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I'm actually significantly more skeptical of OpenAI after discovering that one of their founders is behind this. The tag line of universal basic income is so a

I'm actually significantly more skeptical of OpenAI after discovering that one of their founders is behind this. The tag line of universal basic income is so absurd for an iris scanner built on the blockchain. Are we still in the world of 0% interest rates???

littlestymaar 3y ago
You can have UBI at a country level if you finance it with government budget (through taxes)[1], but as a for-profit enterprise, there's no that's a good idea (for it to work at all, it must have a monetization strategy, and they all look dystopian) [1] it actually exist(ed) in France (see RMI/RSA, though the different governments recently added tons of bureaucracy to it as a way to deter people from getting it, ruining the point), but the political will that it requires (and whether this is a good idea at all, I don't have a strong opinion on that) is the limiting factor.
- dopidopHN 3y ago
  To add : France minima sociaux are not enough to live on by themselves. Last time I checked the RSA was around 400 euros / months. The idea of UBI imply that you can live in a ok way with it. I have friends who lives with the French RSA, they have previous stash of money to complete it. One is close to spend only 400/month, but he lives on land he bought with his last job.
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    > The idea of UBI imply that you can live in a ok way with it Not really, or rather it depends who you ask: on the left's perspective on UBI, you're right, but on the right side (Milton Friedman being the most prominent on that side having talked about UBI) then it should be barely enough to replace all other form of state wellfare without necessarily be enough to live from it.
- iraqmtpizza 3y ago
  As soon as the money becomes conditional, it's not UBI. If you have to irrevokably sign up to an organ donor list, it's not UBI. UBI is inherently redistributive. Which I happen to think is immoral.
  - lost_tourist 3y ago
    Do you think that public roads and schools are also immoral?
    - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
      In principle, yes. In practice, one occasionally has to choose the least immoral option. That does not invalidate the principle.
  - landemva 3y ago
    Do you think USA doing more deficit spending to redistribute USA's munitions to Ukraine is immoral? Seems like the past 30 years have been ongoing interventionism to shovel money to war makers.
    - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
      Yes. We're borrowing money from China to fund salaries in the Ukrainian government. Let Europe do that. I don't mind sending old munitions that are set to be destroyed anyway, especially if we get some good data out of it.
  - nerdbert 3y ago
    Almost every interaction between more than one human that involves resources is either abusive or positively redistributive to some degree. If intentional redistribution with the goal of increasing equality is immoral, that leaves abuse as the only moral choice in your worldview.
    - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
      LOL so theft and coercion are in the redistributive category and barter and contracts are in the abuse category? If what you say is true, then I would choose abuse over theft.
- brandall10 3y ago
  I took a look at RSA and 1) it's not technically UBI but a conditional welfare program (UBI is allocated to all adults, even wealthy ones) and 2) it's exceptionally low - just $514 a month. That's 30% minimum wage and a bit less than half the poverty threshold. I don't think UBI will really work if it doesn't even have support at the poverty line. Part of the point of UBI is a segment of the population which can't find work due to obsolete skills can at least spend the energy to retrain, or perhaps pursue some endeavor that is difficult to monetize but provides some benefit to society. That's difficult to do when one is destitute. As well, it needs to be effective for large swaths of the population if we are indeed heading into a post-work society over the next 10-20 years.