4 ms·
A much cheaper way is to not care. If someone wants their Us$0.50 of rice allotment just give it to them. Universal basic rice.
by dmd 8y ago
A much cheaper way is to not care. If someone wants their Us$0.50 of rice allotment just give it to them.
Universal basic rice.
- AceJohnny2 8y agoNo. "Free" has an odd effect on people. For example they may think the item has less or no value ("Why are they just giving this to us? Are they trying to poison us?"), or think the item is unlimited. The point isn't to recoup costs, but to make the recipients value the item.
- dmd 8y agoI don't mean "just give it to them" as in without cost, I mean don't disallow anyone from getting it, regardless of whether they're supposedly eligible or not.
- Proziam 8y agoIf you are struggling enough to go through the effort to try and scam the government for a small portion of free rice then I think it's obvious they value the item. Not caring about the edge cases is almost certainly the correct choice here.
- oh_sigh 8y agoNope, because you will find that people will start using rice for unintended purposes like bean bags, animal food, and smuggling rice into other nations that need to pay money for rice, etc.
- dmd 8y ago... so?
- oh_sigh 8y agoRice isn't unlimited.
- dmd 8y agoOh, sorry. I thought we were discussing this in good faith.
- oh_sigh 8y agoOk, fine, rice is unlimited and your idea is great.
- mark-r 8y agoReminds me of a story. A wise man was called to solve a problem for the Emperor, and he did so. The Emperor asked what he could give him as a reward. The wise man said humbly, "I do not ask for much. I wish for a chess board with one grain of rice on the first square, two grains on the second square, four grains on the third square, and so forth." The Emperor agreed. Any idea on how the story ends?
- oh_sigh 8y agoEmperor beheads the wise man for being cheeky.
- saalweachter 8y agoMy impression with this sort of thing is that the restrictions aren't because the people administering the program are worried about cheating, but because they're worried about cratering the local agricultural economy. If everyone is able to buy rice airdropped in by a richer government or charity for a token amount (or free), it becomes very difficult to support yourself as a local rice farmer. If only a subset of the population which was previously unable to buy a significant amount of rice is able to do so, it doesn't affect the local rice market. The misdistribution mentioned at the beginning of the article is a worst possible case: the poorest people not given their cheap rice are unable to afford enough to eat at all; people who may be hurting but aren't the worst off get cheap or free rice instead of buying rice they might (barely) be able to afford from local rice farmers.