
Mark Zuckerberg again defends government giving people free money - tgragnato
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/05/mark-zuckerberg-talks-basic-income-after-alaska-trip.html
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bko
> "When you're losing money, your mentality is largely about survival. But
> when you're profitable, you're confident about your future and you look for
> opportunities to invest and grow further. Alaska's economy has historically
> created this winning mentality, which has led to this basic income. That may
> be a lesson for the rest of the country as well."

Is this true? My impression is that many of the problems in regards to young
people having trouble in the labor market have to do with the fact that for
the most part they are more free than their parents to pursue their interests
rather than "survival". This is due in part to their parents being more
wealthy and they have the luxury to pursue majors that don't pay well. Also,
the safety net extends after they graduate. For instance, 40% of Americans
under 35 live with their parents or relatives [0].

And the problem runs deeper than that. Low labor participation rates are not
something that should be a policy objective. From my anecdotal experience,
those people not participating in the workforce are rarely living meaningful
happy lives.

[0] [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/percentage-of-young-americans-
li...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/percentage-of-young-americans-living-with-
their-parents-is-40-percent-a-75-year-high/)

~~~
mattmanser
Seems like you're cherry picking your arguments, as the article you linked to
directly contradicts your impression.

~~~
bko
> But the bigger issue may be the triple whammy of low wages, student debt and
> rapidly escalating rents.

Student debt is a luxury. There are plenty of affordable colleges and
universities. Many just choose to go to expensive options and they are able to
do so due to subsidized student loan rates (also a luxury) and support from
relatively wealthy parents. In regards to mortgages being unattainable due to
housing appreciation, I think that is only half the story. The other half is
that mortgage rates are at near historic lows. Yes, homes were cheaper in the
50s-90s but mortgage rates were ~6-18% at that time. This makes a huge
difference in home affordability. For instance, a 30 year 100k mortgage at 8%
and 4% interest have mortgage payments of $733 vs $477, respectively.

[0] [http://blog.lucidrealty.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/12/mortg...](http://blog.lucidrealty.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/12/mortgage-vs-10-year-rates1.jpg)

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lawless123
A basic income will be necessary for capitalism to survive full automation of
our society. It's really the only way the rich will be able to stay rich.

~~~
TausAmmer
Automation can take care of owners, food, clothing, resources, education. You
preserve some exceptional people that improve automation. Why do you need
other people around?

~~~
lawless123
>Why do you need other people around?

They might wonder the same about the owners. The French Revolution didn't work
out well for the owners.

~~~
maeln
It actually did work out great for owners. The French Revolution was not the
perfect "people" revolution that a lot of people think it is. The people who
mostly gain from it were the bourgeois who were really restrained under the
royality. That's why one of the first right of the Declaration of Human Right
is the right to possess.

~~~
majewsky
> That's why one of the first right of the Declaration of Human Right is the
> right to possess.

Wherein by "first", you mean "17th article" (or 30).

[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Huma...](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights)

EDIT: Ah, I forgot about the context of the French Revolution, so I looked at
the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_M...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Man_and_of_the_Citizen)
of August 1789. The right to property is actually the _last_ article in that
one, so the original point remains debunked.

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naturalgradient
I have always thought there is an optimistic version and a pessimistic version
of this.

The optimistic version is that technology creates enough wealth to provide a
basic income for everyone when the value of most human labour is diminished.
The interesting part here is who 'everyone' is, because in our imagination it
rarely includes impoverished countries.

The pessimistic version is that technology could already create enough value
for everyone, but what it really does is it increases inequality.

The value of automation might be captured by few large companies and a
technological elite in a few countries, which have no incentive to support the
rest of humanity other than to avoid a bloodbath. Combine this with vastly
increasing populations in developing countries and resource scarcity + climate
change in various regions causing mass migration movements, I just do not see
how this can really workout peacefully.

If people have seen the movie Elysium, I always feel that this is already
happening, just that Europe and the US are Elysium, and it is only about to
get worse.

~~~
huffmsa
The first description you have there is the plot of WALL-E / Karl Marx.
Eventually, humans will be obsolete as units of production.

Not necessarily a bad thing.

~~~
ekianjo
Production is not what most people do already now. Nothing new.

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hankhill
What kind of garbage title is this? Mods, please fix the title to make sense
(or at least copy the article title)

~~~
majewsky
There are multiple titles apparently. I just opened the article, and the
<title> says "Marc Zuckerberg talks basic income after Alaska trip", but the
<h1 class="title"> says "Mark Zuckerberg again defends government giving
people free money", which is the current submission title. I guess that title
A-B-tested better. :/

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jrx
I don't know if I'm the only one, but I really see the basic income as a
strong force for increasing the inequality, leading to society stagnation and
disallowing any social mobility effectively setting in stone current power
structures.

I don't think we can ever say that the "jobs are gone". There are always
things that people can do that are beneficial to the society but they can be
either a) not profitable in the current economic framework or b) require
highly skilled workforce that is currently not available on the job market.

If a) is the case, that means we are not really yet in the post scarcity world
and need to first work more on providing "basic" goods so that we can afford
having these less essential ones.

If b) is the case that means we need to put more resources into educating and
training people. There is a sentiment that modern day universities are not
worth the cost, but I highly disagree with that - society is only as good as
people are educated and the more knowledge and highly developed skills people
have the more they can participate in the economy.

In the world of the future, the "easy" jobs will be gone, but there will still
be lots of things to do for smart, educated and skilled people. The only
problem is that learning process and guiding a young human from newborn to
such person is a costly process to the society. Providing basic income of
barely "survival minimum" disincentives people to take that cost and
participate in the economy. Until we have the AI that is better than humans at
doing basic research, there is still a ton of things to do for humans, and I
don't see anything good with excluding parts of the society from the process.

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seaknoll
The issue is not whether people will become lazy if they get free money. If
jobs are going to disappear they'll disappear, fewer people will be able to
work unless somehow the workforce disappears too. The real question is how
will we handle it when those jobs do disappear.

My gut tells me that Europe will embrace shorter work weeks and basic income,
but in the US where we love to see people being punished for perceived failure
to pull oneself up by bootstraps and other moral failures, and to promote
businesses over the welfare of citizens, we'll find a way to justify laborers
fighting over peanuts.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
The only solutions are to subsidise or quarantine peoples' existences. The
former means basic income (or something like it). The latter means erecting
borders between the rich and the poor.

We sort of do the latter today, between rich countries and poor ones.
Extending the analogy to _e.g._ America versus not-America, or New York City
and the Bay Area versus Middle America, or any other configuration seems
conceivable.

~~~
seaknoll
Absolutely these things could be decided on a local level vs. nationwide.
Pretty consistent with my speculation that the federal government shouldn't be
relied upon to protect a basic standard of living.

