Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/andrew-yang-talks-tech-san-francisco-sam-altman-fundraiser-2019-11 <comment><USER2> "Altman, who favors UBI, said in exchange for a floor, he'd like to see no ceiling on earnings, as some, like presidential hopeful Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, have suggested. And like Friedman, Altman suggested tying the amount of the basic income to a fixed percentage of GDP. "Right now, because people are rightly angry that there's no floor, and that most people have no real chance to be super successful, we sort of say billionaires are inherently evil," he said. "I think it would be great to say, we as a society will allow trillionaires in exchange for a floor for everyone.""

The problem with having a handful of people be billionaires and trillionaires is that money is power, and with that amount of money you have nearly unlimited power and influence over everyone and everything. A system that will concentrate that much power _will_ be inherently evil, it will and does serve the needs of that few over the needs of the many.

UBI just doesn't solve that, and it especially doesn't solve that when it's being funded by a highly regressive VAT tax that none of these ultra wealthy people will ever pay as Yang is proposing.

Honestly, this whole Yang project just strikes me as a weird 10x play by wealthy bay area VC types to get out of paying more progressive income taxes by attempting to bamboozle voters into a regressive tax based UBI they will shoulder the burdon on, so we will forget about major structural problems like wealth concentration.

Regardless, no, I don't think trillionaires should exist and I'm pretty confused why anybody thinks that is going to work out well for them, competition, or democracy.

<comment><USER3> > UBI just doesn't solve that

Doesn't it though? You create a floor, so that anyone with a miserable job can say "screw you" and quit and go start their own business without having to worry about how they're going to make rent before the new business starts making money, and you get a lot more competition. More smaller companies instead of fewer bigger companies. And the big companies would have to pay more to get some people to not do that, so you get less inequality.

How _isn 't_ that solving the problem?

<comment><USER4> Seriously there is NO WAY in the world an UBI will cover the rent - even the rent alone - in any place where it makes sense starting a business.

I would imagine an UBI will be mostly used by people to exclude themselves from active workforce to "retire" in low-cost destinations. Because that will be the only thing it will really allow doing.

Say you impose a super huge 30% income tax (anything above that will cause a revolt in the middle classes, and mass exodus in upper classes), that will only give an equivalent of a minimum wage to everyone (ok 20% above national minimum wage but some states have it higher)... how far does that get you?

<comment><USER3> > Seriously there is NO WAY in the world an UBI will cover the rent - even the > rent alone - in any place where it makes sense starting a business.

You can get a one bedroom in Austin for less than $800/month, to say nothing of arrangements that involve roommates or shared facilities or couples who would then have a second UBI.

> I would imagine an UBI will be mostly used by people to exclude themselves > from active workforce to "retire" in low-cost destinations. Because that > will be the only thing it will really allow doing.

You're forgetting the possibility for supplemental income. Combine the UBI with a part time job and you could live just outside of New York City and spend the other half of your time on the business for as long as it takes until it makes enough for you to quit the part time job.

There is also a whole lot of work that really doesn't care about location at all. You can do software development in Kansas if you want to, as well as anything else that involves selling your product over the internet.

> Say you impose a super huge 30% income tax (anything above that will cause a > revolt in the middle classes, and mass exodus in upper classes)

The marginal rate isn't what causes revolts, it's the effective rate. Middle class people don't care about paying $12,000 in tax if they also get a $12,000 UBI. Upper middle class people aren't going to revolt over a difference between the two of an amount similar to what they pay already for the existing welfare system we would no longer need.

And the whole point of using VAT is that billionaires and international corporations _can 't_ avoid it.

<comment><USER5> > You can get a one bedroom in Austin for less than $800/month

... because there is currently no program in Austin whereby residents each get $1,000 of free money month.

<comment><USER3> True, if only people in Austin got a $1000 UBI then many people would want to move there for the UBI and rents there would go up by supply and demand.

But if everybody in the country gets the same UBI then people are going to move from where to where exactly?

If the answer is from places with higher housing costs to places with lower housing costs, I think you're going to find that there's more than enough empty space in the middle of nowhere to satisfy _all_ of that demand without significant rent increases.

<comment><USER5> You've misunderstood. I'm not suggesting that the rent would go up because of the increased demand for a living in Austin. I am suggesting that the rent would go up because everybody has at least $1,000 per month of free money, on top of whatever income they earned.

<comment><USER3> By what mechanism does that cause the rent to go up?

The entire reason people are setting up shop in Austin is that it's so much less expensive than San Francisco. If landlords in Austin tried to raise rents then people would go to Kansas City or Buffalo or Louisville.

Some of the landlords would figure out that it's more profitable to have tenants at lower rents than higher rents and no tenants.

<comment><USER6> > If landlords in Austin tried to raise rents then people would go to Kansas > City or Buffalo or Louisville.

In the real world, most people can't just relocate their life on a whim, and the majority of citizens are more-or-less locked into a specific area for long periods of time, for a whole bunch of reasons. (Employer, Spouse, Children, Extended Family, Networks, etc)

It's not _impossible_ to relocate or anything. But most people can't do so, and the few who can usually can't do so easily. It's not like window shopping for cars or clothes, these markets are effectively soft-Monopolies.

If landlords in Austin raised rents, _most people_ would just have to eat it, unless it got to dystopian levels that _forced_ them to relocate.

<comment><USER3> They still can't, because they're not even _local_ monopolies.

There are a thousand local landlords. If they all decided to double rents, maybe only 5% of the local population would move out, but then 5% of the landlords would have empty properties. They're individually better off to get someone in there at a lower rent than have an empty unit, so they advertise a lower rent and take one of the tenants from a landlord across the street. Now that landlord has the empty unit and they do the same thing.

Which means Kansas City is competition for Austin even if 95% of the people there would never actually move. (Assuming cities where the job market, amenities and so on are similar.)

Also, when rents are higher, there is incentive to build new housing to capture the profits.

Rents only get high when they're not just eager to arbitrarily raise rents but somehow colluding to constrain supply, which is hard for thousands of landlords to do except through zoning. But that's completely independent from how much money the local people have. There are cities that have the same median income and higher rents because the local government imposes housing supply constraints.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like the idea of freeing people to be able to quit and get a new job any time, where quitting today means a real threat of losing one's home, transportation, or ability to eat (never mind fueling the cycle of debt that keeps so many down). I think it would be a net benefit if people could tell oppressive employers to fuck off without fear.

However, a welfare state is a real thing to be worried about. My sister works up in Alaska. Tribal members up there have exactly what UBI promises: a baseline check every month. This has not stirred people to innovation. It has led to a gluttony of drug and alcohol addition and a forgetting of the ways to live off the land. There are a few elders who would like to teach the young how to do so, but they are not interested. Nobody wants to do better and there is high resentment towards the federal government.

I've seen it in other places. When you are outside the balance of exchange with someone (or some organization), resentment breeds. I can see UBI causing more resentment on both sides, the receivers and the payers.

Economically, we would have to produce enough "extra" that a full, regular distribution of that wealth could continue to work with producers continuing to produce, and a growing collection of people who would lose all interest in contributing. We would have to have a way to deal with a dramatic rise in apathetic people. We would have to have a way to deal with producers just leaving the country.

In The Expanse, Earth has a UBI like thing. The whole planet. You get subsistence living, and if you want to be a producer, you start by doing menial work for a period of time to prove you are willing to work hard. It is also sci-fi for a reason :).

Again, I would love to free people from tyrannical employers and the fear and stress of not knowing what next month brings due to finances (I've lived that the majority of my life). I don't see how UBI can work.

<comment><USER8> If we want to free people from tyrannical employers, isn't free healthcare step one? Perhaps some sort of more available food stamps step two?

I would agree with a lot of the criticism of government should not target too closely etc, but those two programs seems pretty well run compared to the free market alternatives. At least when they are allowed to.

<comment><USER9> Yep, that's why Yang completely lost me when he dropped Medicare for All. Universal healthcare would dramatically reduce the dependance of workers on exploitative employers and it's way more feasible than UBI. Over 50% of healthcare today in the US is already funded by the government.

<comment><USER10> He supports healthcare for everyone, that's literally the goal[1]. He just has a different approach to get there. And some argue it's a more realistic approach than Medicare for All, which (at this point) doesn't seem terribly likely to get widespread support and pass.

1\. [https://www.yang2020.com/policies/medicare-for- all/](https://www.yang2020.com/policies/medicare-for-all/)

<comment><USER2> None of the stuff Yang is proposing will pass the current Senate, including and especially UBI. Why not drop UBI then as well?

The fact is that he is trying to call his fake health plan "Medicare for All" when it doesn't even have a public option and was recently called out on it, and frankly it makes him look more like a swindler than a serious candidate.

