I don't see why the Basic Income model relies on a "post-scarcity" scenario. Where does the money come from?
citizenr (the post that started this particular chain) explicitly called it out as part of his reasoning:
This is one of the scenarios of post scarcity world (goods/food manufactured by automatons leaving people unemployed).
The goal is working people would pay the equivalent of the Basic Income in tax, but get the Basic Income too, so it would have net zero effect.
If everyone got back exactly what they paid, there would be not left to go to those who pay nothing.
declare it, lose benefits and face a 90% marginal tax rate
It's known as a welfare trap. It means that the opportunity cost spent to get back into work isn't worth the returns on working. It might be a little less pronounced under a Basic Income system, but the principle still applies - Basic Income is, after all, just another form of welfare, with a simplified system of distribution.
Welfare generally starts off as a safety net - enough money that people who are without work can survive. The thing welfare needs to work is a large gap between the welfare payments, and the lowest tier of the workforce. Without that gap, you lose the incentive for people on the Basic Income to ever leave it - the opportunity cost for working outweighs the benefit of a marginal financial benefit.
The thing is, once the Basic Income is established, it's in the interest of the people on it to narrow that gap. Because people born into welfare generally find it hard to leave it, you get an increasing pool of people on welfare, which correlates with an increasing political presence (in democratic societies anyway), and a commensurate decrease of workers providing funding for it.
In short, what you need is for a welfare payment that is enough to survive, but little enough that it's not comfortable to live on it. Maintaining that balance long term is difficult, particularly when there's pressures on both sides with a vested interest in tipping it over.
When Google starts trying to "civilize" the internet by requiring real names, it's forcing us to associate our free speech with our jobs, families and others who may face retaliation if our ideas are not socially acceptable.
Google has no authority, and is not trying, to civilize "the internet". It's trying to apply those policies to its own services, and it has every right to do so. Doing so isn't "forcing" you to associate your name with your speech, unless you are somehow compelled to use Google's services. And in the arena where this applies (social networking) Google isn't even particularly dominant.
The thing about the internet is that it's not some uniform monolith. There is plenty of space for both pseudonymous and real-name services - if you don't like a service that requires real names, use one that allows pseudonyms. You don't have to force every service on the internet to conform to your ideas as to how the internet should operate - doing so is far more of an attempt to "civilize the internet" than what Google's doing.
Ooh! Secret agreements! I love me a good conspiracy.
that banned Acer from making Aliyun phones?
Yeah, they threatened to kick out people who worked directly against the purpose of the alliance. How unreasonable of them. Next you'll suggest that democrats who suggest adopting Randian economic practices are getting unjustly booted from the party.
Is it can be forked. But then we have the question of whether Android, the open source part, is really enough to build a phone or if only basic elements are open source, while key elements are closed or so severely controlled that they might as well be closed.
Is it even a question any more? I thought Cyanogen had answered that particular one years ago. The only thing the opensource Android codebase lacks is device-specific drivers, and that's going to be a perennial problem with Open Source until hardware manufacturers open up their devices. It's still an issue even with Linux - which is why most Linux machines that care about graphic performance install a close-source binary blob driver from the manufacturer.
But if you actually try to make use of that source code, Google puts a spanner in the works.
Newsflash: You can't have your cake and eat it to.
If you've made an agreement to work towards making Android the dominant mobile OS, then yeah, creating an incompatible fork is likely to get you kicked out of the OHA. If you've made no such agreement, or no longer want to be a part of the OHA, you'll have no troubles.
Also, forking the SDK is now banned. How is Android open again?
Isn't this just called "The Prisoner's Dilemma [wikipedia.org]"? Or will I be downmodded for using the word "prisoner" -- too harsh for the Aaron Swartz case?
No. The Prisoner's Dilemma is a thought-experiment in game theory, not an application to real-world interactions with police. This particular case doesn't resemble the prisoner's dilemma anyway, as that scenarior requires both players to have a benefit for co-operating, and a greater benefit for backstabbing.
No. For that to be a like-to-like comparison, you'd have to include the footprint of building the bike. Petrol-Asparagus is a fuel comparison. Bike-Bus is a vehicle comparison. Of course, to make it actually fair, you'd want to divide the footprint of the bus' fuel by the average number of passengers.
The problem with a deflationary currency is that it discourages investment. If your currency is deflating by, say, 1% per annum, you can, without any risk at all, increase the buying power of your money just by sitting on it.
