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Request For Research: Basic Income
441–450 of 1001 posts
Re: Request For Research: Basic Income
#442Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sold on density. I think improving rural logistics is more key. Make more land attractive rather than making more use of current land. That is logistics both for people, data, and goods.
It does seem attractive, all the empty land out there. But the point of cities is to be near lots of other people all the time. There's a tipping point of human flourishing from the intermingling. Great cities outlasted empires. Interaction density is the important thing, and it grows combinatorially with human density. There's no way you're going to get rural logistics to that level.
Also there's a significant problem of infrastructural efficiency. There's research indicating that city infrastructure follows a 3/4ths-power distribution, where doubling the population only increases the need for infrastructure by 68% [1]. The more generalizable format of this is Kleiber's Law [2], which notes that animal metabolisms scale along that same distribution by body mass. The implication is that cities like Detroit that are rapidly contracting in population and per-capita income are getting a double-wammy of decreasing tax revenues and increasing per-capita infrastructure costs.
[1] http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/math-and-the...
Re: Request For Research: Basic Income
#443What a cop-out calling it "basic income". As if it's somehow "free money". Really it's just a further institutionalization of theft, of course making people more dependent on mother government. Imagine the debate, should we raise basic income by x or 2x? The solution is not more laws, it's less. For example ending the war on drugs would have a immediate effect on the lower income brackets. If I didnt pay >1/3 of my i…
Nice job defining all taxation as theft without actually stating it. I can kind of see a basis for that - people with guns enforce that you pay your taxes. On the other hand, in the US, Congress decides on the budget, and we vote for those folks. And we don't seem to care enough about government spending to vote out the ones that spend a lot. And, if taxation is theft, what is your alternative? Government supported b…
Individual income and property tax specifically. There are other ways gov can raise money. Gov has the printing press (although I want to let people decide what money is and what to trade in). Gov supported by charity is usually presented as an absurdity, like nobody would earmark donations for the DOD, I don't think that's the case.
Agreed that people just dont care enough, I think a part of that is the constantly re-enforced state of fear which promotes the protection racket.
Re: Request For Research: Basic Income
#444Startups already increase global prosperity enormously by targeting massive markets with scalable solutions. Ultimately, the way you make money as a startup is by offering value to your customers, i.e. increasing their wealth.
Some examples of this include: Uber/Lyft, decreasing transportation costs and improving quality for millions, while creating tens of thousands of jobs; Airbnb, same thing for hotels; social apps like Twitter, Instagram, etc, increasing entertainment/information flow to users, creating new media careers; etc. So startups don't need to operate any differently than they do now ... Think big and make big moniez!
One thing that definitely does not work are "social enterprise" startups. Distraction from the brutal realities of market forces ultimately leads these to fail while patting themselves on the back for doing "good."
In the spirit of the question though I'll list a few areas I think have enormous potential.
Money services and lending - very difficult to innovate here due to the iron fist of Uncle Sam and banking cartels. I think what's needed is either, 1) US-caliber teams operating outside the US or 2) products that skirt the law a la Uber/Airbnb but like those products are so positive with users that going against them becomes a risk for politicians.
Health - outsourcing/telepresence, reducing the cost of basic testing. Again may need to operate outside the US.
Legal - enormous value to be unlocked by standardizing and automating this field a la Clerky but better. Difficult to get lawyers on board, they are very good at extracting rents.
Real estate - breaking regulatory capture of Realtors.
End of life services - we're all in this market. It's not sexy so not much innovation.
Education - it's so backwards that you can innovate in any dimension.
Investment - despite nominal progress on things like crowdfunding, there really hasn't been a big impact yet by startups in increasing access to capital / opportunities to invest. It's still far too difficult to raise money for new businesses. Again, may have to operate outside of the US for this and consider innovative legal structures.
Science - breaking the University stranglehold on credible scientific research through crowdsourced/funded efforts. Enormous potential to cheaply fund studies especially those that go against orthodoxy or corporate interests. Again may need to be outside US.
