Ask HN: Database with country names down to the city, etc. - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN,
I remember reading these in HN a few months ago. Apparently they were free. They had coordinates, country names, cities, towns, etc.
Can anyone point me to a reliable site with a good database for such?
Thanks!
-Wenbert <comment><USER2> hey Wenbert,

I've got one, let me dig it up for you, just a moment.

edit:

Ok, ready for download, it's a mysql dump so you can simply read it back in to any mysql server:

<http://autotagger.com/geoinfo.dump.gz>

41 Megabytes, 2.67 million towns & cities, fields are country, region,name,accented name,latitude,longitude,verified,current,prefered and population.

The 'verified', 'current' and 'prefered' fields are all internal to an application I wrote so you can lose those safely.

I've also added tables with countries, country aliases and regions.

edit2: holy guacamole, easy guys, that server is only on a 100 Mbit uplink.

I figured there'd be one download...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! What about for updates? How do you regularly update your data?

LOL. It downloaded in about a minute. Nice server!

Again, thank you so much!

<comment><USER2> This is a hybrid of a public dataset and a _lot_ of manual polishing to get rid of duplicates (no doubt there are a still quite a few of those, especially in Asia).

I don't actively maintain the dataset, but if you want I can create a small website around it so people can update it.

The reason I built this was a project called 'autotagger', the idea behind it is to identify people, places and subjects in texts automatically.

It's one of my pet projects but I don't have enough funds to continue to work on it full time without a way to monetize it, so it's been sitting there rusting for the last year or so.

I think I have most of the datastructures and algorithms worked out, it needs a massive rewrite to get it production ready and fast enough.

The fields most subject to change are the population and the names, cities/towns don't get created too often but merging smaller towns does happen.

They rarely move around, so I figure the longitude/latitude should be good for a while ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hehe. I am from Asia (Philippines), but in Norway right now for a short training. Things are a little bit unpredictable right now (schedule, etc.) for me but I find your project very interesting. It would be good if I can find something else to do since I have a few hours at night after the training.

Would be good if you can give me some more info about it.

<comment><USER2> Autotagger is one of the more interesting things I've worked on in the last couple of years, it takes a pretty weird approach to the problem but it worked surprisingly well.

When I have some time I'll do a write-up on it and post it.

The basic idea behind it is 'google backwards', if you can figure out how it works from those two words drop me a line ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no idea what you mean by "google backwards".

Anyway, thanks! I keep an eye on this project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not exactly to your requirements but related: we use the MaxMind GeoLite city database to correlate IPs with lat/lon and city/country names. It's free (the GeoLite version; the pay version has a little more detail but doesn't cost very much) and simple to update and use.

<http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecity>

</comment><comment><USER4> The one we used for our analytics product came from here:

<http://www.geonames.org/export/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks again! I will compare this with jacquesm's file.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.geonames.org/> (download area at <http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/>)

Used as the placename source for <http://www.dopplr.com> among others.

HTH,

Brendan.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have found the link in HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=530086></comment>


Ask HN: How do you spread a new theory? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
Say you solved a very complex mathematics problem, and it was not a famous problem that one particular institution was offering a prize for solving. However you felt the result was important to wider field of mathematics and you wanted the world of mathematics to know you had solved it, how would you go about spreading your result?
I was wondering if you could help me. My father died when I was young and when I was twenty I found myself in need of therapy. I have been in therapy for eight years and quite early on dreams became part of our therapeutic sessions. I am a data analyst by trade, did a degree in Economics, am dyslexic and find that I naturally think "structurally" (as if every system is made of lego, and to understand a system you need to understand the entire shape). I could not help but view dreams as another form of unstructured data to understand the shape of the system behind.
Obviously the claim is extremely contentious, but I am quite sure I have worked out the structure of dreaming. The theory matches the neurology, explains why dreams are so 'extreme' and I am able to accurately predict dream content consistently after only hearing certain aspects of someone's dream. I know it sounds rather bonkers, but please don't make the obvious bonkersness the focus of your answer, I would just love to know what you would do if you found yourself in this position. I'm quite stuck!
Thank you for any thoughts! <comment><USER2> This may sound like a rather trite answer, but have you tried sharing your insight? I would be interested in the details and I'm sure others that have read this post would be too.

As for gaining the attention of the mathematical community, I can't really help you there.</comment>


No Sane Compiler Would Optimize Atomics - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jfbastien/no-sane-compiler <comment><USER2> Torvalds on memory ordering and clever compilers ([http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/memory_barriers.html](http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/memory_barriers.html)):

"Compiler people tend to think that people want smart compilers. I as a compiler power-user can emphatically tell you that that isn't true. People want _reliable_ compilers, and they want compilers that can be told to just get the hell out of the way when needed."

I guess I'm largely at the same side of the argument, on the theory that atomics etc. should be used very sparingly by people who know what they're doing and spend time to hand-optimize their code and think it through semantically (and these people aren't helped by the semantics of atomics becoming more complicated for the sake of optimization opportunities), as opposed to other language mechanisms which are used all over the place by everyone, and so with these mechanisms you do gain a lot from clever optimizations. But I understand the other side of this argument...

<comment><USER3> Torvalds' argument makes for a nice quote but reality tells a different story: If people just wanted a reliable compiler they would use the oldest compiler they could find which is able to compile their code. If it is old all bugs, problems and faults are known. You know how to work around them and nothing can surprise you anymore. The performance may not be great, it may be a bit of a pain to do some things, but you know it all, so it is not great, but reliable.

What people really want is something which is reliable _and_ smart _and_ fast _and_ .. people love smart compilers/programs/whatever, only when those programs fail them they cry "why did you try in the first place? No one wants this"

There's a thin line between smart and crazy. Trying to be always on the right side is one of the hardest parts of software design.

<comment><USER4> I agree. Another proof is that the people like the -O3 optimization mode, when the -O0 optimization mode provides the same functionality with less compiling time (with the side effect of more run time).

<comment><USER5> I was under impression that, at least on gcc, everybody uses -O2 and -O3 is reserved for those who have the patience to verify that their software not only still works correctly, but even actually becomes faster.

FWIW, I once tried -O3 on some number crunching code few years ago and results were mixed. Improvements, if any, came from only one or few of the many -f flags enabled by -O3.

Oh, and I also tried -O3 on Gentoo. Some weird gtk crashes, had to rebuild back with -O2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love the WTF potential of this one:

 _Another interesting optimization is to use potentially shared memory locations (on the stack, heap and globals) as scratch storage, if the compiler can prove that they are not accessed in other threads concurrently. [..] For example the following transformation could occur:_

      // Some code, but no synchronization.
      *p = 1; // Can be on stack, heap or global.

_Becomes:_

      // ...
      *p = RAX; // Spill temporary value.
      // ...
      RAX = *p; // Restore temporary value.
      // ...
      *p = 1;

_Since we write to p and there is no synchronization operations, other threads do not read /write p without exercising undefined behavior. We can therefore use it as scratch storage._

<comment><USER6> I see no WTF here. Concurrent reads from * p _have_ to be allowed to produce any possible value whatsoever, since if the variable is larger than a system word, the compiler may have to break up the write into multiple instructions (and some architectures don't even have instruction-level isolation).

The language doesn't give you any stricter concurrency guarantees just because a variable is sizeof(void* ). And that's _good._ It makes the language cleaner. No bullshit special cases that require you to know implementation details. You want atomic behavior, use std::atomic (or a lock), period.

<comment><USER7> This prevents debugging, probably does not really optimize (except 1% in useless microbenchmarks), and increases compiler complexity and the risk of bugs in it. A similar thing has already happen in the past: compiler started to introduce speculative writes on code pathes where the write did not occur in the source code, and this broke multithreaded programs -- IIRC there was no threading model at that time (the current one forbid to do that kind of thing, and it is probably impossible to get a sound threading model that does not forbid that) but instead of saying that they were technically allowed to do that compiler authors recognized that because it made multithreaded programs impossible to write, that they had to fix their shit.

In the C standard, crashing is not a specified behavior, so when an obscure architecture crashes on a specific construct, the standard has to technically say that this is undefined behavior. That compiler authors now interpret most of undefined behavior as a license to be stupid on ALL architecture instead using their brain and allowing non-portable programs to exist is not them being smart optimizing all our code-bases for free but just a proof they do not understand a part of what they are doing, including the standard they pretend to know so much.

