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VC, Entrepreneur Says Basic Income Would Work Even If 90% People 'Smoked Pot' and Didn't Work (techinsider.io)
An anonymous reader cites a story on TI: The chief complaint people lodge at universal basic income -- a form of income distribution that gives people money to cover basic needs regardless of whether they work or not -- is that it'll make them lazy. Sam Altman doesn't buy it. In a recent episode of the Freakonomics podcast, entitled "Is the World Ready for a Guaranteed Basic Income?" Altman argued basic income could support huge amounts of productivity loss and still carry the economy on its shoulders. "Maybe 90% of people will go smoke pot and play video games, but if 10% of the people go create incredible new products and services and new wealth, that's still a huge net-win," Altman says. "And the American puritanical ideal that hard work for its own sake is valuable -- period -- and that you can't question that, I think that's just wrong." [...] The complaint Altman addressed on the Freakonomics podcast is a common one. Study after study, however, has shown that giving people extra money makes them feel financially secure. That security ends up leading to empowerment, not de-motivation.
I strongly suspect that my level of "basic needs" I'm willing to "give" to someone who smokes pot and plays video games all day is much lower than they will demand.
The Capitalist system has created more jobs, more wealth, more prosperity, and higher income mobility than any other system in the history of mankind.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Ask the people in East Germany before they were set free from your idea of utopia if they think their lifestyles - as empowered by mandatory collectivist wonderfulness - was more or less corrupt, or polluted, or impoverished than was the lifestyle in West Germany.
You're deliberately pretending that history didn't happen so you can insist that having other people provide for you is somehow not only fair to them, but preferable. No. We don't want to be your slaves, slacker-boy. Trying to re-tell the history of prosperity so you can avoid looking at reality is just your juvenile way of wishing you could slack your way through life while other people work and create and make the things you want to be handed simply because you're breathing.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Corruption exists in all economic systems.
More pollution and more trash are by products of people using more resources. Not all choices will be good choices
Capitalism is basically resource allocation based not on need but ability to cover the expenses of gathering those resources. It is flexible by letting people set their own lower bounds. Socialism tries to make it capitalism more efficient which It can do in limited grouping but not on the whole system. Some systems especially those dealing with people will always been horribly inefficient. That won't ever change. So the most flexible system will grow the most and that is capitalism.
Where capitalism fails is in providing minimum base level. If you want people to have healthcare capitalism will always fail at that. If you want everyone to get a minimum amount of food daily. Capitalism fails. Otherwise you get homeless hungry people dying on your streets.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
You people categorically against this do realize we are rapidly approaching a point where large parts of the population don't really have to work to support our basic societal infrastructure? So what happens then? Do we actually reevaluate our economic system or just proceed as we've been going with increasing economic inequality and subsequent societal unrest? Are you people so selfish that you would deny basic support for all if our society could afford it? There will always be an incentive for work because you'll be able to make more money and have more things.
And if that is the way modern capitalism worked, you might have a point. But when you consider the amount of corporate welfare in most industrialized countries, and couple that with the fact that, as the Panama Papers show, the very wealthy are so powerful that they can actually manipulate, if not outright force the political system to make sure not only profits are guaranteed, but large amounts of cash is protected in tax shelters. There's nothing wrong with being wealthy, but when being wealthy effectively creates a whole new political class, capable of overawing politicians to guarantee compliance and leniency, then i'd say we've left behind the idealized capitalism and are well on the way to kleptocracy.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Oh for fucks sakes, anytime anyone offers anything, there are strings attached. The difference between government and private concerns is that governments are at least hypothetically responsive to the voter. But really, this is total paranoia. All housing, even privately owned housing, has rules attached to it. I can't dig a big ass mote around my property, nor can I build a five hundred foot tower. I still have to get permits, and if the plan violates local or state building codes, then that's that. If I play loud music at 1am, the fact that I own my house doesn't mean I can't be fined under nuisance bylaws, and potentially even end up in court.
This Libertarian fantasy of yours simply does not exist. We all have obligations, whether we're owners or renters, and whether, as renters we live in privately-owned housing or public housing.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The difference between government and private concerns is that governments are at least hypothetically responsive to the voter.
Another difference is that private parties are responsive to their own welfare, and not just hypothetically because they must play well with others in order to have continued success.
So this debate boils down to which has more power to push common good: the set of voters or market forces? My thought is "both", and I think it's foolish to play the game of attacking one side just to promote the other.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
I htink we were collectively distracted by the poor term "the 1%". The actual 1%, the moderately wealthy, the successful doctors and dentists and lawyers and small business owners, they aren't the issue here. The 1% aren't the people in the Panama Papers.
We should instead be upset at "the richest 100 families", who IMO have been causing so many problems. In some ways, the difference between "ideal capitalism" and "capitalism as practiced in the US" is the difference between the 1% and the richest 100 families.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I think the VC's claim is a little strange also:
Maybe 90% of people will go smoke pot and play video games, but if 10% of the people go create incredible new products and services and new wealth, that's still a huge net-win,
Yes, people will continue to invent, they will create new products and services, music, art, etc. But who is going to decide that instead of sitting home and watching TV, they're going to wait tables, or flip burgers, or enforce laws, or collect trash, or be a retail cashier?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
This sounds nice on paper, except you still haven't dealt with the problem of those who feel they have the "right" to live there.
Sure I have: they don't have any such right. They have a guaranteed monthly income, and they can spend it how they like. If they can't afford the rent in Manhattan on that, then they'll have to move.
Remember also that New York was one of those states that wanted to justify having unemployment for longer than 99 weeks.
You don't need unemployment with BI, just like you don't need "disability", SNAP, etc. All these social programs are band-aid attempts to fix the problems caused by poverty. Eliminate poverty with a basic income and you don't need them any more.