Moving Forward on Basic Income
blog.ycombinator.com
Moving Forward on Basic Income
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Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income
#2Very exciting! I wonder how the short-term nature of the pilot program might have some inherent biases compared to the long-term study? Presumably there would be less dramatic changes in behavior / lifestyle?
Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income
#3Very exciting! I wonder how the short-term nature of the pilot program might have some inherent biases compared to the long-term study? Presumably there would be less dramatic changes in behavior / lifestyle?
That's correct -- it's really not our goal though to try and answer the main research questions with the pilot; it's meant to help us figure out the mechanics of doing the larger study.
Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income
#4Or moving backwards, the study will findout.
Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income
#5I think it's great YC is funding some interesting research.
I'm a bit curious as to why they didn't partner with some established academics in this area (there's plenty of economists who have done excellent research here) rather than start a new program - but it's YC's money, and they can choose how to spend it.
How open do you plan to be about things like datasets/analysis plans and so forth? I think this would be an excellent opportunity to push forward open science http://osinitiative.org/about-osi/. Further, if you allow people who are skeptical of the minimum income to register the objections before you gather the data, you can address them before you proceed - at that point, post-hoc critiques are a lot less credible.
Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income
#6> If the pilot goes well, we plan to follow up with the main study. If the pilot doesn’t go well, we’ll consider different approaches.
Interesting. What are the metrics to determine the success or failure of the pilot?
Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income
#7Have you given much thought to the effect of a participant taking on debt during your experiment?
Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income
#8Question: Wouldnt it make more sense to pick an more isolated ecosystem than oakland?
Eg a smaller town or even a small country (eg an island country - yes sounds crazy but actually why not)
Or is the goal rather to find out how people will act? (as in: get lazy or not)
Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income
#9I wonder how to test controlling for reciprocity. I.e., If I receive a basic income as part of a pilot/experiment I will feel tempted to "give back" somehow, while if basic income is a baseline all humans receive, that reciprocity will not be present. How can you design an experiment so that somehow people don't feel they are receiving money in an extraordinary way, but rather that's just part of how the world works. Wouldn't that change their motivations and thus the behavior you want to observe?
Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income
#10Thank you for doing this, YC!