So the position of "all the standard, nothing but the standard" is utter bullshit. Another example: the current published atomic specification is subtly unsound. Do compiler authors do the right thing instead of trying to implement the broken spec, while waiting for the spec to be fixed? On that point yes -- at least for now. So when, on other subjects, they introduce new bugs in compiled code compared to what all previously known compilers produced - and without proving this _really_ improves performance like crazy to justify taking that kind of risk - they are just being dangerous asses. -O2 has shown to be able to be fast enough without (reasonable) code breaking behavior in the past. In most case you wants to keep the same behavior as -O0 built programs. An optimisation that does not preserve behaviors reasonably expected by skilled programmers and requires that every programmer knows the standard by heart at any point of their work under penalty of crashes and security holes is not an optimisation but a piece of crap. This is blurry but the C / C++ standards are blurry and their usage even more so -- and more importantly they do not forbid to stay safe and sane to begin with -- so trying to do formal logic instead of doing engineering by thinking about the whole picture and history is completely stupid.

<comment><USER8> 'the current published atomic specification is subtly unsound'

Are you talking about memory_order_consume? Although I believe that correctness proofs have so far excluded memory_order_consume, I do not think the current spec has been shown to be unsound; it is just generally regarded as hard to implement and hard to use correctly. In practice most compilers (conformingly) just lower it to memory_order_acquire; even Linus has been considering doing away with all the dependent load trickery in the kernel and just convert all of them to explicit load acquires.

x86 and SPARC are TSO machines and have zero cost acquires, modern POWERs can also be run in a similar sane TSO mode and ARM64 has cheap explicit load acquire and store release (which I believe were added explicitly to allow simple mapping of the C and C++ memory model). Even Itanic has (I assume cheap) load acquire and store release operations.

Other insane architectures that actually require dependant loads for performance can go and have anatomically impossible sex with themselves.

edit: spelling

<comment><USER9> The latest on consume: [http://wg21.link/p0190r0](http://wg21.link/p0190r0)

The spec is pretty sound, but unimplemented because that's not how compilers work right now for the generality that consume wants. I think the above proposal is likely to work because it's more restrictive towards how consume works, but we need implementation experience.

Linux uses consume extensively for RCU, and I don't think it'll go away soon because of the benefits it provides to Power and ARM. It works through a gentleperson's agreement between Linux's RCU implementation in C and GCC.

<comment><USER8> There was a recent thread don lkml were after a long discussion on memory_order_consume, Linus wondered what would the cost be of replacing ACCESS_ONCE with a proper acquire. Someone run a test on arm64 and there was no measurable effect. Linus then actively considered the switch. I doubt it will happen right now or even the next few years, but it could happen soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The presentation is unreadable as it jumps all over the place and requires you to press keys to navigate.

<comment><USER11> What sane person would write a presentation like this. Horrible to try and read, particularly on a phone. Whatever his message was is lost on me.

<comment><USER12> A hipster one. Reveal.js presentations are everywhere nowadays.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> C/C++ language designers used to take the position that concurrency was an OS issue, not a language issue. That came unglued as processors did more and more out of order operations.

C/C++ language doesn't really understand concurrency. Even locking is iffy, because the language doesn't know what data is locked by a lock. Rust, and to a lesser extent Java, associate locks with data, which gives the compiler some info to guide what it can't optimize. C/C++ have a whole series of kludges - "volatile", "atomic", etc., which patch holes in race conditions but don't provide a coherent concurrency model. Which is why we see papers like this.

<comment><USER8> "C/C++ language designers used to take the position that concurrency was an OS issue, not a language issue"

That was the case until Bohem's 'Threads Cannot be Implemented as a Library' position paper, which lead the C++ Standard Committee to formally define the C++ memory model (whose correctness was also independently proven [1]). This standardization work was greatly inspired by the corresponding Java MM, and in a break from the past, it explicitly disallowed a few compiler optimizations and even made the C++ standard unimplementable on a few quirky older architectures for the sake of sanity.

Today there are no arguments on whether a concurrent algorithm (and compiler optimizations) is conforming or not, as there are both dynamic and static checkers that can verify it against the C++ memory model.

I wish that the same rigorous formalization work were to be done for the strict aliasing rules of the language, which are still a mess of underspecified, ambiguous and mutually contradicting rules scattered all over the standard document.

[1] the original drafts had in fact issues which were found when attempting the correctness proof; these flaws have been corrected, except there is a still standing issue with out-of-thin-air values; it is not believed to have any impact on code with current compiler and cpus, but there is an ongoing effort to correct it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I haven't dealt with concurrency in C++ yet, but I definitely agree with the "don't write assembly, file bugs for the compiler instead" methodology. And not because I don't like ASM -- some of my favourite code consists of ASM hacks -- but because better compilers help everyone.

</comment><comment><USER15> (If it's not clear you need to navigate the presentation with both left/right and down keys)

You know what? This is getting pathological. It seems keywords are added to ensure serialization/atomicity, then compilers find a way to optimize it away/make it useless, then another thing "now it's the right way" gets added. Rinse, repeat

And most things that are added have some quirks and people trying to play it smart

<comment><USER16> >It seems keywords are added to ensure serialization/atomicity, then compilers find a way to optimize it away/make it useless

No, what happens is keywords (or more broadly, semantics) are added which provide certain guarantees given certain preconditions. Then, developers write code that depends on those guarantees and fails to meet the preconditions, but happens to work anyway. At some point, the implementation adds some optimization which -- while still providing the appropriate guarantees when the preconditions are met -- breaks that code.

I know C and C++ can be a royal pain in the ass sometimes, but I have little sympathy for developers who flip the "I know what I'm doing, please assume my code is right and make it run fast" switch, then get upset with the compiler when it turns out that their code actually _isn't_ right and the compiler performs an optimization they weren't expecting. If you don't want the compiler to reorder your memory access, then don't fuck around with the memory_order flags.

<comment><USER15> > Then, developers write code that depends on those guarantees and fails to > meet the preconditions, but happens to work anyway.

This reminds me of the memcpy/memmove issue. You should use "move" when areas overlap, not memcpy

The real question is: why are there two versions? Checking if the memory overlap is _very cheap_ compared to copying, let's say 16 elements. And if you're memcpy'ing smaller sizes you can probably do it manually

> I know C and C++ can be a royal pain in the ass sometime

Yes, they lack enough information to know what you are actually trying to do and have to guess a lot of things. Not sure how "C++ smart" are modern compilers. (Example: you pass an object by value, and only read one field, can it optimize this?)

<comment> david-given I see they've finally changed the memcpy() specification to forbid overlapping memory areas completely.

Previously, it was defined to copy from low addresses to high addresses, which meant you could use this to fill an array:

        p[0] = 42;
        memcpy(&p[1], &p[0], sizeof(p)-sizeof(*p));

And people _did_.

<comment><USER17> The original 1989 ANSI C specification stated, in _" 188.8.131.52 The memcpy function"_:

 _If copying takes place between objects that overlap, the behavior is undefined._

So it has been this way in C since the first official standard. I don't have a first edition K&R so I can't see what that said, though.

<comment> david-given Huh. You're quite right.

Well, it may have been undefined, but _in practice_ the behaviour was standardised and couldn't be changed without breaking existing code... which is basically C in a nutshell.

<comment><USER17> Code like your example would have been broken by real standard library implementations very early in the piece, because even a forward-copying implementation that does word-at-a-time copies (a straightforward and obvious optimisation with real and significant benefits on many machines of the era) would have broken it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Watsi uses crowdfunding to provide healthcare, but are patients better off? - <AUTHOR> https://brightthemag.com/silicon-valley-needs-to-stop-pimping-out-patients-to-alleviate-white-guilt-bc94b4a17885 <comment><USER2> No matter what good you do, someone will go out of their way to find the bad in it.

Are Doctors Without Borders also all collectively suffering "white guilt"? Project Smile? Are they crippling societies by not forcing the people in those societies to suffer more in the name of commanding other governments to bootstrap themselves? And while we're casting aspersions about for ulterior motives, how grossly western is it to expect other governments to just adopt ideals like universal health care?

> I clicked on the link, not really sure what to expect given the tone of the > introduction. I soon found myself on the shiny, Squarespace-y landing page > of Watsi, a San Francisco-based startup closely linked to the accelerator Y > Combinator.

"...and I was secretly glad, because I knew I'd found something to fuel my simmering outrage, and I could write about it and maybe get some attention for myself."

> A few moments later, charitably-minded voyeurs can flick through photos of > her and hundreds of other desperate looking men, women, and children from > around the world and play God — i.e., fund the saddest case they can find > and feel good about themselves.

"A few moments later, charitable people can be easily connected to someone to help. No, wait, that doesn't sound very bad. Hmm. Charitable people can just pick the case that's closest to being fully funded. No, that's not that bad either. Okay, what words can I cram in here to make this sound really bad? Where did I leave my thesaurus?"

