The African people would me much better off if we would stop selling them weapons and would pay a fair price for their work and natural resources. But hey, that wouldn't be a great PR action making headlines!
Acting as you suggest and programs like this aren't mutually exclusive propositions. I doubt that the people backing this program are the same people selling arms to Africa.
So nobody should do anything unless they can also solve all problems? I actually upvoted your comment because I agree that those things should stop but I don't have the slightest bit of power to stop it and those who are conducting these sort of studies have more power than me but when put up against giant problems, it's at the margins. That is, they can't stop the arms trade either.
My problem is that programs like this does not change anything except making us first world citizens feeling comfortable about not having the power to stop exploitation of a whole continent. It is like a drug for the society making us feel good when we should feel bad and ashamed.
I don't think that's the point. This program's testing the basic income and I think the idea is there will be a number of tests under different conditions.
If this concept proves viable, then that could serve as a model to scale it up. The problem this is trying to solve isn't that of just the developing world, the developed world is sliding toward a catastrophic failure of the system that depends on there being a job (aka a way to make a living) for every adult who wants to work.
I'm not sure but we could be there now. If we aren't there now it won't be long. The trend toward automation and the rise of AI are enough on its own but there are other trends working against the current system. Add to that even for people who have steady work how well has the retirement saving system been going in the U.S.? There are millions of people who will retire completely unprepared to support themselves for even a decade of retirement.
The need will be global. Unless you're wealthy enough to have no worries at all about money, you might someday be grateful for these initial tests that led to the successful deployment of this system for you. I know I worry about how many years I can make it into retirement when that day comes and I really worry about my son who's a small child. The system is failing yet slow enough that perhaps it hasn't hit you yet.
Actually, even if you ARE wealthy, if the system becomes too unstable ultimately we all eat it. Instability is everyone's adversary.
>> This program's testing the basic income and I think the idea is there will be a number of tests under different conditions.
IMHO there have been enough test for basic income where the basic income was decoupled from the free job market. It is called socialism / communism. All of these tests failed badly and ruined whole generations. No sane person have lived behind the iron curtain would consider it as a sustainable economic solution.
No, you've got this wrong. First off, let's distinguish our terms to prevent completely muddled thinking. There are different flavors of socialism: national socialism, communist flavor socialism, democratic socialism. You seem to lump democratic (aka European style socialism) with the heavy handed-killed-20-million-of-his-own-people Stalin-style central planning socialism. You can be opposed to democratic socialism just fine without, perhaps unintentionally, confused thinking. If you would take the time to define your terms you can avoid crying wolf.
Basic income does not presume any of the flavors of socialism, though if your particular ideology is libertarianism or conservativism then you've likely been taught to throw any sort of government program into the same category in order to attempt to discredit it.
This is basic income with no strings attached. You can take that money to buy ramen so that you can be a half starving artist or you can take a chance on that job or start the business that you've been hesitant to take a chance on because you estimated the odds of falling hard and broke were too high.
If you retire and didn't save enough in your 401k and Roth IRA's to make it to the finish line without working when you're old and tired then this might make the difference. If you fall on hard times as many human beings do at some point in their lives sooner or later, the UI would be the floor with a little padding.
There's not a single thing about this that has anything to do with the "iron curtain." Nobody thinking this through themselves using reason would arrive at your conclusions and you're probably pretty damn smart. So I suspect the problem that it is not your thinking, you are instead parroting some quasi-talking-points from some ideology or other that you subscribe to.
Please try to get beyond seeing everything that you encounter through the lens of your ideology or any ideology at all for that matter, but if you need your ideology for whatever reason, at least review and define your terms again to make sure you at least have that part right or what follows doesn't have a prayer of coming together as a cogent argument.
How long have you been living in a country where everything is basic? Your job, your income, your home, your education, your healthcare? What do you know about how humans living under sutch conditions act and how sutch systems end up? You call it ideology, I call it experience.
[Edit:] I appreciate your intent to build up a working socialism and not to fvck it up this time. But some systems simply does not work with humans, only with ants and robots.
I live in a country with a guaranteed level of education and healthcare (I guess that's what you mean) and I love it. No need to worry when I go to a doctor or whether I can afford university.
As far as I know what has never been tried on a large scale is to give everyone a no-strings-attached 'salary' and let them do whatever they want, without consequences for that income.
Communism definitely didn't let you do whatever you want, while still paying you for it. And in all socialist countries I know of unemployment benefits are decreased as soon as you start working, sometimes even at a net-negative rate (yes, I consider that stupid as well).
I don't know what you mean with a basic home. I guess you could call where I live right now 'basic', but only because I don't care enough to spend more for it.
I live in the U.S. and I'm not sure what you're saying about everything being basic. This is about the reality of automation and, soon, AI, not to mention other economic forces whereby far fewer jobs available than people needed to fill those jobs. I assume since you are here in HN you are well aware of what I'm talking about.
So what are your ideas to mitigate the problem? Or would you rather cling to your ideology rather than think about a problem that's destined to destabilize the system that supports your existence? If the basic assumptions and agreements that make civilization possible go out the window, you go out the window as well.
And I'd appreciate it if you'd go easy on the red herrings. Talking about UI does is not the same as talking about the other things you mentioned.
Of course the best solution is for everybody to just coordinate. But coordination is hard, because there are strong incentives for individuals to defect (see also "Meditations on Moloch").
Making incremental improvements is the next best hope, and this one (giving cash) could turn out to be much more effective than previous state-of-the-art interventions (giving food, medicines, books, etc.). Additionally, enough incremental improvement might reach a tipping point where the poverty/coordination trap can be escaped, and the global equilibrium shifts.
