8 ms·

Guaranteed minimum income, reverse taxation, or merely a solid welfare program that provides solid housing, food, and medical care -- basically anything that so

Guaranteed minimum income, reverse taxation, or merely a solid welfare program that provides solid housing, food, and medical care -- basically anything that someone would die or be in pain without...these are all possible solutions. I'd advocate for an experimental approach with smaller populations with different possible solutions, ratcheting them up as they are shown to be successful and sustainable.

at-fates-hands 11y ago
>> Guaranteed minimum income, reverse taxation, or merely a solid welfare program that provides solid housing, food, and medical care The only problem with this is how this is impossible to scale to proper levels in the US. This works great in smaller economies (like you're advocating) like Scandinavian countries where you have a much smaller population and it's easy to support a few million people. You also have to take into account the Scandinavian cultural norms as well. When you have over 300 million? As we've seen in recent years, when you institute measures like this it actually creates more dependency and self reliance on the government - not something I would think you'd want to advocate on such a large scale.
- geogra4 11y ago
  We are all dependent on government in at least some ways. Unless you don't drive on public roads, don't send your kids to public schools, and don't use US Mail.
  - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    It would be nice if we could have ... global understanding of public goods.
  - xrange 11y ago
    Here's a great opportunity for a little informal HN poll. When was the last time you used the postal service to send a letter? Sure, I've got a box that gets junk mail every day, but the only time I send anything are one-off bills where they don't have an option for on-line payments.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      I post mail about twice a week.
  - nationcrafting 11y ago
    So, if you're looking at .gov as a service provider, why give it a monopoly on providing those services if that makes its users dependent on it? Roads may be a little tricky, of course, but some services like US Mail could surely do with a few competitors to bring prices down and service up.
    - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
      UPS and FedEx. They don't do individual letters, of course, but they compete with the US Mail on packages, and compete by offering better service, not on price.
- clavalle 11y ago
  I tend to agree with you when it comes to Guaranteed Minimum Income. Reverse taxation is a bit more murky. And I absolutely think a solid welfare program is possible -- we are within a stone's throw of that as things stand now we'd just need to streamline things a bit. Also, your concern is why I'd advocate for a small pop to large pop experimental approach. I don't think government dependence is a prima facie bad thing. If we assume that people are mostly rational and can make decisions that are best for themselves the government dependence problem would work itself out. We have a problem with it, now, because it is in a persons best interest to step out of the zero sum and negative sum games that the poor are forced into for, sometimes, decades or lifetimes. But if we ensure people have just enough guaranteed assistance to not starve, go homeless, or die from lack of medical care we can ensure that the vast majority of transactions -- including trading one's time to create value for an employer -- are positive sum transactions. People will tend to make the most of that if we assume a basic level of self interest and rationality. Government assistance would be a steady state of mere survival while the market would offer positive growth and an improvement of one's condition.
- witty_username 11y ago
  The idea of basic income is that it provides the basic human rights in a more libertarian manner (instead of the government providing services, the government gives you money). So, if someone doesn't have enough money to buy food, they won't starve to death and the facilitation of this human right is done via the market in basic income. I don't think a basic income set to provide basic human rights is going to create any sort of drug-user like dependency on the government. Regarding population, when you have more people you get more money. > You also have to take into account the Scandinavian cultural norms as well. What are these Scandinavian cultural norms?
  - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    Relatively strong nudging.
