Taking out at scale the most extractive labour globally will both do a lot of good and draw the ire of the most aggressive economic players. Making a chair taller by chopping of a leg for building materials is not a repeatable strategy. One may not like what is going on in the kitchen, but serving unprocessed ingredients will improve nutrition and will drive down patreonage.
I think I’m missing your point. UBI is a long way off, but there are a lot of (mostly economic theory) writings about how guaranteed income at a large scale would drastically shift power in our economy/society in a positive way for people across the wealth spectrum. It might draw ire, but It’s totally worth doing. I just hope we don’t get assassinated
For the logistics, I don’t see what service is being provided for the help direction. Sure, using a develped country means that whatever personal need the receipient has there is a specialised industry to serve that. And for undeveloped countries an existing industry is proven to be viable and possible instead of illfitted outside injection. But money used in undeveloped country will suffer from the local infrastructure not being, well, developed. Using a definition of dollars for value creates a big distortion there. Sure, if I need car in developed country and pay $1000 for it and pay in undeveloped country £3000 in one sense both are “100% money to need fulfillment”. But on another view the other option is three times less efficient. Providing a $2000 car in the poor area is in one view half as efficient as a rich area car but on another view significantly more efficient than the local poor infrastructure option.
I think it could be important to take a look at the many examples of people in developed nations sending stuff to developing countries that they don’t actually need, or want, the most. A car might be cheaper to deliver than a local car would be to buy, but most of the lime locals are not looking to buy a car, they need something else that is specific to them or their village. You have to be comparing the counterfactual value gained by beneficiaries if they were given $2,000 versus the $2,000 cost (including all logistical and administrative costs) of delivering a certain item such as a car.
I also can’t think of any other metric than dollars, and it does account for examples wherien not giving people money could be more efficient. A case point would be GiveWell’s Top Charities, they don’t give cash ‘value’ but instead, they give cheap, easily distributable items that have incredibly large life-saving impact ‘value’. Money value, lives saved value, economic multiplier effects value… all of these things can be most easily converted to dollars for comparison—although none of this is easy at all.
Yeah, hello Pascal’s mugger. It was atleast interesting when there were numbers about the amount of rooms in the castle making up the deficiencies in building materials. In the wake of FTX big payouts on tail probabilities might be a bit of a challenging sell.
Hi Pascal! But in all seriousness, I don’t think that there’s a near-zero chance. Given the research, I’ve outlined, and the input that I’ve received from a bunch of unbiased professionals in the nonprofit industry, I think the likelihood is closer to 40% if we do not get any support from EA, and over 75% if we do get tons of support. Unlike FTX’s BSBF I’m not interested in a microscopic chance of massive impact, I’m interested in a likely chance of massive, within a decade, impact. The comment was basically meant to ask,” How low would the likelihood of these impacts happening have to be before not dropping everything and working hard on this problem would not be worth it”. Perhaps an unhelpful question.
You’re right I probably should make our actual chances clearer though. I don’t want to argue about 0-1% chance, I’d like people to argue that our chances are not 40%, but 0 instead.
I think I’m missing your point. UBI is a long way off, but there are a lot of (mostly economic theory) writings about how guaranteed income at a large scale would drastically shift power in our economy/society in a positive way for people across the wealth spectrum. It might draw ire, but It’s totally worth doing. I just hope we don’t get assassinated
Those people are trying to persuade the whole public at first and then moving. With this apporoach we first move and then show it was a good thing. Sure need to get funders on board but private money pushing ahead of public policy is a “shoot first, ask permission later” approach.
Climate change people need to deal with misinformation and mudding of the waters by oil companies and such. It is not just that the public randomly happens to be ignorant and a simple informing will do the trick. There is a lot of PR done by neoliberalism and such which will reactively up its efforts when the boat starts to shake. The pipedreams talk about the future but the grassroots squashing is done today.
Western intelligence agencies, atleast for the bad apples part, will topple foreign orders if the environment is not sufficiently corporation-friendly. If the issues become hot, freedom of operation or experimentation might not be there. And here scale matters, a political wind that 1% of the population is symphatetic to can be tolerated. So lifting individual people up does not pose a threat to the way of life. But doing that to whole classes of people does more than just the sum of the individual cases. Sure more things become possible but pushing an old system aside means everybody invested in the old way will have their survival instincts triggered. You don’t want to be on the business end of capitalism defending itself. So knowing which structures are (felt) existentially central is key to letting sleeping bears lay.
