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To you, in the words of one Silicon Valley investor, this seems like “the only logical conclusion.” To the average person, this seems like the height of ar

To you, in the words of one Silicon Valley investor, this seems like “the only logical conclusion.” To the average person, this seems like the height of arrogance. People are uncomfortable with universal basic income because you’re essentially saying their labor isn’t worth anything — but you don’t see it! I think this point is really missing from most UBI conversations that happen on HN. UBI is the answer when you believe that all economic productivity must come from the US coasts. I think a lot of start ups have thrived trying to solve the problem of high density cities. Airbnb and Uber are start ups that get created when your biggest problems are high rent and poor public transit. I would be interested in seeing startups trying to solve suburban problems and producing suburban jobs. I think the fact that are very few companies like this is indicative of our increasing cultural divide.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
>I would be interested in seeing startups trying to solve suburban problems and producing suburban jobs. I think the fact that are very few companies like this is indicative of our increasing cultural divide You'll have an uphill battle because "environment". Nobody wants to invest in making commuting more bearable or making areas with non-city population densities more environmentally friendly. Everyone wants to hitch their wagon into whatever the latest scheme to cram people into carbon neutral shipping containers.
rjsw 9y ago
I don't see UBI as saying that someone's labour isn't worth anything, it just allows them the freedom to keep experimenting in order to find out what it is worth when applied to different jobs.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> UBI is the answer when you believe that all economic productivity must come from the US coasts. No, it's not. UBI is the answer when you recognize that capitalism directs the gains from productivity (whether made in the US coasts or anywhere else) to a narrow class of megacapitalists, that it's gotten more efficient at that over time, and that the welfare state of the modern mixed economy is an overly complicated, inefficient corrective measure for that that leaves lots of gaps for people to fall through and responds slowly to changes in the details of the mechanisms of capitalist wealth capture. UBI is the simple, low-overhead, responsive implementation of a mixed economy, which gets out of the way—compared to classic welfare state programs—of realizing the value of labor, especially including labor marked as worthless and prohibited from sale by minimum wage laws.
- ianai 9y ago
  With UBI there wouldn’t need to be a minimum wage. Probably gen the 40 hr work week could be disrupted.
orangecat 9y ago
UBI is the answer when you believe that all economic productivity must come from the US coasts. This is a failure of a common way presenting the UBI as "you should be able to have a comfortable life without working", which is both economically infeasible and not actually desirable. A UBI, at least in the form that I support, isn't something that you should be happy to live off of indefinitely, it's just better protection against homelessness and hunger than our current convoluted welfare systems. The expectation should still be that you'll find something productive to do, and a UBI incentivizes that because it avoids the welfare trap of losing a dollar in benefits for every dollar you earn.
Caveman_Coder 9y ago
> "I would be interested in seeing startups trying to solve suburban problems and producing suburban jobs." In my opinion these aren't technical problems to be solved by a team of engineers in their SF Bay offices. They are political problems that need legislative solutions. To think that we can outsource political problems to the realm of tech is misguided and won't solve our long-standing public policy issues.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

>I would be interested in seeing startups trying to solve suburban problems and producing suburban jobs. I think the fact that are very few companies like this is indicative of our increasing cultural divide You'll have an uphill battle because "environment". Nobody wants to invest in making commuting more bearable or making areas with non-city population densities more environmentally friendly. Everyone wants to hitch their wagon into whatever the latest scheme to cram people into carbon neutral shipping containers.

rjsw 9y ago

I don't see UBI as saying that someone's labour isn't worth anything, it just allows them the freedom to keep experimenting in order to find out what it is worth when applied to different jobs.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> UBI is the answer when you believe that all economic productivity must come from the US coasts. No, it's not. UBI is the answer when you recognize that capitalism directs the gains from productivity (whether made in the US coasts or anywhere else) to a narrow class of megacapitalists, that it's gotten more efficient at that over time, and that the welfare state of the modern mixed economy is an overly complicated, inefficient corrective measure for that that leaves lots of gaps for people to fall through and responds slowly to changes in the details of the mechanisms of capitalist wealth capture. UBI is the simple, low-overhead, responsive implementation of a mixed economy, which gets out of the way—compared to classic welfare state programs—of realizing the value of labor, especially including labor marked as worthless and prohibited from sale by minimum wage laws.

ianai 9y ago
With UBI there wouldn’t need to be a minimum wage. Probably gen the 40 hr work week could be disrupted.

orangecat 9y ago

UBI is the answer when you believe that all economic productivity must come from the US coasts. This is a failure of a common way presenting the UBI as "you should be able to have a comfortable life without working", which is both economically infeasible and not actually desirable. A UBI, at least in the form that I support, isn't something that you should be happy to live off of indefinitely, it's just better protection against homelessness and hunger than our current convoluted welfare systems. The expectation should still be that you'll find something productive to do, and a UBI incentivizes that because it avoids the welfare trap of losing a dollar in benefits for every dollar you earn.

Caveman_Coder 9y ago

> "I would be interested in seeing startups trying to solve suburban problems and producing suburban jobs." In my opinion these aren't technical problems to be solved by a team of engineers in their SF Bay offices. They are political problems that need legislative solutions. To think that we can outsource political problems to the realm of tech is misguided and won't solve our long-standing public policy issues.