This is in comparison to an inflationary currency where, if you don't invest it, its buying power eventually dwindles away to nothing. It encourages people with a large reserve of money to make it available to others via the mechanism of investing.
Yea, how dare those bastards make clean air and water for everyone priorities over profits for the select few!
Because our pure-hearted regulators only ever do what's best for everyone, and never use their authority to line their own pockets, or stifle their friends' competitors.
Can you comfortably phone someone or receive phone call without resorting to earplug?
Why is an earplug a "resort"? When I'm using my phone, I pretty much always either have it connected to a headset (anywhere there's other people around) or on speaker (everywhere else). I don't think I've held a phone to the side of my face for years.
but a framework/engine like Silverlight accomplishes all the things you just listed and enables a much greater level of productivity (in my opinion) than HTML/JS/CSS.
Yeah, but why? Is it the IDE used for generating Silverlight apps? If so, is there something about the underlying code Silverlight generates that makes it more amenable to being managed by an IDE than HTML+JS+CSS? If so, what are the features that make it so? How much effort is it to incorporate those sort of features into HTML+JS+CSS?
I'd prefer to do it all in one language, not three plus the back end
Why? You don't use C++ to query a database do you? Why would you use it to describe a visual style? It's a procedural programming language, not a stylesheet language. Horses for courses.
plus the various JS frameworks
What, you never use any common libraries for your non-web code? That's all those JS frameworks are - useful, general functions collected into a library.
...gets extended to cover all scenarios, when there are older and better technologies around. For example, did we have to reinvent everything on the desktop in the browser?
Bad example. An app that runs on the desktop is not comparable to one that performs the same function in a browser. For one, the browser app is inherently accessible remotely; it almost certainly stores files remotely, and is orders of magnitude easier to make cross-platform than your average desktop app (unless it was written explicitly with cross-platformness in mind, and often even then).
When people started wanting apps that were accessible from multiple devices, accessing files stored in a central, remote location, browser-based applications started taking off. Not because they were new and shiny, but because they were doing something the desktop ones didn't.
If it weren't for the MS tie-in, and it was truly an open standard, wouldn't it make more sense than trying to string together HTML and JavaScript in clever ways to accomplish the same thing?
Why is "stringing together HTML and Javascript" a bad way of doing things? Really, for these UI-type things, most development models involve you creating "things", stringing them together with "actions" and (possibly) changing the way they look with a "skin". Why is using HTML to define the things, javscript to define the actions, and CSS to describe the skin, a bad idea? Is there a different language for one of those functions that you think is more appropriate to that particular domain for some reason?
In short HTML+JS+CSS are rapidly (relatively speaking) converging on the capabilities of Flash/Silverlight - and bringing some of their historical strengths (accessibility, separation of content and style, human-readable data formats, open standards, etc) to the table as well. I mean, doesn't Flash even now use a Javascript dialect for its scripting capabilities?
The US wants to meddle deeply in the affairs of its neighbors, maybe assassinate those who don't play along, support those who strike at Iran and the like.
Except that doesn't seem to be the mechanism here. In this case, it's the same individual which has a lowered sensitivity to DEET after a single application.
But, you know, don't let that stop this thread turning into another Evil Religion Suppresses Science flame-fest.
My parents were teachers (University educated). I have somewhere in the vicinity of 10 friends who are teachers, and all of them have a higher effective income than my parents did when I was growing up. I've got about the same education as my Dad, but in a different field (web development), and I'm earning now what he did when he retired.
Productivity has risen so much since 1950 that we should be able to work 4 hour days.
We used those productivity gains to increase our GDP rather than shorten our workday. While an increased GDP inflates the bank balances of the rich more than it does the middle-or-lower classes, there are benefits in having a strong economy for us too; most people I know are living "better" (bigger house, more expensive car, more travel, more disposable income) than their parents were at the same age - and frequently with lower debt.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see why the Basic Income model relies on a "post-scarcity" scenario. Where does the money come from?
citizenr (the post that started this particular chain) explicitly called it out as part of his reasoning:
This is one of the scenarios of post scarcity world (goods/food manufactured by automatons leaving people unemployed).
The goal is working people would pay the equivalent of the Basic Income in tax, but get the Basic Income too, so it would have net zero effect.
If everyone got back exactly what they paid, there would be not left to go to those who pay nothing.
declare it, lose benefits and face a 90% marginal tax rate
It's known as a welfare trap. It means that the opportunity cost spent to get back into work isn't worth the returns on working. It might be a little less pronounced under a Basic Income system, but the principle still applies - Basic Income is, after all, just another form of welfare, with a simplified system of distribution.
