4 ms·

Instead of a basic income, we could have Universal Jobs where anyone could make $X an hour in a government jobs center computing hashes by hand for a welfare cr

Instead of a basic income, we could have Universal Jobs where anyone could make $X an hour in a government jobs center computing hashes by hand for a welfare cryptocurrency. Roll the dice, use your government-approved paper to calculate the hash, and claim your prize if you're the first winner. Prizes and difficulty are designed to statistically provide a target $/hour.

hellbanner 10y ago
Why do that when a computer could?
- MichaelBurge 10y ago
  Because then rich capital-holders could buy up all the computing power and take control of all the welfare money. Chinese millionaires would end up taking money from needy Americans. Using this system, we ensure that no single capital-holder controls too much mining power over the currency. Every working man is judged on his merits, using a system that is hard for any one actor to parallelize or scale. So many many distinct actors work to secure the underlying currency, and it is safer against large banks or governments.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - jcoffland 10y ago
    This is silly. One small mining computer would be faster than all the human hashers combined. There is no special hashing function a human can always do better than a computer.
  - hellbanner 10y ago
    Except that if I tell you I have "a million people" in my secret facility manually hashing and in reality there's a single GPU crunching, I'd still make more. How would you audit this?
- swiley 10y ago
  Thatsthejoke.jpg
warrenpj 10y ago
Joscha Bach recently said something similar. [1] A society that provides a basic income may also need an ethic that encourages not-for-profit activity, creativity and community involvement. The "Universal Job" is just to be a healthy human being and make your community - no matter if it's the global civilization or just your own family - "richer" in a non monetary sense. It seems to me that this would be a much more efficient kind of "employment" for the public good than paying people to do some useless bureaucratic work. [1]: https://twitter.com/Plinz/status/727893059934031873 https://twitter.com/Plinz/status/727893059934031873
flak48 10y ago
But will women and non-Asian minorities be given more tries or more error tolerance as a way of affirmative action/lowering the standards?
- spacemanmatt 10y ago
  Please join me in a tiny tear shed for the oppressed white male.
ThomPete 10y ago
Universal jobs implies that the job in itself is why we work while the reality is that we work mostly for the benefits of that job. If technology could be used to automate the whole chain of touch points and thus remove the need for human incentives to get things produced why insist on an old paradigm with what would mostly be the most shitty jobs you could find. That seems like using technology for the opposite of what it's good for and for insisting on an very undesirable part of being alive.
dragonwriter 10y ago
Which is not a good substitute for Basic Income, add part of the motivation for Basic Income is to make it easier for people to reach their potential in an evolving market by allowing them to spend time retraining for jobs with emerging demand rather than stuck in dead-end jobs. Universal make-work jobs don't replace Basic Income, they are just an unproductive form of slavery by economic duress.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
quality10 10y ago
It doesn't make any sense unless you count human labour costs at $0/hour. You take $10 of taxes and $10 of work ($20 total), and give $10 to the worker. But maybe 50% waste is still better by order of magnitude than average government projects.
jcoffland 10y ago
So people do pointless work to "earn" their bread? This is not a society I would like to live in.
- spacemanmatt 10y ago
  The premise that everyone must work to "earn" the right to food and shelter is the essence of fascism. Humans have always been creatures of community.
Ericson2314 10y ago
This is excellent satire y'all.

hellbanner 10y ago

Why do that when a computer could?

MichaelBurge 10y ago
Because then rich capital-holders could buy up all the computing power and take control of all the welfare money. Chinese millionaires would end up taking money from needy Americans. Using this system, we ensure that no single capital-holder controls too much mining power over the currency. Every working man is judged on his merits, using a system that is hard for any one actor to parallelize or scale. So many many distinct actors work to secure the underlying currency, and it is safer against large banks or governments.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jcoffland 10y ago
  This is silly. One small mining computer would be faster than all the human hashers combined. There is no special hashing function a human can always do better than a computer.
- hellbanner 10y ago
  Except that if I tell you I have "a million people" in my secret facility manually hashing and in reality there's a single GPU crunching, I'd still make more. How would you audit this?
swiley 10y ago
Thatsthejoke.jpg

warrenpj 10y ago

Joscha Bach recently said something similar. [1] A society that provides a basic income may also need an ethic that encourages not-for-profit activity, creativity and community involvement. The "Universal Job" is just to be a healthy human being and make your community - no matter if it's the global civilization or just your own family - "richer" in a non monetary sense. It seems to me that this would be a much more efficient kind of "employment" for the public good than paying people to do some useless bureaucratic work. [1]: https://twitter.com/Plinz/status/727893059934031873 https://twitter.com/Plinz/status/727893059934031873

flak48 10y ago

But will women and non-Asian minorities be given more tries or more error tolerance as a way of affirmative action/lowering the standards?

spacemanmatt 10y ago
Please join me in a tiny tear shed for the oppressed white male.

ThomPete 10y ago

Universal jobs implies that the job in itself is why we work while the reality is that we work mostly for the benefits of that job. If technology could be used to automate the whole chain of touch points and thus remove the need for human incentives to get things produced why insist on an old paradigm with what would mostly be the most shitty jobs you could find. That seems like using technology for the opposite of what it's good for and for insisting on an very undesirable part of being alive.

dragonwriter 10y ago

Which is not a good substitute for Basic Income, add part of the motivation for Basic Income is to make it easier for people to reach their potential in an evolving market by allowing them to spend time retraining for jobs with emerging demand rather than stuck in dead-end jobs. Universal make-work jobs don't replace Basic Income, they are just an unproductive form of slavery by economic duress.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

quality10 10y ago

It doesn't make any sense unless you count human labour costs at $0/hour. You take $10 of taxes and $10 of work ($20 total), and give $10 to the worker. But maybe 50% waste is still better by order of magnitude than average government projects.

jcoffland 10y ago

So people do pointless work to "earn" their bread? This is not a society I would like to live in.

spacemanmatt 10y ago
The premise that everyone must work to "earn" the right to food and shelter is the essence of fascism. Humans have always been creatures of community.

Ericson2314 10y ago

This is excellent satire y'all.