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  Is that the kind of UBI we want though? If it has a single issuer, like the government, then it has a single point of control which can be used to coerce people (i.e. by threatening to take it away). The ideal UBI system would let you threaten to overthrow your government in a way that does not threaten the integrity of UBI. It ought to be a safety net that makes otherwise impractical growth possible. As a crypto, CirclesUBI is a bit of a disaster (e.g. the hosted UI, and sensitivity to certain kinds of attack), but I think they got the tokenomics right: it encourages Sybil resistant behavior among the users without trying to bind an address to your body and without relying on an issuer's good behavior.
  - Ataraxic 3y ago
    > The ideal UBI system would let you threaten to overthrow your government... Crypto Anarchism is not attractive the vast majority of people. I'll argue the UBI people want involves their government sending them a check, direct deposit, or cash.
    - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
      Given that we'd have to all conspire to respect the UBI token while we replaced the government, I'd classify it as cryptocommunism, but I take your point. I just have a hard time imagining a government that both: - keeps the U in UBI - is not under some kind if existential threat from its people You need the latter to have the former. But if you're coordinated to achieve the latter then you don't really need the government to achieve the former anyway.
    - landemva 3y ago
      Since USA still controls it's currency issuance (unlike EU members), why isn't this in place today? Rename food stamps and WIC into newUBI and start rolling it out.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > The ideal UBI system would let you threaten to overthrow your government in a way that does not threaten the integrity of UBI If you can, categorically, overthrow it without threatening the integrity of UBI in its territory, it was never actually the government in the first place.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  And you don't need a magic orb to do it. You can do it in the US through the mysterious buildings referred to as "unemployment offices" by changing the signs and opening twice as many. It would also be amazing to use these buildings to match employers and the unemployed, but that's obviously asking far too much of government.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > And you don't need a magic orb to do it. You can do it in the US through the mysterious buildings referred to as "unemployment offices" by changing the signs and opening twice as many. You could do it through the agency known as the IRS by adding a standard refundable credit, you might need a few more employees, but nothing like twice as many.
    - landemva 3y ago
      IRS already implements the child tax credit which pays, so a negative income tax should be straight-forward.
NelsonMinar 3y ago
Does anyone believe the UBI part is real? Or is it just part of the scam?
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  I used to defend crypto a lot (now just a little). Especially the UBI attempts. But no. World coin has always looked like a thinly veiled attempt to generate a biometric dataset which would later be used against its users. I just don't know who its audience was supposed to be. If you're suspicious enough of fiat to want this kind of escape hatch, how can you simultaneously be trusting enough to embrace a system that relies on biometrics and allegedly trustworthy hardware?
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Because 90% of the people who got into crypto did not give a fuck about "trust" or any of the nonsense blockchains claim they do and only wanted to hit the lottery on the next coin going to the moon.
    - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
      Oh it's totally in the 95% grift part of crypto. I'm just saying that it stands out from the rest because it targets a virtually non-existent demographic. Most scams try to cast a wide net.
- slantedview 3y ago
  It's pie in the sky. UBI could be worked towards today in many different ways without involving crypto. The idea of US tech people offering UBI to people in one of the most heavily exploited parts of the world as a way to get them to turn over biometric data is gross.