Say you have a 20 M program running in a country. Yay, people are free to self-improve. But it also means they are not doing their previous income activity. Will there be a search for all those task that these people were doing? Probably. And because they were the bottom 20 M the replacements will not do it for cheaper (this is somewhat unique condition for this setup (normal economic thinking assumes that others step up)). Sure some tasks are not worth the new cost and the increased demands might not be that much. But the switchers will reduce laborers for the next wage class (and this recourses as much as it needs to). Doing it at scale means firms feel the statistical impact. Or is the bid that they could full-time self-improve but will statistically significantly choose not to? If you did a wholesale reform at once you can jump to a new balance point. But doing it gradually within existing dynamics means that the hunger for labour will growl.
Those people are trying to persuade the whole public at first and then moving. With this apporoach we first move and then show it was a good thing. Sure need to get funders on board but private money pushing ahead of public policy is a “shoot first, ask permission later” approach.
You’re pretty much right. I started my journey writing about UBI policy and its potential to improve society, but I got fed up with politics. I do think the danger isn’t quite as bad at first. We basically have permission to ‘shoot’ because guaranteed income pilots are very common nowadays and tons of cities and private organizations have launched guaranteed income pilots. We will have to ensure that our platform cannot violate IRS rules about who qualifies as ‘in need’.
Sure more things become possible but pushing an old system aside means everybody invested in the old way will have their survival instincts triggered. You don’t want to be on the business end of capitalism defending itself. So knowing which structures are (felt) existentially central is key to letting sleeping bears lay.
So basically, watch our backs when we get big enough for entrenched interests to start losing their grip on exploited labor. That’s a good piece of advice, although, I think we may be able to get wealthy & powerful people to at least claim to support guaranteed income. I think it will be important for us to leave the more political side of it all to other organizations such as Income Movement and the Economic Security Project
With messaging, I see it as framing guaranteed income as the most powerful possible way to help almost any group of people in any location, and back that up with tons of falsifiable research. It’ll be pretty tough to attack us I think. At the same time, lots of technologists and powerful people think that guaranteed income is the only thing that can save capitalism and ensure prosperity during a time of automation.
A 20 M program would fund only 3K participants for 1 year at $500 a month. For perspective, there are 13.5K people homeless in Arizona.
And 13.5K people are approximately 0.02% of the population in Arizona. We would have to be throwing around billions (and that is the goal between 5-10 years) to make any noticeable macroeconomic impacts on the labor force.
Say you have a 20 M program running in a country. Yay, people are free to self-improve. But it also means they are not doing their previous income activity. Will there be a search for all those task that these people were doing? Probably. And because they were the bottom 20 M the replacements will not do it for cheaper (this is somewhat unique condition for this setup (normal economic thinking assumes that others step up)). Sure some tasks are not worth the new cost and the increased demands might not be that much. But the switchers will reduce laborers for the next wage class (and this recourses as much as it needs to). Doing it at scale means firms feel the statistical impact. Or is the bid that they could full-time self-improve but will statistically significantly choose not to?
The major problem most homeless people encounter is that they cannot get jobs, because of various obstacles such as having clean interview clothes, a home address, a bank account, stolen IDs, etc… From the limited prior studies on guaranteed income for homeless and housing insecure people, guaranteed income seems to enable them to gain employment. Unlike conventional benefits, guaranteed income doesn’t force people to stay unemployed or refuse promotions by having a benefits cliff.
I think I’m missing your point. UBI is a long way off, but there are a lot of (mostly economic theory) writings about how guaranteed income at a large scale would drastically shift power in our economy/society in a positive way for people across the wealth spectrum. It might draw ire, but It’s totally worth doing. I just hope we don’t get assassinated
I think it could be important to take a look at the many examples of people in developed nations sending stuff to developing countries that they don’t actually need, or want, the most. A car might be cheaper to deliver than a local car would be to buy, but most of the lime locals are not looking to buy a car, they need something else that is specific to them or their village. You have to be comparing the counterfactual value gained by beneficiaries if they were given $2,000 versus the $2,000 cost (including all logistical and administrative costs) of delivering a certain item such as a car.
I also can’t think of any other metric than dollars, and it does account for examples wherien not giving people money could be more efficient. A case point would be GiveWell’s Top Charities, they don’t give cash ‘value’ but instead, they give cheap, easily distributable items that have incredibly large life-saving impact ‘value’. Money value, lives saved value, economic multiplier effects value… all of these things can be most easily converted to dollars for comparison—although none of this is easy at all.
