It's a great story, for sure, and I think I watched it live. The way he let his lead left jab linger to cover Moorer's eyes and then slipped in his hammer of a right to KHTFO was brilliant.
But I'm partial to Billy Mills 1964 10km gold medal in Tokyo. I love how the co-announcer loses his mind on the American broadcast of the race, because the two favorites were favored so heavily.
That doesn't follow. It's a reason to believe prices will increase, not that prices will increase roughly in line with the income increase. This distinction is not a minor detail, it's pretty crucial. If you give people $3k and the prices go up by $2k... that's a very different scenario from one where the prices go up by $3k.
As long as we’re in a deficit, spending for this program would directly increase the money supply. Of course there are other factors like velocity of money and elasticity of good/services but at the end of the day we’re increasing the amount of money (aka cash + credit) with no change to supply AND we’re going into debt to do it.
Let people choose if they want to do something, but have a concerted effort to encourage/suggest things that might give them purpose and build a community. Leave them to decide their hours and effort. Maybe someone wants to clean the gutters for their entire block at 6am and then go tinker in the shed for half the day. I'm sure that sounds really lazy, but this concept is working up from a default UBI that is pay-for-no-job.
I can imagine loads of tasks or jobs that would be quite pleasant if it weren't for stressing over efficiency or business admin.
Nobody is going to choose to be a ditch digger without a financial incentive. Most jobs worth doing are unpleasant or difficult. Thats why people pay for the labor!
I mean think about it…when was the last time you heard of charity gutter cleaning services? People would much rather enjoy their leisure time on hobbies or with family/friends.
Why would there not still be gutter cleaning or ditch digging companies? Or people cleaning their own gutters? I'm not familiar with UBI proposals that do away with traditional enterprises; it's generally suggested as raising the floor. People would have more time to clean their own gutters or use the money they receive to pay someone else.
In terms of charity cleaning services, there are people who clean hoarder's houses or landscape unruly yards for free on YouTube... ;)
I'm talking about gutters on the street, beside the kerb. I thought this was implied after I said "keeping your block clean by sweeping and mulching". You routinely see older people in Asia sweeping and raking a communal area if you get up early to walk. There's a (probably obsessive-compulsive) 60 yo guy a few houses down from me in Australia who might've retired early and now goes around raking verges and cleaning the footpath/gutters meticulously. Near my office, there's a woman who bakes bread for the joy of it and sells it at-cost via an honour-box in a sidestreet. She also turns verges and front yards (with owners' permissions) into a community vegetable garden. If others were given an opportunity equivalent to early retirement, these sorts of things might be more common.
As for why: for purpose, for praise, for community, for mental health, for trade/contribution, for skill building, etc. Loads of examples of this already. Maybe none of these things are attractive to you but I don't think that's universal.
Like I said, it's just trying to add to the default UBI, not getting everyone volunteering in their community or else.
Most retirees, early or not, do not contribute to society with their labor nearly as much as they did during their working years. What makes us think that UBI beneficiaries would be any different?
Right! So everyone would choose to pursue passions/interests/leisure. We would be going into debt with no meaningful benefit to the taxpayer. Direct malinvestment.
This is drawing a line between "us" (tax paying citizens + the government) and "them" (people on benefits). I don't think it's that simple.
I imagine just like with existing benefits, the majority of people wouldn't feel great about being on UBI doing nothing, and they would pursue something that gives them a better social standing, a better sense of purpose, a good challenge, whatever motivates an individual. It's why lots of people do volunteer work, work on important open source software, and so on. Sure, there's outliers that actually proudly slack off, but you don't address specific problems with generic solutions.
But more importantly, having the _option_ to fall back on benefits means people need to take fewer risks to pursue their talents and likely be of more value to society than if they did whatever puts food on the table today. Case in point: People born into a family that can finance them through college are more likely to become engineers than people born into poor households. On the flip side, some people do white collar jobs vs something like being a medic to uphold their standard of living from the higher salary, not out of preference.
I think it would need careful management, but I believe there's every reason to be optimistic.
UBI isn't even needed if there's just universal housing, medical care, food and education. People will find enough work to get the rest, even if it's through barter.
Okay…now that we agree that UBI won’t produce any meaningful labor. What benefit do we get out of the trillions of dollars of debt we’d be accumulating?
It’s a classic economic blunder that dictatorships love to make:
1. Create money & rack up debt.
2. Produce nothing.
3. Create inflationary crisis and exacerbate wealth inequality.
4. Highlight your good intentions and relish your new position as champion of the people.
Isn’t the investment to avoid a revolution? To avoid those that cannot find work from dismantling and tearing down everything around them so they can get what they need. Some might consider that to be a benefit to taxpayers and not a poor investment.