> If Watsi donors are paying for the healthcare of individuals in developing > countries, what incentive do those developing country governments have to > build functioning health systems?

Because clearly the only thing stopping these countries from taking care of their own citizens is Watsi.

> Getting individual donors to pay for care does not help address the > structural barriers that exclude many poor people from accessing health > services.

"I hate everything Watsi stands for, and especially that they aren't doing more of it."

> In its current state, the model seems to exist more to alleviate "white > guilt" than to increase access to care.

"I suffer from a cynicism that is so deep and hopelessly dark that I find it impossible to imagine anyone doing anything unless they're motivated by the guilt I imagine they should feel for the color of their skin."

> Our goal is to ensure that even if the project fails, patients are better > off than if it didn't exist…. We're working closely with the local > community, government, and providers that collectively have many, many years > of experience to design the system and adhere to all local laws in such a > way that no matter what, patients will benefit.

> Are the bolded words above making anyone else nervous? Or is it just me?

"Damn. That's a pretty good reply. I've ... I've really got nothing to argue with here. I'll appeal to a vague sense of unease."

> ...allow me to offer a few suggestions:

"Knowing absolutely nothing about their experimental programs, I am going to make a few vacuous suggestions backed by absolutely no mention of expertise in this field."

> Healthcare is a human right, and should not be granted based on an > individual's state of relative piteousness. No more photos, no more sob > stories. Pool donor donations and allocate randomly among the patients.

"I would sooner insist that Watsi throw away everything that allows them to help a few people, and adopt instead my totally untested opinion which will destroy everything that makes Watsi unique and in all likelihood cause them to go the way of every other faceless organization begging people for money."

> That means working with governments and Ministries of Health to find the > most effective and appropriate means (e.g. social insurance, sin taxes, > etc.) for them to raise sufficient funds to provide universal healthcare for > their population so you don't have to.

"I really really hope nobody notices that just a moment ago I was accusing them of being short-sighted for trying to reduce the overhead costs of health care. If that worked, the need for funds would be reduced."

\--

I hate this article. I viscerally hate it. "Cee Cee Elle" claims to be a "public health professional", but this thing she wrote is completely devoid of any substance at all, any concrete or constructive criticism, anything stated from experience or expertise, and it's so _transparent_ in the way it tries one self-righteous insult after another, just to see if any of them might stick. That's the thing that really grates: not that it's a criticism of Watsi, but that it's a stupid criticism of Watsi.

<comment><USER3> I totally agree this is a really shitty article.

What I like about Watsi is that is finds a model of charity that is transparent, low-overhead and not-creating-dependencies. By not-creating- dependencies I mean that supplying food (unless in crises) will make people dependent on your handouts, thus creating a dependency. Getting an individual's medical problem fixed, that will otherwise FOR SURE go unfixed due to lack of money, will truly benefit that person (and their families).

Watsi provides me a clear way to do charity without most of the common drawbacks (high overhead and creating dependencies).

Thanks Watsi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _It may seem innocuously altruistic, but there are bigger implications of this work. If Watsi donors are paying for the healthcare of individuals in developing countries, what incentive do those developing country governments have to build functioning health systems?_

Is it somehow better for the patients if they are allowed to suffer or die because they can't afford the treatment?

Perhaps it's true that in the long run, crowdfunding individual treatments gets in the way of the government building a health care system, I'm not sure that's true. Look at the dismal state of public health care in the USA, one of the richest countries in the world.... it seems debatable that much poorer countries are even capable of coming up with a workable public health care system.

But in the meantime, why not help some people out that otherwise couldn't afford the healthcare?

I understand that it can be degrading to have to put your healthcare plight on the internet and beg for donations to survive... on the other hand, what other option do these people have _today_?

<comment><USER5> Anecdotally I've heard from my partner who works in public healthcare that a lot of poorer countries are coming up with more sustainable health care systems because they have the luxury of learning fromthe mistakes of US and other western countries. Most 3rd world countries are building out their infrastructure now so they have benefit of any greenfield operation.

The US is suffering from the healthcare version of crippling technical debt (and cultural issues around that).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a Watsi team member, and while this post is already off the front page, I still wanted to discuss a few of the points raised in the article and address some inaccuracies:

> "Silicon Valley needs to stop pimping out patients to alleviate white > guilt."

Watsi donors come from around the world, and we have more donors from China than any other country. I don't think "white guilt" is something that applies to most of our donors.

> "She is informed by the doctor that this is a "Watsi facility" and is asked > if she would like to "share her story with the world." Faith, who is > economically vulnerable and facing a non-choice between externally-funded > treatment and continued disease, agrees. Her photo is then taken and > uploaded, along with her sob story, to the Watsi site."

This is misleading. As we state on our website, "If a Watsi Crowdfunding patient doesn't wish to be featured on the website, we give them the option to have their healthcare funded via our General Fund without ever appearing on the website." It's important to us that patients don't have to decide between sharing their story publicly and receiving healthcare.

> "...to design the system and adhere to all local laws in such a way that no > matter what, patients will benefit."

I wrote this response to a support email and I'm embarrassed rereading it. It would have been more accurate to say that we make every effort to identify and reduce the risks involved with any new project. It's part of my job to represent Watsi's work accurately and I let us down here.

> "It does not incentivize poor communities to demand their governments > fulfill their commitment to the World Health Organization..."

I don't believe people in poor communities need to needlessly suffer due to a lack of healthcare in order for them to be incentivized to advocate for their basic human rights. This statement is demeaning to people around the world.

> "If the goal really were to increase patient access to life-changing care, > there would be a commitment to supporting patients and to working with > governments over the long term to remove those structural barriers to care"

This raises a point that I've struggled with in the past: is it better to help one person today or try to create a system that helps more people in the future? I've come to believe it's a false premise. You'd never tell your mom that she should die of diabetes because you're working to strengthen Medicaid.

Every patient deserves healthcare today, and in the future, and the world has the resources to provide both. And it's often by starting small and serving individuals that organizations can learn how to effectively work with governments to help people over the long term.

> "If YC and Watsi are truly committed to ensuring their model really does > leave patients better off, allow me to offer a few suggestions...stop > pimping out patients."

Millions of people in wealthy countries like the US use websites like GoFundMe in order to post their stories online and crowdfund their medical expenses. Of course, I wish everyone had access to healthcare and this wasn't necessary. But it seems crazy to argue that poor people shouldn't have access to the same fundraising tools that rich people do.

I'd be happy to speak with anyone (including the author) about our work. I'm at chase at watsi dot org. We're open to any feedback or ideas that can help us better serve patients.

</comment><comment><USER7> In case anyone from Watsi inadvertently stumbles across this enormous pile of ridiculousness, please know that the overwhelming majority of us appreciate the hard work that you're doing to improve the lives of others.

</comment><comment><USER8> I hate to discuss anything faith-based on HN, but in seeing models of charities like Watsi's, I'm reminded of how Tzedakah (charity) was discussed in Hebrew school growing up. Maimonides suggests that not all giving can be considered equal and outlines a hierarchy for what types of donations are considered most "pious":

      1. The lowest: Giving begrudgingly and making the recipient feel disgraced or embarrassed.
      2. Giving cheerfully but giving too little.
      3. Giving cheerfully and adequately but only after being asked.
      4. Giving before being asked.
      5. Giving when you do not know who is the individual benefiting, but the recipient knows your identity.
      6. Giving when you know who is the individual benefiting, but the recipient does not know your identity.
      7. Giving when neither the donor nor the recipient is aware of the other's identity.
      8. The Highest: Giving money, a loan, your time or whatever else it takes to enable an individual to be self-reliant. [0]

Maybe it's just the way I was raised, but platforms that allow me to select an individual person to receive my philanthropy (like watsi) make me deeply uncomfortable. The intuition here is that it's more pious to give because it is our duty to take care of those with less than to give out of pity for someone's plight. I would rather give money through a trusted third party, such as a reputable NGO that focuses its efforts on healthcare needs in the developing world. I would rather give to an organization and trust trust their judgement in distributing my money in the ways they believe it is needed most, than pick which individuals are deserving of my charity.

[0] [https://www.charitywatch.org/charitywatch-articles/eight- run...](https://www.charitywatch.org/charitywatch-articles/eight-rungs-of-the- giving-ladder/73)

<comment><USER9> They have universal option where you just say the monthly amount and it is used pretty randomly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm on the monthly donation to Watsi, which is another product they don't mention in the article. I don't pick people to cure like the article suggests.