[https://twitter.com/ThisWeekABC/status/1211317868555423744](https://twitter.com/ThisWeekABC/status/1211317868555423744)

<comment><USER10> Aye, that is disappointing. It's oddly out of character for him and I think he made a big mistake using that label. Not sure what's going on there and hope they revise that.

As for UBI, I have the same concern and worry he's too far ahead of the zeitgeist for it. Though he makes a strong case when you hear him talk about it and answer questions in depth, even to many across the aisle. And generally I think he'd have a good shot of at least bringing people together enough that they could have a good faith debate. Outside of UBI I suspect he'd make a surprising amount of progress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Altman and Yang are a natural fit because they're both very invested (Altman literally so) in the narrative that automation is coming for huge numbers of jobs. But the economic statistics just don't back this up. Total factor productivity, a (rough) measure of the technological contribution to economic production, is growing considerably more slowly than it was during the early 2000s, and _much_ more slowly than during the 1930s, when the Second Industrial Revolution really came for the masses (and helped catalyze a huge labor shift away from agricultural work—but didn't put all former farmers out of jobs).

<comment><USER12> Even if automation isn't coming for people's job, isn't it time we moved away from this idea that every single person has to work for 40 hours a week for 50 years of their life just to survive?

What about spending time with family, or learning a new language or just enjoying one's time?

When do we reach that magical future where we actually have leisure time and can enjoy the fact we're more advanced than we were a hundred years ago when everyone worked hard?

I'd like to get there now.

<comment><USER13> Answer is: never. The average person in the West has already surpassed the comfort and standard of living of the average monarch a couple centuries ago, but instead of settling we want more: traveling, more and more advanced tech, vast amount of entertainment, etc.

Consider the multi-billion dollar media productions (games, TV series, movies, music, books, etc.) that you can access at the command of your voice vs. the same ol' jester, resident poet or occasional travelling theater company that were the only option for a monarch not so many centuries ago.

<comment><USER14> So you are saying that we should feel like monarchs because we have TVs, Netflixes, Games, gadgets, toys etc.

I would argue that many people nowadays feel more like slaves than monarchs since they can hardly even afford healthcare in many cases, they probably won't have a pension due to current demographics, they have to hand over half of their salary to various land lords, tax lords, pension lords, healthcare lords and other various fee lords.

True, It does feel like Feedalism again, but for many not from position of monarchs but serfs.

<comment><USER15> > So you are saying that we should feel like monarchs

18th century monarchs, yes. (Not 21st century monarchs.)

> hardly even afford healthcare in many cases

Better than leeches though.

> they probably won't have a pension

The reason that's a problem is precisely because health is good.

> hey have to hand over half of their salary to various land lords

Most adults in the U.S. own their own home (modulo mortgage...but even very wealthy people still choose to take mortgages for yet bigger houses). And expensive housing is generally driven voluntary by urbanization.

If you offered me the choice of life as King George III or the average American, I would choose the latter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yang does have an interesting idea for campaign finance reform too. 100$ a year for any citizen to spend on political campaigns. In some ways I think this is bigger than the UBI. If everybody spent this voucher it would be ~23B, almost 4x what was spent on federal races in 2016.

I think it will be more likely that our elected officials make better policy for normal people if their campaign funding also comes from them. In federal budget terms, 23B is cheap to increase political participation / trust.

While it's entirely possible that corporations / billionaires increase their expenditures to match, having "enough" money is more important than having more money in political campaigns (or so I was taught in school.)

<comment><USER17> As you pointed out, special interests will just raise the value of a politician so the $100 disappears in value. That or buy out ads to convince people to spend on their corporate sponsored candidates rather than the ones seeking direct support from voters. Both of these already happen, so why wouldn't they happen more? Solving this issue of corruption in campaign finance requires a solution that only publicly financed campaigns can give. Make it so that voting is all that matters in deciding an elected official and sterilize campaign funding so it's not easy to corrupt.

<comment><USER18> The ratio of special interest funding would have to increase by 80x to outweigh the $100 by a factor of 10:

Currently, the $100 democracy dollars would outweigh special interest politician funding by 8:1, so for the pendulum to swing back in the other direction implies that political favors go up nearly 100x in price. That seems like an easy win to me.

<comment><USER17> Special interest money absolutely does not need to outweigh the "democracy dollars" contributions in order to be effective. It just needs to be enough to sway the vote of the politicians. Most of the time voters aren't even aware of the agreements their representatives had made with donors. This won't change with "democracy dollars." Politicians will gladly take voter contributions, but they'll continue to take special interest money until the laws change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Great to see tech leaders get behind UBI. Now is the time and Yang is the candidate of a lifetime. I never understood how people buy into the whole "break up the tech giants" argument. It makes no sense, just a great platitude with no real accomplishment. Who wants to use the 2nd best Twitter or Facebook? Not a single person.

<comment><USER20> How does UBI even work? Won't it just lead to rampant inflation where the basic income is spread thin, eaten up almost entirely by the rising cost of goods? It seems like this in turn will require an even higher basic income, which exacerbates the problem.

Isn't an analogous situation that of private loans for tuition? Tuitions have risen across the board to eat up all the new "free" money in the system.

Won't UBI make goods much more expensive for everyone and also increase our taxes? Wouldn't a better expenditure be providing healthcare?

I'm earnestly curious.

<comment><USER21> It depends on how government would get the money for UBI. If it goes ahead and just prints more money then there will be rampant inflation, but if it redirects money from other programs, the prices of some goods may change, but there won't be inflation.

<comment><USER22> Then there's the behavioral factor to consider. Will UBI truly relieve pressure and give people a hand up? Or will it result in a large swathe of the population dropping out of the labor force and accepting a life of poverty and marginalization? Could some UBI pushers actually see the latter as the true goal?

Ask any Native American how empowering a UBI-esque system worked out for them.

Not that I'm rejecting the idea of UBI out of hand, but I'm very concerned about the lack of such discussion.

<comment><USER23> There is a Native American example with UBI (North Carolina, casino-based UBI) and it sounds like it immediately improved outcomes and did not impact working:

[https://thecorrespondent.com/4664/why-do-the-poor-make- such-...](https://thecorrespondent.com/4664/why-do-the-poor-make-such-poor- decisions/179307480-39a74caf)

Also, would you stop working if you got 12k a year for free? How much do the wealthy make in dividends a year? Do they stop working? Maybe to ensure that the wealthy continue to work, we should prevent any kind of returns on capital investment. Maybe people should only make money through their labor?

But seriously, who wants to do nothing all day long? The UBI money takes away stresses and maybe some will stop working for a boss, but they will find other things to do with their time and, if it is valuable to others, they will profit from it and do it more. So it goes.

<comment><USER24> As a personal anecdote, I would love volunteering with building homes, helping elderly, or helping animal conservation and rehabilitation efforts. I would also like to work on some inventions (I'm a mechanical engineer). However, volunteering doesn't pay anything and inventing something is really risky, so as a result I can't contribute in such ways to society and instead am working at a job I hate contributing to my deteriorating quality of life and mental health (i feel like a slave working towards having enough money to buy myself from my owner).

<comment><USER20> > However, volunteering doesn't pay anything and inventing something is really > risky, so as a result I can't contribute in such ways to society and instead > am working at a job I hate contributing to my deteriorating quality of life > and mental health (i feel like a slave working towards having enough money > to buy myself from my owner).

I often wonder how many people feel this.

I don't feel quite as dire about it, but I absolutely agree that my best contributions to society will be those I initiate and see to fruition on my own accord. Unfortunately, I too have many ideas, yet so little time to work on them.

It's too risky to quit work and embark on my own, so I only get 1/10th of my vision done during the evening and weekend hours I can spare. And even then I'm burning the last remaining cycles of effort I have during the day. It's a slow, painful slog. But I am making progress.

If I were in the flip side position of being a CEO with a product vision and lots of workers to see my ideas through to fruition, how many of my employees would be stuck in the same trough of apparent underutilization and under- fulfillment? If I empowered them to follow their own path and dreams, wouldn't they quit and leave me with nobody to work on my vision?

If you get rid of the perhaps boring and mundane "keeping the lights on" jobs, which are ever so important, then the product dies.

This is a hard problem.

<comment><USER24> > my best contributions to society will be those I initiate and see to > fruition on my own accord

This is pretty much the essence I was getting at and what the goal is to solve

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Yang says that breaking up tech monopolies won't help (with giving a very weak example) but he doesn't give a proper answer how to get competition back. Why does China have 20 different kind of Youtubes and the western world just one?

<comment><USER26> Yang wants to give everyone legal ownership of their own data. That is going to be more disruptive to the tech industry than antitrust rulings against a few companies.

