a perfect case in point for #UBI (Universal Basic income)
@tshepang
I would need to give this idea some more thought.
You see, if a service does not cost anything at all, there tends to be waste and abuse.
If everyone is given a basic income to cover their (basic) needs, this would solve that problem too, don't you think?
In any event, public goods should be held by a (non-corrupt) state and not by private citizens or corporations (e.g. water rights).
(1/n)
Very interesting. You thought of corruption by administrators (and rightly so, see my posts, e.g., about Nestlé and water-rights abuses, e.g., in the US and elsewhere.)
I thought more of abuse by citizens. People tend to value services that are free of charge low.
Regarding the showcase of #Scandinavian countries, they cannot be the benchmark. I'm no #anthropologist but I'd suspect that the following factors influence this result:
1) relatively...
(2/n)
small, and until recently, a fairly
homogeneous population.
2) Rich and highly educated populations.
3) Centuries of common enterprise (e.g. #Viking raids.) Mist other countries lack such characteristics.
Very different: Native American tribes.
There might be other factors.
People, generally, tend to be ill-disciplined in huge crowds where individual stakeholdership and malfeasance don't lead to ostracism, as in ancient times. (My hypothesis)
Therefore,...
(3/3)
...even public goods must have a monetary, and not just an intrinsic value. This can be offset by #UBI.
It's a zero-sum game, really, but leads to significantly different results, IMHO.
//
@tshepang @HistoPol @jsbarretto
You can't witness the degree of preference though. Suppose you have two beaches, one has better surfing. On any given day 1000 people go to both beaches. Both beaches are "equally good" right? What if I told you that the 1000 surfers would pay $40 to park there, but the 1000 other beach goers would only pay $5. It's not enough to see how many people go where to give you good information about how to allocate resources.
@tshepang @HistoPol @jsbarretto
For example it might tell you to allocate resources to a special bus that goes to the surfing beach that can take surfboards, where you can board the bus a few miles away in some kind of parking structure, enabling more people to surf the beach without requiring us to build parking next to the beach. Just as an example.
@tshepang @HistoPol @jsbarretto
In general there are other ways you can gain information, but money transactions makes for a single comparable measuring stick between any goods and services, do you enhance the beach, or have more concerts in the park, or have more bus transport or plant more fish in lakes or provide more educational opportunities for kids or ... having a way to compare everything (price) is vastly superior to a hodgepodge of surveys and whatnot.
@tshepang @HistoPol @jsbarretto
The problem is we have made money be a thing you only get for working for wages etc. Suppose we start charging reasonable prices for all sorts of public goods, the linux kernel, beach access, census data... whatever. But then on the other hand, everyone gets an equal UBI of maybe $40000/yr which is more or less say twice the average cost of consuming all the public goods we started charging for. So you can buy a typical quantity of the public goods, plus $20k
@tshepang @HistoPol @jsbarretto
The money charged for the public goods can go to public maintenance, and whatever isn't used there, can be paid out again by the govt as part of paying the UBI. you're recycling money, using it as an information-carrier. That's how it's supposed to work, to direct resources where they're needed. If you started charging for public goods you'd triple or quadruple the GDP, but to keep the consumption constant you'd need a lot more money circulation... ie the UBI
I agree with your train of thought, except for the library. They have always been free, and I did not see people reading too many books.
#UBI doesn't mean everybody's rich and can afford everything.
Trade-off have you be made, e.g. for sick people, as they have a disproportionate share of healthcare costs.
These above-average expenditures should never crowd out literature.
Libraries should remain free for all residents.
...correct, and that could lead to overconsumption for some people, as they would not get anything else instead.
@HistoPol
I have not. I did some work on Bayesian models for measuring poverty back in 2017 and had some interesting results but it didn't wind up panning out.
I have a dream of starting a nonprofit utilizing agent based modeling to address large scale social and technical issues, but do not have a clear path towards making that happen.
@tshepang @jsbarretto
@dlakelan
Sounds like a thrilling idea.
Forgive my ignorance, what are #BayesianModels?
@dlakelan
I like it. 😀
Seems very versatile.
And by form, you meant formula, correct?
@tshepang
The corruption and inflation questions are good questions though. IMHO a transition to UBI should proceed through a gradual process. For example if we give out 10% of GDP/capita, and then slowly transition more services to payed consumption, GDP would grow and therefore UBI would grow.
Corruption needs a different solution entirely. There are plenty of services that serve the corrupt not the supposed targets. Bridges to nowhere etc.
@HistoPol @jsbarretto
@tshepang @HistoPol @jsbarretto
That's an interesting theory, and I guess not without some merit. A big part of corruption is siphoning off funds by moving them into the pockets of the corrupt. But money movement also does good things, and I think they're kind of "invisible". Why when we go to the grocery is there food there to eat? Because that moves money from hungry people into grocer's pockets. Stop allowing grocers to sell food for money, and the population will starve.
@tshepang @HistoPol @jsbarretto
It may in theory be possible, but the history of the world says that market economies work well for things like food, and that some kind of centralized economy without utilizing the information from price and money exchange works poorly for such things as in USSR. When we talk about a demand, we need to specify a price. In some sense there is "infinite" demand for many zero price things. I'd eat a lot more sushi if it cost $0.
