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American Equity

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: American Equity

#2

Post by mehrdada »

This could a bit tangential to Sam's core point, but there is a lot of value that can be added to society that ends up reducing GDP (especially true when we talk about things governments should be doing), so I am not sure aligning everyone to maximize that singular metric is necessarily the best thing one could do.

More directly relevant to the core point is the short-term/long-term question: as also evident in the stock market, it is not clear that the companies controlled by shareholders are better focused on the long term than the ones where founders have majority control.

Re: American Equity

#3

Post by chollida1 »

Can someone actually explain what Sam wants to do here? I've read the post 4 times and I still can't see an y sort of plan, numbers, etc to actually critique,

Which is odd because he specifically ask you to give feedback but never follows through on presenting the actual idea.

He does motivate why he thinks a share of the GDP is so he gets the why, but never actually gets into the what, and how.

I mean the GDP isn't just something you can siphon off money from and give it to someone as it's not a thing that anyone owns.

So if you want to give out a portion of the GDP, I think what he really means is pay a universal income that is locked to GDP growth, but he never really says this.

Re: American Equity

#4

Post by aaron-lebo »

This is remarkably short of specifics, justification, or data for such a massive undertaking. Sam, you'll make a fine politician. The lack of rigor doesn't bother you, though?

Re: American Equity

#5

Post by aaron-lebo »

chollida1 wrote: post #3

Can someone actually explain what Sam wants to do here? I've read the post 4 times and I still can't see an y sort of plan, numbers, etc to actually critique, Which is odd because he specifically ask you to give feedback but never follows through on presenting the actual idea. He does motivate why he thinks a share of the GDP is so he gets the why, but never actually gets into the what, and how. I mean the GDP isn't…

He's putting forward a vague political plan because he wants to be a politician.

Re: American Equity

#7

Post by JoachimSchipper »

Context: Y Combinator has funded an experiment in Basic Income, which basically gives everyone in (a city, a country, ...) a guaranteed income independent of labour/capital. A (Universal) Basic Income should let people focus on art/science/... if they want, and ensure that everyone continues to have an acceptable live as automation makes more and more jobs obsolete.

This appears to be the same idea, but in capitalist language (Americans as stockholders in the US.)

Re: American Equity

#8

Post by andy_ppp »

I'm a little unclear how this would work in practice. What is the financial instrument and is it equity in the government or equity in all the companies in the US?

I see no reason why companies would do it and no incentive to take a part of the government (is the US government going to pay a dividend?), I'm not certain everyone having a share they couldn't trade would be worth it. I think the ability to trade state monopolies was tried in Russia, how is that looking?

Finally isn't the stated aim of YC to create companies that are monopolies and use network effects to entrench their positions, accumulating wealth into a few hands?

Re: American Equity

#9

Post by jasode »

Meta question: if this essay about "American Equity" is another way of proposing "universal basic income", why is there circumlocution around UBI?

Possibilities are "UBI" has been poisoned with negative connotations can you can't talk about it anymore. That's possible but it seems like the overwhelming sentiment on HN and reddit is massive support for it.

As far as I can tell, "UBI" doesn't have negative connotations such as the phrase "welfare queens". UBI is already widely understood. What's the motivation for the neologism "American equity"? (My guess is it's a UBI-indexed-to-GDP.)

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