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Basic Income Research Proposal

basicincome.ycr.org

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Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#411

Post by s73ver_ »

staunch wrote: post #409
s73ver_ wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How?

You don't have to trust anyone with access to your pension not to steal from it, because no one has access to it. The promise that is your pension would be cryptographically enshrined in a blockchain, with full transparency.

That's... that's not really true. For one, we've already seen how these "smart contracts" can be hacked. I can almost guarantee that they will put something in them that will allow them to take the stuff back.

And that hasn't really explained how the funding would be there.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#412

Post by ThomPete »

dang wrote: post #410
ThomPete wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been participating on HN for years never been accused of that before. What exactly are you referring to? Furthermore I can't fix anything as I can't edit.

I'm referring to the personal swipes in "if you can't actually formulate your own thinking in a comment but are so lazy", etc. Yes, there's an "if", but it's still unduly personal. That's why I said "crosses into" rather than "is". By "fix" I just mean editing that kind of thing out in the future. Shouldn't be hard. And thanks for being an excellent HN contributor!

Ok but can we then have an addition to the rules that says "thau shall not ask others to go read something to make your argument for you" ?

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#413

Post by dang »

ThomPete wrote: post #412
dang wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm referring to the personal swipes in "if you can't actually formulate your own thinking in a comment but are so lazy", etc. Yes, there's an "if", but it's still unduly personal. That's why I said "crosses into" rather than "is". By "fix" I just mean editing that kind of thing out in the future. Shouldn't be hard. And thanks for being an excellent HN contributor!

Ok but can we then have an addition to the rules that says "thau shall not ask others to go read something to make your argument for you" ?

That's clearly not what was wrong with your comment!

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#414

Post by ctdonath »

mbrameld wrote: post #334
ctdonath wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your abstract 3rd-party justification from a distance fails to note the rest of that sentence: "Overall basic income is theft from workers and will be seen as such by those workers. " When enough of those producing wealth decide that UBI = theft, they aren't going to just continue producing without pushing back. Personally, if UBI is implemented, I will "go Galt" and move to a self-sufficient homesteading-style life,…

>because so many people find paid idleness a desirable lifestyle. You're close, and it's an easy mistake to make since it seems intuitive. However, the reality is that people find THE IDEA of paid idleness desirable. Small N, but everyone I know who has found themselves in that position has only remained idle for a very short time. Productivity quickly returns, although not in the form of trading time for money.

While I actively help the poor, it frequently appalls me how many of them choose to live that way. Basic needs met, a significant percentage find no reason to do more than watch TV, eat, and reproduce. Hence my comment elsewhere on this thread lamenting that Y Combinator, having focused on financially assisting the hyper-productive, have lost comprehension of how much of society is populated by those that only produce because they have to for survival; supply basic survival, and they do nothing.

(I'm not saying that about all poor, but the fraction thereof who are is significant.)

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#415

Post by chillwaves »

sintaxi wrote: post #320
chillwaves wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Overall basic income is theft from workers Disagree, basic income is equitable distribution of a collective legacy of increasingly advanced tools and a necessary recognition of limited natural resources and duty to share a small portion to every human being on the basis of birth into our society, aka social contract.

I'll grant you that you've found a clever justification for stealing from producers. The question is what do you do once the people who are generating the value no longer agree?

The ever shrinking % of people who can viably trade labor for wages will have to count on a robot army to cleanse the world of undesirables. Either that or you pay people to dig holes and fill them back in for moral value?

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#416

Post by conanbatt »

Frondo wrote: post #200
conanbatt wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be true of a real BI as well, as you dont know if the government will cut it on the next election!

"I have structured my life not to depend on roads, because you never know if the next government will stop maintaining them." When there's a cultural shift to a UBI, that's not going to vanish overnight just because of an election cycle.

You sir, need to spend 2 years in Argentina to truly understand how the road example is absolutely applicable.