Welfare generally starts off as a safety net - enough money that people who are without work can survive. The thing welfare needs to work is a large gap between the welfare payments, and the lowest tier of the workforce. Without that gap, you lose the incentive for people on the Basic Income to ever leave it - the opportunity cost for working outweighs the benefit of a marginal financial benefit.
The thing is, once the Basic Income is established, it's in the interest of the people on it to narrow that gap. Because people born into welfare generally find it hard to leave it, you get an increasing pool of people on welfare, which correlates with an increasing political presence (in democratic societies anyway), and a commensurate decrease of workers providing funding for it.
In short, what you need is for a welfare payment that is enough to survive, but little enough that it's not comfortable to live on it. Maintaining that balance long term is difficult, particularly when there's pressures on both sides with a vested interest in tipping it over.
non-cooperation with a grand jury is possible but carries great risk.
She didn't need to refuse to co-operate. She just needed to bring a lawyer.
When Google starts trying to "civilize" the internet by requiring real names, it's forcing us to associate our free speech with our jobs, families and others who may face retaliation if our ideas are not socially acceptable.
Google has no authority, and is not trying, to civilize "the internet". It's trying to apply those policies to its own services, and it has every right to do so. Doing so isn't "forcing" you to associate your name with your speech, unless you are somehow compelled to use Google's services. And in the arena where this applies (social networking) Google isn't even particularly dominant.
The thing about the internet is that it's not some uniform monolith. There is plenty of space for both pseudonymous and real-name services - if you don't like a service that requires real names, use one that allows pseudonyms. You don't have to force every service on the internet to conform to your ideas as to how the internet should operate - doing so is far more of an attempt to "civilize the internet" than what Google's doing.
It is high time for us to stop their dumping, subsidies, and money fixing
I initially read that as "dumpling subsidies", and was ready to shoot of a fiery reply. I loves me some cheap dumplings.
Haha, the same alliance with secret agreements
Ooh! Secret agreements! I love me a good conspiracy.
that banned Acer from making Aliyun phones?
Yeah, they threatened to kick out people who worked directly against the purpose of the alliance. How unreasonable of them. Next you'll suggest that democrats who suggest adopting Randian economic practices are getting unjustly booted from the party.
Is it can be forked. But then we have the question of whether Android, the open source part, is really enough to build a phone or if only basic elements are open source, while key elements are closed or so severely controlled that they might as well be closed.
Is it even a question any more? I thought Cyanogen had answered that particular one years ago. The only thing the opensource Android codebase lacks is device-specific drivers, and that's going to be a perennial problem with Open Source until hardware manufacturers open up their devices. It's still an issue even with Linux - which is why most Linux machines that care about graphic performance install a close-source binary blob driver from the manufacturer.
But if you actually try to make use of that source code, Google puts a spanner in the works.
Newsflash: You can't have your cake and eat it to.
If you've made an agreement to work towards making Android the dominant mobile OS, then yeah, creating an incompatible fork is likely to get you kicked out of the OHA. If you've made no such agreement, or no longer want to be a part of the OHA, you'll have no troubles.
Also, forking the SDK is now banned. How is Android open again?
It's not. Troll harder please.
Isn't this just called "The Prisoner's Dilemma [wikipedia.org]"? Or will I be downmodded for using the word "prisoner" -- too harsh for the Aaron Swartz case?
No. The Prisoner's Dilemma is a thought-experiment in game theory, not an application to real-world interactions with police. This particular case doesn't resemble the prisoner's dilemma anyway, as that scenarior requires both players to have a benefit for co-operating, and a greater benefit for backstabbing.
Remember, CO2 is also poisonous in sufficient quantities.
As is oxygen; as is water. As is pretty much anything you care to name.
No. For that to be a like-to-like comparison, you'd have to include the footprint of building the bike. Petrol-Asparagus is a fuel comparison. Bike-Bus is a vehicle comparison. Of course, to make it actually fair, you'd want to divide the footprint of the bus' fuel by the average number of passengers.
He's talking about a "post-scarcity" scenario - which basically means it's not applicable now, nor any time in the conceivable future.
The problem with a deflationary currency is that it discourages investment. If your currency is deflating by, say, 1% per annum, you can, without any risk at all, increase the buying power of your money just by sitting on it.