  - xacaxulu 11y ago
    Having awesome oil revenues probably helps.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  In the US, the banking and military sectors - and a large chunk of tech - are at least as dependent on government handouts. So the problem isn't one of scale, which is already huge. It's one of distribution. Money on its own is not the solution. You can only grow an economy when people are building useful things of all kinds, doing useful things for each other, and creating new businesses. The big problem in the US isn't capitalism as such, it's the fact that there's a layer of old and new money privilege accreted around Wall St and Washington. It's such a resource sink it has literally locked out most of the rest of the population. It's a networking and patronage problem. The money is just a symptom. If you're on the right side of the social firewall you can be a complete failure and still get jobs at C-suite and board level. (See recent examples from any number of tech companies - which are the obvious symptoms of a much bigger issue.) Prosperity only happens when an economy rewards ability much more than it rewards the benefits of in-caste relationships. This isn't even considered an issue in most descriptions of economics, but it's a huge influence at every level of business. And with the partial exception of the startup/accelerator/incubator scene, the current situation in the US has been a tragic brake on real growth. The best you'll get from throwing money at people is temporarily less crime, starvation, and homelessness. Those are big wins on their own, but they're a bandaid and the improvement isn't really sustainable. For a growth-oriented economy, more is needed.
  - meatysnapper 11y ago
    Exactly right. The US Military (and Israel, for that matter) get a guaranteed minimum income from the US government. Why not the average person on the street?
    - jsn117 11y ago
      b/c they aren't doing a job?
  - baddox 11y ago
    > In the US, the banking and military sectors - and a large chunk of tech - are at least as dependent on government handouts. > So the problem isn't one of scale, which is already huge. It's one of distribution. Ah, but those industries are concentrated interests. The individual value proposition is sufficient for people in these industries to lobby the government, because there's an enormous amount of wealth available to be transferred to a relatively small number of individuals. On the other hand, the scenario you're proposing is that same enormous amount of wealth available to be transferred to an enormous number of individuals. The upside per individual is relatively small, and most individuals are better off spending their time and resources on things that can more directly improve their life (like going to work, getting an education, exercising, enjoying entertainment, etc.). Note that this isn't individuals making a mistake or being irrational. They're acting in their self-interest. It's easy to say that "we" should just redistribute the subsidies on big industry to the entire population. But it is, as far as I can tell, not a remotely feasible goal.
- lukeschlather 11y ago
  Could you be specific about which programs you're referring to? I'd also appreciate specific figures about expenditures, and what percentage of people are dependent on public welfare programs. The figures I've seen suggest that in the US, 50% of welfare beneficiaries are long-term dependents, but they have bouts of it, going in and out of welfare over the course of (on average) 12 years. If you dig into specific programs, I think generally you find that programs fail because they aren't giving people enough resources to become self-sufficient, and are expecting results on too short a time frame.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > The only problem with this is how this is impossible to scale to proper levels in the US. I've yet to see a coherent argument for this claim. > This works great in smaller economies (like you're advocating) like Scandinavian countries where you have a much smaller population and it's easy to support a few million people. Why would this work better in a smaller economy? Why would it be easier for an economy of 30 million people to support N needy people than for an economy of 300 million people to support 10N? > When you have over 300 million? As we've seen in recent years, when you institute measures like this it actually creates more dependency and self reliance on the government How have we seen this? I don't see any evidence that "measures like this" have actually been instituted, much less that they have been instituted and observed to produce the results you suggest.
  - vidarh 11y ago
    It's the favourite argument against anything and everything the US isn't doing. It has the benefit that it pretty much only falls flat when China or India is doing something successfully. Of course, the problem is that almost everything it gets applied to can be decomposed neatly into, independently operated geographic regions - whether states, or counties or groups of such - if the scale becomes a challenge. Arguably scale rather creates great opportunities. Subdivision coupled with looser coordination and knowledge exchange means systemic failure at the top of each system can be contained by leaning on the others. E.g. the UK National Health Service is split into many "trusts" and failing trusts are often either put under the control - temporarily or long term - of successful ones, or given more focused support from surrounding trusts to get back on track. Any number of trusts can be badly mismanaged without creating existential threats to the health service as a whole. The larger the overall system, the more such trusts can be run at whatever the ideal scale is for optimizing system cost rather than having to scale them down to spread the risk; and the more such trusts, the easier it becomes to absorb individual failures without too big effects on surrounding ones.