They do send me emails about patients that I've contributed to. But I don't know who they are ahead of time. It's kind of a gimmick I guess, but a useful way to retain contributors by reminding them what their money is going towards.

I believe their model is to raise from investors to cover overheads, but donations go directly to treatments. You have an assurance (as far as those go) that what you donate is not paying salaries of management. That hopefully has a propensity to make the operation more frugal and efficient.

A useful reading if you want to understand what happens if a patient is "not picked":

[https://watsi.org/faq#what-if-a-profile-isn-t- funded](https://watsi.org/faq#what-if-a-profile-isn-t-funded)

</comment><comment><USER11> I used to donate regularly to Watsi, but recently I have churned, as they have de-emphasized the p2p aspect over universal healthcare. They now seem to be in an awkward split between two projects, where I'd like to see them stand firmly in either side of the camp.

I really enjoyed being able to see the patients, hear their story, get updates on their progress, and receive a "thank you" from their loved ones. Is that voyeuristic, bad, playing God? Perhaps. Should you be able to give blindly, with just an abstract generic result in your mind's eye? I'd agree that is better.

But it worked for me. It worked for Watsi. It worked for multiple patients receiving around 1000$. It just does not work for the hate and outrage brigade who want to signal that: doing good is not good enough if doing good makes you feel good.

I don't care that the SV elite commercializes/optimizes foreign aid to the point of a one-click-checkout meat market at Amazon. I don't care that it is probably predominantly white people giving to black people in a weird reverse kind-of cultural appropriation (black guilt: why can't we solve our own problems?). I don't care that people suffer after Christmas donations dry up a few months later. Keep hammering these points though and I may quit charity all together: I don't want to think about things such as race when donating. That is just no fun, not easy on the mind, not comfortable.

Exploit it. All commercial companies are doing so (Watsi is competing for my attention). Why not manipulate people into giving instead of clicking on advertisements? That only hurts my oversized wallet (and the refined taste of the outrage brigade).

<comment><USER12> "I used to donate regularly to Watsi, but recently I have churned, as they have de-emphasized the p2p aspect over universal healthcare."

It's my understanding that the their "other projects" are not being funded from the same bag that the p2p healthcare. I don't see the problem if they want to expand their activities.

<comment><USER11> The author makes mention of being able to flick through hundreds of patients to find "the saddest case". (I think this is really only telling of how the author views the world).

This used to be possible, but now there is just a "meet a patient" button, showing a single random patient at a time, which works more like StumbleUpon than Amazon product listings.

Now I need to actually invest way more time to find the "saddest case" (in more polite terms: A case that resonates with me, usually a child with a life threatening disease, but a perfectly viable treatment option). Also, skipping patients was mentally easier for me when they were collections on a page, than when there is a single patient on the page, and skipping to the next may mean you never see the patient again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think a critical eye can be a helpful viewpoint, but the rhetoric in this article is over the top to say the least (as others have pointed out). The use of the word "voyeur" is especially off color. Sure, some small percentage of givers might fit that description, but using it as a blanket description seems very inappropriate. In general I applaud efforts like Watsi so long as the hearts of the people involved are good, and they are willing to be humble and honest. We need good experimentation in all walks of life.

</comment><comment><USER14> The question is, would Watsi work if the only thing it offered were pooling of donations to anonymous care receivers. The article suggests that it would not.

But _that_ is the same idea as taxes. Taxes, that a lot of people like to hate, offer that service already, and they are pretty efficient (except when lawmakers prefer to make business owners richer by crippling public services).

So Watsi is only offering voyeurism as a business model. And that's what sucks about Watsi, and that's why this article is 100% correct.

<comment><USER15> What on Earth are you talking about? You don't seem to have any idea what the world is like outside the West. Taxes there go to whatever nepotistic dictator or warlord is "in office", and the people _widely_ suffer for it. Violence is a part of everyday life for _a lot_ of people on this planet. In these places, medical care of any kind besides the local witchdoctor is a luxury completely out of the means of most people. There are even places where the Red Cross/Crescent and Doctors Without Borders _will not go_. Those places exist! If nothing else, this comment is exactly why Watsi is doing good in the world: Some people are ignorant of how the rest of humanity lives.

<comment><USER14> Except that I don't live in the "West". And I've seen my share of the world, and done my share of NGO work at home and in the places where it's directly helpful. I also know that taxes are used especially in the West to fund the military industry that contributes to killing people all over the place. So I am well aware of the ambivalence of "taxes". But that's not what I am talking about. I am talking about "taxes" as a way to create a strong public service, not as taxes to create even stronger dictatorships. Also, places where the Red Cross/Crescent and BWB won't go are also very unlikely to be places where Watsi will go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yeesh. This is some kind of caricature of social signalling or something. What even is this person trying to say?

</comment><comment><USER16> Am I missing something here? Donating money to a cause or individual in developing/third world country is classic NGO. And Watsi seems to offer nothing new, except maybe the word "crowdfunding" and based out of SV.

On that end, the indignation of this article is also misguided. This is like saying - "if X NGO's donors are paying for improving Y in developing countries, what incentive do those developing country governments have to improve Y?" This line of logic argues against all donation.

<comment><USER17> >This line of logic argues against all donation.

No it doesn't. You do need to be careful about how goods and services are donated to avoid making the situation worse.

[http://www.djiboutijones.com/2014/02/dont-send-your-used- sho...](http://www.djiboutijones.com/2014/02/dont-send-your-used-shoes-to- africa-or-maybe-do-send-them/)

<comment><USER16> Oh I forgot about the issues on donating used shoes, food cans etc. So let me rephrase that - This line of logic argues against any _cash_ donation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > If Watsi donors are paying for the healthcare of individuals in developing > countries, what incentive do those developing country governments have to > build functioning health systems?

Doesn't even stop to consider that maybe donor based healthcare is more sustainable and a better solution than anything the local government could offer.

</comment><comment><USER19> Do these people not understand that what they are basically saying is "a few children must be sacrificed so that local governments wake up". Also this assumes that the local governments have enough resources (or ever will) which may totally not be the case.

</comment><comment><USER20> This entire article is nothing but making perfect the enemy of good.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is everyone in Silicon Valley so out of touch? Those hospitals presumably have to pay someone to take pictures, upload to watsi the profile, manage the billing, etc...

Wouldn't it be easier -- if Watsi instead helped these countries institute some sort of single payer plan, or a plan whereby the Hospital is an insurer. Everyone in their 'district' is insured by that hospital. They pay monthly fees based on income 2-4% maybe? Watsi could give grants to hospitals who are in the red as well as consult them on how to improve productivity and lower costs...

I think this model would work here as well...

If you're out of network on a business trip or something, you'd go to another hospital, your home hospital would pay the out of network one. The hospital benefits because they have MRR from all patients living in their district who opt-in to their hospital. Hospitals could then standardize all billing and use a central software/system to manage everything get rid of lots of billers, not need to deal with insurance companies anymore, and they'd always get paid.

<comment><USER22> This sounds like something you cannot do with an NGO since it is far to integrated with government.

And that's a fully different level of activity; you have to go through your national foreign aid agency (they might laugh at you, hopefully only at first). You're basically trying to interfere in foreign politics at this point, and as you can guess the diplomacy involved is crazy (as it should be).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> How is it not blatently obvious that is not OK to have richer people from another country picking and choosing which individuals are "deserving" or "piteous" enough to receive health care?

<comment><USER23> That's part of the marketing to help bring awareness to the need for the service.

I always donate to their general fund, which means they do the allocating.</comment></comment>


Finland launches trial program to pay unemployed citizens a basic monthly income - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/business/basic-income-finland-1.3918671 <comment><USER3> This basic income experiment has plenty of flaws. Many people get DOUBLE that from government as benefits anyway, so the premise of that experiment is flawed. The disintensives for smallish amount of work still continue. Finland has additional benefits for rent, additional benefits for supported children and increases to standard unemployment benefits for having to support children. This isn't really the basic income as most people understand it. It really doesn't replace benefits bureaucracy with something more streamlined that deals away with disincentives. By disintensives I mean the situation in which reduction of benefits and cost of getting to work eat the salary and there is almost nothing left from the work if its a part time job.

<comment><USER4> This is not a basic income experiment. This is an experiment to redefine and simplify unemployment benefits.

Specifically, this experiment eliminates (much of) the problem that earning a few hundred euros will cut your unemployment benefits by the same amount. It allows people to take part-time jobs without being penalized. It's not perfect for the reasons you give and more, but it might be significantly better than what is currently in place.