<comment><USER27> What does that actually mean in practice? From a technical perspective, thanks to GDPR, Facebook and other sites now let you download your data (even outside EU), but it hasn't led to a resurgence of competition in social networks. From a legal perspective, you _do_ own the content you provide to Facebook, you only provide them a non-exclusive license to use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> My main issue with UBI is that businesses will aggressively raise prices to capture that money. Not every business will, but most will, so you can be damn sure everyone's rent is going to increase at the highest rate legally permissible all around the country.

<comment><USER29> Yes, prices will likely go up. However, they will not capture all of that money. And UBI will allow people to have more choice in where they live. UBI will give you the flexibility to move somewhere new and figure things out when you get there, rather than having to have a job lined up immediately. This should, at the margin, decrease the lock in effect of big cities, and maybe even cause rents to decline over time.

<comment><USER30> I'm hoping UBI exists in 10-20 years. I could take on my parents' home on that kind of salary without thinking, and just dub along as a subsistence farmer/ occasional contractor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There is already a UBI in place for veterans who suffered one of a number of qualifying disabling conditions during as a result of military service. Veterans can receive nearly $4000/mo if they are 100% service connected. Some veterans have significant disabilities like missing limbs and others qualify for things like arthritis or tinnitus. Many (in my estimation most) of them could work but choose not to once they get this basic income.

<comment><USER32> Do they lose that income if they start to work?

<comment><USER31> I don't believe so

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm confident that we can all agree that large corporations are efficient at extracting value from the economy (not to suggest that they don't also add value).

If we were to take the current system, with no changes made to the rules, and send it forward 100 years in a time machine, I'm confident we can also agree that consolidation by large corporations will have increased significantly during this period of time.

If we can increase the velocity of the economy, I'm confident we can agree that this would have a similar effect as the aforementioned time machine scenario.

Indiscriminate injection of capital into an economy necessarily increases the velocity of the economy.

If you're with me this far, then you have come to the conclusion, for yourself, that UBI will increase the velocity of the economy and further consolidate wealth into the hands of large corporations.

Has it not occurred to you that there could be reasons, other than philanthropy, that many of the proponents of UBI are millionaires/billionaires, large corporations, and both of these in their roles at economic think tanks?

<comment><USER33> Multiple parties can benefit from UBI.

You also handwave and make a load of assumptions in each of your statements.

<comment><USER5> What are the statements I've made that are not A) rooted in generally accepted economic theories or B) syllogism based on the other statements?

I don't expect you'll reply :]

<comment><USER33> Of course not, you made so many statements it's not worth my time at all. Care to provide sources for all your generally accepted economic theories ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Andrew Yang is too early with the UBI, which in this case means he's wrong. We still need humans to make things and the future. A negative income tax would work better now and would be a better segue to UBI.

<comment><USER35> $12K/year is hardly a free ride to a life of no work. There will be a tiny minority that somehow game it and live off that, but for the vast majority it's a cushion and not a replacement for work at all.

<comment><USER22> I wish for your assessment of human nature to be accurate, but I'm quite doubtful.

<comment><USER36> What do you even mean? The average income in this country is ~45k. If that is what he was proposing than maybe we'd have an issue, I guess, but I doubt it. Everyone is so sure that people on UBI would stop working, and there is no evidence to back it up. In the studies that have shown people who stop working it is usually caregivers, which I would argue is a positive thing.

<comment><USER32> The median US individual income ($31,099) is a better metric to use since the average is more weighted by extremes that don't represent the "typical" experience of people.

[1] According to google from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> There are videos of this here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHuyuzcjSrw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHuyuzcjSrw)

</comment><comment><USER38> How can a US Dollar based UBI solve the problems of automation when the Super Admins of the US Dollar are explicitly pursuing the opposite goal?

According to the Federal Reserve website, 2/3 of their main goals are:

1\. Seeking to maximize employment

2\. Maintaining stable prices

[https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/what-economic-goals- does...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/what-economic-goals-does-federal- reserve-seek-to-achieve-through-monetary-policy.htm)

Automation and ephemeralization minimize employment and prices, but the money system seeks the opposite. Until these contradictions are reconciled, how can a US Dollar based UBI _not_ fail?

<comment><USER39> Simple proposition, but the Federal Reserve is not part of the US Government. Perhaps it's time that system be re-evaluated?

<comment><USER38> Indeed, the Federal Reserve is over 100 years old. However, I fear the Fed is such a powerful and entrenched legacy system that it is extremely unlikely for it to be politically re-evaluated unless there were some sort of catastrophic system failure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Is anyone interested in starting a member-owned "General Automation Corp" to just go ahead and UBI ourselves without waiting for politics?

I'm seriously you guys.

Bootstrap off some desert land, convert it into e.g. Village Homes[0] (but up to date) using Permaculture, et. al. including local carbon-neutral fuel production integrated into the ecosystem[1], lease/sell units, rinse and repeat.

Alongside that, develop a kind of super-RepRap[2] to manufacture e.g. the contents of a Daiso store[3].

(BTW, no cult shit, no radical new lifestyles, just a small town built as if the last few centuries of progress actually happened: food production, power capture & storage, automation, etc... You know: Star Trek TNG _sans_ fictional technology.)

Anybody?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_Homes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_Homes)

[1] [http://alcoholcanbeagas.com/](http://alcoholcanbeagas.com/)

[2] [https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap](https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap)

[3] Not all human problems can be solved by a few ounces of plastic or metal, but those that can, can be solved at Daiso for $1.50.

<comment><USER39> If you invent a time machine, go back to places like Taos in the 1960s, lots hippy communes that are now weird architecture AirBNBs. History repeats itself, reality always wins.

<comment><USER40> Sorry, I have no idea how your comment connects with what I wrote.

<comment><USER39> It's been tried before. Lots of times. The reality of "let's form our own utopia town/city/commune" always loses out to reality of primal human interests.

<comment><USER40> Ah, no, that's exactly what I _don 't_ want to do, more-or-less for just that reason.

Just riffing...

It would be a kind of vertically-integrated real estate development company, along with some manufacturing and tech/software company-ish.

Essentially, it's a terraforming company and the eco-cities it makes are the product.

We have the technology: Christopher Alexander's "Pattern Language" et. al.; Permaculture (applied ecology if you prefer), including carbon-neutral integrated alcohol fuel production (also, tug on this thread: "New Alchemy Institute" "living machines" [1] ); Bucky Fuller's "Design Science Revolution" for inspiration and large-scale efficiency[0]; etc... (Those are just my own "favorite hits".)

The idea is both 1) sell/lease cheaply ("affordable housing") to alleviate economic pressure, and 2) provide a steady income to members to offset economic obsolescence.

(I maintain that UBI makes sense only in the context of wide-spread inability for the "average person" to compete in the job market. And I think that's already happening. I mean, if I wasn't good at computers I don't know wtf I could do to make a living. I'd probably be homeless!)

I don't want this hypothetical company to be political or ideological (not even Hippie ideology) just economic (to the extent that that's realistic, eh?) We can work out the politics of everything once people have a place to live and a steady "three square meals a day", and it's ecologically harmonious, which is another way to say cheap and bountiful.

Frankly, I'm not qualified to run this sort of thing. I'm a recluse, with ways different than your own. But it seems to me that it would be sooooo easy, and that there are enough people and enough "free-floating" capital to make it happen.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_River%27s_City_project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_River%27s_City_project)

> It is moon-crater-shaped: the crater's truncated cone top opening is a half- > mile in diameter, rim-to-rim, while the truncated mountain itself is a mile > in diameter at its base ring. The city has a one-mile (1.6 km)-diameter > geodesic, quarter-sphere transparent umbrella mounted high above it to > permit full, all-around viewing below the umbrella's bottom perimeter. The > top of the dome roof is 1,000 feet (300 m) high. The bottom rim of the > umbrella dome is 500 feet (150 m) above the surrounding terrain

Some more information and a couple of pictures of the model at: [https://solutions.synearth.net/a-community-dwelling- machine/](https://solutions.synearth.net/a-community-dwelling-machine/)

[1] [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22New+Alchemy+Institute%22++%22li...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22New+Alchemy+Institute%22++%22living+machines%22&atb=v60-1&ia=web)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Yang's proposal doesn't seem like UBI to me. A key component of UBI being the U - i.e that it is universal. However, Yang wants to pay for it, in part, by adding new taxes. In order for some people to make money, others must, on net, lose money.

To actually have a UBI I think the government needs something valuable, and can then sell that valuable and distribute the money equally. For example, in Alaska, the state has the rights to oil. The state of Alaska sells that right to private companies and splits the proceeds with the citizens. That's a UBI in a way that taxation and redistribution is not.