- vidarh 11y ago
  The "the US is too big" argument gets dragged out for all kinds of things, and it is total nonsense. You have more people to pay, but you have equivalently more jobs. And conveniently, you have administrative subdivisions: States. And not that many of them have more people than the Scandinavian countries. Furthermore, none of them have more people than Germany (~80 million), the country where the modern welfare state was born (Bismark put in place the first welfare reforms as a means to try to stop the growth of the socialist groups that were becoming a threat to the political stability of Prussia; though while he gave with one hand, he outlawed dozens of them with the other). Of course, even the Scandinavian countries subdivides provisioning of these services further, down to the county level for many types of services. In other words: This is a problem that decomposes very nicely, and that scales up accordingly. Just threat it as a suitable number of independent systems. They still have the economies of scale to make it reasonably efficient. You have some added complications, but also the benefit of being able to study differences in the various implementations and copy the most effective practices. Scale is opportunity here, first and foremost, not a problem. > You also have to take into account the Scandinavian cultural norms as well. As a Scandinavian, I'm very curious about what Scandinavian cultural norms you believe makes this easier that isn't present elsewhere. Besides, it's not just Scandinavia that has a comprehensive welfare system. Most Western-European countries do. > As we've seen in recent years, when you institute measures like this it actually creates more dependency and self reliance on the government This is only a "problem" when you don't consider that the alternative is that these people starve, live in substandard housing or go without important medical care. Nobody wants people to be dependent on welfare, but I prefer "welfare dependence" to having people grow up destitute. If/when there are jobs that pay enough, fine, put strict conditions in place to push people to take them or lose benefits. But when there aren't enough jobs, or the ones that are available doesn't cover housing or food nothing good is achieved by not providing support for the basics.
  - Terr_ 11y ago
    > Germany (~80 million), the country where the modern welfare state was born When discussing social services, it's also important to discuss borders, because of the real-or-imagined threat of people doing all their tax-paying years in one jurisdiction and all their benefit-drawing years in another. The various US states have been dealing with tenuous internal boundaries for 200 years, and it has affected the evolution of their various tax/benefit systems. In contrast, Germany--as part of the EU--has done the same for only about 20 years, and is even now poised to break/bend the agreement to deter an influx of migrants. TLDR: It much easier to maintain a high-welfare state when you have strong border-controls or are geographically remote from waves of immigration.
- jules 11y ago
  The size of a country has nothing to do with this. A larger country has more people to support, sure, but it also has a larger economy.
- rconti 11y ago
  We also have a bigger tax base. But yes, we have to be careful not to foster dependency.
  - alexqgb 11y ago
    Yes, it would be terrible if people started depending on government for the safety of the air traffic system, the maintenance of clean air and water, or the existence of a stable and universally accepted currency. I mean, can you imagine? Just...total horror. If only there was a word to describe this nightmarish dependence on government. Wait, what's that? There is a word? Oh, right, civilization.
    - oldmanjay 11y ago
      Which part of being snotty do you think helps sell your point of view?
    - rconti 11y ago
      Unfortunately, your partisan blinders made you read an innocent comment about how to provide a safety net without fostering dependency as an anti-government screed that you had to blast a bunch of liberal talking points to counter. What you could have done was instead read it for what it is.
      - alexqgb 11y ago
        Sorry, what? Acknowledgemetns of basic reality are now "liberal talking points"? Um, ok. More the point, negative forms of dependency are fostered by reducing people's options, not increasing them. If you're really worried about dependency (and not, say, maintaining a status quo that features a cheap, easily exploited, and largely disposable labor pool) worry less about making life's basic necessities a reward and more about the kind of society that can develop when basic security is a baseline.
- laotzu 11y ago
  >The only problem with this is how this is impossible to scale to proper levels in the US. This is obviously false when you consider the simple fact that there already exists a renewable surplus of food water and shelter in the US. There are more than 5 empty houses for every homeless person in the US. This is a distribution problem, not a production problem.
jchrisa 11y ago
The way I think about this, is that currency is a form of information. If we want an optimal economy, we want everyone to have table stakes at least, so we can get more information. I don't see how to get universal participation in the information flows without something like basic income. I like your concave / convex image, thanks for that.