Re: Request For Research: Basic Income
#445My non-profit's focus is on early childhood education in developing countries.
It's sort of a long time to see a payoff but economically-speaking these are some of the most efficient education dollars people can spend (it's a time in the child's life that has high leverage).
You can read more about how we're trying to increase affordability here: www.sharedforkids.com
Re: Request For Research: Basic Income
#446Earlier quoted context omitted.
Evidence increasingly is showing that direct cash transfers to the poorest are among the most effective interventions, among randomized control trials in the developing world.
Define poorest. The great society handed out lots of free cash in the 60s and 70s, and it didn't work.
Define great society. If anything, parent's comment is more clear to me than yours. Both are [citation needed], but parent's hints at more detail.
Re: Request For Research: Basic Income
#447Things that would help everyone, regardless of income, without depending on a radical restructuring of entitlement spending, that seem like things startups could actually do: * Equally credible alternatives to university education for professions that don't involve students shouldering $100k-$200k in debt based on decisions they have to make when they're 18 years old. * Empirical, blinded, skills-assessment based tur…
Sorry, but all of those sound like things that are going to help people who were already going to be successful to be even more successful.
College debt, for example, is a problem for those who were successful enough to get into college into the first place, and who, simply by getting into college, are already increasing their lifetime earnings by millions of dollars.
Technological services for K-12 ed is pushing a string. The largest predictor of a student's performance is the educational level and socioeconomic status of their parents, not any in-school factor. Classroom technology offers the most benefit to the students best equipped to make use of it, which is again the privileged and better-prepared students.
Increased political engagement helps those who already have enough leisure and status to spend time following and engaging politics.
Poverty is a more basic problem.
Re: Request For Research: Basic Income
#448Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. Everyone bemoans the increasing in tuition and increase in admin staff.. these things are intimately tied. The cost of education on a per-student basis hasn't increased very much in the US. Most of the cost burden has just shifted from taxpayers to students (for better or worse). Much of the admin staff is necessary to handle all of the financial aid, grant applications, etc. Simply providing tuition-free educat…
Much of the increase in admin staff and university spending has come from all of that free government aid money we keep giving them. If we make tuition "free" for everyone, then universities will get a bottomless pit of money to spend on useless things. They will be almost totally divorced from the incentive to keep costs low. Right now, universities don't compete for funds on the basis of the quality of education. T…
This isn't supported by much.. The cost per student hasn't increased, only the proportion charged to tuition rather than taxes. It's easy to blame easy government money for the increase in admin staff, but during my grad program I GA'ed in the office and half of the staff were dealing with financial aid / loans / scholarships. They would be there regardless the source of the cash.
I've fought this battle on HN before and nobody wants to believe that college isn't any more expensive than it previously was, so I'll leave this here -- but do a bit of research and you'll be surprised.
Edit;
Since everyone seems to be downvoting this point, here's the inflation-adjusted cost per student in California from 1987 - 2013:
http://keepcaliforniaspromise.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12...
It actually costs about $2,500 less per student today than it did in the late 80's -- yet during the same time, tuition has increased by upwards of 5x. That delta used to be carried by taxpayers but has been shifted to tuition.
Re: Request For Research: Basic Income
#449A lot of people see problems in getting basic income funded. But is there is a simple solution :) Generate the money, just print it! Everyone on earth will get an equal quantity of money, every month. Now this money can be used in two different ways. 1) Buy natural resources 2) Buy services This distinction is important: When somebody provides a service, like fixing your bike he gets money and can keep it. When you b…
You don't understand what money is. If it doesn't actually represent real work, or some material good, it's valueless. It's just this weird stack of paper that shows up at the door every month.
Re: Request For Research: Basic Income
#450I've proposed a number of things at http://catallax.info. It boils down to changing incentives. We are currently incentivised to get the most for our dollars in the present. When you change the incentive to allow for more reward in the future if you spend your today dollars 'better' you can make sentences like 'decreasing the cost of living' much less relevant to the conversation.