Automation could play a role with UBI. I imagine that eventually industries could reach complete automation. When that happens, in my view, they should be nationalized. The government should run the automated industries and pay the proceeds to the public. The more we automate, the more basic income everyone will get. This also answers the "Why not 2,000 a month, or 30,000?" Objection to Yang, by having a natural brake - we'll give as much basic income as we can. And it gives an incentive to keep automating.

<comment><USER14> I agree, but about the part about nationalization of companies. Historically it tended to produce bad outcomes. People just don't put the same effort if they don't own it.

What actually works is government stepping in by producing a competitor when it sees oligopolies developing and the participating companies not innovating further but just undermining each other or colluding to undermine interests of their customers.

For example in the early railroads there were tons of companies building their own railroads instead of coopearing with others to reuse. Telecommunication networks tend to get stuck similarly. That's how AT&T was created to have a single infrastructure entity and lot of competition on top of that infrastructure. Similar situation can be observed in social networks today. The business model for them is not that great unless you infect them with advertisement. Twitter struggled a lot with monetization because it feels more like a infrastructure project similar to roads or phone lines. Perhaps it is time for government to create competing social network or just pump support money to a community created one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> If instead of the federal government paying the Egyptian military millions of dollars, or building billion dollar buildings in Iraq, they were were giving out micro payments to citizens, I don't see how that could be worse than our current model of spending.

</comment><comment><USER43> UBI is not going to fix our problems. You would do more good rebuilding the million SROs we've torn down in recent decades.

Small, affordable residential spaces in walkable neighborhoods mostly don't exist in the US. Injecting funds won't change that fundamental fact.

Most likely, passing out UBI will actually make it harder to solve underlying problems of that sort because rich people, who have zero need of UBI, will have a new excuse to ignore such problems. UBI will become a reason to say "Quit your bitching!" without having fixed anything.

</comment><comment><USER44> There's no such thing as a free lunch. Welfare is a tax, and a much needed one since the alternative costs even more. I don't really see how a universal basic income (UBI) solves much of anything that other welfare programs couldn't solve more effectively. If the argument is that it's easier to just give everyone $1,000, then I think you're a lazy policymaker.

<comment><USER10> Giving people the money directly, for them to use where it's needed in their particular case, is far more efficient than any program could ever possibly be. It's just the math and physics of it. Programs have all sorts of overhead and need to be generalized. They introduce inefficiency by default. And the larger it is, the more inefficient it becomes. That's just how it works with any organization. Even in the private sector (startup vs corporation).

With UBI, are they a citizen and 18+? Send check. Not much overhead there.

<comment><USER44> I'd love to know exactly how you figure it's more efficient. Sure, it's more efficient for the bureaucrats, but for the market as a whole? If you give me $1,000 a month, I can promise you I won't just be spending it on my _needs_ every month. Even people in massive debt don't always spend towards their needs effectively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Everything I've read about UBI in experiments sounds great. But I've never heard anyone address the idea that when everyone is getting it, my landlord or some other rent seeker also knows this information, and simply raises my rent by however much I'm getting from the government because they know I can pay it and everyone else in the industry has done the same.

<comment><USER46> The solution to that is remove the rent seeking by introducing new supply of housing. Or regulating it like utilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> It's not UBI, it's a rolling stimulus package :)

That money is going to spent. For startups, 100 bucks, 300 bucks, 800 bucks. Some of that is going to go to subscriptions. That's for the digital service economy.

And it's good for early startups - because if someone has spare change, they're going to be willing to take a chance on an up and coming app.

<comment><USER48> In a way very true but also subsidized by the wealthy's spending habits. To mention UBI without the accompanying VAT would not properly show how progressive this system can be with higher taxes applied to non essential goods.

People concerned with it wiping out safety nets needs to understand how under equipped and under utilized they are for numerous reasons. The average benefits also average to only about $500/month. UBI is a new economic floor in which we can mobilize large swaths of the population and revitalize small towns that are falling apart. The shift in economic power will be massive and it's incredible to think about.

[https://www.urban.org/research/publication/five-things- you-m...](https://www.urban.org/research/publication/five-things-you-may-not- know-about-us-social-safety-net)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/13-million-p...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/13-million- people-in-poverty-are-disconnected-from-the-social-safety-net-most-of-them- are-white/2019/02/04/807516a0-2598-11e9-81fd-b7b05d5bed90_story.html)

<comment><USER22> If history is any indication, the recipients are likely to become just more complacent and detached. I fail to see how people would become "mobilized" and towns revitalized when they have even less incentive to leave the house.

If anything, I see UBI shifting power even more into the hands of the elites, as massive numbers of the lower classes drop out of the workforce and no longer care about anything the politicians or big businesses do, so long as the cash keeps flowing.

This could very well be the intent.

Take a look at any Native American reservation, or any caged animal for that matter. Hardly vibrant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> The government would need to get money somewhere for the UBI program.

It can only do so either through taxation, or by printing money, as the government is not a value-generation enterprise.

If UBI gets its funding by taxation, UBI can't work economically (not to say it wouldn't be "UBI"). Even if you tax all the rich people, it won't provide enough money for the program. Besides, you can't really tax the rich, the moment you declare an aggressive taxation regime on them, they fly their money out of the country (and possibly their businesses too, which would generate poverty). If the assumption is that it would tax "everyone but the poor" then it's not universal "income", it's just another "social program" paid by the middle class.

If UBI is funded by printing money, then it's a debt generation engine. The USA is already heavily indebted due to at least 100 years of irresponsible governments spending a lot more than what they made through taxes. UBI would only make matters worse, and could easily lead to a currency crash within at most a couple decades (which would wipe out retirement funds, savings, etc. therefore generating poverty and causing social unrest)

<comment><USER50> > the government is not a value-generation enterprise

This is incorrect. The value generated by providing a stable framework in which people can go about their daily lives is incredible. It's hard to measure this value, of course, but our modern way of life is impossible without this framework.

<comment><USER49> Without prices it's not possible to measure the "value" of goods or services. Which is the same thing as saying that without prices there's no "value" generated.

The government makes its own money (generating inflation, which is taxation on savings), and takes money from people through taxation in various ways. It then spends that money in any way it wants, without a price system to signal where that money should be spent. Therefore, it ends up generating "malinvestments", where money is poured in the government functions, social programs, war, "economic incentive" programs, etc. according to the current political agenda, which is generally of low time preference (as politicians have to keep promising on things they can deliver within their mandates).

The modern state (which dates from the 1700's) might have had its historical justification on the basis of making management costs smaller (as in: property records, basic infrastructure, etc.). But as time goes by and technology improves, making both management and transaction costs diminish, the need for a centralized state becomes less important. The problem, however, is that governments want to persist (as they have a large amount of politicians and public workers), and instead of lowering taxes and being less invasive over time, they are progressively doing the opposite.

<comment><USER50> > Without prices it's not possible to measure the "value" of goods or > services. Which is the same thing as saying that without prices there's no > "value" generated.

It's really, really not the same. Just because you can't measure something properly, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Just how absurd that thought is becomes obvious when you translate it to a different topic: Magnetic fields did not spontaneously begin to exist when humans started to be able to measure them accurately, for example.

What it does mean is that we don't have as good an understanding of the concept of value as we have of electro-magnetism. That's not surprising, of course, since the inherent complexity of the notion of value is much greater.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I haven't read all of the literature on basic income, but my (admittedly semi- educated) impression is that one potential downside is that it fosters dependence on the state and is thus not anti-fragile.

I'm just thinking out loud here, but: what if instead of a flat cash payment, the basic income program provided free technologies that covered basic needs. For example, a small greenhouse device that can grow enough food to sustain a family. Or a 3D printer that can turn raw materials into clothing or shelter. In terms of cash needs, you could create a sort of minimum-wage Uber-style online mechanical Turk system that allows one to put in work and generate cash. You would theoretically get the benefits of basic income without having them be controlled by an external actor.

I don't know enough about farming, 3D printing or biology to know whether this is feasible, but it seems within the realm of possibility. Have any economists explored options like this?

<comment><USER52> _> what if instead of a flat cash payment, the basic income program provided free technologies that covered basic needs_

What if, instead of yammering about UBI, Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur, went out and started a company to _make_ such technologies? The way to innovate is to innovate, not to try to milk money out of the government.

The whole discussion about UBI misses this basic point: to make it easier for people to make a living, you don't give them more money, you _make the basic needs of life cheaper_. And why doesn't that happen? Because the government keeps putting its thumb on the scale and preventing people from doing it. For example, the government subsidizes large agribusinesses instead of letting innovators and entrepreneurs find cheaper ways of providing people with food. The government prints money and gives it to banks for mortgage loans to keep home prices high while rigging building codes so the only method of construction that's feasible is two by fours and drywall, instead of letting innovators and entrepreneurs figure out cheaper and more durable methods of construction for homes.