- Retra 11y ago
  Another way to think if it is that money is a measure of the ability to overcome barriers to cooperation. (That is, you don't need money at all if everyone were already cooperating with each other.) This would imply that our economic measurements are inaccurate if they don't account for the situations where people cooperate without exchanging money (for instance, raising a child.) Thus maximizing money flows in the current economy only maximizes cooperation where otherwise it would not happen, not cooperation in general, and you run the risk of optimizing for behaviors that people are actively against (and don't want to cooperate), while penalizing behaviors that people like (where they would cooperate for very little.) You can end up paying people to fight each other, while failing to pay them to help each other.
  - finance-geek 11y ago
    Very true, but how else would you do it? How would you pay them to help each other?
    - Retra 11y ago
      I don't know if there is a good way to deal with this directly, but there are a couple ways to deal with it indirectly. Basic income is one such method, though you could also pay people for performing civic responsibilities or charitable work. (Some of this already exists, of course.)
  - jchrisa 11y ago
    Great way to sum up the problem with market-for-everything ideology. The valuable things that people do often aren't transactionalized but sometimes they are commemorated. I'm slowly working on an idea for an alternate cryptocurrency based on commemorating ordinary human moments (instead of CPU time as the source of scarcity). A couple of articles on the project: http://www.wired.com/2014/07/document-coin/ http://www.wired.com/2014/07/document-coin/ http://thenewstack.io/why-art-could-become-currency-in-a-cryptocurrency-world/ http://thenewstack.io/why-art-could-become-currency-in-a-cry...
AnimalMuppet 11y ago
> I'd advocate for an experimental approach with smaller populations with different possible solutions, ratcheting them up as they are shown to be successful and sustainable. That sounds like exactly the kind of situation where different states try different things, then the Federal government does something after it sees which ones worked. This approach has been something of a pattern for trying new things in the US.
- clavalle 11y ago
  Yes, and one of the secret ingredients to the success of the US. But as decades pass, people seem to want to skip those first steps and jump right to the Federal level and refuse to budge if they cannot get the entire nation to make some leap or another with them. That evolving 'Everybody or Nobody' attitude is killing one of the strengths of the US system.

at-fates-hands 11y ago

>> Guaranteed minimum income, reverse taxation, or merely a solid welfare program that provides solid housing, food, and medical care The only problem with this is how this is impossible to scale to proper levels in the US. This works great in smaller economies (like you're advocating) like Scandinavian countries where you have a much smaller population and it's easy to support a few million people. You also have to take into account the Scandinavian cultural norms as well. When you have over 300 million? As we've seen in recent years, when you institute measures like this it actually creates more dependency and self reliance on the government - not something I would think you'd want to advocate on such a large scale.

geogra4 11y ago
We are all dependent on government in at least some ways. Unless you don't drive on public roads, don't send your kids to public schools, and don't use US Mail.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  It would be nice if we could have ... global understanding of public goods.
- xrange 11y ago
  Here's a great opportunity for a little informal HN poll. When was the last time you used the postal service to send a letter? Sure, I've got a box that gets junk mail every day, but the only time I send anything are one-off bills where they don't have an option for on-line payments.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    I post mail about twice a week.
- nationcrafting 11y ago
  So, if you're looking at .gov as a service provider, why give it a monopoly on providing those services if that makes its users dependent on it? Roads may be a little tricky, of course, but some services like US Mail could surely do with a few competitors to bring prices down and service up.