The premise that one can find some universal income amount X and do away with all other types of benefits is a pipe dream anyway. For some, X will be enough to scrape by. For others, X will not be enough for their medical care necessary to survive for two weeks. There will always be a need for some extra needs-based benefits.

<comment><USER5> I just wish it would stop being touted as a basic income experiment. It's not even close.

<comment><USER6> Any experiment that changes benefits to be unconditional whereas they used to be withdrawn if you get a job, will provide very useful insight into peoples behavior under a basic income experiment.

That is why this a useful basic income experiment - regardless of whether the program itself is classified as basic income in its current form or not.

<comment><USER7> > Any experiment that changes benefits to be unconditional whereas they used > to be withdrawn if you get a job, will provide very useful insight into > peoples behavior under a basic income experiment.

Not really, because (i) tax credits and other proposed "welfare trap" reduction methods have been around and studied for a while and (ii) it doesn't attempt to study any of the features of BI widely believed to have negative impacts such as the cost of extending welfare to millions of people not currently [interested in being] eligible for it, possible social effects of decoupling benefit entitlement from any indication of desire/need and net income reductions to some current welfare beneficiaries if other programmes such as housing entitlements are cut. As a general rule, experiments which don't test any of the perceived negative effects of a proposal generally mislead more than they inform in debates about whether it's an improvement on the status quo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The New Zealand Treasury did a basic analysis on a Guaranteed Minimum Income a while ago (2010) that's a good read, with a lot of actual numbers crunched: [http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/WelfareWorkingGroup/Downloads/Wor...](http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/WelfareWorkingGroup/Downloads/Working%20papers/Treasury- A-Guaranteed-Minimum-Income-for-New-Zealand%20.PDF)

<comment><USER9> For those of us too lazy to click a link, would you mind providing a summary or a few dot-points of interest.

<comment><USER10> From a table within the source:

Benefits:

 More equal distribution of income

 Removes disincentive for beneficiaries to undertake part-time work

 Poverty is reduced but only at the 60 and 70 percent relative levels (2, 2A)

 May improve labour market outcomes in some areas: more employee flexibility; encourages unpaid work; additional employee bargaining power; encourages entrepreneurial activity; and reduces the opportunity cost of full time training or education.

 Lowers administrative, management and operating costs

Costs:

 Poverty is either increased across all relative levels as Superannuitants have their payment decreased by 44% on average (1), or is increased when measured at the 50 percent relative level (2, 2A).

 Horizontal equity problems due to differential treatment of one and two parent families

 Many current beneficiaries (e.g. sole parents, the disabled and carers) will be financially worse off under the scheme

 Reduces the supply of labour: decreases hours worked; increases migration of skilled workers; discourages people from taking entry level jobs; discourages further education and training; and the EMTRs for families with children are very high discouraging further work, MFTC (1, 2).

 High personal income taxes have negative implications for saving, investment and productivity

 Lowers economic growth (estimated at 2.8 percentage points per year)

 Non-alignment causes integrity and coherence issues for the tax system

<comment><USER11> Meta:

You are using a Private Use Area codepoint (U+F0B7) for your lists. These will show up as boxes-with-a-hex-code in it for some (I get this), the glyph you intended (no idea) for others, and a completely unrelated and inappropriate glyph for the rest.

Why not use one of these instead: » → ▶ ◆ ●

<comment><USER12> What's wrong with

\- the

\- good

\- ol'

\- hyphen?

<comment><USER11> Nothing, that is fine too of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The largest concerns about basic income are that it will reduce the incentive to work for at least some people, and that it is phenomenally expensive.

Why not solve both problems by simply eliminating income tax on lower income brackets instead? This is cheaper, easier to implement and less politically contentious (we already embrace the notion of progressive taxes, and who doesn't like a tax cut?). It also gives the money directly to those who need it most.

I suspect many people support basic income because they fundamentally believe in a world where you shouldn't have to work to make a living. They use arguments like helping the poor, or putting everyone on an even playing field, or the claim that tech will eventually destroy jobs anyway as Trojan horses for this agenda. I don't agree and I think most people would disapprove of basic income if you told them that it was intended to undermine the culture of working and earning to make your own living.

If you really want to help the poor and the working class, support the elimination of income tax on the lower income brackets instead of basic income. It is a simpler, better, cheaper, and less divisive solution.

<comment><USER14> You can't give people a tax break if they earn literally nothing. There isn't necessarily an economically sensible job for every single person, and it seems ridiculous to invent bullshit or demeaning jobs just so that people can work to eat.

I reject the idea that working any deadend awful job just to get by is somehow virtuous. I love what I do, and I would do it even if I didn't need to work -- but being able to say that is an extremely privileged position to be in.

We're automating away industry after industry. There already aren't enough jobs to go around, and that will only get worse from here on out. I have no idea what the future should look like, but we have to start by accepting that the value of working at a job to feed yourself is not irreducible or axiomatic.

<comment><USER15> _There isn 't necessarily an economically sensible job for every single person,..._

Sure there is. Domestic labor (maid, cook, driver, servant) for more productive people. Mechanical turk. Selling loose cigarettes. Making tacos for people and selling them by the side of the road.

We know that these are jobs people could possibly do because in India people actually do them. Americans just have the opportunity not to work, so they take that opportunity. This makes us all poorer. BI only makes the problem worse.

<comment><USER16> There is limited demand for the jobs you list. If population continues to grow and automation continues to grow, I believe there will soon be more people than we need for domestic labor, mechanical turk, selling things on the roadside, fashion and entertainment, maintaining the automations, lawyers etc. Anyway, robots can sell cigarettes much cheaper than a person can.

I don't think that inventing bullshit jobs (say an extra few layers in your local bureaucracy) is really a solution.

I'd much rather everyone got a universal basic income and could focus their lives on something more useful like their families, or creativity and art or whatever the post-job-world will be about.

<comment><USER15> I take it that since you believe there is no useful work to be done, you also oppose expanding the government and providing new services?

Working women don't need child care, and should in fact be encouraged to stay home to reduce the demand for jobs? Infrastructure is not crumbling and in need of repair? That's what "no useful work" means.

<comment><USER16> I didn't say that there was no useful work to be done. I said that I believe there to be a limit to how much there is and that I believe that, if automation continues to grow, that population will exceed how the amount of useful work.

There will always be useful work to be done, but will there be enough for 7 billion people? What about 10 billion people? Especially as more routine work gets automated "away".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Could somebody living in Finland comment on what 560 euros per month will get you?

Edit: Looking at some stats here [1] and it looks like 565 euros is enough to rent an apartment outside of city center. It also looks like one could potentially find something for 450 which leaves pretty decent money for food and perhaps a bicycle for transportation? Definitely not enough if you consider utilities though. That's some rough living.

[1] [https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/country_result.jsp?cou...](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/country_result.jsp?country=Finland)

<comment><USER18> It's possible to live with that amount (because schools and health care are basically free), but it wouldn't be nice of course.

Note that this doesn't really "cost" anything as the people in the program are already receiving generous unemployment benefits, " The amount will be deducted from any benefits they already receive."

So the difference mainly is that you don't have to ask for this money or report it if you start to earn money. I wonder how your other benefits are affected though (child support, living expenses like rent and utilities etc.) if you indeed get a job.

The bureaucracy is a nightmare here with unemployment benefits, so hopefully something good will come out of this project.

<comment><USER19> With the amount, it might be possible to survive, not to decently live long- term.

Personally, the lowest I was able to achieve in practice was about 650€. Gotchas:

1\. It was over 10 years ago

2\. I had student discounts on housing, lunches, public transport etc.

I suppose I could still have squeezed that down if I really had to, fortunately I didn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is fundamentally unemployment benefit paid to those out of work coupled with working tax credits paid to those in work.

Nothing new to see here at all other than the elimination of the ridiculous requirement to look for jobs that don't exist - because there aren't enough jobs.

Not enough jobs is still the issue, and nothing has been done to redress that. Nothing changes until the buyers market in labour is turned into a sellers market.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't see basic income working in its purest form but then again that is not what this is. This reminds me of the reforms done to the Norwegian pension system, which allows people to keep working after retirement without reduction in pension payments. This was to encourage people who are healthy to work longer than the standard 67 year retirement age.

To my knowledge this has worked well in Norway, and so I suspect a similar change can work well for the unemployed.

I think we are going down the wrong path with endless reports, and threats to get unemployed people back into the workplace. I think it would be better with stronger focus on positive encouragement.

