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This post really resonated with me, as I have between a dozen and a hundred abandoned projects, mostly games, since I started programming around 1989. Most of t

This post really resonated with me, as I have between a dozen and a hundred abandoned projects, mostly games, since I started programming around 1989. Most of them written for the Mac Plus or Mac LC. And many of them following a similar mechanic or art style to the ones in the post. I think of the few shipped projects I've released or been part of as a shadow of who I am. Same with my resume and work experience. They're a fingerprint of a whole being living a dream life that never manifested, because I never had an early win to build upon. That's why I think UBI might magnify human potential by 10 or 100 fold, to get us from the service economy to agency and self-actualization, producing our own residual incomes. Oh and I played Pararena a ton!

imchillyb 2y ago
If minimum wage didn’t work, what metric makes you believe that a similar system but paying those who don’t work, will? This type of thinking truly baffles me. This magic UBI will be minimum wage for the masses that don’t work. How could that, possibly, be sustainable or even good?
- alexissantos 2y ago
  Part of me wonders if this parallels the venture capital approach. Many won't don't anything economically productive with the opportunity UBI affords them, but the ones that do may make the cost worthwhile. Not sure if that's how it would actually pan out, of course, but I think it's plausible.
- agumonkey 2y ago
  I believe UBI would require a few external attractors / motivators to avoid people being dilluted in choice and fuzzy self actualization path.
- malignblade 2y ago
  Answering your literal question, how could it "possibly" be good: Minimum wage probably doesn't work because it means a lot of people live in precarity while both emotionally and physically exhausting them. It might just be that minimum wage has stagnated while COL has skyrocketed. If the point of minimum wage is that it provides people with a guaranteed dignified life as long as they are employed, that needs to keep up with the cost of living a normal life in order to keep its effectiveness. That is one reason it might be "failing" although I don't know exactly what you mean by that. > get us from the service economy to agency and self-actualization This is the thing I think most people have a hard time connecting to "measurable utility" but will probably be the most sweeping effect of UBI or similar. Think about your typical gig worker, minimum wage worker in some high-turnover environment etc. This person probably does not have the financial safety net to pursue something meaningful, or to take the risk reskilling, or to otherwise improve their emotional and financial well-being. You will probably always have free-riders or people who just want to consume without producing. But is it better to have a society of exhausted, frustrated, barely-hanging-on people, or a society of people with the _potential_ to to be creative, passionate, and exploratory? Conversely to you, I find it hard to imagine that a society with surplus wealth would be more effective if it chose to subject its people to precarity and emotional strife instead of empowering as many of its people as possible. Some references: https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ https://www.statista.com/chart/25574/living-wage-vs-minimum-wage-by-us-state/ https://www.statista.com/chart/25574/living-wage-vs-minimum-...
  - jay_kyburz 2y ago
    Why not just have unemployment benefits or new enterprise grants? Why do you need UBI? Here in Australia there is quite a bit of money floating around for those people with passions and potential. I've received quite a bit over the years taking chances, some of it as grants, some as government investments. I've been fortunate and never had to rely on unemployment benifits, but I always knew in the back of my mind it was available if I fail. Soon I'll be able to fall back on my aged care benefits :)
    - jltsiren 2y ago
      Unemployment benefits and other income-dependent benefits are a strong incentive against working, unless the job pays particularly well. It's common that the effective tax rate for low-paying jobs is 80-90%, if you count lost benefits in addition to taxes. Sometime the rate exceeds 100%. In order to get unemployed people back to work against their own interests, unemployment benefits often come with strict time limits, a lot of surveillance and bureaucracy, and a general loss of dignity. The "basic" in UBI aims to solve that by changing benefits and taxes. Everyone from the homeless to the billionaires gets the same benefits, while income taxes will make sure that most people won't see any additional money. The differences are only seen by people with low incomes. While the benefits may be a little lower, taking a low-paying job makes much more sense, as your tax rate may be as low as 40%. Many old-school unions oppose UBI because it makes low-paying jobs more viable. They consider it morally wrong. According to them, if you work full time, the employer should pay you enough that you don't need any government handouts for a dignified live.
      - jay_kyburz 2y ago
        Id love to understand how unemployment benefits discourage working more than a UBI. Either you need to work to survive or you don't. I've read some comments here recently that suggests people feel like they have a right to a nice life after being born. As I get older I see humans more like any other animal born into an uncaring universe out in nature. You have to get out of that borrow, hunt and forage to survive. It's not the responsibility of every other human to have food delivered to your burrow.
- HideousKojima 2y ago