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    UPS and FedEx. They don't do individual letters, of course, but they compete with the US Mail on packages, and compete by offering better service, not on price.
clavalle 11y ago
I tend to agree with you when it comes to Guaranteed Minimum Income. Reverse taxation is a bit more murky. And I absolutely think a solid welfare program is possible -- we are within a stone's throw of that as things stand now we'd just need to streamline things a bit. Also, your concern is why I'd advocate for a small pop to large pop experimental approach. I don't think government dependence is a prima facie bad thing. If we assume that people are mostly rational and can make decisions that are best for themselves the government dependence problem would work itself out. We have a problem with it, now, because it is in a persons best interest to step out of the zero sum and negative sum games that the poor are forced into for, sometimes, decades or lifetimes. But if we ensure people have just enough guaranteed assistance to not starve, go homeless, or die from lack of medical care we can ensure that the vast majority of transactions -- including trading one's time to create value for an employer -- are positive sum transactions. People will tend to make the most of that if we assume a basic level of self interest and rationality. Government assistance would be a steady state of mere survival while the market would offer positive growth and an improvement of one's condition.
witty_username 11y ago
The idea of basic income is that it provides the basic human rights in a more libertarian manner (instead of the government providing services, the government gives you money). So, if someone doesn't have enough money to buy food, they won't starve to death and the facilitation of this human right is done via the market in basic income. I don't think a basic income set to provide basic human rights is going to create any sort of drug-user like dependency on the government. Regarding population, when you have more people you get more money. > You also have to take into account the Scandinavian cultural norms as well. What are these Scandinavian cultural norms?
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  Relatively strong nudging.
- xacaxulu 11y ago
  Having awesome oil revenues probably helps.
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
In the US, the banking and military sectors - and a large chunk of tech - are at least as dependent on government handouts. So the problem isn't one of scale, which is already huge. It's one of distribution. Money on its own is not the solution. You can only grow an economy when people are building useful things of all kinds, doing useful things for each other, and creating new businesses. The big problem in the US isn't capitalism as such, it's the fact that there's a layer of old and new money privilege accreted around Wall St and Washington. It's such a resource sink it has literally locked out most of the rest of the population. It's a networking and patronage problem. The money is just a symptom. If you're on the right side of the social firewall you can be a complete failure and still get jobs at C-suite and board level. (See recent examples from any number of tech companies - which are the obvious symptoms of a much bigger issue.) Prosperity only happens when an economy rewards ability much more than it rewards the benefits of in-caste relationships. This isn't even considered an issue in most descriptions of economics, but it's a huge influence at every level of business. And with the partial exception of the startup/accelerator/incubator scene, the current situation in the US has been a tragic brake on real growth. The best you'll get from throwing money at people is temporarily less crime, starvation, and homelessness. Those are big wins on their own, but they're a bandaid and the improvement isn't really sustainable. For a growth-oriented economy, more is needed.
- meatysnapper 11y ago
  Exactly right. The US Military (and Israel, for that matter) get a guaranteed minimum income from the US government. Why not the average person on the street?
  - jsn117 11y ago
    b/c they aren't doing a job?
- baddox 11y ago
  > In the US, the banking and military sectors - and a large chunk of tech - are at least as dependent on government handouts. > So the problem isn't one of scale, which is already huge. It's one of distribution. Ah, but those industries are concentrated interests. The individual value proposition is sufficient for people in these industries to lobby the government, because there's an enormous amount of wealth available to be transferred to a relatively small number of individuals. On the other hand, the scenario you're proposing is that same enormous amount of wealth available to be transferred to an enormous number of individuals. The upside per individual is relatively small, and most individuals are better off spending their time and resources on things that can more directly improve their life (like going to work, getting an education, exercising, enjoying entertainment, etc.). Note that this isn't individuals making a mistake or being irrational. They're acting in their self-interest. It's easy to say that "we" should just redistribute the subsidies on big industry to the entire population. But it is, as far as I can tell, not a remotely feasible goal.