I won't claim to fully understand the theory of guaranteed basic income, but as it has been explained to me it seems inherently flawed in its purest form. The whole point of a welfare system is that members of society will occasionally experience dramatic situations which can get very costly, whether from unemployment, serious illness or accidents. That means sudden spikes in money requirements. A socialized system can handle that as those spikes are evened out over a large portion of people. But a universal pay is constant to my understanding and thus won't fluctuate with need.

This all it can really solve is hindering people from lacking basic necessities like food, shelter and clothes. You can make a system which pays enough to handle every possible case unless you make the payment really high. A young healthy individual will require less basic income than a disabled person in a wheel chair with expensive medications and customized house and car.

</comment><comment><USER22> Well if valley types have their way and automate 40% or more of jobs in the next ten years, then what actually is the alternative? This or major uprisings and violent clashes?

<comment><USER23> > automate 40% or more of jobs in the next ten years

No scheme on earth could automate 40% of jobs in a decade.

> what actually is the alternative

As a proportion of total U.S. jobs, farming declined steadily 5% per decade from 1800 to 1970.

Imagine telling a youth in 1900 that in his lifetime, 35% of the nation's jobs would disappear. People will have nothing to do!!

<comment><USER24> Between 98-2004 the US lost 4 million jobs to the Chinese. In that same period the chinese lost 15 million jobs to automation.

I don't think most people understand how fast this is going mostly because we work in the part that still benefit from this.

When automated cars and truck become a reality then 12 million jobs in the us are in danger. Transportation being the one job that can't be outsourced to other countries (contrary to Europe) is the most common job in the US. Once that's gone so are their jobs.

And can we please stop comparing to farming and the luddite fallacy they are completely missing the point of whats going on right now. Did the horses get new jobs when cars started taking over?

Technology replaces jobs that require higher and higher levels of abstraction and while technology keeps improving humans only improve to the extent that technology allows them to.

Also here is another good example of a huge manufactorer who is going to get rid of all their people.

It's here faster than you think.

[http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/30/14128870/foxconn- robots-a...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/30/14128870/foxconn-robots- automation-apple-iphone-china-manufacturing)

<comment><USER25> But this type of thing has been happening routinely since the industrial revolution.

Secretary used to be the biggest job in America and now it's virtually gone because of technological progress.

Do you know how many clerks were automated away when the database was created?

Maybe this time is different, but you can't assume it will be.

<comment><USER24> Yes and each decade less and less jobs are created. Now the kind of jobs that are created in the US are primarily either low paid jobs or temporary jobs (which means no healthcare which means much harder to live off) On top of that the cost of living is going up.

So the trend is actually showing us exactly that.

If your claim is that new jobs will be created you need to show those new jobs cause they are needed right now and I don't see what area you are referring to which should be able to take over.

Saying we don't know is not an argument when the trends show the opposite.

<comment><USER25> >If your claim is that new jobs will be created you need to show those new jobs cause they are needed right now and I don't see what area you are referring to which should be able to take over.

Predicting what the new jobs will is very hard. Someone in 1870 couldn't predict that a large percent of Americans would stop farming and instead manufacture cars, radios, and refrigerators. Those things hadn't been invented yet.

Also, sometimes automation brings cost down and unlocks demand that increases the number of jobs in total. More people worked in auto manufacturing after the factory line was invented than before, despite it drastically reducing the man hours per car.

There may be a period of high unemployment, but the cheap labor will find uses. Well, it always has in the past. Against this time might be different if automation is easy enough to replace nearly all low skill human labor.

<comment><USER24> It's not really that hard to predict.

Unless you are somehow expecting technology to stop improving and humans to somehow improve exponentially the trend is pretty clear. Machines will be able to do most of the things we do at levels we haven't seen before.

It's not hard to predict new jobs if they are there, they should already be there and you should be able to point to them.

The numbers speak for themselves. As I said the number of new jobs created have actually gone down decade over decade in the US.

The real danger is saying things like "jobs will come" thats not an argument when you can't point to it, then it just become a religious belief in something there is absolutely no evidence for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Finland is one of the best places to adopt basic income.

We already have comprehensive and complex welfare system that creates pockets where effective marginal tax rate is above 100% (going to work part time reduces welfare, net effect is negative). In the lowest income service industry almost half of workers would earn the same if they were unemployed. Fears of people not working if they get the same money without working seems to be false.

There is already two groups of Finns that get kind of basic income. Underage children and old people. Underage children get unconditional sum of money (goes to parents of course). Old people have guaranteed small pension.

This test has many faults, (its only for unemployed, basic income would be for everyone) but it's unconditional like basic income should be. People get the same amount of basic income even if they find work, or work only part time.

<comment><USER27> On the other hand, there are about 213 000 officially unemployed and 140 000 "hidden unemployed" with an employed workforce of 2 413 000. Worse than that, the benefit dependency has now started to become intergenerational. About one fifth of Finnish young men (20-24) are "NEET" (Neither in employment nor in education or training). To exaggerate a bit, they don't mind living on benefits as they have enough for housing, food and computer games, or whatever they do.

The problem with welfare system's pockets of >100% marginal tax are not only related to money in the long term. It's also that the payment of benefits is interrupted very quickly upon the employment office learning of someone getting any job (even temporary and part time) and resuming payments is slow. So although the money is evened out in the longer run, people who take a job tend to have short-term cash flow problems. They really suffer for taking a job, and that is wrong.

BI would help in that, but as a long-term solution on population level the equation looks unsolvable.

<comment><USER26> The biggest problem in Finnish welfare is pensions[1]. They are too high for babyboomer generation. Basic income would allow creation of something similar to mini-jobs in Germany but still giving people a choice.

\---

1: Yes. Pensions in Finland are welfare. Pension fund savings cover only tiny percentage of pension. Young working people are paying sums much bigger than basic income to old people.

<comment><USER7> Traditional BI as opposed to this experiment essentially _is_ a state pension - a fixed monthly payment benchmarked to livable income - but paid to working age people. So if the biggest problem in Finnish welfare is spending too much on its 1.5million pensioners (and 250k unemployed) you probably don't want to subsidise another 1.4 million working age people who aren't working or looking for work, especially if you have to reclaim those costs by taxing the mere 2.7m people in employment.

Ultimately, if BI had the incredibly desirable (and unlikely) effect of encouraging every one of Finland's 250k unemployed people to start part time work and pay tax on those earnings, the state would still be much worse off than before from paying all these economically inactive people a subsidy they probably don't need.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Basic income is not free money, it's redistribution so that every people can live humane life.

<comment><USER29> Money comes from value and value comes from somewhere. If you receive a redistribution, you've not created value but you've received it. That's "free money".

And remember friends, TANSTAAFL.

<comment><USER30> Rent is also value that one didn't create. A way to fund basic income that particularly appeals to me is a land value tax, because resources that no one created (land, oil, etc.) don't rightfully belong to anyone and the benefits from those resources should be shared.

<comment><USER31> There is definateky value provided in exchange for rent. Rent is paying to stay in someone elses building or what not, not just the land. you are essentially paying the landlord instead of building your own home.

If you think there is no value to living inside, well, that's just delusional.

<comment><USER32> Sure, there is a component of rent that comes from the structure. But that isn't the component that causes the price difference between an apartment in San Francisco or Manhattan and the same size apartment in West Texas or Detroit.

<comment><USER31> That would be a limited supply of units in a high demand area causing the price difference, which is a fundamentally different argument

<comment><USER33> And what limits that supply? Some combination of a limited supply of land and limited planning permission, neither of which are created by the landlord and both of which could very reasonably be taxed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is wholeheartedly welcome, lets hope 2017 brings more news like this. Not at all surprised that it is being done in Finland.

</comment><comment><USER35> Why limit the experiment to unemployed people? It would be interesting to see what people already earning a living do when receiving this no-strings- attached income.

<comment><USER36> Australia has some of the most liberal welfare payments in the world - <USER2> that isn't earning much (or doesn't have a job, or has never had one) can get around $250 per week. Forever. Very few strings attached. More money if you have kids, etc.

It's known there are tens of thousands (hundreds? millions?) of people who just don't want to work and sit around on it for their entire lives. A few friends did it for a decade after highschool, just surfed all day every day.

Despite all the naysayers and doomsayers about this kind of thing, Australia's economy and workforce is perfectly healthy, and has been this way for decades....

<comment><USER37> That is an exceptionally positive review of Australia's economic position.

By contrast can I point out that Australia has a high basic cost of living, colossal levels of private debt, an epidemic of obesity, an ongoing productivity crisis that was only temporarily masked by a resources boom, and a demographic inversion just around the corner that is likely to a) overwhelm the healthcare system and b) elect ever more conservative governments that will stifle immigration at exactly the time it is most needed.