Hi Pascal! But in all seriousness, I don’t think that there’s a near-zero chance. Given the research, I’ve outlined, and the input that I’ve received from a bunch of unbiased professionals in the nonprofit industry, I think the likelihood is closer to 40% if we do not get any support from EA, and over 75% if we do get tons of support. Unlike FTX’s BSBF I’m not interested in a microscopic chance of massive impact, I’m interested in a likely chance of massive, within a decade, impact. The comment was basically meant to ask,” How low would the likelihood of these impacts happening have to be before not dropping everything and working hard on this problem would not be worth it”. Perhaps an unhelpful question.
What I’m looking for is people like you to please find a fundamental first-principles problem with the plan.
You’re right I probably should make our actual chances clearer though. I don’t want to argue about 0-1% chance, I’d like people to argue that our chances are not 40%, but 0 instead.
Those people are trying to persuade the whole public at first and then moving. With this apporoach we first move and then show it was a good thing. Sure need to get funders on board but private money pushing ahead of public policy is a “shoot first, ask permission later” approach.
Climate change people need to deal with misinformation and mudding of the waters by oil companies and such. It is not just that the public randomly happens to be ignorant and a simple informing will do the trick. There is a lot of PR done by neoliberalism and such which will reactively up its efforts when the boat starts to shake. The pipedreams talk about the future but the grassroots squashing is done today.
Western intelligence agencies, atleast for the bad apples part, will topple foreign orders if the environment is not sufficiently corporation-friendly. If the issues become hot, freedom of operation or experimentation might not be there. And here scale matters, a political wind that 1% of the population is symphatetic to can be tolerated. So lifting individual people up does not pose a threat to the way of life. But doing that to whole classes of people does more than just the sum of the individual cases. Sure more things become possible but pushing an old system aside means everybody invested in the old way will have their survival instincts triggered. You don’t want to be on the business end of capitalism defending itself. So knowing which structures are (felt) existentially central is key to letting sleeping bears lay.
Say you have a 20 M program running in a country. Yay, people are free to self-improve. But it also means they are not doing their previous income activity. Will there be a search for all those task that these people were doing? Probably. And because they were the bottom 20 M the replacements will not do it for cheaper (this is somewhat unique condition for this setup (normal economic thinking assumes that others step up)). Sure some tasks are not worth the new cost and the increased demands might not be that much. But the switchers will reduce laborers for the next wage class (and this recourses as much as it needs to). Doing it at scale means firms feel the statistical impact. Or is the bid that they could full-time self-improve but will statistically significantly choose not to? If you did a wholesale reform at once you can jump to a new balance point. But doing it gradually within existing dynamics means that the hunger for labour will growl.
You’re pretty much right. I started my journey writing about UBI policy and its potential to improve society, but I got fed up with politics. I do think the danger isn’t quite as bad at first. We basically have permission to ‘shoot’ because guaranteed income pilots are very common nowadays and tons of cities and private organizations have launched guaranteed income pilots. We will have to ensure that our platform cannot violate IRS rules about who qualifies as ‘in need’.
So basically, watch our backs when we get big enough for entrenched interests to start losing their grip on exploited labor. That’s a good piece of advice, although, I think we may be able to get wealthy & powerful people to at least claim to support guaranteed income. I think it will be important for us to leave the more political side of it all to other organizations such as Income Movement and the Economic Security Project
With messaging, I see it as framing guaranteed income as the most powerful possible way to help almost any group of people in any location, and back that up with tons of falsifiable research. It’ll be pretty tough to attack us I think. At the same time, lots of technologists and powerful people think that guaranteed income is the only thing that can save capitalism and ensure prosperity during a time of automation.
A 20 M program would fund only 3K participants for 1 year at $500 a month. For perspective, there are 13.5K people homeless in Arizona.
And 13.5K people are approximately 0.02% of the population in Arizona. We would have to be throwing around billions (and that is the goal between 5-10 years) to make any noticeable macroeconomic impacts on the labor force.
The data we’ve seen from basic income pilots at all scales around the world indicate that guaranteed income may actually increase labor force participation. There are examples of people using it to get an education or do socially valuable care work, but overall RTC study examinations have seen statistically insignificant, slightly increased rates of working.
The major problem most homeless people encounter is that they cannot get jobs, because of various obstacles such as having clean interview clothes, a home address, a bank account, stolen IDs, etc… From the limited prior studies on guaranteed income for homeless and housing insecure people, guaranteed income seems to enable them to gain employment. Unlike conventional benefits, guaranteed income doesn’t force people to stay unemployed or refuse promotions by having a benefits cliff.