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Comment Re:Complete nonsense (Score 1) 651

No. Higher price of output (goods/service) will be caused by higher price of the input. People, creating values, will have to earn extra money, because they have to earn also for UBI payment.
Oh, I see, you're saying increased taxation necessary for the UBI will cause pressure to increase salaries, which will then increase costs. That's plausible, I'll have to think about that more. If you tax passive income (investment) higher than active income, it seems like that wouldn't be as much of an issue.

Not all wealthy people are rich incorrectly. Actually you need to take money from people, who are rich because of their work. Let's assume Paris Hilton doesn't produce anything. You can take from her once, to pay X people $1000 UBI. But next month - you cannot take from her, because she didn't produce anything. So for monthly UBI - you must take from people, who do a lot.
Ah, but certainly she has investment income that she passively profits from.

So UBI is based on money from creators of values. As they work the same, but earns less, they will compensate with higher prices to cover their loss. And they can ask higher price, because all people have more money because of UBI.
Of course all economic systems are based on distributing the work of the creators of value. The question is how exactly to distribute it. As technology progresses, that value increasingly goes to those who can invest in the technology. Researchers make new solar panels possible, engineers bring them to market, workers install them, and then the person that paid for all that profits. With proper taxation, the UBI would be funded primarily by taxing these investors' profits, with the creators of value minimally impacted (beyond the availability of the UBI safety net).

Comment Re:Complete nonsense (Score 1) 651

Thanks for the response!

>First of all, your point of view contradicts the idea of the original article. I don't mind, as I disagree with it anyway, just pointing it out.
Yeah, the article seems to be flame-bait; I'm more interested in figuring out the logic of your argument, since it seems to pop up quite commonly.

> About your response. Money represents value - work, goods, goodwill, etc. Considering your redistribution, you are saying to take money
> from those, who create value and spread them evenly. So there will be a deficit on the side of creators of value. To eliminate this deficiency,
> creators will have to earn more money. To earn more money, they will have to raise the prices. Raised prices means that general public will
> have nominally more money, but can afford less-per-dollar. And the circle is closed.
You seem to be reiterating that UBI will increase prices on common goods. I agree with that, but don't see the problem with it: assuming healthy competition (or regulation of allowed monopolies), this has to be accompanied with a higher sales volume (the supply/demand curve shifts towards more production). That is, the people that need the UBI get more stuff.

Here, and in another comment, you appear to argue that the increase in price on common goods will decrease the purchasing power of people that don't need the UBI. That's actually good: to point is to redirect money from people that are being incorrectly over-valued by investment-focused market forces (e.g. Paris Hilton) and to give it to those that are being incorrectly undervalued by the market (e.g. buggy whip manufacturers that stuck around to provide the then-necessary goods and then became unemployed due to advancements in technology). Of course, if you fully redistributed the money that would destroy incentive structures, but a moderate UBI creates a safety net and stability---which drives innovation.

There's also the issue of border-line folks that just barely don't need the UBI. Their purchasing power drops when the UBI is introduced, but then again they're getting the UBI too, so for them it's a wash.

What do you think?

Comment Re:Complete nonsense (Score 2, Interesting) 651

That's a common counter-argument, but doesn't seem to make sense. You seem to be arguing that charity-type wealth distribution is pointless in general... I'd like to settle this for myself once and for all, so perhaps you can help clarify your point.

As far as I understand it, the goal of UBI is to redistribute the wealth more fairly*, not to create wealth, and only ends up helping those that need money.

For a simpler example, if I buy someone a pair of shoes, that doesn't create wealth, just takes it out of my pocket. Sure, the overall price of shoes will be impacted because of increased demand (if this is scaled up), but other prices will decrease (maybe I won't buy an extra monitor) and the person that needs shoes will now have shoes.

The same thing happens if I (myself or via the government) give away $1000 rather than specifically buying shoes. Sure some prices go up, while others go down, and people get more money to spend on things they need.

*Fairly: As automation, etc, increases it tends to benefit people money rather than people performing the labor. The work that goes into creating that automation is often performed by a third party. For example, as solar panels get cheaper through materials research, investors can make money off of them, while coal workers lose jobs. That's not really equitable to the coal workers, who are providing currently-necessary labor.

Comment Physics explanation (Score 2) 867

The article doesn't explain what the warp drive actually does. As far as I can tell the idea can be roughly phrased as "rather than making a long journey, cause the road in front of you to become short, then make a short journey". The drive would contract spacetime between the object and its destination to make it really small. Apparently to do this, one has to also affect spacetime behind the object, expanding a region of it. Once spacetime is distorted appropriately, the long journey becomes short. Seems vaguely plausible - as much as physics ever does.

On the other hand, the process of distorting space time should propagate at the speed of light at best. So the ship would spend a standard amount of time bending space-time and not moving, then move a short distance and arrive at the destination. And then after the trip, we'd still have all this distorted space-time to either fix or leave stretched.

Comment What actually happened: (Score 1) 574

Overwhelming feedback: 187 comments.
Google revealed their view on the community: One developer said, specifically: 'Commenting on this bug has absolutely no effect at all on the likelihood that we are going to reconsider. So that people don't get their hopes up falsely, I'm locking this bug to additional comments.'

The issue was set to WontFix in September 2010, but people are still complaining about the design decision.

Comment Customs Authority (Score 0) 390

Customs officials need the right to inspect everything that goes through the border - if we are going to have a customs system at all. If a customs official finds a locked box you refuse to open, they should have the right to ship it off to the box-opening facility for further inspection. The case with the laptop is no different.

This, of course, comes in conflict with the desire for privacy. But if you're planning to argue that laptop searches are unconstitutional, you must conclude the same about customs searches in general. Most likely, customs searches are constitutional, or at least there is plenty of judicial precedent claiming so.

Disclaimer: I'm not saying I like the searches, just that they are an inevitable part of the current setup.

Censorship

Submission + - Tolkien Estate Censors the Word "Tolkien" (boingboing.net)

An anonymous reader writes: Following their recent attempt to censor a work of historical fiction containing Tolkien as a character, the estate have now issued a takedown notice to someone making buttons with the words "While you were reading Tolkien, I was watching Evangelion" on them, claiming "intellectual property right infringement". Predictably, this has led to widespread blog coverage, a new store has appeared offering a range of 'censored' Tolkien items, and the 'offending' product has had vastly increased exposure as a direct result of the removal.

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