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Regulating MTurk away will do nothing to improve their options, it will just remove their current best option.

danans 8y ago
I didn't suggest regulating MTurk away. There are other ways of giving people options. UBI is an example, but there are likely others, for example, a sovereign wealth fund as found in Alaska and Norway.
- a008t 8y ago
  Why not start UBI on a small, voluntary scale, and demonstrate its success? Every one advocating for UBI could go to a poor neighbourhood / country, pick a poor person (or several), and start transferring them a portion of their income every month...
  - danans 8y ago
    > Why not start UBI on a small, voluntary scale, and demonstrate its success? That's what YC is doing: https://basicincome.ycr.org/ https://basicincome.ycr.org/ They have 100s of millions to experiment with ... the average person does not. > Every one advocating for UBI could ... Advocacy (and voting) are the most power tools for shaping the future direction of society. It's very effective as a way of bringing change, and we have many examples in recent history of this being true. If it weren't, you wouldn't see huge amounts of money being given to Super PACs to advocate for political positions. > start transferring them a portion of their income every month... This is a rehash of the very tired, and baseless, cliche against higher taxes that says that those who support higher taxes should write a check to the IRS. It's a fallacious argument, because redistribution only has societal impact when operating on a society-wide scale. The most significant example of this, the Great Society (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society) wasn't built on voluntary contributions to the government. Individuals of normal means making marginal contributions does little to move the needle on the relevant societal problems in any significant way, whether those problems are infrastructure, poverty, health care, education, etc. These things, if they are done at all, have to be done at a societal scale, and that means via government methods of finance.
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
  But what happens when we pass laws in our country that takes away the job in another when there is no realistic chance of them implementing some safety net to help? For example, when western countries put pressure on east Asian sweat shops to stop using child labor, they did, but the local governments didn't offer anything to help the children who depended upon those jobs to have enough to feed themselves, and as such many of the children transitioned into even more dangerous jobs or worse. It would be nice if their government made up for the gap, but int he real world we have to deal with the possibilities they won't. So one has to deal with the ramifications of their choices that shouldn't and wouldn't happen in a good world but do happen in our world.

I didn't suggest regulating MTurk away. There are other ways of giving people options. UBI is an example, but there are likely others, for example, a sovereign wealth fund as found in Alaska and Norway.

a008t 8y ago
Why not start UBI on a small, voluntary scale, and demonstrate its success? Every one advocating for UBI could go to a poor neighbourhood / country, pick a poor person (or several), and start transferring them a portion of their income every month...
- danans 8y ago
  > Why not start UBI on a small, voluntary scale, and demonstrate its success? That's what YC is doing: https://basicincome.ycr.org/ https://basicincome.ycr.org/ They have 100s of millions to experiment with ... the average person does not. > Every one advocating for UBI could ... Advocacy (and voting) are the most power tools for shaping the future direction of society. It's very effective as a way of bringing change, and we have many examples in recent history of this being true. If it weren't, you wouldn't see huge amounts of money being given to Super PACs to advocate for political positions. > start transferring them a portion of their income every month... This is a rehash of the very tired, and baseless, cliche against higher taxes that says that those who support higher taxes should write a check to the IRS. It's a fallacious argument, because redistribution only has societal impact when operating on a society-wide scale. The most significant example of this, the Great Society (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society) wasn't built on voluntary contributions to the government. Individuals of normal means making marginal contributions does little to move the needle on the relevant societal problems in any significant way, whether those problems are infrastructure, poverty, health care, education, etc. These things, if they are done at all, have to be done at a societal scale, and that means via government methods of finance.
PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
But what happens when we pass laws in our country that takes away the job in another when there is no realistic chance of them implementing some safety net to help? For example, when western countries put pressure on east Asian sweat shops to stop using child labor, they did, but the local governments didn't offer anything to help the children who depended upon those jobs to have enough to feed themselves, and as such many of the children transitioned into even more dangerous jobs or worse. It would be nice if their government made up for the gap, but int he real world we have to deal with the possibilities they won't. So one has to deal with the ramifications of their choices that shouldn't and wouldn't happen in a good world but do happen in our world.