This is in comparison to an inflationary currency where, if you don't invest it, its buying power eventually dwindles away to nothing. It encourages people with a large reserve of money to make it available to others via the mechanism of investing.
Yea, how dare those bastards make clean air and water for everyone priorities over profits for the select few!
Because our pure-hearted regulators only ever do what's best for everyone, and never use their authority to line their own pockets, or stifle their friends' competitors.
Can you comfortably phone someone or receive phone call without resorting to earplug?
Why is an earplug a "resort"? When I'm using my phone, I pretty much always either have it connected to a headset (anywhere there's other people around) or on speaker (everywhere else). I don't think I've held a phone to the side of my face for years.
but a framework/engine like Silverlight accomplishes all the things you just listed and enables a much greater level of productivity (in my opinion) than HTML/JS/CSS.
Yeah, but why? Is it the IDE used for generating Silverlight apps? If so, is there something about the underlying code Silverlight generates that makes it more amenable to being managed by an IDE than HTML+JS+CSS? If so, what are the features that make it so? How much effort is it to incorporate those sort of features into HTML+JS+CSS?
I'd prefer to do it all in one language, not three plus the back end
Why? You don't use C++ to query a database do you? Why would you use it to describe a visual style? It's a procedural programming language, not a stylesheet language. Horses for courses.
plus the various JS frameworks
What, you never use any common libraries for your non-web code? That's all those JS frameworks are - useful, general functions collected into a library.
...gets extended to cover all scenarios, when there are older and better technologies around. For example, did we have to reinvent everything on the desktop in the browser?
Bad example. An app that runs on the desktop is not comparable to one that performs the same function in a browser. For one, the browser app is inherently accessible remotely; it almost certainly stores files remotely, and is orders of magnitude easier to make cross-platform than your average desktop app (unless it was written explicitly with cross-platformness in mind, and often even then).
When people started wanting apps that were accessible from multiple devices, accessing files stored in a central, remote location, browser-based applications started taking off. Not because they were new and shiny, but because they were doing something the desktop ones didn't.
So this initiative is all about saving telcos money? Where can I sign up?!
If it weren't for the MS tie-in, and it was truly an open standard, wouldn't it make more sense than trying to string together HTML and JavaScript in clever ways to accomplish the same thing?
Why is "stringing together HTML and Javascript" a bad way of doing things? Really, for these UI-type things, most development models involve you creating "things", stringing them together with "actions" and (possibly) changing the way they look with a "skin". Why is using HTML to define the things, javscript to define the actions, and CSS to describe the skin, a bad idea? Is there a different language for one of those functions that you think is more appropriate to that particular domain for some reason?
In short HTML+JS+CSS are rapidly (relatively speaking) converging on the capabilities of Flash/Silverlight - and bringing some of their historical strengths (accessibility, separation of content and style, human-readable data formats, open standards, etc) to the table as well. I mean, doesn't Flash even now use a Javascript dialect for its scripting capabilities?
You should switch to Mint.
The US wants to meddle deeply in the affairs of its neighbors, maybe assassinate those who don't play along, support those who strike at Iran and the like.
If the shoe fits...
Really?
Yah, really. That quote you got was right from the bottom of the page. From just above that quote:
Earlier research by the same team found that genetic changes to the same species of mosquito can make them immune to Deet
Yes, evolutionary resistance to Deet has been observed before. No, that's not what this research is about.
Funny, no one was doing that. Defensive much?
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3483731&cid=42976213
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3483731&cid=42976021
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3483731&cid=42976185
Most books and movies are the same. Look at half the scifi books on amazon. Humans fighting aliens for some reason
Yeah. Every book I've read is just a sequence of words, one after the other. All the same!
Except that doesn't seem to be the mechanism here. In this case, it's the same individual which has a lowered sensitivity to DEET after a single application.
But, you know, don't let that stop this thread turning into another Evil Religion Suppresses Science flame-fest.
My parents were teachers (University educated). I have somewhere in the vicinity of 10 friends who are teachers, and all of them have a higher effective income than my parents did when I was growing up. I've got about the same education as my Dad, but in a different field (web development), and I'm earning now what he did when he retired.
Productivity has risen so much since 1950 that we should be able to work 4 hour days.
We used those productivity gains to increase our GDP rather than shorten our workday. While an increased GDP inflates the bank balances of the rich more than it does the middle-or-lower classes, there are benefits in having a strong economy for us too; most people I know are living "better" (bigger house, more expensive car, more travel, more disposable income) than their parents were at the same age - and frequently with lower debt.