Its true that its easier to add than to remove. One solution to that would be to tie adding it to removing something else.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#417

Post by gnaritas »

staunch wrote: post #408
gnaritas wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't need to, the comment I replied to already addressed a valid why. Smart contracts can't enforce access to funds without locking the funds up from other use, and that's not how things work in the real world. Pensions aren't savings accounts where funds are locked up ready to be used in a black box. They can't interact with the real world without trusted oracles, but we already have that in the real world and t…

You're just claiming it's impractical today, not technically infeasible for any reason. 1. Pensions don't currently work like this There are many thousands of different pension systems across the world. It stands to reason that you could create new system, and if it had significantly attractive advantages, people would use it. 2. Trusted oracles are a problem Yup, we need more decentralized services that smart contra…

Hence my final words, so far...

> Making deterministic change is precisely what you want.

Yes, but that's a problem when you have to interact with the real world which isn't.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#418

Post by ThomPete »

dang wrote: post #413
ThomPete wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok but can we then have an addition to the rules that says "thau shall not ask others to go read something to make your argument for you" ?

That's clearly not what was wrong with your comment!

I know but it's what triggered it and it's a little bit like the "dont tell people they haven't read the article" territory.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#419

Post by SXX »

pdfernhout wrote: post #402
SXX wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I don't believe in idea that many people would be able to build successful FOSS projects and communities around them while living off their savings. It's could be a good for the start, but nothing would work without project having viable business model like MatterMost or Discourse have. Or if someone sponsors it be it some corporation or individual. Reason for this is simple: successful project it's not ju…

I agree anyone competent enough to run a good FOSS project from their savings will face a daily temptation of abandoning their precarious existence for a substantial secure income working at a corporate job. And I agree also that it is problematical how to divide donations to a project when there are multiple contributors (especially versus donations to specific developers, but even that is problematic if a multi-per…

While I wish to be as positive as you are about the future there still few points I feel important to make.

* First of all I don't think that important projects started by single developer is right example for benefit that BI could bring because they managed without basic income in past and they don't need it today.

If project don't get enough traction during period when project originator actively work on it that's usually mean that will never happen. But if original developer leave there still chance for someone else who believe in idea to take control or just fork it and continue. Also this rotation seems like one of crucial parts that make open source successful.

So while BI would let someone to work on the same code indefinitely or at least much longer than now I don't think that will greatly increase number of popular and widely used open source projects. And who knows might be it's will even decrease that number.

* Another note about voluntarism. It's great that in developed countries there is endless number of ways for society to participate in all kind of useful activities and I wish it's was even remotely close in country of my origin. Though for the reasons stated before I simply don't believe that crowd-sourcing can be applied to build successful software projects. You might say that community can go promote software instead of helping with development, but today you can't even promote project efficiently using centralized tools we have simply because companies companies like Facebook and others want you to pay for that. Number of communities outside of centralized social networks is dwindle over last 10 years.

So I wish to think positively, but so far all I see is that distributed FOSS projects cannot successfully compete with corporate or VC funded products. With direction where Internet, hardware trends, Internet and society itself going I don't see how we going to get more people involved in open source and not less.

But hopefully someone will come up with idea how to fund truly distributed open source teams so they can at least somewhat compete with VC money burning centralized proprietary alternatives. Without that best we can hope for is that open source will keep positions it's have today.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#420

Post by pg314 »

taysic wrote: post #407
pg314 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point, I hadn't considered those second order effects. > There are plenty of low income workers that would quit their jobs, driving their wages up I don't think we have enough information currently to unequivocally state that. How many low income workers would quit? It's not like many people in better paying jobs reduce their working hours up to a point where they make the equivalent amount of money as a UBI. Ho…

As is seen with people on welfare there are plenty of jobs they won't take if they don't have to. The meager wages don't make them worth it. Because of this I think prices would soar much higher than 40%

UBI is unconditional: you don't lose it if you work. That is not the case with welfare, typically.
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