Free money never works. It’s been attempted countless times. In fact, it exacerbates the wealth gap as the rich own assets that scale with inflation while the poor do not.
No, you just live in a bubble of smart and really driven people.
The vast majority of people's passions are partying, sex, alcohol/drugs, watching sports, gossiping, generally wasting time. Things that mostly
This whole line of thought to me is embarrassingly clueless, naive and basically childish.
It is just mind blowing to me how smart people can't see what a bubble they live in.
I almost suspect, the higher a person's IQ, the more susceptible they are to living in a bubble that basically has nothing to do with the majority of people with an IQ of 100.
How do you make sure that enough people want to do the necessary jobs?
And why do you need money at all in that scenario, at least for the basic items the UBI intends to make affordable to all? Why not just make them free and available to everyone?
No UBI proposal I'm aware of proposes UBI replaces salaries or is high enough to satisfy everyone. The "B" is for basic. Most people are not satisfied with earning a basic salary.
I was very surprised during the pandemic response to see how many people were happy to take government checks plus unemployment rather than working.
I know a few people with small businesses in various manufacturing industries. They all had a really hard time finding enough people to work while stimulus checks were going out.
People wouldn't make quite as much, but they were happy to stay home and have the basics for "free" rather than have a job.
Historically, jobs or professions always existed around the intrinsic motivation of the person working and around the needs of the society around that person.
So you could become a poet, but if you do not write poems that people like you would starve. Or you could become a farmer and provide the best apples in your city and you will earn a more than deserve income.
That's why free economies have developed historically so much better than any centrally planned economy.
> I can not believe this was voted down. It is simply an assertion of fact. Whether true or not, seems reasonable and most people would agree with it.
If it was voted down, I'm guessing it was because to the extent that it's a fact, it's trivially true, and there's nothing insightful about the defeatist take. It's possible to do more harm than good doing pretty much anything. And the world is littered with problems that are not "fully solvable" but that we've mitigated greatly.
> the people producing and selling solar panels don’t give a fuck about the environment
They sure as hell are incentivized to at least make others do. An increased awareness for environmental issues is profitable. I would go further and think that genuine interest in the future of humanity is more plausible than the required cognitive dissonance.
Why on earth are solar panels seen as righteous? You’re so indoctrinated that it borders on worship. Go look into who makes them and how.
Producing solar, batteries, wind farms EMITS carbon and has large environmental impact. The energy sector will sell you whatever…
> > Neither do you.
> Completely needless accusation.
99% of environmentalists are just posturing. I guess it’s possible you’re different, but just remember you probably emit more carbon than almost every person who’s ever lived.
The environmental impacts of these technologies are well documented and reported. However the emissions are negligible compared to the running emissions of fossil fuels which you don't seem to actively dislike. Assuming that the world's power usage does not dramatically shrink in the future, especially solar farms will have to be built on a massive scale because we simply can't emit as much carbon as would be required for fossil power plants. Again, you can check the numbers for yourself.
> you probably emit more carbon than almost every person who’s ever lived.
That seems exaggerated. I live a vegetarian diet and do not own a car, my home electricity is 100% local renewables and I am very mindful of the carbon impact of any products I buy. While the Western industrial lifestyle is still unsustainable, I do think these small-scale changes are beneficial. Of course the ambient societal carbon emissions are incomparable to pre-Industrial timeframes, but that is widely known.
Thanks for the response! I am not anti-solar, and the technology absolutely has it's niche. It's just not suitable for base-load power generation.
> However the emissions are negligible compared to the running emissions of fossil fuels
This is untrue but for the record, I'm referencing climate impact, not just emissions.
Solar has great emissions compared to FF in VERY SPECIFIC CONDITIONS. Its obvious that solar only works intermittently, and only provides efficient power in places where we have lots of sun next to large demand (think population centers).
Most of the worlds solar panels are produced in China, where they burn coal for the bulk of their industrial energy. Burning coal to produce panels, and placing them in non-sunny regions creates extra emissions, not less...frequently not even breaking even on the carbon cost of the initial production/distribution during the lifespan of the panel.
> fossil fuels which you don't seem to actively dislike
Of course I don't actively dislike inanimate substance. This is what freaks me out about the cult-like support for solar. Without fossil fuels, we would lose access to food, shelter, medicine, infrastructure, etc. The way some people talk, I'm starting to think the renewable crowd believes it's "worth it."
> Assuming that the world's power usage does not dramatically shrink in the future, especially solar farms will have to be built on a massive scale
1. We could use other forms of power generation...solar is not the only game in town.
2. The materials required for solar production are finite. It's unsustainable to extract/process all the materials required for such a feat, barring some sort of physics breakthrough in hyperconductivity. We literally do not have the materials OR the technology.
