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Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe | 1 month ago
With UBI I wouldn't be surprised if those would be even more productive doing something else they want. And others who couldn't do the CS curiculum even though they would have loved to because they had to find a job quickly would plausibly be at their place instead.
I really view UBI as something that puts oil in the society: people have less friction to be at the spot they're better at. People who want to do nothing will not slow us down anymore. And jobs that nobody wants to do would finally be paid by how much they suck instead of how much money your parents had to educate you.
> Ok, but the dev might still want to monetize, and we're back to the original question
I don't really see the issue. We're far from having shortage of ways to make people pay: ads, paywall, soft paywall, begging, rate limits. What's the issue with those? I certainly don't like them as a user and as a member of society but am fine with people doing that.
Especially with UBI in place: if the dev is putting a paywall, they have to compete with people that have plausibly much more freedom of time and mind to allocate to another free foss project. So in the end it becomes less profitable to be adversarial against end users.
jonahx|1 month ago
Unfortunately, also wishful thinking. A particular kind of wishful thinking endemic to naturally highly curious, academic achievers (not a dig, I am one). But -- and if you don't understand this, spending some time teaching at universities makes it abundantly clear -- most of the world is nothing like this. They aren't being held back from their natural passions and curiosities by the demands of living. They would not suddenly flourish under UBI.
> With UBI I wouldn't be surprised if those would be even more productive doing something else they want.
For the people that do naturally love creating and are good at it, they might "even more productive" in one sense -- creating more stuff that they, personally, value. And personally I'd love to do that, but it doesn't maximize value across society. That's one of the main things money is. It's a constraint forcing the production of consensus value. In a world of infinite resources that ceases to matter, but we're still very far from that.
> People who want to do nothing will not slow us down anymore.
Who do you think is supporting them? Until we have robots taking care of everyone for free, support is still a cost levied on other humans.
Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe|1 month ago
> it doesn't maximize value across society
Well you'd have to define "value" here. I am sure GDP would plummet because bullshit jobs would plummet. The current society is doing maybe a decent job at producing but a terrible job at making it "across society". We still have millions of people dying every year of very preventable causes just because of the lack lf coordination. I think this would be better if we had less noise in our daily lives caused by the system so inefficient that we have bullshit jobs.