littlestymaar 3y ago

You can have UBI at a country level if you finance it with government budget (through taxes)[1], but as a for-profit enterprise, there's no that's a good idea (for it to work at all, it must have a monetization strategy, and they all look dystopian) [1] it actually exist(ed) in France (see RMI/RSA, though the different governments recently added tons of bureaucracy to it as a way to deter people from getting it, ruining the point), but the political will that it requires (and whether this is a good idea at all, I don't have a strong opinion on that) is the limiting factor.

dopidopHN 3y ago
To add : France minima sociaux are not enough to live on by themselves. Last time I checked the RSA was around 400 euros / months. The idea of UBI imply that you can live in a ok way with it. I have friends who lives with the French RSA, they have previous stash of money to complete it. One is close to spend only 400/month, but he lives on land he bought with his last job.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  > The idea of UBI imply that you can live in a ok way with it Not really, or rather it depends who you ask: on the left's perspective on UBI, you're right, but on the right side (Milton Friedman being the most prominent on that side having talked about UBI) then it should be barely enough to replace all other form of state wellfare without necessarily be enough to live from it.
iraqmtpizza 3y ago
As soon as the money becomes conditional, it's not UBI. If you have to irrevokably sign up to an organ donor list, it's not UBI. UBI is inherently redistributive. Which I happen to think is immoral.
- lost_tourist 3y ago
  Do you think that public roads and schools are also immoral?
  - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
    In principle, yes. In practice, one occasionally has to choose the least immoral option. That does not invalidate the principle.
- landemva 3y ago
  Do you think USA doing more deficit spending to redistribute USA's munitions to Ukraine is immoral? Seems like the past 30 years have been ongoing interventionism to shovel money to war makers.
  - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
    Yes. We're borrowing money from China to fund salaries in the Ukrainian government. Let Europe do that. I don't mind sending old munitions that are set to be destroyed anyway, especially if we get some good data out of it.
- nerdbert 3y ago
  Almost every interaction between more than one human that involves resources is either abusive or positively redistributive to some degree. If intentional redistribution with the goal of increasing equality is immoral, that leaves abuse as the only moral choice in your worldview.
  - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
    LOL so theft and coercion are in the redistributive category and barter and contracts are in the abuse category? If what you say is true, then I would choose abuse over theft.
brandall10 3y ago
I took a look at RSA and 1) it's not technically UBI but a conditional welfare program (UBI is allocated to all adults, even wealthy ones) and 2) it's exceptionally low - just $514 a month. That's 30% minimum wage and a bit less than half the poverty threshold. I don't think UBI will really work if it doesn't even have support at the poverty line. Part of the point of UBI is a segment of the population which can't find work due to obsolete skills can at least spend the energy to retrain, or perhaps pursue some endeavor that is difficult to monetize but provides some benefit to society. That's difficult to do when one is destitute. As well, it needs to be effective for large swaths of the population if we are indeed heading into a post-work society over the next 10-20 years.
__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
Is that the kind of UBI we want though? If it has a single issuer, like the government, then it has a single point of control which can be used to coerce people (i.e. by threatening to take it away). The ideal UBI system would let you threaten to overthrow your government in a way that does not threaten the integrity of UBI. It ought to be a safety net that makes otherwise impractical growth possible. As a crypto, CirclesUBI is a bit of a disaster (e.g. the hosted UI, and sensitivity to certain kinds of attack), but I think they got the tokenomics right: it encourages Sybil resistant behavior among the users without trying to bind an address to your body and without relying on an issuer's good behavior.
- Ataraxic 3y ago
  > The ideal UBI system would let you threaten to overthrow your government... Crypto Anarchism is not attractive the vast majority of people. I'll argue the UBI people want involves their government sending them a check, direct deposit, or cash.
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    Given that we'd have to all conspire to respect the UBI token while we replaced the government, I'd classify it as cryptocommunism, but I take your point. I just have a hard time imagining a government that both: - keeps the U in UBI - is not under some kind if existential threat from its people You need the latter to have the former. But if you're coordinated to achieve the latter then you don't really need the government to achieve the former anyway.
  - landemva 3y ago
    Since USA still controls it's currency issuance (unlike EU members), why isn't this in place today? Rename food stamps and WIC into newUBI and start rolling it out.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > The ideal UBI system would let you threaten to overthrow your government in a way that does not threaten the integrity of UBI If you can, categorically, overthrow it without threatening the integrity of UBI in its territory, it was never actually the government in the first place.
pessimizer 3y ago
And you don't need a magic orb to do it. You can do it in the US through the mysterious buildings referred to as "unemployment offices" by changing the signs and opening twice as many. It would also be amazing to use these buildings to match employers and the unemployed, but that's obviously asking far too much of government.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > And you don't need a magic orb to do it. You can do it in the US through the mysterious buildings referred to as "unemployment offices" by changing the signs and opening twice as many. You could do it through the agency known as the IRS by adding a standard refundable credit, you might need a few more employees, but nothing like twice as many.
  - landemva 3y ago
    IRS already implements the child tax credit which pays, so a negative income tax should be straight-forward.

NelsonMinar 3y ago

Does anyone believe the UBI part is real? Or is it just part of the scam?

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
I used to defend crypto a lot (now just a little). Especially the UBI attempts. But no. World coin has always looked like a thinly veiled attempt to generate a biometric dataset which would later be used against its users. I just don't know who its audience was supposed to be. If you're suspicious enough of fiat to want this kind of escape hatch, how can you simultaneously be trusting enough to embrace a system that relies on biometrics and allegedly trustworthy hardware?
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Because 90% of the people who got into crypto did not give a fuck about "trust" or any of the nonsense blockchains claim they do and only wanted to hit the lottery on the next coin going to the moon.
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    Oh it's totally in the 95% grift part of crypto. I'm just saying that it stands out from the rest because it targets a virtually non-existent demographic. Most scams try to cast a wide net.
slantedview 3y ago
It's pie in the sky. UBI could be worked towards today in many different ways without involving crypto. The idea of US tech people offering UBI to people in one of the most heavily exploited parts of the world as a way to get them to turn over biometric data is gross.