> That seems exaggerated. I live a vegetarian diet and do not own a car, my home electricity is 100% local renewables and I am very mindful of the carbon impact of any products I buy.
That's all well and good, but once you start taking flights, using infrastructure , electronics, ML workloads, developing software, etc, you've already beaten most others today and historically.
How many african peasants worth of emissions do you think your lifestyle produces? How do you think the food you consume is produced and distributed? Why aren't you considering the emissions required to pour concrete and produce steel?
Well lowering market spreads is all about increasing the returns for capital, and incenctivising overfinancialisation. It's hardly curing cancer is it?
At worst it's actively harmful if you believe that the current state of turbo-financialised capitalism has its drawbacks.
> Network latency
Not really sure what you're talking about but surely spending billions of dollars to bring rtt latencies to 50 micros or whatever is not really a great use of money and top engineering talent. Again, it's playing an arbitrage game but not really delivering any value.
lol I said "closeted dictator" for the record. But alrighty why don't we start over and see if we can both argue in good faith. I can certainly be a dick on the internet sometimes.
I honestly can't tell what your concrete points are. I come from the position that economies are naturally occurring phenomena which cannot be centrally planned or controlled. If people can find ways to profit off market inefficiencies, they should! The HFT/Quant firms make their arbitrage money (value for them) and all market participants in return see: (non-exhaustive list)
If your bar is that "all smart people should be working on curing cancer or andrepd-approved endevours" then almost nobody in the economy is providing value. Is my lowly SecEng job at $MEGACORP good enough? What about my buddy who writes firmware for toothbruhes? Are professional starcraft players wasting their talents?
> EDIT: The funny part is even the exchanges and hft firms agree with me see PLP/speed bumps on exchanges like Eurex lol
This debate has been going on for ages, and it's silly to pretend that it's been settled and everyone agrees with you.
> I come from the position that economies are naturally occurring phenomena which cannot be centrally planned or controlled.
This is a challenge to untangle. It sounds like you're saying that there is no point trying to regulate, legislate or control what happens in the economy at all. But that sounds bonkers to me.
For starters, there are (and should definitely remain) absolute limits to business activities. We've moved on from Victorian-era child and slave labour for good reasons, even though such a situation was "naturally occurring" at the time. Moreover economic activity is dictated by cultural mores - if your service is morally reprehensible in some way then you won't get much business whatever your matgins are. Economies are inherently subject to the laws and customs of the agents.
Secondly, some regulation is pretty clearly beneficial. For example, there's a recurrent tendency for market power to concentrate in modern economies; we need robust anti-trust regulation to prevent consumers from getting ripped off and to prevent fragile supply chains. A well-conisdered balance of public and private provision supports the least well-off in society while allowing room for the fruits of individual flourishing.
Thirdly, we must consider what makes one economic system better than others. One way to measure this is to look at how efficiently it converts resources to social utility. I'm far from convinced that it's efficient to employ our brightest minds to build trading models with brief lifespans so that investors who are already well-off become slightly more so. It's worth investigating what regulations and incentives could put those minds towards things of greater value - solving climate change, cancer, sending humans into space etc... .
> This is a challenge to untangle. It sounds like you're saying that there is no point trying to regulate, legislate or control what happens in the economy at all. But that sounds bonkers to me.
I really do not appreciate this mischaracterization of my position. Focus on my actual words. I don't care about 'winning' this online argument. I take effort to engage because I am disturbed by the number of intelligent people who believe if only _THEY_ were in charge (or at least the right person), we would be able to fix all of society's problems.
> For starters, there are (and should definitely remain) absolute limits to business activities...
I agree with everything that follows. Government needs to be around to keep the peace. I want to be explicit: When I say "centrally planned/controlled economies" I am NOT talking about the general concept of regulation. If you are debating in good faith, this should be obvious. Look at all the history of failed states who tried to implement top-down control of their economies.
Also, YSK that not all regulators are government entities.
> Thirdly, we must consider what makes one economic system better than others. One way to measure this is to look at how efficiently it converts resources to social utility.
Never before in history has mankind been so prosperous. What system would you like to emulate? The US capitalist system is not perfect (and never will be)...but it blows all of its peers out of the water in terms of economic prosperity. Here's a couple data points: (Please read the technical definitions if you are truly interested in this subject)
> I'm far from convinced that it's efficient to employ our brightest minds to build trading models...
This is where my "closeted dictator" quip comes from. Nobody is "allocating" these minds...they are acting on their own free will. Why should you or anyone else be the arbiter? What if individuals disagree with your beliefs? Space exploration is a great example of a debatable "worthy endeavor"
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