lukeschlather 11y ago
Could you be specific about which programs you're referring to? I'd also appreciate specific figures about expenditures, and what percentage of people are dependent on public welfare programs. The figures I've seen suggest that in the US, 50% of welfare beneficiaries are long-term dependents, but they have bouts of it, going in and out of welfare over the course of (on average) 12 years. If you dig into specific programs, I think generally you find that programs fail because they aren't giving people enough resources to become self-sufficient, and are expecting results on too short a time frame.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> The only problem with this is how this is impossible to scale to proper levels in the US. I've yet to see a coherent argument for this claim. > This works great in smaller economies (like you're advocating) like Scandinavian countries where you have a much smaller population and it's easy to support a few million people. Why would this work better in a smaller economy? Why would it be easier for an economy of 30 million people to support N needy people than for an economy of 300 million people to support 10N? > When you have over 300 million? As we've seen in recent years, when you institute measures like this it actually creates more dependency and self reliance on the government How have we seen this? I don't see any evidence that "measures like this" have actually been instituted, much less that they have been instituted and observed to produce the results you suggest.
- vidarh 11y ago
  It's the favourite argument against anything and everything the US isn't doing. It has the benefit that it pretty much only falls flat when China or India is doing something successfully. Of course, the problem is that almost everything it gets applied to can be decomposed neatly into, independently operated geographic regions - whether states, or counties or groups of such - if the scale becomes a challenge. Arguably scale rather creates great opportunities. Subdivision coupled with looser coordination and knowledge exchange means systemic failure at the top of each system can be contained by leaning on the others. E.g. the UK National Health Service is split into many "trusts" and failing trusts are often either put under the control - temporarily or long term - of successful ones, or given more focused support from surrounding trusts to get back on track. Any number of trusts can be badly mismanaged without creating existential threats to the health service as a whole. The larger the overall system, the more such trusts can be run at whatever the ideal scale is for optimizing system cost rather than having to scale them down to spread the risk; and the more such trusts, the easier it becomes to absorb individual failures without too big effects on surrounding ones.
vidarh 11y ago
The "the US is too big" argument gets dragged out for all kinds of things, and it is total nonsense. You have more people to pay, but you have equivalently more jobs. And conveniently, you have administrative subdivisions: States. And not that many of them have more people than the Scandinavian countries. Furthermore, none of them have more people than Germany (~80 million), the country where the modern welfare state was born (Bismark put in place the first welfare reforms as a means to try to stop the growth of the socialist groups that were becoming a threat to the political stability of Prussia; though while he gave with one hand, he outlawed dozens of them with the other). Of course, even the Scandinavian countries subdivides provisioning of these services further, down to the county level for many types of services. In other words: This is a problem that decomposes very nicely, and that scales up accordingly. Just threat it as a suitable number of independent systems. They still have the economies of scale to make it reasonably efficient. You have some added complications, but also the benefit of being able to study differences in the various implementations and copy the most effective practices. Scale is opportunity here, first and foremost, not a problem. > You also have to take into account the Scandinavian cultural norms as well. As a Scandinavian, I'm very curious about what Scandinavian cultural norms you believe makes this easier that isn't present elsewhere. Besides, it's not just Scandinavia that has a comprehensive welfare system. Most Western-European countries do. > As we've seen in recent years, when you institute measures like this it actually creates more dependency and self reliance on the government This is only a "problem" when you don't consider that the alternative is that these people starve, live in substandard housing or go without important medical care. Nobody wants people to be dependent on welfare, but I prefer "welfare dependence" to having people grow up destitute. If/when there are jobs that pay enough, fine, put strict conditions in place to push people to take them or lose benefits. But when there aren't enough jobs, or the ones that are available doesn't cover housing or food nothing good is achieved by not providing support for the basics.
- Terr_ 11y ago
  > Germany (~80 million), the country where the modern welfare state was born When discussing social services, it's also important to discuss borders, because of the real-or-imagined threat of people doing all their tax-paying years in one jurisdiction and all their benefit-drawing years in another. The various US states have been dealing with tenuous internal boundaries for 200 years, and it has affected the evolution of their various tax/benefit systems. In contrast, Germany--as part of the EU--has done the same for only about 20 years, and is even now poised to break/bend the agreement to deter an influx of migrants. TLDR: It much easier to maintain a high-welfare state when you have strong border-controls or are geographically remote from waves of immigration.
jules 11y ago
The size of a country has nothing to do with this. A larger country has more people to support, sure, but it also has a larger economy.
rconti 11y ago
We also have a bigger tax base. But yes, we have to be careful not to foster dependency.
