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I would tend to think like you, but what would probably happen with me is that I would try something cool that I'm interested in and could benefit others (I am

by S4M 12y ago

I would tend to think like you, but what would probably happen with me is that I would try something cool that I'm interested in and could benefit others (I am now working on an intelligent software to teach maths to Junior High School/ High School, so I would probably do that), but without the economic incentive to deliver something tangible and usable, odds are that I would probably give up at some point after encountering something I can't solve, and most likely I would end up with an half assed project before trying something else. My guess is that the majority of the people would do just like that, and while we would probably have more Linus like people who start building things by sheer curiosity, we would lose lots of industrial work and research, and I am not sure we would end up winning. So I don't know. I am genuinely interested in the BIG, and think it could unleash the creativity of some people, but I am afraid the majority of us would just waste time into useless distractions. Maybe the BIG should last a given period (like one year), at the end of which it can be renewed if the beneficiary can prove that he or she has spent enough time on something "interesting" - it can be the kind of things you mention, something artistic, doing some studies, traveling, etc. The definition of "interesting" needs to be loose, but the beneficiary has to prove that he or she hasn't only been watching youtube and facebook.

dllthomas 12y ago
'The definition of "interesting" needs to be loose, but the beneficiary has to prove that he or she hasn't only been watching youtube and facebook.' Presuming that the time spent on youtube and facebook was not actually valuable (and I will quickly grant that there are ways to spend time on both that are not) I think this is part of a much larger issue we have with motivation and addictive/avoidant behavior. Push to "get a job" can help some people with this, but I think it's actually destructive to others; I think in general we need some better approach - which might be as simple as better mental health care (at the level of helping people meet their goals most effectively) but I'm open to ideas. I think this is needed whether we implement BIG or JG, or not.
motters 12y ago
I think the situation today is that many of us do waste time with unproductive distractions in the workplace. It's my observation that if you monitored people in offices much of the time what they're doing is not actually "working" in any meaningful sense, and when they are working the kinds of output which they're producing are not useful to many people. That kind of situation was of course famously satirised in the TV series "the office". So I don't think it's a clear cut situation that wage labour automatically means a good and productive society and that BIG means a bad and unproductive one.
- S4M 12y ago
  I totally agree with you that many of us could be more productive at their workplace, but they still could be less productive. In fact, let's say that someone productivity goes between 0 and 1, productivity 0 means that you don't do anything at all and just waste your time. Productivity 1 means being as efficient Carmack. I would say that the current productivity is quite low for the employed people, maybe 0.1 in average, and follows some kind of log-normal distribution (all of this are super rough approximation). If we adopt BIG, we would have lots of people who will have 0 productivity (maybe 95% of the population, much more IMHO), and the rest will have a higher productivity. Would we be better off? It's not clear to me, especially at the beginning - maybe after one generation people will get used to work on what they really like - but I would really like to see some experimentation in that direction.
  - motters 12y ago
    Another thing to keep in mind is that BIG would be basic, and living on it would not be particularly luxurious. Unless you did things to supplement the basic income then you probably wouldn't be able to afford to buy or run a vehicle, go on foreign holidays, have the latest fancyphone or anything of that sort. So financial incentives would still exist for most people.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    I think you are assuming a much higher BI than many of us would propose.

by S4M 12y ago

dllthomas 12y ago

'The definition of "interesting" needs to be loose, but the beneficiary has to prove that he or she hasn't only been watching youtube and facebook.' Presuming that the time spent on youtube and facebook was not actually valuable (and I will quickly grant that there are ways to spend time on both that are not) I think this is part of a much larger issue we have with motivation and addictive/avoidant behavior. Push to "get a job" can help some people with this, but I think it's actually destructive to others; I think in general we need some better approach - which might be as simple as better mental health care (at the level of helping people meet their goals most effectively) but I'm open to ideas. I think this is needed whether we implement BIG or JG, or not.

motters 12y ago

I think the situation today is that many of us do waste time with unproductive distractions in the workplace. It's my observation that if you monitored people in offices much of the time what they're doing is not actually "working" in any meaningful sense, and when they are working the kinds of output which they're producing are not useful to many people. That kind of situation was of course famously satirised in the TV series "the office". So I don't think it's a clear cut situation that wage labour automatically means a good and productive society and that BIG means a bad and unproductive one.

S4M 12y ago
I totally agree with you that many of us could be more productive at their workplace, but they still could be less productive. In fact, let's say that someone productivity goes between 0 and 1, productivity 0 means that you don't do anything at all and just waste your time. Productivity 1 means being as efficient Carmack. I would say that the current productivity is quite low for the employed people, maybe 0.1 in average, and follows some kind of log-normal distribution (all of this are super rough approximation). If we adopt BIG, we would have lots of people who will have 0 productivity (maybe 95% of the population, much more IMHO), and the rest will have a higher productivity. Would we be better off? It's not clear to me, especially at the beginning - maybe after one generation people will get used to work on what they really like - but I would really like to see some experimentation in that direction.
- motters 12y ago
  Another thing to keep in mind is that BIG would be basic, and living on it would not be particularly luxurious. Unless you did things to supplement the basic income then you probably wouldn't be able to afford to buy or run a vehicle, go on foreign holidays, have the latest fancyphone or anything of that sort. So financial incentives would still exist for most people.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  I think you are assuming a much higher BI than many of us would propose.