  >How could that, possibly, be sustainable or even good? It isn't. Like most magical thinking economic proposals, it's simply a matter of ignoring reality. "In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all, By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."" ... "And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins, As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_of_the_Copybook_Headings https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_of_the_Copybook_Hea...
- scott_w 2y ago
  Minimum wage and UBI aren’t the same thing so you can’t extrapolate the results of one into the other.
- Tade0 2y ago
  Who said minimum wage didn't work? It works, provided you adjust its value regularly. Anyway, I've met a few people who, through a combination of welfare and inherited wealth don't really have to work. While most are simply living their best life spending time on unprofitable hobbies like photography one example stands out as he's currently busy driving into Ukraine and back with supplies for the people there. What I'm getting at is that in reality we don't actually know what would happen under UBI. Maybe more children would be born, as another example from my list is currently a father and (to the best of my knowledge) still jobless?
authorfly 2y ago
I do have a different opinion to you, and it was formed during the pandemic when there were UBI-like circumstances for me and my friend group. Those who didn't need to work any more, became rather depressed, quite quickly, compared to those who kept working. And it changed my view on UBI. Maybe in your friend group that was different or your country didn't follow such an approach? What's the difference between working on several games or focusing and finished one to you? Would you work on these things enough to produce finished projects if you had UBI? For more than a while? I think at some life stages, like parenthood or childhood, UBI makes sense. At others, when you are finding yourself - having a responsibility is useful.
- scottLobster 2y ago
  That's why in the sci-fi, utopian economics of the Star Trek Federation they have a "participation based" UBI, where your ticket to the Federation's generous UBI (made possible by effectively infinite material resources) is contingent upon you doing something productive. You can't just sit on your ass all day and collect it. Now how they measure/judge what's "productive" and the fact that it works at all is what makes it sci-fi, but it highlights that responsibility is critical, even in a utopia.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    UBI is a failure of imagination for jobs programs. Don't get me wrong, as a society we should take care of everyone so that no one dies of starvation or freezes to death, but don't just give people handouts, pay people to do stuff. Even something as simple as planting trees.
    - vineyardmike 2y ago
      I think jobs programs are a failure of society to imagine what true abundance looks like, and how abundant our lives are. In the US, we produce and throw away so much food that overconsumption is vastly more deadly than underconsumption. Hell, we even put corn ethanol into our petro products just to keep the farmland in use. We could have “universal basic food stamps” pretty much immediately. Affordably too - society is collectively already paying for a multiple of all consumption needs (just out of pocket instead of via government subsidy). People could work for extra income for their specialty foods.
gwervc 2y ago
UBI won't work: it's almost implemented in my country (you can get 600€/month + many other welfare stuff by not working) and what's the result? Highest public deficit in the EU zone, highest tax rate in the world, rampant criminality, difficulty to get money by working because of said taxes, educated people leaving the country in mass, etc.
- mikabasketball 2y ago
  France?
- romeros 2y ago
  Reality #1: Universal Basic Income (UBI) will empower people to break free from the grind of work. They'll have the freedom to start innovative companies, create art, make music, learn to dance, and generally enjoy happier, less stressful lives. Reality #2: Alternatively, many might find themselves stuck at home, glued to their screens. This could lead to boredom and depression, resulting in online trolling and petty arguments. Some may even resort to crime out of frustration.
- wk_end 2y ago
  What you’re describing isn’t UBI; it’s just traditional welfare. UBI advocates are aware of problems with welfare and believe that UBI wouldn’t suffer from the same issues.
  - jonhohle 2y ago
    No true Scotsman
    - wk_end 2y ago
      > No true Scotsman or appeal to purity is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect an a posteriori claim from a falsifying counterexample by covertly modifying the initial claim. No one has covertly modified the initial claim. UBI has a long-standing definition that’s distinct from welfare.
  - 2y ago
nineteen999 2y ago
I just call that unfinished stuff "research". I have a bunch of UnrealEngine 4/5 projects I'll never finish, but they were fun from a point of view of testing a game mechanic, rigging and animation, shader development, creating the 3D assets etc.
mihaaly 2y ago
We live different lives. I only played part in projects (none game though) where the product should have been abandoned! In the state released of course. A theoretical option could been to finish it properly. However attempting that would have meant the end of the organization (bankrupcy), that's why saying theoretical option. Looking at the state of software I have the misfortune to work with and use in private time all of my peers live this life... : ( Luckily the users have no choice then, all need to buy the crap or not buying anything at all. We are safe selling crap!
hadlock 2y ago
Can you recommend any resources for writing for system 6/7 on the old 68k devices? I cut my teeth using computers on those but haven't written anything targeted at that platform.

