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Comment by auggierose | Hacker News Reader

> Yes! Let them eat beans!

Preferably in their apartments.

No, seriously now. I've got a friend who 5 years ago decided that he needs "to straighten his life out", and now he has a huge house in SV and is lead engineer at Apple. That's really fine, and obviously not everyone can have such a life. And people will really have to look inside themselves, and ask themselves what it REALLY is they want. If they want status and big houses, then they better be extraordinary smart & disciplined and/or rich. Me, I just want an office where I can do my thing, not being responsible to anyone else but myself.

A solution to this dystopian future would be the basic income as proposed in Switzerland. This is the only way in my opinion to make sure that a master/slave relationship will not exist, and people are really paid what the job is worth, unpressured by the need to survive.

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A solution to this dystopian future would be the basic income

I'm fascinated to see how philanthropic society will choose to be. Here's why. With the advent of robots I believe that something fundamental has changed. Elites, if they so choose, will not need to accommodate lower classes.

Previously, there had to be some sharing because elites still had to rely on other humans for policing and military. However, it seems like robots might cut that connection. What will happen when elites feel like they don't need a large part of the population? Will they be altruistic?

I don't know. Personally I'm pretty cynical and think we're heading for a future that's both more egalitarian and dystopian. The internet will give people a similar opportunity to succeed but those who do succeed won't be charitable to those who don't.

Think of the other side ... all the hacker movies that we watched - they could become a reality. When you launch your startup why not just try to use zero day exploit to mess with the brakes of Zuckeberg's tesla (that is PS4 on wheels) while he is near a cliff.

Home made drones - with the advance of 3d printing why not? If 10 people could create a billion dollar company today just think what a rogue genius could do in 10 years if he is hell bent on eating the rich.

Technology is an enabler. It also enables the nasty stuff. And the elites while more powerful than ever will also be more fragile and vulnerable. And if they unravel the social fabric that keeps them safe now ...

"Technology is an enabler. It also enables the nasty stuff. And the elites while more powerful than ever will also be more fragile and vulnerable."

I'm trying to imagine the risk exposure with and without technology regarding the benefit for one's safety. In the past the rich people have always been exposed to robbery and other kind of crimes, and the only real solutions have been keeping a low profile or employing protecting forces. The technology worked well in reducing the risks of exposure. There doesn't make much sense now to be attacked for robbery as wealth isn't carried much around with you. I admit though that being attacked out of personal reasons wasn't brushed off by technology, but I didn't quite understood why would anyone be "hell bent on eating the rich"?

This statement surprises me. I'll admit to being a little bit unstable perhaps, but when I look at people I know who have succeeded and don't need to work anymore, I struggle a lot with feelings of anger and rage.

The "story" we're told is: work hard and you will succeed. But these successful people aren't working. They're just rich. Isn't that the whole idea? Passive income?

But then I look and see, my labor is supporting their passive income. That makes me angry. Not out of some altruistic desire for equality, but out of jealousy. Why can't I be the one with the passive income?

Class structure has only a little to do with absolutes and a lot to do with relative comparisons. You could tell me that, worldwide, I'm the 1%. I have a place to sleep (heated), food to eat (cooked), and the safety of a policed city. Boom, that's more than most of the world will ever dream. But does that help? No, it doesn't. Because we always compare upwards. It's miserable. I'm miserable every day. I'm angry, I'm rageful, I'm scared. I'm a broken person.

I try to fix these things by focusing on amazingly lucky and well off I actually am in the global scheme, by focusing on how my Maslow needs actually are being met, by focusing on pride in my work and professional accomplishments, and by ignoring both the horrors below me in the world and the lavish luxury above me. But can I understand how someone could lash out, could become violent, at such perceived injustice? Absolutely I understand!

Now I understand this too. In time the humanity worked to combat the causes of more crude crimes which now are relatively rare. I guess the next step is to work out the remaining causes of violence, which is exactly what the article mentions - socioeconomic acceptance and being happy with beans.

> You could tell me that, worldwide, I'm the 1%. I have a place to sleep (heated), food to eat (cooked), and the safety of a policed city. Boom, that's more than most of the world will ever dream.