<comment><USER38> Could you elaborate on the 'demographic inversion' that's incoming?

<comment><USER39> Baby boomers exiting the workforce, along with lower birth rates (and some increasing anti-immigrant sentiment that curtails the normal set of solutions) will lead to issues with healthcare affordability and end of life care. But these are issues that all Western countries are dealing with, and I have no reason to believe that Australia would be harder hit than many others due in part to the success of our mandatory saving schemes.

<comment><USER40> The success of the mandatory saving schemes will probably work for a while, but the current property crisis in Australia is going to put an end to that eventually. Give it another 30 or 40 years once the non-boomers that have been unable to buy a place to live (and have therefore being paying rent their whole lives and will continue to do so in retirement) and there will be an even worse crisis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Note that this is an experiment to observe the behavior of those who are on unemployment benefits when they get unconditional benefits. It is not yet universal income, even on a small scale (as it is conditional on the current benefit status).

Note that any "complete" welfare state more or less guarantees, that you will get X income (or at worst, incur a cost of X). Even if you refuse to work, society will make sure you aren't hungry. There is universal healthcare etc. So the money is already spent - a basic income only changes the dynamics by also offering it to those who work.

Offering it to people who work might reduce the number of worked hours, which would be a positive effect (might create more jobs, improve health etc). It comes at an increased cost of course - but that can be offset by increasing income taxes.

If money is distributed and taxes are _not_ increased, then it is a form of stimulus. In that context, a Basic Income should be compared to central bank stimulus (artificially low interest rates etc). If you want to make absolutely sure that stimulus money ends up spent in the economy, as opposed to saved or transferred abroad etc - then a BI seems like a better idea.

<comment><USER41> "If you want to make absolutely sure that stimulus money ends up spent in the economy, as opposed to saved or transferred abroad etc"

i read this all time around here. money "saved" is usually invested, and that too stimulates an economy -- and probably more meaningfully long-term.

<comment><USER42> Saving money amounts to producing some wealth without consuming any wealth in exchange (generally because you expect your savings to conserve value, and therefore get the right to consume without producing some time later. Like all bets and promises, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't)

That's good for the economy when there is a lack of supply: plenty of people willing to buy stuff while nobody wants to make those stuff. When there's a lack of demand, it doesn't help. When there's a lack of demand, you need to make people consume more, possibly by delaying / alleviating the expectation that they produce something valuable first. This consumption is expected to allow creation of supply. That's the principle of a Keynesian stimulus.

The problem typically associated with massive unemployment is a lack of demand: there are plenty of unemployed people who would like to produce and consume, but they can't find anyone willing to buy whatever they might produce.

Put another way, UBI is a way to raise the velocity of money, the amount of commercial exchanges per amount of time occurring in the economy; saving lowers money velocity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm very interested in this. My own intuition says basic income won't work, but it'd sure be nice if it did.

<comment><USER44> Eh, 30% of all income is capital gains income, so passive income does work for the top 1% without problems.

<comment><USER45> The majority of capital income flows not to the super-rich, but rather to the pensions of the upper-middle-class.

Also, most income earned by the top 1% of income earners is employment income; many professionals (doctors / dentists / engineers / lawyers / accountants) fall into that top 1% of incomes. The working-age individuals whose income is _primarily_ from capital are generally in the top 0.1%.

<comment><USER46> > Also, most income earned by the top 1% of income earners is employment > income; many professionals (doctors / dentists / engineers / lawyers / > accountants) fall into that top 1% of incomes.

I am not American and I don't know if doctors and lawyers are usually considered 1 percenters, but Wikipedia says "Data on the minimum yearly income to be considered among the 1% vary per source, ranging from about $500,000 to $1.3 million."[1] It is my understanding that half a million dollar is not a common engineer or doctor income, I am not sure most income earned by 1 percenters is employment income.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_are_the_99%25](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_are_the_99%25)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> That's pretty pointless... it has absolutely nothing to do with basic income. It's a limited time stipend. The recipients' behavior would only be identical if they were so dumb as to not plan more than a month ahead.

</comment><comment><USER48> Causes for Economic inequality [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality#Causes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality#Causes)

</comment><comment><USER49> I don't understand, how do governments plan to have a long term sustainable basic income for citizens when AI and other technological developments put a large percentage of people out of jobs?

<comment><USER50> For example, tax the robot work equal to human work. But since the robots don't need money the salary paid to a robot is pooled to a "common bank account" and then distributed to humans according to some criteria by the goverment.

<comment><USER51> Robots won't replace humans on a one-for-one basis. One human could be replaced by a hundred tiny robots or a factory with a hundred workers might be replaced by a single big robot. We already have single robots that can do a task hundreds of times faster than a human so how do you tax them equally to human work?

<comment><USER52> Tax them by their production. If one robot can do the labor of 40,000 surely it can pay for the people it displaced so they don't starve to death.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> > The scheme is part of the measures by the centre-right government of Prime > Minister Juha Sipila to tackle Finland's joblessness problem.

I like this is not even proposed by a leftist government. The Scandinavian left-right scale maps outside the political spectrum of many countries.

</comment><comment><USER54> Haha lucky, seems like one of those "idealized situations"

If we automated everything, where does money/value come from.

I still don't completely understand how money works "it's a ledger, faith, gateway of energy" a doctor is worth more than a janitor (not arguing that)

Just when there are no skills involved, everyone's the same, would money still have a purpose.

Though I like the idea of basic income. I wouldn't mind that myself and I could remove the fear of being homeless from my mind and focus more on web development.

<comment><USER55> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post- scarcity_economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy)

<comment><USER54> I don't understand. Is post-scarcity good or bad?

Scarcity seems to be the reason why anything has value.... No forget that I kind of forgot what I was going with that.

What I did want to bring up is this argument of land vs. population and energy/raw materials.

If energy is neither created or destroyed, it's just moved around, and assuming we still have the sun, if we're just using the energy from the sun through food, then as long as the sun exists, aren't we fine? Same with water. Water might be transformed but it returns. Where it would it go? There is also salt water sure you have to take energy/time to desalinate and purify it.

I just don't get that argument of resources if you have an ineexhaustable supply of energy as the sun for 5 billion years.

Also humans compared to the size of the Earth, we don't even begin to cover it as far as human size compared to land size eg. continents.

Please correct me as I'd like to learn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I doubt they are actually giving _cheques_. It's only USA which still regularly uses cheques.

<comment><USER57> Well, if we're going to be pendantic about it, the USA doesn't have _cheques,_ either. The only _check_ I currently write is for rent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> The HN headline ("Free money for all") is a bit misleading. The article states that the basic income will only be given to 2000 randomly selected unemployed people.

<comment><USER45> _2000 randomly selected unemployed people_

That's how they're selecting the participants for the trial; but continuing to be unemployed is not a requirement for receiving the $587. (Indeed, this is the whole point: They want to see if the existing system of unemployment benefits is creating a disincentive to finding work.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> in Singapore the unemployed can get up to $500 per year LoL

is this a form of basic income

</comment><comment><USER48> Good initiative since 1% have 99% wealth [http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35339475](http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35339475)

<comment><USER45> That article actually says that the top 1% have _50%_ of the _net_ wealth.

But "net wealth" is a really weird statistic. The top 20% of the world has somewhere around 125% of the world's net wealth, because many people are in debt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> As humans, we are inherently Lazy.

What's the incentive to start looking for work if there are no strings attached on how you can spend money? Is Finland the only country in the world that has 0 junkies, 0 prescription addicts, 0 dads paying child support?

I agree with @aswanson, this is headed for inflation, or an even worse financial disaster.

Side Note: Is it easy to immigrate to and naturalize as a Citizen? I'm buying my ticket.

<comment><USER61> > What's the incentive to start looking for work if there are no strings > attached on how you can spend money?

More money?

> I agree with @aswanson, this is headed for inflation, or an even worse > financial disaster.

Why would distributing money _per se_ cause inflation? Does inflation go up any time money goes from one entity to several?

<comment><USER45> _Why would distributing money per se cause inflation?_

So-called "helicopter money" is very good at inducing inflation, because it shifts the equilibrium between "holding money" and "buying stuff". This is the principle behind quantitative easing. But basic income isn't simply a matter of _distributing_ money; the money also has to come from somewhere, and raising taxes (or cutting spending elsewhere) in order to fund BI has a disinflationary effect.

That said, the inflationary and disinflationary effects are likely to not apply equally across all goods; if you raise income taxes in order to fund a basic income system, you'll likely see increased inflation on low-end goods (since the people who purchase them have more money to spend) and decreased inflation on high-end goods (since the people who purchase those have less money to spend).

