
Ask YC: Any Updates on the Basic Income Project? - JohnnySpaghetti
Last time we had an update was on May 31:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.ycombinator.com&#x2F;moving-forward-on-basic-income&#x2F;<p>I was wondering if there are any updates that could be shared with the community.
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sama
We've started giving money to a small pilot group. We're still working out the
kinks but expanding it slowly.

The plan is still to run the pilot until we're confident everything is working
well (especially with issues like making sure no one loses eligibility for
income-based benefits) and then start the full-scale study.

~~~
anondon
What is the status of the MOOC? When can we expect additional details?

YC should consider writing the occasional blog post about the projects it's
working, it would be interesting to follow and the feedback from HN might be
useful.

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cookiecaper
Would YC really be upfront about the success or failure of this experiment?
Most people are shy enough about failures in professional contexts where
impacts are isolated to the company itself. The outcome of this pilot has real
potential political ramifications, further disincentivizing those who're
committed to basic income (as YC obviously is) from revealing any serious
flaws or difficulties experienced, beyond the typical already-pretty-strong
impulse to keep failed experiments under wraps (and when they are discussed,
to generalize and gloss over the more painful/sticky parts).

I know we all admire YC here, but let's be practical about it. They're not
going to drum up any more bad press for themselves than necessary.

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evanwolf
_It 's all about the feedback loop._ Failure analysis (where necessary) is
more than a bumpersticker obituary. And we also need to catch lessons learned
along the way, both the microfailures we learn from and the assumptions we
tested and proved correct/incorrect. Last, it's vital to turn periodic recaps
into more organized and systematic bodies-of-knowledge so it's fast/easy to
learn from the history we're writing together.

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dpandey
This is a great question. And 6 months after the last update is a good time to
be asking it.

It's much less efficient for both YC and individuals if every interested
individual started emailing and asking for updates. Much better this way -
after all that's why broadcast or pub-sub systems exist. HN is kind of a
curated broadcast system.

It often happens that people who're working on the project might not find
'right now' to be the ideal time to share updates. This could be either
because they're immersed thinking through a particularly challenging aspect of
the problem/solution, or they feel a little lost (which is a normal feeling in
the middle of ambitious projects). Sharing an update at that point makes you
feel vulnerable, but that's exactly what you need to do.

Or it could be that they have a really promising angle and want to see more
data before writing something up. The 'more data' approach is usually a mirage
(promising approaches start showing potential even at early stages/small
scale) and sharing progress helps the project even in that case. (For example,
you might learn that a similar approach has been tried before, and here is
what someone learnt).

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home_boi
There would need to be at least ~50-60 years before evaluation of the results

There needs to be at least 2 generations that have had UBI for their entire
life. UBI affects the motivation to work on skills, so the subject would need
UBI for their entire life.

The parents of the subject also needs to have UBI for their entire life
because the parents could transmit the scarcity, pre-UBI mindset onto the
subject. There is a still chance that the pre-UBI mindset of the grandparents
could be transmitted to the subject. Ideally the subject would be at least 3-4
generations removed from the start of UBI

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robertelder
I came to the same conclusion when thinking about this too. It might even make
sense to counsel people too about what they can do with the extra time/money.
There are a lot of amazing things to do in the world, but most people will
always try to emulate their immediate environment.

For some people, I would expect they would end up getting hooked on something
unwholesome (drugs for example) with their newfound free time. You could
probably make a huge difference in this just by suggesting the right things at
the right times.

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SomeCallMeTim
> hooked on something unwholesome (drugs for example) with their newfound free
> time

Based on what the "Rat Park" studies show about the natures of addiction, that
seems very unlikely: People get addicted when their lives suck, not when they
have free time.

Having money enough to eat is going to go a long way to making peoples' lives
suck less.

Not to say that helping people direct their energies wouldn't be useful. It
may take a few months of vacation or longer before people can recover enough
drive to do anything with their time that they can make themselves do anything
other than relax. When you've spent your life being told what to do and
driving yourself with fear of losing your job, it may take months or even
years of recovery before you can be self-motivated effectively. Telling them
_that_ too might be useful.

I think the government _should_ offer "jobs" that don't add a huge amount of
money over the basic income, but that provide some public good, to help people
who are just terminally uncreative direct their time, but should also offer
free education in how to start their own businesses for those who _do_ want to
create something, build something, or provide a service. Or alternately they
could learn new professions in their now-free time and get higher paying jobs.

So yes, I agree with your conclusion (education and guidance is important).
Just not the reasoning that got you there. :)

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dorianm
Maybe sending emails to the researchers and posting their answers here could
be more efficient.

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Hydraulix989
I'm not sure what there is to update. I'm guessing they chose some
"interesting" people (as in whose outcomes will most likely to advance their
agenda), and doled out a monthly "income" for them -- as in, they literally
handed them cash for 6 months (personally, I would've just kept on working
full-time). Nothing magical to report back on there, right?

This doesn't really show the economic effects of "basic income" on a macro
scale though (I claim that they are so drastic that they are actually worth
understanding first, but can't personally think of a better "experimentation
platform"). Also, I doubt the project will really do much to actually
influence public policy in a way that would favor UBI.

It's also probably shocking to a lot of people that Uber's self-driving cars
really weren't as good as they were supposed to be, so now it makes YC look
like they _really_ just jumped the gun.

Call it "Basic Income," but really, it's "giving money to people" on a small
scale.

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fouadmatin
I don't work on YCR Basic Income, but the early steps of any experiment are
pretty time consuming and not particularly interesting (e.g. logistics,
experiment structure, etc...) I'd guess we can expect an update early next
year with some of those details and a reflection on existing progress.

In their blogpost, they provide an email for feedback: basicincome@ycr.org

They're likely very consumed by all the work they need to do, so I'd reach out
if you have some specific suggestions/asks. Otherwise, you can join me in
eagerly waiting for more updates when they're ready to share them :)

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dllthomas
I expect there are quite a few people here who would find logistics,
experiment structure, etc... fascinating. Which is not to say it's necessarily
the best use of their time to update us on it.

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tomcam
Agreed tenfold. YC has absolutely no obligations to us regarding these issues
but there is not a single detail in the whole enterprise that would not be
fascinating to me.

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questionr
anyone know how to sign up for participation in the pilot and/or the eventual
wider rollout?

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edblarney
I think the limitation of UBI experiments is that they are inherently
microeconomic, they might measure the individual effects of the program, but
not measure the resulting macro issues of what 'Universal' would really imply
across broad strata of society.

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kwhitefoot
One must start somewhere.

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runesoerensen
_" Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us
questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain about moderation)"_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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Zombieball
I think in this scenario it seems fair to post a question. What's the
alternative, write a blog article asking the same and post a link to that
instead?

I'm also interested in a status update given some recent news posted on HN
about Finland experimenting with the same ideas.

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prawn
Alternative would be emailing them "Are you able to share any progress on the
BI project? I'd bet more on HN would be keen to hear too." Project then writes
a blog and someone submits to HN.

However, I can appreciate that the slight public pressure of an Ask YC making
the front page might encourage quicker movement or at least a response that
didn't otherwise warrant a blog post.