imchillyb 2y ago

If minimum wage didn’t work, what metric makes you believe that a similar system but paying those who don’t work, will? This type of thinking truly baffles me. This magic UBI will be minimum wage for the masses that don’t work. How could that, possibly, be sustainable or even good?

alexissantos 2y ago
Part of me wonders if this parallels the venture capital approach. Many won't don't anything economically productive with the opportunity UBI affords them, but the ones that do may make the cost worthwhile. Not sure if that's how it would actually pan out, of course, but I think it's plausible.
agumonkey 2y ago
I believe UBI would require a few external attractors / motivators to avoid people being dilluted in choice and fuzzy self actualization path.
malignblade 2y ago
Answering your literal question, how could it "possibly" be good: Minimum wage probably doesn't work because it means a lot of people live in precarity while both emotionally and physically exhausting them. It might just be that minimum wage has stagnated while COL has skyrocketed. If the point of minimum wage is that it provides people with a guaranteed dignified life as long as they are employed, that needs to keep up with the cost of living a normal life in order to keep its effectiveness. That is one reason it might be "failing" although I don't know exactly what you mean by that. > get us from the service economy to agency and self-actualization This is the thing I think most people have a hard time connecting to "measurable utility" but will probably be the most sweeping effect of UBI or similar. Think about your typical gig worker, minimum wage worker in some high-turnover environment etc. This person probably does not have the financial safety net to pursue something meaningful, or to take the risk reskilling, or to otherwise improve their emotional and financial well-being. You will probably always have free-riders or people who just want to consume without producing. But is it better to have a society of exhausted, frustrated, barely-hanging-on people, or a society of people with the _potential_ to to be creative, passionate, and exploratory? Conversely to you, I find it hard to imagine that a society with surplus wealth would be more effective if it chose to subject its people to precarity and emotional strife instead of empowering as many of its people as possible. Some references: https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ https://www.statista.com/chart/25574/living-wage-vs-minimum-wage-by-us-state/ https://www.statista.com/chart/25574/living-wage-vs-minimum-...
- jay_kyburz 2y ago
  Why not just have unemployment benefits or new enterprise grants? Why do you need UBI? Here in Australia there is quite a bit of money floating around for those people with passions and potential. I've received quite a bit over the years taking chances, some of it as grants, some as government investments. I've been fortunate and never had to rely on unemployment benifits, but I always knew in the back of my mind it was available if I fail. Soon I'll be able to fall back on my aged care benefits :)
  - jltsiren 2y ago
    Unemployment benefits and other income-dependent benefits are a strong incentive against working, unless the job pays particularly well. It's common that the effective tax rate for low-paying jobs is 80-90%, if you count lost benefits in addition to taxes. Sometime the rate exceeds 100%. In order to get unemployed people back to work against their own interests, unemployment benefits often come with strict time limits, a lot of surveillance and bureaucracy, and a general loss of dignity. The "basic" in UBI aims to solve that by changing benefits and taxes. Everyone from the homeless to the billionaires gets the same benefits, while income taxes will make sure that most people won't see any additional money. The differences are only seen by people with low incomes. While the benefits may be a little lower, taking a low-paying job makes much more sense, as your tax rate may be as low as 40%. Many old-school unions oppose UBI because it makes low-paying jobs more viable. They consider it morally wrong. According to them, if you work full time, the employer should pay you enough that you don't need any government handouts for a dignified live.
    - jay_kyburz 2y ago
      Id love to understand how unemployment benefits discourage working more than a UBI. Either you need to work to survive or you don't. I've read some comments here recently that suggests people feel like they have a right to a nice life after being born. As I get older I see humans more like any other animal born into an uncaring universe out in nature. You have to get out of that borrow, hunt and forage to survive. It's not the responsibility of every other human to have food delivered to your burrow.
HideousKojima 2y ago
>How could that, possibly, be sustainable or even good? It isn't. Like most magical thinking economic proposals, it's simply a matter of ignoring reality. "In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all, By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."" ... "And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins, As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_of_the_Copybook_Headings https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_of_the_Copybook_Hea...
scott_w 2y ago
Minimum wage and UBI aren’t the same thing so you can’t extrapolate the results of one into the other.
Tade0 2y ago
Who said minimum wage didn't work? It works, provided you adjust its value regularly. Anyway, I've met a few people who, through a combination of welfare and inherited wealth don't really have to work. While most are simply living their best life spending time on unprofitable hobbies like photography one example stands out as he's currently busy driving into Ukraine and back with supplies for the people there. What I'm getting at is that in reality we don't actually know what would happen under UBI. Maybe more children would be born, as another example from my list is currently a father and (to the best of my knowledge) still jobless?