@tshepang
I agree, but so far, no-one has conceptualized a system that might actually work on a large scale* for human beings, at least not that I'm aware of
*i.e. not just on a community or municipal level
(1/2)
aka the factual "Communism" in the former Soviet Union, for instance.
Also, this is what I meant that it will not work when groups become to big.
Basically, it could be argued that a lot of the indigenous tribes of the Americas practiced a form of (working) Communism (except for the peoples with kingdoms, in particular Middle America and Peru/Bolivia.)
People are, in essence, egotistic, and no amount of governance...
@dlakelan (2/2)
will ever change that, though there is, of course, an altruistic streak as well.
(1/2)
That is a good thought.--As you state yourself, though, money was invented after barter trade. And none-monetary IOU's have been quite customary in many cultures.--Not saying that it is corruption, but just think of the "Legacy" anomaly at US Ivy League colleges, for instance.
People are very inventive.
Also, as seen with the price-cap discussion in many European countries during the current #EnergyWars, even...
(2/2)
..."rich" G20 countries cannot afford to provide unlimited price caps, so there is always room for fraud, if e.g. a company requires a lot more.
So, in reality, I think reducing the money in circulation (not even abolishing it) by providing UBS would maybe only momentarily reduce the corruption problem. People are very creative.
@tshepang
I disagree with that statement.
A lot of resources will be lost with trial and error, trying to find a balance.
If, in the end (I see 9mths to 3 yrs) everything re/ corruption is "back to normal," it is not worth it, I think.
I used to think that way, too.
Until I found out what has really happened during the past 40-50 years.
And I am not only talking about the #GinnyCoefficient (there was an excellent pod of #TheEconomist on this topic some months ago) and the betrayal of the global population by #BigOil, or the neocolonial practices of such Robber-Barron companies like #Nestlé.
(all hashtags are recurrent subjects in my posts)
@HistoPol @tshepang @jsbarretto
Well, I do think most of those things you decry which I also decry are examples of "special cases" created by the rich by buying government power. This is all too common though. Something needs to change.
(1/2)
It is not just that, alas, my post is in Germany (which I will put, regardless, afterwards,) here is a post in English about a NTY article about the unprecedented power Musk has amassed in satellite internet communications.
He has become a "transnational being."
https://mastodon.social/@wendysiegelman/110798502577035485
Please also check out my posts on #TESCREAL that I provided for Tshepang.
Things are some lightyears worse than you probably...
@tshepang @jsbarretto
@dlakelan @tshepang @jsbarretto
(2/2)
...think, so lets postpone discussion on this.
I need to call it a day, as I have to start my day early, I will check back tomorrow.
Good night.
@dlakelan @tshepang @jsbarretto
Final thought for 2nite regarding our discussion about UBS and housing - the markets have been failing time and again around the globe, e.g. in Germany, the US presently and soon also in Canada:
Canada's national housing agency has warned that millions of homes must be built within less than a decade to balance the housing market, but even it seems doubtful that its own target is achievable. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-government-housing-construction-challenges-1.6941854
@tshepang
No, not quite, it means that even poorer, say administrative staff kids, get preferential treatment. They "inherit" an enrollment.
It perpetuates a ruling cast and does not allocate the spaces to the most gifted students with the highest pontential ROI for society.
Therefore, inherently unfair.
Yes, agreed. However, that raises the specter of "ideological incest," as I would call it, and here we are at a big other topic, #TESCREAL (I covered that yesterday in a repeat of some of my threads.)
I threatends the complete world order we have presently, and no, not in the way you would like it to move, but in to a complete #oligarchy. Fact.
It is a really huge issue, but I did put some summary posts yesterday.
Let me check for you.
I talk about #TESCREAL in this convo, which gives important sources, too:
https://mastodon.social/@HistoPol/110565890923413442
Furthermore, regarding our starting point, US colleges, this article by insider and Google victim Timnit Gebru talks about the issue:
https://dair-community.social/@timnitGebru/110662391761220428
And then, the #TESCREAL handle has become quite active here in recent weeks.
WARNING: extensive and intensive subject, not for bedside reading ;)
Another great article by @[email protected] who is one of the few journalists who knows whats really going on with "AI safety." The amount of money the TESCREAL billionaires are putting into converting this field into a doomsday cult is ridiculous. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/05/ai-apocalypse-college-students/
If you listen to the interview, @timnitGebru makes it very clear that except for one black swan, all tech billionaires in #SiliconValley are (chiefly white) males that (mostly?--don't recall) belief in #TESCREAL.
#SciFi, in particular certain novels, that used to be nerd stuff, has become main stream.
These two threads emanate from the influential tech billionaires and VC funds. They replicate through funding other white males, indoctrinated by this (on the one hand) fascist thought.
@[email protected] ah, in the current world, the less wealthy have the world set up against their success, so I would rather have them get preferential acceptance in fancy institutions, but more importantly, would rather other institutions close the gap of excellence (because prestige is a form of discrimination) @[email protected] @[email protected]
Oh, heck it does.
#AbolishBillionaires, maybe even more important than #UBS or #UBI. (see other posts of mine)
It would really be interesting to have a rather complete chart of (possible*) public services differentiated by "insurance-like quality" vs. "should be priced" or something.
*some services might only make sense for some countries, e.g. heating in the tropics, not sensible, but essential in northern countries. Air condition, contrary example.
Joshua Barretto
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
tshepang
Daniel Lakeland