3 ms·

Good idea short-term. Long-term, it should be financed via our taxes (best case: international agreement).

by benevol 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dllthomas 11y ago
Define "it". Certainly not all FLO software is of sufficiently broad interest for public funding to make sense.
- CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
  One model that that could work is to start with a basic income. That would ensure that everyone has the option to simply spend their time as a low income inventor. Or perhaps part-time, well paid consultat, part-time low income inventor. Perhaps the next level up is simply to allocate some money as simple grants. As long as you manage to produce the basic paperwork you get some additional money thrown at you. I'm sure the lower end of such implementations are reasonably effective. After all their basic aim just to throw money around. On top of that there's really not that many projects left, I'm sure we can continue to invent custom solutions for those.
  - dllthomas 11y ago
    I support a modest basic income. I do suspect that in that environment, we would see an increas in the range of projects tackled because people want to do them, want them done, want the fame, and similar. I also think there are projects that a grant program could effectively support. But I also think there is a really long tail of projects that some people would find worth having done, but that would not likely get done without someone paying, and would be difficult for grant issuers to distinguish from other projects that are simply not worth doing at all. I think Snowdrift - or something similar - could have a huge role in such a world. In particular, a basic income would make it easier for more people to contribute to a project and also reduce the amount of money necessary to see a project move forward.
    - CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
      Snowdrift is certainly an interesting approach and agree, similar things are needed. In an abstract sense, as i see it, we need to find a way to direct funding, in an accessible way, towards people just wanting to work on generally useful stuff, without being entirely reliant on capitalism and market economies. I do fear that most schemes for selecting what to fund, grants, or capitalistic markets tend to promote the wrong things for the wrong reasons. Once serious money gets involved it gets ugly quickly and all sorts of gaming and failures take over. I guess one failure mode of Snowdrift would be that high visibility projects, with a direct user facing component, will get loads of funds. But infrastructure kind of things, will be forgotten and be underfunded. Perhaps not a real problem though, the funds going the user facing project might ripple down, so to speak, into the infrastructure. In any case, the problem of selecting who should get money is hard, and you probably just have to accept that its a gamble with low odds of success. Maybe most of the things not worth doing, is worth doing precisely to find out how not worth doing they are!

Good idea short-term. Long-term, it should be financed via our taxes (best case: international agreement).

by benevol 11y ago

Good idea short-term. Long-term, it should be financed via our taxes (best case: international agreement).

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

dllthomas 11y ago

Define "it". Certainly not all FLO software is of sufficiently broad interest for public funding to make sense.

CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
One model that that could work is to start with a basic income. That would ensure that everyone has the option to simply spend their time as a low income inventor. Or perhaps part-time, well paid consultat, part-time low income inventor. Perhaps the next level up is simply to allocate some money as simple grants. As long as you manage to produce the basic paperwork you get some additional money thrown at you. I'm sure the lower end of such implementations are reasonably effective. After all their basic aim just to throw money around. On top of that there's really not that many projects left, I'm sure we can continue to invent custom solutions for those.
- dllthomas 11y ago
  I support a modest basic income. I do suspect that in that environment, we would see an increas in the range of projects tackled because people want to do them, want them done, want the fame, and similar. I also think there are projects that a grant program could effectively support. But I also think there is a really long tail of projects that some people would find worth having done, but that would not likely get done without someone paying, and would be difficult for grant issuers to distinguish from other projects that are simply not worth doing at all. I think Snowdrift - or something similar - could have a huge role in such a world. In particular, a basic income would make it easier for more people to contribute to a project and also reduce the amount of money necessary to see a project move forward.
  - CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
    Snowdrift is certainly an interesting approach and agree, similar things are needed. In an abstract sense, as i see it, we need to find a way to direct funding, in an accessible way, towards people just wanting to work on generally useful stuff, without being entirely reliant on capitalism and market economies. I do fear that most schemes for selecting what to fund, grants, or capitalistic markets tend to promote the wrong things for the wrong reasons. Once serious money gets involved it gets ugly quickly and all sorts of gaming and failures take over. I guess one failure mode of Snowdrift would be that high visibility projects, with a direct user facing component, will get loads of funds. But infrastructure kind of things, will be forgotten and be underfunded. Perhaps not a real problem though, the funds going the user facing project might ripple down, so to speak, into the infrastructure. In any case, the problem of selecting who should get money is hard, and you probably just have to accept that its a gamble with low odds of success. Maybe most of the things not worth doing, is worth doing precisely to find out how not worth doing they are!