<comment><USER53> _> For example, the government subsidizes large agribusinesses instead of letting innovators and entrepreneurs find cheaper ways of providing people with food._

The primary subsidy afforded to farmers is effectively assistance in paying insurance premiums. Insurance that exists to keep farms afloat during bad years in an environment that is highly volatile. The intent is not to make food cheaper (although that may happen as a side effect), but rather to ensure there are still farmers around next year to grow the next crop.

I am not sure that really limits the desire of innovators and entrepreneurs to seek out ways to provide cheaper food. I would argue that there is still great incentive to do exactly that. Someone who can successfully do so is in a great position to become the next large agribusiness. Those who have large agribusinesses today do so because they were the innovators and entrepreneurs of the past who figured out how to sharpen their pencil to a finer point than their neighbours.

The insurance system probably limits innovation in finding ways to survive bad years independent of government support, but I'm not sure how much that relates to the particular topic at hand.

<comment><USER52> _> The primary subsidy afforded to farmers is effectively assistance in paying insurance premiums._

But the vast majority of the subsidy goes not to small individual farmers, who might need such insurance (although even on the assumption that they do, private sector insurance companies and speculators could provide it more efficiently than the government does), but to large agribusinesses who have more than enough resources and diversity to self-insure. So the entities who are getting the subsidy don't actually need it. But it makes a great way for politicians to stealthily transfer wealth to their donors and supporters.

 _> The intent is not to make food cheaper (although that may happen as a side effect)_

It doesn't make food cheaper, it makes it more expensive and creates a mismatch between supply and demand.

 _> I am not sure that really limits the desire of innovators and entrepreneurs to seek out ways to provide cheaper food._

It might not limit the desire, but it certainly limits the ability. It's hard to compete with large businesses that get government subsidies they don't actually need.

<comment><USER53> _> But the vast majority of the subsidy goes not to small individual farmers, who might need such insurance_

You are quite right that there is no preferential treatment for smaller farmers. It is simply for each dollar in premiums required, 60¢ is paid for by the farmer, 40¢ is paid by the government. It is true that those who pay the most in premiums (i.e. the largest farms) will receive the most in subsidies. It is designed to be a fair system without preference for any particular farm.

 _> large agribusinesses who have more than enough resources and diversity to self-insure._

On the flip side, small farmers have off-farm jobs so a loss on the farm is not likely to sink them. They still have their day job to pay the bills.

 _> private sector insurance companies and speculators could provide it more efficiently than the government does_

I'm a tad bit skeptical. Private insurance has done well to serve individual events like a house fire or automobile accident, but when things happen on a grand scale like a major flood or widespread fire, it seems they fall back to government bailouts. The trouble with insurance on the farm is that it isn't usually just one farmer with failure. It is all the farmers at the same time. Private insurance hasn't proven a model to handle such cases, and if you're going to rely on the government to step in anyway as we've seen many times in the private insurance space when disaster strikes a large area, why not codify that action?

 _> It's hard to compete with large businesses that get government subsidies they don't actually need._

I am quite interested in your elaboration on this as I am not seeing how large businesses are advantaged by the subsidy in a way that small business are not. Proportionately, the subsidy given to each farmer is equal.

<comment><USER52> _> for each dollar in premiums required, 60¢ is paid for by the farmer, 40¢ is paid by the government_

I have no idea where you are getting this from. There are no actual "premiums". There is no actual insurance involved. The "insurance" is, as you originally said, "effective"\--for certain crops, if their market price is below a certain price set by the government, the government pays farmers the difference as a subsidy. But only for certain crops, and those crops (the biggest one is corn) are mostly grown by large agribusinesses, not small farms. (The corn subsidy is even worse because much of the corn produced doesn't get eaten, it gets turned into ethanol to put in gasoline, for no good reason.)

 _> small farmers have off-farm jobs_

I don't know which small farmers you are talking about. Most small farms are family owned businesses and provide the entire income for the family members who participate. Family members who have off-farm jobs are the ones who have left the farm and switched to other careers.

 _> Private insurance has done well to serve individual events like a house fire or automobile accident, but when things happen on a grand scale like a major flood or widespread fire, it seems they fall back to government bailouts._

First, while that may be true, it doesn't mean the government provides the insurance more efficiently.

Second, private insurance companies are often restricted by the government in the premiums they can charge. For example, while flood insurance in regions which flood frequently is not cheap, it is cheaper than it would be in a free market, because in a free market the premiums would be based solely on actuarial data on the frequency of flooding and the expected losses from flooding, which would go up as more things of value were built in such areas. But the government, due to political pressure, doesn't allow the premiums to get that high, which means that people who choose to live in such areas, or companies that choose to build infrastructure there, don't see the full costs involved and so have less incentive to find somewhere else to go.

 _> I am not seeing how large businesses are advantaged by the subsidy in a way that small business are not_

They are advantaged by being able to lobby to have the subsidies go to crops that they can more easily grow. But they are further advantaged by the mere existence of the subsidies, since they don't need them while smaller farms might.

<comment><USER53> _> I have no idea where you are getting this from._

Experience. I am a farmer.

 _> if their market price is below a certain price set by the government, the government pays farmers the difference as a subsidy._

Yes. This is insurance. A claim is made if the price fails to meet the insured value. There is also insurance against production output, which covers things like weather events. This is where the vast majority of the subsidy dollars go. Farmers pay 60% of the cost, the government pays 40% of the cost. As such, like I mentioned, for every dollar required in insurance premiums, you pay 60¢, the government pays 40¢.

 _> I don't know which small farmers you are talking about_

The data indicates most farmers have off-farm jobs, myself included. I can certainly talk about my small farm, if you wish. Let's face it, unless you have a large farm, there simply isn't much work to do. You need an off-farm job to remain viable. The customer isn't going to pay you to sit on HN all day long. They will pay enough to justify the time you do spend farming, but the rest of your time is up to you to figure out how to make it pay.

 _> because in a free market the premiums would be based solely on actuarial data on the frequency of flooding and the expected losses from flooding_

It is interesting you mention data, as that is the primary reason why the government operates this insurance system. It gives reason for farmers to report what they are going to produce ahead of time, allowing the government (and private sector) to make informed decisions.

 _> They are advantaged by being able to lobby to have the subsidies go to crops that they can more easily grow._

I'm not sure what you mean? The subsidies give no preference to what you want to grow. It is simply a matter of you paying 60¢ on every dollar or premium required to insure you. The reason corn producers receive the most subsidies, which is likely what you are thinking of, is simply because corn is the most frequently grown crop – by a large margin. More acres means greater overall risk, and therefore more overall insurance premiums. Which means that the 40¢ on each premium dollar equals a greater amount than a crop with lesser premium demands.

If you want to grow tomatoes, you'll still get 40¢ on every premium dollar you need to spend to enrol in the insurance system. The reason you'll probably choose corn over tomatoes is simply because the market for corn is tremendously larger. It is mostly eaten by animals and cars, which dwarf the number of humans eating tomatoes by orders of magnitude, not to mention much more easily shipped across the entire world. The market for tomatoes is highly localized due to shipping issues (before reaching the processor) and a fairly tough sell in comparison due to the much smaller market.

<comment><USER52> _> Experience. I am a farmer._

Fair enough.

 _> This is insurance._

Not by any reasonable definition of that word. It's a subsidy. The fact that you "file a claim" is just a way of using words to obfuscate what is really going on.

 _> There is also insurance against production output, which covers things like weather events._

This isn't really insurance either, because weather events that affect farm output are not rare (neither are price fluctuations, for that matter), and insurance is only supposed to insure against rare events. (Not to mention that risks that affect everybody, instead of just a small percentage of people, are not really insurable, as you yourself have already pointed out.)

 _> for every dollar required in insurance premiums, you pay 60¢, the government pays 40¢_

What premiums?

Also, it makes no sense for the entity that is insuring you (the government) to pay part of your premium.

 _> The subsidies give no preference to what you want to grow._

Yes, they do, since there are only subsidies for certain crops.

 _> unless you have a large farm, there simply isn't much work to do. You need an off-farm job to remain viable. The customer isn't going to pay you to sit on HN all day long. They will pay enough to justify the time you do spend farming, but the rest of your time is up to you to figure out how to make it pay._

In other words, you are confirming that small farmers are at a disadvantage compared to large agribusinesses. Do you think large agribusinesses complain that customers don't pay enough for them to make a living at farming?

To some extent this could be due to economies of scale, but given modern technology I have difficulty believing that that alone is enough to account for the obvious disparity between your description of how tough it is for small farms to stay in business, and the position of large agribusinesses. If the government is supposed to be helping farmers stay in business, it clearly is not doing a very good job.

