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Ask HN: Would mathematicians be better off unemployed if we had UBI?
Wouldn't they have more time for research given that they would not have any teaching or administrative duties?
- hiAndrewQuinn 2y agoI mean, if they were unemployed, they wouldn't be mathematicians anymore
- drpossum 2y agoI'll not be snarky and say with some certainty that mathematicians teaching mathematics is important to the field of mathematics.
- romanhn 2y agoSure, at the expense of the next generation of mathematicians who may not have anyone to teach them.
- dtgm92 2y agoMaybe some sort of new enrollment/payment system, like the religious practice of giving to your church a % of your income... The same could be done in a UBI society. Because the amount of UBI in dollars received will change over time, expressing it as a percent will work. Let's call it UBIC or UBI-Cent for 1/100 of your UBI. Maybe a fully pledged 100/100 UBI would be UBID or UBI-Dollar. Let's say you have a platform for teaching and learning, and students subscribe to their teachers and peers by literally pledging their UBIC to them. Within this system, students have a means to live and study using their UBI, and teachers the same. Imagine liking the work your friend is doing, so you pledge them 1 UBIC. Or finding a teacher with a good price to match your situation. I feel like there is room for entirely new systems of teaching/learning in a society where everyone has their minimum financial requirements fulfilled and is not going to starve.
- aristofun 2y agoUbi is a non realistic utopia to begin with (offsetting the temperature scale doesn’t make anyone any warmer). But even if not - no. The best scientific breakthroughs were always made because of some scarcity and urgent necessity. Check Turing, history of Xerox lab etc etc. Laziness and easy life is a bad motivator. Whether you like it or not.
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