<comment><USER32> > That said, the inflationary and disinflationary effects are likely to not > apply equally across all goods; if you raise income taxes in order to fund a > basic income system, you'll likely see increased inflation on low-end goods > (since the people who purchase them have more money to spend) and decreased > inflation on high-end goods (since the people who purchase those have less > money to spend).

This is true, but it's worth pointing out that it applies equally to _anything_ that transfers wealth from the rich to the poor. You get the same effect from a significant increase in charitable giving from the rich, or a reduction in apartment rents, or an economic boom that reduces the unemployment rate.

And it's assuming that a basic income would actually do that. You could have one that simply replaces the existing tax code and welfare system without inherently being any more or less progressive on net. You could have one that does the opposite -- you could lower the effective tax rate on the rich and have a very small UBI.

How progressive you want the government to be in terms of income redistribution is completely independent of whether a UBI is preferable to means-tested welfare.

<comment><USER45> Right, I was just taking raising income taxes as an example to illustrate that policies could create zero net _total_ inflation while still resulting in some people seeing an increase in inflation and other people seeing disinflation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Basic Income is another failed Utopiasm and it depresses me that seemingly intelligent people are falling for its populist simplicities. But this is the age of Trump so I should expect no less.

<comment><USER63> > failed Utopiasm

How can it be failed when it's never been implemented?

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> 1\. $587 a month in many cities in the US will barely rent a room.

Even in St. Louis ([https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-st-louis-rent- tre...](https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-st-louis-rent-trends/) ), average monthly rent for a one bedroom apartment is $1000 a month. In LA, it's over 2000 a month, in NY it's 2700, in Detroit it's at 1000.

SNAP (Food stamps) give about $255 a month. That means that out of UBI, about $300 is left over for rent.

2\. If everyone in the US gets $587 a month, that's 1.5 trillion a year.

The current US federal budget is 3.8 trillion.

That's about a quarter of current US federal budget, and we still have to give an actual livable stipend to the truly poor (SNAP, section 8, medicare), some kind of defense, leave some for state/city tax, federal infrastructure programs (freeways/trains).

<comment><USER65> > That's about a quarter of current US federal budget

Only some will be given free money, and almost all of them will be spent since receivers are poor and cannot save it, would be quite a boost to the economy. It's a very direct way of implementing Keynesian policies.

<comment><USER64> >Only some will be given free money,

I thought the idea is that everyone from Bill Gates to the beggar will be given it?

<comment><USER63> And most will have their taxes adjusted so that it makes no difference to the governments bottom line.

<comment><USER64> I'm saying that taxes will go through the nose (close to 25%) for everyone with quite questionable benefits (will barely pay for rent).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Flickr group of the most beautiful old control panels - <AUTHOR> https://www.flickr.com/groups/controlpanel/ <comment><USER2> Well, this is definitely going to cost me a few hours of sleep. Great find.

Off topic but if I had the time/money, I'd love to remodel my bedroom as an old power station control room, or maybe the Apollo CM. There's something so satisfying about twisting or turning all of those physical switches.</comment>


Show HN: Recaf-A modern java bytecode editor - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Col-E/Recaf <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, I like to fiddle with java applications/crackme's in my spare time and made this to assist in the process when I couldn't find a tool that had most of what I wanted. In short I wanted to make editing compiled java easy by bypassing the need to worry about managing constant-pool entries and keeping stack-frames in-tact. This uses Objectweb's ASM to accomplish that and a few other libraries to even further simplify things.

I would like Recaf to be as easy to use as possible. To do so I've written some basic docs (linked on the repo) and modeled it after some of the tools for .Net reverse engineering that I found to be well designed.

Thanks for checking out my project and I would love any feedback on how to improve it.</comment>


Ancient DNA is offering clues to puzzle of Dead Sea scrolls, say experts - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jun/02/ancient-dna-helps-experts-tackle-puzzle-of-dead-sea-scrolls <comment><USER2> Here's the paper for anyone interested [https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30552-3#.Xt...](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674\(20\)30552-3#.XtZj7CuS9w8.twitter)

I'm one of the middle-authors on this. Happy to try and answer questions.

<comment><USER3> Could estimate the % of fragments that are currently unplaced? I'm curious to know how much structure has been pieced together so far and what remains.

<comment><USER2> Most of the fragments (sorry don't have a %) could be mapped to a genome. In cases where a fragment could not be mapped it's more likely because of degradation than novel biology.

That said we did identify some novel microbial genomes. Not clear if they are actually ancient though vs contamination in the last 100 years or so.

<comment><USER3> I think you're referring to DNA fragments but I actually meant text fragments. Do you know how much of the text is recovered at this point? Trying to get a sense of whether or not the full text of the scrolls is able to be read at this point or if there's more to piece together.

If I understand correctly, you have a bunch of pieces of scrolls and it's kind of like piecing a shredded document back together. By analyzing the DNA material of the scroll fragments, you can tell which ones should be grouped together, to help put the puzzle back together so to speak.

Is that right? Or are you mainly analyzing the DNA to find out other information about the scrolls, like where and when they may have originated?

<comment><USER2> You have the right idea. In some cases the Dead Sea Scrolls were literally shredded- ripped up into small pieces that were sold individually to tourists.

The goal here was to identify parchment fragments that came from the same animal so the original (unshredded) document could be reconstructed.

While we were able to link a lot of parchment fragments we didn't go so far as to actually reconstruct the text on those fragments. While we constrained that task somewhat it's still nontrivial since we don't know what order the fragments should go in, if there are still missing pieces, etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Peanut History of Art - <AUTHOR> http://expressiveegg.org/2017/06/19/peanut-history-art/ <comment><USER2> Interesting way to attack post modernism by creating a diatribe in the truest expression of existentialism.

If I assume the piece is well written in the sense that it gets the authors point across (rather than hastily or sloppily written without respect for the ideas and words that convey them) then I have to wonder which part of the snake is being eaten and which part is doing the eating.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article sounds suspiciously like turtlenecked art-house nonsense so common amongst the "art" community today.

      "These earliest images are multi-dimensional, integrated into a complete sensory experience."

Hah! That's what he would like to _think_ because it is a rather pretty and poetic embellishment.

But to say that these people are drawing these pictures without any definable (or understandable-to-us) send of _self_ seems like a stretch of anthropological imagination. While most can agree cave art is not meant to be an objective portrayal of reality he seems to argue that its creators were merely channeling some otherworldly inner vision, without individual embellishment or initiative. That these people were merely agents to some shared idea without individual will. I disagree.

      "The universe was consciously felt and conceived as an organism; fundamentally benevolent, productive, mysterious and impenetrable to the rational mind; which is to say, female."

Uh, _what?_

</comment><comment><USER4> If this diatribe against postmodern art is sincere, I would offer that the author does not have a full understanding of where art sits as we begin the 21st century. We are in the middle of a stunning revolution in art that addresses many of the exact issues the author raises.

Art is far from dead and postmodernism was certainly not the end of it. If the author is in a contemporary art gallery and thinks all modern artworks look the same, perhaps it is simply not very good modern art that he or she is looking at...

<comment><USER5> > _We are in the middle of a stunning revolution in art that addresses many of > the exact issues the author raises._

Could you elaborate on this/provide some jumping-off points?

<comment><USER6> I'll give you a single word: Metamodernism.

I'm in the middle of reading it, but the viewpoint and arguments being made (not to mention overuse of oscillation/pendulums/art-as-cycle) hit me as being rooted there. There's not much to go on in terms of pure-visual MM artworks, a few performances by Ronkko, Turner, LaBeouf and some academic critiques.

The gist is an oscillation between the PostModern methods of operation (Irony, Pastiche, etc) and more sincere methods of expression. A balancing act that displaces the artist back and forth between objectivity/subjective belief, Abstract and concrete image. But what separates these works from proper Modernist/Postmodernist works is the cognizance of both and utilizing eithers methods in differing degrees.

Take a look at the "New Metamodernists" on FB, Notes on Metamodernism blog and do a search of Google Scholar. Hell, I attempted to make a API-Art service in a metamodern fashion, have an exhibition coming up wwhere I play with these techniques as well.

[https://theblackbox.ca/apiIndex](https://theblackbox.ca/apiIndex)

<comment><USER7> And here's an entertaining video on Shia Labeouf's antics that's probably a decent introduction to the subject. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dsECbVahBw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dsECbVahBw)

@SuperPaintMan - Thanks for sharing the metamodernist blackbox - it made me smile.</comment></comment></comment></comment>