RE: Thoughts on Dan Larimer’s “Universal Resource Inheritance”
I compare ubi to the natural behavior of humans when things are given to them from birth. In most cases, the person had no idea that what they are given, isn't a right. They can either recognize that or dismiss it.
The former can be anyone and live a life that would have otherwise been in poverty. But the latter will always be what we call entitled.
In the real world, we are born into nothing except what was given to us. Any advantage we have starts at birth. We other wise have to repeat what our parents did. And there in lies the problem. We all view life in a different way and feel entitled about different things. Many of us have such an advantage in terms of basic needs (food and shelter) that we lose sight of the survival instinct.
The result of some is that we try to recreate the hardship to gain it back. So does ubi/uri really work? Unlikely in my opinion because all it does, is make those who feel entitled, feel entitled for more. It makes those who miss the struggle of human nature, struggle to find ways to cope.
Although I whole heartedly support philanthropy, I think it has to be merged with natural human behavior to succeed. If you make some one earn their income, even if it's bullshit work, it goes a long way to filling the need to struggle and succeed.
Actually, I come from a first world nation with a solid welfare setup. A welfare setup which not to be forgotten was fought bitterly for by my grandparents. While, they went through one world war and being born at the tail end of the second.
We, they, didn’t;t have many rights back then. They fought for them and got them, because as Dan Larimer put it:
Nowadays, I live in a development nation, by choice, and opted for a simple lifestyle and I live amidst locals in simplicity. Yet, a big issue is not that they don’t want to work but that even while they work - not different from many lesser skilled professionals in first world btw - they couldn’t yet level up. It takes a college degree to go and work for Accenture, moderating Facebook posts which are outsourced against a locally rather solid wage for local standards but also come with horrendous quotas (6 seconds/review). Yet, when I say solid wage that solid wage doesn’t allow them to mortgage for a condo, which here is pretty much only as big as sufficient space to walk around the furniture and not stumble yourself against it when not drunk.
The concept of UBI (which doesn’t work because it may cause hyperinflation) or in this process URI, which aims to redistribute, is to actually empower [even more so if the singularity happens]. There have been ample studies that many will continue to majority, a vast majority will that also because the workplace is the social life many. At the same time, the basic income will allow more entrepreneurial ventures from the grassroots up.
That’s not to say I don’t share your concerns, I do understand them. But the distribution is flawed and the abundance is a nice story but if you look beyond the world of nice condos and SUVs... the reality isn’t that “abundant” at all. And now with a strong USD... it’s going to get worse.
Yet, education is primordial. Education about the concepts and the processes. Without that... we just give the commons x/month more and they will merely spend it on more things. Which, of course, would serve the 0.1% rather nicely.
Obviously, I’m a weirdo because I’m born into a nice degree of ‘not needing to care’ and over the years the family has managed to improve upon that even. Yet... I don’t want any of it. Something I made clear merely weeks ago as well when I rejected a birthday gift (an iPhone X) for not ‘having deserved it’.
The interesting thing when you work with many homeless people for example is that it isn’t that they don’t want (some are too intoxicated to, yes) but they lack the ability to find/impose a structure on their own life. The same core wanting has often been a sore discovery for charitable projects in third world nations where “white guy with money came and built the school” but the locals never used it. Because they didn’t think it was theirs. And maybe, maybe they had different and more stringent needs too.
So, I totally agree but we need to fix distribution. Urgently. And the premise, the question of eternal rights we are born in, and how we can (ab)use or fully drain those, taking away from next generations, is an issue we need to tackle.
Because... soon “they are going to lose it”.
Lots of good points but I want to focus on the education part and the inability to provide for themselves because they don't know how to.
Dishing out x/month is obviously not the solution. For those who want to be better, it masks their need to struggle to be better. Part of that struggle is learning to improve, based in prior experience. That experience is the core nature of what we are discussing here in my opinion.
Take for example, why you feel that you did not deserve an iPhone x as a gift because you didn't earn it. None of us deserve an iphone x. None of us deserve it unless we purchased it ourselves.
Instead the man who thinks to improve life may see the gift as a tool to improve one's self. Far fetched, I know. But my galaxy note 8 is impreitive to me improving my life because it allows me to exponentially work better.
Now, going back to the education thing. It think you are spot on. Someone who wants to do better but simply can't because they don't know any better. A shakespearian tradegy at its core.
I think about technology replacing all the shitty jobs that no one else will do. And where the poor fit into this world. There will always be a point where work related to the basic nececcities of life will be automated. Where will the poor go then? Education becomes their only way out, but that begins at a young age.
Suppose we provide strong education at a young age. We know the result. They will cause an uprising once they feel that the game is rigged against them, no matter what system you put them in (capitalism or any form of social welfare).
So what are we to do? Keep the poor uneducated? Or let them revolt? Say we do the later, where do we end up? Poland perhaps? Where nearly everyone under 30 has a degree, yet there isn't enough work for all the educated to fill because there isn't enough centralized capital to get things going at a fast enough rate.
I may be ranting at this point, but my point is that I don't see a way out. We do need to redistribute, but in a way that makes sense, I just can't make sense of it.
Maybe the problem is really over population.
That last sentence is definitely something to consider. Yet, for the first time in history we are beating Mother Nature at the game. In every species “self extinction mechanics” are built in, may that be actual cannibalism or in form of epidemics like the Black Death.
If we look back at last 50-60 years, only the pretty much oldest epidemic - the Big C - has survived and is still making inroads, eventhough a cure is coming nearer every day. HIV is a battle pretty much won, Ebola and bird flu and their ilk are contained always faster than the panic makes sound possible.
PS: Each Western European nation has the saturation of college degrees as a problem. A college degree merely buys you a job to stack shelves nowadays. And it isn’t any different in development nations either.
One of the benefits of redistribution could be more entrepreneurial behavior. In fact, we would mostly reset the cycle 50-60 years back and buy some more time. More time before the whole exponential curve kicks in again. Hopefully when that happens again, we’ve found a better solution for the next cycle.
Here's my problem with entrepreneurial behavior.
Most people will fail. Most people don't have the right fight to survive. They don't have something solid. They only have a dream where success is the only possible outcome because they don't know any better.
Granted maybe they will succeed, but reality is that they will simply earn a basic living.
This is what I always see in NYC, where I live. One person had a dream of the best soap in the world, but the cost of procuring material and labor causes the soap to be extraordinarily high. 10x the price of commercialized soap. So they barely keep afloat, even if they are grossing 10k a month.
The general public, like me, can't afford $20 soap because we are also trying to save. The business closes and another shop opens up, this time selling bubble tea. And the cycle continues. Ofcourse nyc is a cut through environment. But so is life.
Great point on us just pushing back the clock though. I think that's all we can do until we come up with a better solution.
That’s how they learn. Live and #flearn.
I have no problem with entrepreneurs earning only little. Not everyone is set for success and the name doesn’t de facto include riches.
But, honestly, it wouldn’t be worse than having naively bought into the short term Uber marketing pitch and even before the Uber machine reaches selfdriving status already needing to sleep in car parks. More often than not with an overpriced loan on the car too.