<comment><USER53> _> What premiums?_

The money you have to pay to enrol in the insurance system? I'm not sure I understand what you are asking here. The agriculture policy was reconfigured a number of years ago. My farming career is admittedly too young to know how the way things used to be, but perhaps that is our point of contention? That you're remembering the way things used to be?

 _> This isn't really insurance_

If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...

 _> because weather events that affect farm output are not rare_

In aggregate across the entire country, sure. I doubt an individual farmer will have many claims in their career. Disastrous weather events aren't that common when observed within a single area. Areas that are naturally risker, of course, pay higher premiums. This is no different than any other type of insurance. When observed across the entire country, people make claims each and every day within the private sector insurance system.

 _> Yes, they do, since there are only subsidies for certain crops._

But the insurance – and thus the subsidy on the premium – is available for anything you'd ever want to grow. I guess if you want to start farming ragweed you might be out of luck. Is that something you see viability in or are we simply looking at made up hypotheticals that have no bearing in reality?

Besides, if you do want to start growing ragweed for whatever reason, since there is no government insurance available you can buy your insurance from the private sector at much lower cost, as you stated earlier in this thread. No need for a subsidy in the first place thanks to the efficiency of the private sector.

 _> In other words, you are confirming that small farmers are at a disadvantage compared to large agribusinesses._

I suppose that in terms of economies of scale, larger farmers have an advantage. The insurance system (and thus the subsidies we speak of) seems quite fair to me, however. There is no preference given to any farmer. You pay 60% of your cost no matter how big or how small your farm is. If you want to give preference to smaller farmers, I guess I'll take it, but I'm okay with things being fair. It is only fair.

 _> Do you think large agribusinesses complain that customers don't pay enough for them to make a living at farming?_

I'm not sure why anyone would complain, to be honest. On a per-hour basis, on average, it pays better than software development, my other career. But it only takes me a couple of months out of the year to do all the work. Why would I sit around doing nothing the rest of the time? That seems rather silly. Why would you, the person who eats my food, want to pay me to sit around 10 months of the year when I'm happy to have another job to keep me busy? The big farmers have to keep busy in order to make ends meet. Should there be preference given to smaller farmers? And if so, shouldn't the consumer make that choice on their own by choosing to buy from the smaller farmers?

<comment><USER52> _> The money you have to pay to enrol in the insurance system?_

What money is that? I'm looking for some reference that explains to me what "insurance system" you are talking about, because so far I have not found one. Everything I have found talks about subsidies, not insurance.

 _> If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck..._

Which is exactly my point: what you are describing does not walk or quack like insurance. It walks and quacks like a subsidy.

 _> the insurance – and thus the subsidy on the premium – is available for anything you'd ever want to grow._

Again, I am looking for some kind of reference that says this, because so far everything I have found talks about subsidies for certain crops only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Using a concept from software engineering, why can't they just partially roll this out by percentage or by state? Try swapping current benefits w/ equivalent UBI in a handful of states and study what happens?

</comment><comment><USER48> The most exciting thing about UBI is how versatile its benefits are for human resilience.

Work conditions unfair? you have a much easier time quitting knowing you won't be stuck with 0 income.

Politics overrun with corporate money? flush it out with grassroots donations now that you have some pocket money.

Sick of the day to day grind? take your money to a community that fits with your personality now that every community is getting a massive cash injection

Worried about a president like Trump cutting your SNAP benefits again? Opt-in to UBI and never worry about your funds getting cut without the entire country getting infuriated.

People rarely feel this level of freedom. I've only felt this level of security recently but I believe everyone deserves this. I was only lucky to have made it this far from the opportunities given to me by my parents and the support I had when I couldn't stop fucking up. People need to be able to take risks and have retries. Without it, you get people working jobs they hate while envying lives they'll never have.

<comment><USER22> Yes, free money magically appearing would make life easier for the individuals receiving it (at least, in the short term). No one is arguing otherwise. The concern is that it may have even greater negative effects on the economy as a whole.

<comment><USER55> As for right now, the US economy as a whole is looking great. GDP number is good, stock market at high, etc but for most ordinary people those means nothing, they still suffer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> What's to stop companies from just upping their prices to absorb the $1k given to us? We need a real UBI scheme, this policy won't solve anything.

<comment><USER32> All companies won't do this because they're looking to maximize their profits. One of the key factors that consumers look at is the price of a product, so if 3 competitors raise prices (due to UBI) and one keeps it the same or lowers their prices, in a well functioning market I would expect that competitor to start to take over more marketshare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> With unemployment rate at below 4%, where is the evidence that we have enough automation to warrant UBI?

</comment><comment><USER58> UBI is just an excuse to do the real fix, and that's tax the wealthy and the corporations their fair share.

It's ridiculous my tax rate is over 30% while wealthy people has it at 15%, and Amazon has it at 0%. That's the real problem! Yang wants to give people #1kBro so they can shut up about the real issue here is tax fairness.

<comment><USER59> I agree with your overall point that this result is backwards to what people probably want. That being said the situation is hardly ridiculous.

Eg, To a pretty reasonable first approximation, all of Amazon's income is either going to be (1) distributed to shareholders and trigger income/capital gains tax or (2) invested in making goods cheaper for amazon's customers.

It isn't immediately obvious that it is a good idea to tax a system designed to get goods to people cheaply. The money Amazon reinvests in itself is in the short term all about making life better for its customers, not its owners. In the long term that reverses, but the reversal triggers additional tax events.

> It's ridiculous my tax rate is over 30% while wealthy people has it at 15%

The wealthy will be paying much more tax than you though. In raw amounts, the wealthy are doing much more to run the government financially than you are by orders of magnitude.

It isn't immediately laughable. A billionaire is making an absurd contribution vs. other taxpayers even at a 5%. And again, that part of their money isn't going towards themselves, it is difficult to consume that much in real resources in a year. It is likely going to investing in things that other people want.

There is no obviously-right or obviously-wrong with tax. Systems are complicated.

<comment><USER60> In reality Amazon is accumulating cash faster than it can spend it, same as the rest of big tech. If it had things to reinvest it into it wouldn't be such a problem

<comment><USER61> Once your business is accumulating cash faster than it can spend it, it's time to pay a dividend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> My problem with UBI is

1\. It's not fair work-sharing, if people can live on it.

2\. There's no economic mechanism that guarantees we'll have enough money to fund it every month.

I propose another solution. Accessible, high paying jobs. If someone is unskilled, train them. Once they are skilled, guide them to useful work.

<comment><USER63> This forces the bag holders to pay more. What happens when companies expenses increase? They increase their costs, cut jobs, cut benefits, and in very rare cases take short term losses to implement one of the former methods.

There are not enough high paying jobs. Period. Hard stop. There won't ever be.

Now, we need gas station attendants, room cleaners, baggers, bus drivers. These jobs will be replaced by much less expensive robots. Just like switchboard operators, seamstresses, tailors, cobblers, shoe shiners, appliance repairmen have all largely been replaced.

Pray tell, what high paying jobs will these people be given when they're put out of work? Who will pay to train them? How will they afford to live during the 2-120mos of training they'll need to get these high pain paying jobs?

UBI should be funded by a proportional tax on every product and the man hours of work it replaces. A calculator can do in 15 minutes what an average American would spend a day doing. Just as an example everyone should immediately grok. Then scale these up and require companies applying for patents, patent renewals, or business licenses to figure out how long it would take to do a job without their tool by comparing to other available alternatives. A positive net benefit of this is all the new jobs made figuring out how damn hard shit is to do without tools. Companies can then use their numbers to advertise.

Mind you, both our solutions are wholly unrealistic.

<comment><USER62> I'm doubtful of any tax-based plan as a longterm solution. Here's why. Money needs to flow in a circle for a sustainability. But we can't force people to spend all their money monthly and even then tax is not 100% so net negative monthly shortage risk. Maybe we need a spend it or lose it basic-credit system.

About high paying jobs, suppose we pay 100$/hr for people to monitor the machines, up to a cap of 1K$/mth.

Here's one of the semi startrek-esque longterm solution that works reliably but not yet possible. Suppose basic goods productivity improves 10000X. Then a small number of people can produce the basics for everyone without any money issues involved.

<comment><USER63> Just to be clear. You're doubtful that this will work so we shouldn't try, and should continue to watch people living and dying on the streets from the comforts of the lavish accommodations?

Then you go on to propose fantastical, never gonna happen, jobs just poofing into existence at some indeterminate date in the future? Perhaps when enough people have died on the streets as to make UBI palatable over more food and housing riots? That's where we are headed if we can't start fixing these problems there will be riots.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Beneath Another Sky: a historian's global take on migration and identity - <AUTHOR> https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2017/12/beneath-another-sky-historian-s-revisionist-global-take-migration-and-identity <comment><USER2> " Such regressive developments can only be pauses in an ongoing forward movement."