Oh for God's sake. I'm fairly sure you're not actually in the worldwide top 1% just for having food, housing, and safety. Those things have actually been reasonably common throughout history.

Why would anyone be? I don't know - ask Lenin, Robespierre ... if we live in a world where there is only the 0.1% and all the rest - some people will try out of desperation, spite or just for the thrill.

The middle class is the great buffer - the promise that keeps the poor invested in the system. If it disappears - the future will be darker for everyone.

That's all within the realm of possibility, sure. But keep in mind that the affluent could simply buy a drone(or what-have-you) with all sorts of bells, whistles, and 10 years of improvements to security. The amount of work necessary to DIY something that even begins to approach the capabilities of something built by a company that knows what they're doing would be extreme - I'd argue insurmountable in many cases - even with 10 years of improvements to manufacturing and the availability of components.

Right now, the Americans spend billions to defend against men with $5 boxcutters from Wal-Mart. Defense is more expensive than offense by a large multiple. A little more capability to attack requires an immense amount of additional capability to defend against.

A little more capability to attack requires an immense amount of additional capability to defend against.

I think that depends on the type of weapon.

Part of the issue with airlines is how highly valued human life is.

If for example all we were trying to do is have an acceptable level of losses on drone aircraft we'd probably accept a much lower level of protection (and correspondingly lower costs)>

What you're saying is true at a high level. However, it isn't box cutters they're using and the situations are so radically different in every aspect that I'm not entirely sure why this anecdote is even relevant.

And yet many of these companies that "know what they're doing" run on open source software.

If there is a revolution in the future, assuming humans are still writing the code, the masses will still be at an advantage.

Isn't the silicon valley creed that a small group of skilled trained passionate about the product people can put huge multinational order of magnitude companies on their knees?

In the case of web services, sure.

Technology is only good if you know how to use it (or can find out). If you keep the underclasses poor and dumb they will never be able to afford it and won't know how to use it. This is why the digital divide is such an issue.

"Previously, there had to be some sharing because elites still had to rely on other humans for policing and military. However, it seems like robots might cut that connection."

You're right. Out of sight, out of mind. Or probably it would be a sentiment similar with how the African subsistence is thought about. There is some sympathy involved, maybe some occasional donation even, but how much and how often the problem actually falls on one's agenda?

Africa and Brazil is part of what I'm thinking about. We don't have to imagine elites walling themselves off and being indifferent ... there are places on earth where that already exists.

In fact, to be fair to Africa and Brazil, I think that exists to a large extent in America. Lots of people couldn't care less what happens in poor parts of the country.

I believe a basic income would be a great idea, but it would have to be, in part, subsidized by increased taxes on the working population.

Another approach would be the 1:12 rule that Switzerland didn't adopt.[1]

1: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25076879

But how do you handle inflation in a base income economy? It seems that any extra freely allocated capital would immediately be nullified by the increase to inflation it would cause?

Basic income does not increase the money supply, which would bring about inflation. There may be an increase in the general cost of living for many, but that's not inflation, and it wouldn't absorb the entirety of one's basic income.

It seems that "inflation" has an equivocal meaning here. I presume he meant that the purchasing power of the currency would diminish and it's not hard to imagine why. Look at housing - if the credit wouldn't be cheap (or if it wouldn't be available on a large scale), the houses have to have a price between the basic price (the combined cost of land plus house construction) and the price that the market can bear. Given the credit, the housing becomes able to bear a lot more. The housing credit affects just housing, but a basic income would affect pretty much everything an average Joe would require. A basic income would rise both the basic prices for every human-involved activity (the payed work becomes more expensive) and the bar of what a vast pool of potential clients could bear/afford.

Correct. This is what I meant.

There are probably a host of questions like that, and I am not an economist, so I cannot answer them (I am not sure economists can, though).

What is important is to have the will to do something like that. Only then will it become apparent if we can actually do it.

I think this is very similar to writing software. You know roughly what you want it to achieve, but you don't know yet exactly how.

Why do you think inflation would go up? I have never understood this argument. It seems to me as likely for the price of consumer goods to go down as for them to go up in such a scenario. Or you may see no movement at all.

the idea is to replace current system of welfare transfers with basic income for an equivalent amount of money, not simply to print more money and give it away

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