- alexqgb 11y ago
  Yes, it would be terrible if people started depending on government for the safety of the air traffic system, the maintenance of clean air and water, or the existence of a stable and universally accepted currency. I mean, can you imagine? Just...total horror. If only there was a word to describe this nightmarish dependence on government. Wait, what's that? There is a word? Oh, right, civilization.
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    Which part of being snotty do you think helps sell your point of view?
  - rconti 11y ago
    Unfortunately, your partisan blinders made you read an innocent comment about how to provide a safety net without fostering dependency as an anti-government screed that you had to blast a bunch of liberal talking points to counter. What you could have done was instead read it for what it is.
    - alexqgb 11y ago
      Sorry, what? Acknowledgemetns of basic reality are now "liberal talking points"? Um, ok. More the point, negative forms of dependency are fostered by reducing people's options, not increasing them. If you're really worried about dependency (and not, say, maintaining a status quo that features a cheap, easily exploited, and largely disposable labor pool) worry less about making life's basic necessities a reward and more about the kind of society that can develop when basic security is a baseline.
laotzu 11y ago
>The only problem with this is how this is impossible to scale to proper levels in the US. This is obviously false when you consider the simple fact that there already exists a renewable surplus of food water and shelter in the US. There are more than 5 empty houses for every homeless person in the US. This is a distribution problem, not a production problem.

jchrisa 11y ago

The way I think about this, is that currency is a form of information. If we want an optimal economy, we want everyone to have table stakes at least, so we can get more information. I don't see how to get universal participation in the information flows without something like basic income. I like your concave / convex image, thanks for that.

Retra 11y ago
Another way to think if it is that money is a measure of the ability to overcome barriers to cooperation. (That is, you don't need money at all if everyone were already cooperating with each other.) This would imply that our economic measurements are inaccurate if they don't account for the situations where people cooperate without exchanging money (for instance, raising a child.) Thus maximizing money flows in the current economy only maximizes cooperation where otherwise it would not happen, not cooperation in general, and you run the risk of optimizing for behaviors that people are actively against (and don't want to cooperate), while penalizing behaviors that people like (where they would cooperate for very little.) You can end up paying people to fight each other, while failing to pay them to help each other.
- finance-geek 11y ago
  Very true, but how else would you do it? How would you pay them to help each other?
  - Retra 11y ago
    I don't know if there is a good way to deal with this directly, but there are a couple ways to deal with it indirectly. Basic income is one such method, though you could also pay people for performing civic responsibilities or charitable work. (Some of this already exists, of course.)
- jchrisa 11y ago
  Great way to sum up the problem with market-for-everything ideology. The valuable things that people do often aren't transactionalized but sometimes they are commemorated. I'm slowly working on an idea for an alternate cryptocurrency based on commemorating ordinary human moments (instead of CPU time as the source of scarcity). A couple of articles on the project: http://www.wired.com/2014/07/document-coin/ http://www.wired.com/2014/07/document-coin/ http://thenewstack.io/why-art-could-become-currency-in-a-cryptocurrency-world/ http://thenewstack.io/why-art-could-become-currency-in-a-cry...

AnimalMuppet 11y ago

> I'd advocate for an experimental approach with smaller populations with different possible solutions, ratcheting them up as they are shown to be successful and sustainable. That sounds like exactly the kind of situation where different states try different things, then the Federal government does something after it sees which ones worked. This approach has been something of a pattern for trying new things in the US.

clavalle 11y ago
Yes, and one of the secret ingredients to the success of the US. But as decades pass, people seem to want to skip those first steps and jump right to the Federal level and refuse to budge if they cannot get the entire nation to make some leap or another with them. That evolving 'Everybody or Nobody' attitude is killing one of the strengths of the US system.