Trashy globalist arrogance.

The 'Germanics' have been around for a few thousand years, it's not an issue of 'nation state' \- if they believe that all that they are is more than some Federalist, unelected Bureaucracy, then so be it.

Sweden is in many ways more successful than many US states - so then why do they need a Federation?

Why do certain people think that the tendency towards global governance and the abolition of states, ethnicity (i.e. actual diversity) is a good thing?

And how do they somehow make it a moral issue?

For about 1000 years the borders of Europe have bounced around but somehow they almost always end up roughly along ethnic lines.

How many wars were fought over Spanish succession? By French, Habsbourgs etc? And yet, 'Spain' is pretty much 'Spain' even to this day (yes, an amalgamation surely, but most of them roughly 'Spanish' at least considerably more so than they are 'German' or 'French').

It's also a crazy paradox that those usually virtue signalling 'diversity' in specific locales, are the same one's pushing for policies which tend to break up and delegitimize ethnic groups, thereby decreasing ethnicity in the world.

<comment><USER3> I'm an historian of Europe in the 1500-1800 period and I have to say, respectfully, that your assumptions about the continuity of ethnic identity are just factually incorrect. As an example, 'Spain' was _not_ just a single ethno-state in earlier periods - it was a patchwork of different kingdoms with distinct languages and customs. In fact Spanish identity is not even a single formation today, as any Galician or Catalan or Basque would be likely to tell you. And indeed there are many parts of Spain that have more in common with neighboring regions in France (or Portugal) than with other parts of Spain. This was the norm up until the 19th century when ethnicity became fetishized. I can point you to many books and journal articles on this if you're genuinely interested.

<comment><USER4> I share your beliefs, the English empires in France, or Norman, Gascon and Aquitanian empires in Britain, are another example where the borders of today do not reflect the borders of history. I am less well read than you and would like to ask you to post some links if you have some.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple approves previously rejected HKMap.live app - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/hkmaplive/status/1180137132842610688 <comment><USER2> The fact that we can't side-load apps is a tragedy. Any anti-trust investigation into Apple + Google should discuss this it's highly anti- competitive.

I get that they want a sanitary app store but if I go to myapp.com I should be able to side load.

It would also be nice to side-load from phone to phone in situations like this so that apps can't be blocked by governments like China.

If the apps just verified keys that would be enough so that you know you're installing the app from the right developer.

<comment><USER3> The fact that the word 'side-load' exists and is used with a straight face is part of the problem. Installing applications yourself is the default. It's all these walled gardens that are weird.

<comment><USER4> As a long-time desktop Linux user, I don't quite agree with this. The default for me long before iOS existed was to install software from my distribution's repository. Sideloading software not included in the repository was often a technically onerous process, to be repeated manually in case of updates. I had pity for users of Mac OS and Windows who had no access to such convenience.

I don't think having a managed system for installing software is a bad thing at all, though I'm disappointed the big ones don't support third-party repositories. I do think there should always be an option to do it manually.

<comment><USER5> As a casual user I prefer the walled garden that I get with iPhone.

Sure there are other apps but it's just too much variety. What is out there is good and works.

Maybe I don't know what I am missing because I never had it.

<comment><USER6> _Maybe I don't know what I am missing because I never had it._

That applies to freedom too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The big takeaway is that the app was never _removed_ from the store - it was just never approved. Apps not being approved is quite common.

All the headlines were saying that the app was "banned"/removed from the store, leading to massive outrage.

<comment><USER8> I don't see how there's much difference, it's like arguing that a library isn't "banning" a book because they refused to carry it in the first place.

<comment><USER7> Because not being approved is normal for all sorts of apps. This whole controversy was blown out of proportion. If your app is not approved, you just make the changes and resubmit.

<comment><USER9> Assuming changes can be made in order to be approved while still being true to their goal (which is essentially escaping from law enforcement). Apple rejected the app explicitly because of what it was trying to achieve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe it was a misunderstanding or review failure, not an evil conspiracy? You know, they are know to happen quite often...

<comment><USER11> So it's either incompetence or sucking up to China?

<comment><USER12> " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to criticize. Assume good faith._"

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As others here have said, Linux distributions are well used by using official packages. That said, my two Linux laptops and Linux servers I spin up for personal projects are at least partially for the freedom to install anything I want.

For macOS, iPadOS, iOS for my watch, and iOS for my iPhone, I like the protected walled garden. I also like to sometimes use my Chromebook for the same reason: these closed platforms feel more secure to me.

I am happy that Apple OKed the HKMap.live app.

<comment><USER14> With macOS, you can install anything you want. The macOS App Store only contains a subset of all software available/written for macOS.

<comment><USER15> That seems to be changing too for apps outside the Mac App Store:

"Beginning in macOS 10.15, notarization is required by default for all software." [1]

How many users would even figure out (if it's possible and) how to bypass this? Looks like developers will have to do a lot more.

[1]: [https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/notarizin...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/notarizing_your_app_before_distribution)

<comment><USER16> Not that difficult to notarize an app. For example, the latest Sublime Text just added it the other day.

<comment><USER17> Alright, but, of course, we're talking about more legacy apps, here. What if I've paid a licence for an obscure VST?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Since no other comments or the Twitter thread have any context, here's a Boing Boing article on what the heck HKMap.live is: [https://boingboing.net/2019/10/04/hkmap-live-hong- kong.html](https://boingboing.net/2019/10/04/hkmap-live-hong-kong.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> Recent and related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21142977](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21142977).

</comment><comment><USER19> I once got denied. Deleted the app, changed the name by just adding a !. Got approved. Apples process is very inconsistent. Unclear to me if it was public pressure or just the failures of their system

</comment><comment> d-sc I'm genuinely curious. Does this app do anything that couldn't be accomplished by a progressive web app?

<comment><USER20> Yes, gain a real audience. For whatever reason regular users don't use progressive web apps at nearly the same numbers as native apps. At least on iOS

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Slightly OT: Why does HKMap have to be an actual app and not a browser app/PWA? Does it do something in the background or with the hardware of the phone? Or are websites more easily blocked in HK than the App Store?

</comment><comment><USER22> What if this app is actually a "honeypot" developed by the HK/Chinese government?

Protestors being infiltrated by those who wish to subdue them, has been a thing since forever.

</comment><comment><USER23> Our game uses emoji to represent players and their structures on the map. Just like HKMap app which displays live events using iOS emoji font.

We've been rejected until we came up with our own graphics for emoji. Who knows, maybe this was why they were rejected. Also, the UI is quite buggy. Could be another reason.

</comment><comment><USER24> Could this work as a website? Seems like the easiest way to avoid depending on App Store

<comment><USER25> It is, [https://hkmap.live](https://hkmap.live), and the app is probably boilerplate with the PWA embedded inside.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I get that "no encouraging illegal behavior" could be a rule.

But then I wonder how there are multiple crowd sourced speed camera apps.

<comment><USER27> How would "speed camera apps" encourage illegal behavior? The state patrol in my state is happy for people to know where cops are places on the road, where speed cameras are used ... this knowledge makes people slow down and makes the road safer.

<comment><USER28> > How would "speed camera apps" encourage illegal behavior?

If almost all speed cameras are in the app, then you can just slow down near the cameras and speed everywhere else.

If there's no app, you don't know where the cameras are, so you need to be careful everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Put under pressure, Apple is coming back. Funny

</comment><comment><USER30> I bet they read the uproar here.

</comment><comment><USER31> Cool, Apple isn't so bad I though after this app ban.

But anyway, if you're in China - be careful, seems like Chinese icloud (or something like it) under government control, too many issues/speculations about it.</comment>


Programmers should learn to be language agnostic - <AUTHOR> http://www.killerphp.com/articles/programmers-should-learn-to-be-language-agnostic/ <comment><USER2> That's not an article, it's a pandering, resume-padding piece of bait for his potential employers. And "language" in his case means PHP vs Java:

 _In fact, when looking at projects, I always consider the project's needs first and then would look at languages._

I said the exact same thing, in interviews. But as soon as I am hired I tell them I am actually Common Lisp implementation agnostic.

P.S. He also used "irregardless".

</comment><comment><USER3> Hrumph - I prefer what this other guy said:

 _"The disadvantage of believing that all programming languages are equivalent is that it's not true. But the advantage is that it makes your life a lot simpler. And I think that's the main reason the idea is so widespread. It is a comfortable idea."_

<http://paulgraham.com/icad.html></comment>


The "Thinking Functionally" Series - <AUTHOR> http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/series/thinking-functionally.html

<comment><USER2> Kinda off topic but it's a pity about the choice of F#, even though it might be a fantastic functional language. I just can't find myself willing to invest time learning a language that's basically locked to a single operating system.