authorfly 2y ago

I do have a different opinion to you, and it was formed during the pandemic when there were UBI-like circumstances for me and my friend group. Those who didn't need to work any more, became rather depressed, quite quickly, compared to those who kept working. And it changed my view on UBI. Maybe in your friend group that was different or your country didn't follow such an approach? What's the difference between working on several games or focusing and finished one to you? Would you work on these things enough to produce finished projects if you had UBI? For more than a while? I think at some life stages, like parenthood or childhood, UBI makes sense. At others, when you are finding yourself - having a responsibility is useful.

scottLobster 2y ago
That's why in the sci-fi, utopian economics of the Star Trek Federation they have a "participation based" UBI, where your ticket to the Federation's generous UBI (made possible by effectively infinite material resources) is contingent upon you doing something productive. You can't just sit on your ass all day and collect it. Now how they measure/judge what's "productive" and the fact that it works at all is what makes it sci-fi, but it highlights that responsibility is critical, even in a utopia.
- fragmede 2y ago
  UBI is a failure of imagination for jobs programs. Don't get me wrong, as a society we should take care of everyone so that no one dies of starvation or freezes to death, but don't just give people handouts, pay people to do stuff. Even something as simple as planting trees.
  - vineyardmike 2y ago
    I think jobs programs are a failure of society to imagine what true abundance looks like, and how abundant our lives are. In the US, we produce and throw away so much food that overconsumption is vastly more deadly than underconsumption. Hell, we even put corn ethanol into our petro products just to keep the farmland in use. We could have “universal basic food stamps” pretty much immediately. Affordably too - society is collectively already paying for a multiple of all consumption needs (just out of pocket instead of via government subsidy). People could work for extra income for their specialty foods.

gwervc 2y ago

UBI won't work: it's almost implemented in my country (you can get 600€/month + many other welfare stuff by not working) and what's the result? Highest public deficit in the EU zone, highest tax rate in the world, rampant criminality, difficulty to get money by working because of said taxes, educated people leaving the country in mass, etc.

mikabasketball 2y ago
France?
romeros 2y ago
Reality #1: Universal Basic Income (UBI) will empower people to break free from the grind of work. They'll have the freedom to start innovative companies, create art, make music, learn to dance, and generally enjoy happier, less stressful lives. Reality #2: Alternatively, many might find themselves stuck at home, glued to their screens. This could lead to boredom and depression, resulting in online trolling and petty arguments. Some may even resort to crime out of frustration.
wk_end 2y ago
What you’re describing isn’t UBI; it’s just traditional welfare. UBI advocates are aware of problems with welfare and believe that UBI wouldn’t suffer from the same issues.
- jonhohle 2y ago
  No true Scotsman
  - wk_end 2y ago
    > No true Scotsman or appeal to purity is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect an a posteriori claim from a falsifying counterexample by covertly modifying the initial claim. No one has covertly modified the initial claim. UBI has a long-standing definition that’s distinct from welfare.
- 2y ago

nineteen999 2y ago

I just call that unfinished stuff "research". I have a bunch of UnrealEngine 4/5 projects I'll never finish, but they were fun from a point of view of testing a game mechanic, rigging and animation, shader development, creating the 3D assets etc.

mihaaly 2y ago

We live different lives. I only played part in projects (none game though) where the product should have been abandoned! In the state released of course. A theoretical option could been to finish it properly. However attempting that would have meant the end of the organization (bankrupcy), that's why saying theoretical option. Looking at the state of software I have the misfortune to work with and use in private time all of my peers live this life... : ( Luckily the users have no choice then, all need to buy the crap or not buying anything at all. We are safe selling crap!

hadlock 2y ago

Can you recommend any resources for writing for system 6/7 on the old 68k devices? I cut my teeth using computers on those but haven't written anything targeted at that platform.