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Comment by shawabawa3 | Hacker News Reader

The other thing the article ignores completely is the less extreme version of the "jk rowling effect". Where's the cost benefit from all the new startups and small businesses that people doing min-wage jobs or basic jobs wouldn't have the time or want to take the risk to do?

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Indeed. I think this is huge. To me, this is one of the most attractive things about basic income. Someone receiving basic income (and protected by universal health care) can effectively do whatever they want. That includes playing video games all day, but it also includes working full-time on something interesting to them. Maybe it will be profitable, maybe it'll simply make them a more interesting (and maybe even more employable) person.

A basic job tends to discourage mobility in all the ways a normal job does. A basic income encourages mobility because you have time to do anything... including invent something or go back to school (or use online courses) to learn a totally new field. Or even just take a break to recharge.

I'd love to model this, but I have no clue how. Perhaps a normal distribution of a change in a person's ability to produce value when taking basic income and not working. Some people will drastically decrease their ability to produce value, some people will drastically increase it. Most, I suspect, will somewhat increase it and then get back to work.

So put numbers to it. Come up with upper and lower bounds for the effect and add them to the model, then post your code, the result, and the rationale behind the numbers.

The article didn't "ignore this completely". It set up a framework within which you can easily express that argument. Go do it.

What numbers?

There's absolutely no data to support any numbers for this, how could I possibly guess?

That's why I don't like this post. It would have been really interesting if there had been any basis at all for the numbers, but a model for something this complicated backed by nothing is worse than useless - it's misleading.

You're diligently missing the point. Which numbers do you disagree with? What do you think the more appropriate number would be? Change the numbers and rerun the script, so you can see if your argument even matters. If it does, pursue the argument.

Stucchio didn't propose a magic python script that answers the question of whether we should a basic income or basic job. He simply proposed a tool for making the debate more concrete. The debate still happens. It just gets less stupid.

> He simply proposed a tool for making the debate more concrete

No. it makes the debate less concrete.

The model is absolutely 100% meaningless. An equally valid model would be:

I assume that basic job has a cost of $1 trillion (+/- $500 million) and basic income has a cost of $3.25-3.5 trillion

How does that improve any debate?

This whole thread is really annoying me because it's just hiding bullshit behind "maths". There are no insights, no conclusions, nothing. Just some numbers. Most annoying of all is the stupid "write some fucking code!" counter-argument. No. I wont write code with bullshit numbers to try and convince people of something that has no data to support it

People are going to go away from reading this article actually convinced that basic job is better than basic income based on what is essentially this guys uninformed opinion. That is bad

You are now militantly misunderstanding Stucchio's point. I can't help you understand without repeating myself, so, best of luck, but I'm done.

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