Most of my work is on software that runs on big iron unix systems and I suspect Mono would be a tough to impossible sell in large enterprise due to lack of professional services and support. Hell it's impossible to even sell the idea of putting Linux on some of the systems unless it's RHEL.

<comment><USER3> ... _it's a pity about the choice of F#_...

Exactly what I was thinking. I know functional programming is interesting to me, and from experience I know that learning a new paradigm can improve your competence as a developer, but I have the same reservations about learning a language I'm pretty sure I won't have a realistic chance to actually use.

If there are similar resources in Haskell or Erlang... now that I could convince myself to spend some time on.

<comment><USER4> I've studied some ML and as far as I can tell, F# is basically just ML plus access to CLI libraries and support for CLI-specific data structures, generics, etc. Awesome if you're a .NET developer, but if you aren't, then there's not much of a point in learning F#--but SML and OCaml are basically equivalent options.

F#, SML, and OCaml are basically one functional language family, while Haskell and Erlang are in completely different families. And then there's the Lisp/Scheme family, which is again quite different.

<comment><USER3> Interesting! All I know about .NET is that the native ORM is apparently awesome (second-hand opinion, no less, and I can't even correctly recall its name).

I learned a little Scheme to try and help a friend while I was in college, but that's about the extent of my exposure to functional languages... it seems like a real shame that this style of development is apparently so highly- regarded but doesn't get much attention in early programmer education.

I definitely see the utility of OOP, and as far as marketability goes it's still the good bet, but it'd be great to see better resources for functional programming.

<comment><USER4> LINQ is the name of what you're describing.

The ML family is quite different from Scheme. ML's salient feature is its powerful type checking system. It allows you to almost eliminate runtime errors.

Functional programming used to get much more attention from universities than it does now. So did C. Now they're trending toward doing everything in Java, which is what industry seems to want, but it's dumbing down the education.

Classic rant post about this phenomenon can be found here: [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchool...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html)

<comment><USER3> Yep, that's the one! Thanks again. Despite often not totally agreeing with Joel, I taught myself and my classmates C and then C++ in high school, re- learned C++ in college, and am one of those people who railed against Java as a replacement.

My knee-jerk reaction would be that functional programming isn't an important skill for industry... but then neither are the low-level RDBMS classes I took as requirements, and I'm sure a lot of other people could chime in with "US university failed to prepare me for work" stories of their own, so that's beaten to death.

I'm getting over my reactive Java loathing thanks to Android, but man, it'd still be nice to get people learning functional _and_ procedural _and_ object- oriented programming.

<comment><USER2> What's fantastic about Java is not the Java language but that you now get a JVM for just about every platform. You have Java, Groovy, Scala, Closure, etc. all these programming languages you could pick from and you get cross-platform support for free as well as being able to use all the thousands of Java libraries that are already out there. It's a powerful combination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks like a great resource for people new to functional programming. One thing that I wish more F# web sites would look into, though, is using Tomas Petricek's awesome formatting tools [1][2], which give you tooltips for F# code on the web. This makes reading F# code on the web a lot more like reading F# code in an IDE, and makes it much easier to understand what's going on in some examples.

[1] Formatting F# code for the web - <http://tomasp.net/blog/fswebsnippets- intro.aspx>

[2] Announcing - Literate programming tools for F#

</comment><comment><USER6> Slightly tangential, but does anyone know of a good tutorial/explanation of real-life functional programming in designing apps? For example, building a fully AJAX-enabled, MVC-style web app in a functional manner?

I still really want to get "into" functional programming, but all the tutorials I find seem to be awfully mathematically-oriented or theoretical. For me to really "grok" it as it might apply to my life, I'm still trying to get how to combine it with webapps or CRUD-type apps. Even back-end would be fine -- how to write a web server written "functionally", that retrieved data from a database and turned it into JSON format, for example.

<comment><USER7> Check out "Monadic Design Patterns for the Web"[1]. I haven't read it yet, but the description sounds like exactly what you're looking for.

I don't think you're going to find an escape from the theory, though... the abstractions that are necessary to adapt functional programming to something like a CRUD app are going to be mind-bending, one way or another. It might be easy to write something simple up in Yesod or Snap, but that's only because the framework authors are doing most of the abstraction-herding for you. From what I can tell, that book goes into the messy details.

[1]: <http://www.artima.com/shop/monadic_design_patterns>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why do they demand that functions only have one input? They claim that it's because that's how functions work in math, but that's not the case. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivariable_calculus></comment>


Ask HN: Google Reader Alternative? - <AUTHOR>

I switched from Bloglines to Google Reader about a year ago, and prefer the efficiency of Reader, but still feel bogged down with Reader limited organization methods (only one level folders).<p>What do you use for your feedreader? <comment><USER2> I use Feverº by Shaun Inman. It requires that you have a hosting account somewhere, but has an interesting twist to it:

You set up your subscriptions as either "Kindling" or "Sparks". Kindling are your essential feeds and Sparks are your supplementary feeds. So Sparks just kind of sit in the background (though you can read them too), but when enough of them start pointing at an interesting story, that story becomes "Hot" and is prioritized by "temperature", kind of like Techmeme does, but for your personal feeds. It has completely wiped out my "Unread Items" issue, because that number isn't really surfaced in the UI. And with the Hot items, you're unlikely to miss something important.

<http://feedafever.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I really like Brief, a Firefox addon. I like minimalism.

It has folders.</comment>


Exploring undefined behavior using constexpr - <AUTHOR> https://shafik.github.io/c++/undefined%20behavior/2019/05/11/explporing_undefined_behavior_using_constexpr.html <comment><USER2> I've recently been writing just pure C and have been surprised by how much I enjoy it. There are so many things about C++ that have remained confusing to me, even though I've used it extensively over the years and have a lot of respect for the language. But the simplicity not having to wrap my head around all kinds of bizarre concepts that still confuse me in C++, I must say it's been a bit liberating of a feeling.

<comment><USER3> I guess writing it can be fun, but managing it isn't. When I review C code I have to spend 80% of my attention on figuring out if there's anything fishy happening with memory. It's terrible how much C code is just memory-management boilerplate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a super interesting approach I hadn't thought of. Unfortunately it seems to be limited in practice, as demonstrated by the article: first of all, certain constructs cannot be used in a constexpr context, and second (and more worryingly) many compilers fail to diagnose undefined behavior or do so incorrectly. If the second issue can be fixed I can see this being a very useful, if specialized tool for improving the safety of C++ code.

<comment><USER5> > many compilers fail to diagnose undefined behavior or do so incorrectly.

It would be much easier if undefined behaviour was better defined, because then a compiler could recognize it and diagnose it. Of course then it wouldn't be undefined behaviour any more, so problem solved.

<comment><USER4> The bounds of what consists undefined behavior is, well, defined. The "undefined" bit refers to the behavior in this case, not its ability to be recognized.</comment></comment></comment>


Google boss says 'nobody was harmed' by Buzz debacle  - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/feb/17/google-buzz-schmidt

<comment><USER2> Anyone else starting to get sick of this guy?

I still like Google all around, but the privacy comments were insane.... And the Buzz thing really pissed me off.

They are damaging their brand with him being the face of Google.

It OK for Google to make mistakes (or what people might perceive as privacy infractions), but at least sound apologetic when you do... Least you could do.

<comment><USER3> Didn't the "privacy" quote also come from the Guardian? Could there be some kind of bias here you think?

Nowhere in his full quotes did he blame users for being confused.

"I would say that we did not understand how to communicate Google Buzz and its privacy," he said. "There was a lot of confusion when it came out on Tuesday, and people thought that somehow we were publishing their email addresses and private information, which was not true."

"I think it was our fault that we did not communicate that fact very well, but the important thing is that no really bad stuff happens in the sense that nobody's personal information was disclosed."

Be careful not to take news reporting - especially headlines - as fact.

<comment><USER2> In that context, you're right doesn't sound as menacing.

That said "that somehow we were publishing their email addresses and private information, which was not true." seems like sort actually untrue, indeed.

Maybe they weren't displaying emails. But they certainly showed the names of my contacts and pictures. I looked at a contacts computer who had the defaul settings, and could see some of my profile.

I guess my point is they should have gone of the side of privacy and caution, but they needed to err on the side of huge social networks (and displaying info helps those build) to sell this product to the public. I just think they made a selfish corporate decision.

At least they are trying to remedy it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I guess he himself was confused. Because when the Picasa buzz hack came out(use Picasa profile to find out a person's email), I posted a link to his Picasa profile, and only a few minutes later it was deleted.

So what Eric is saying is that privacy is fine and dandy for him...but the rest of us can go eat cake.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think Eric Schmidt doesn't really understand the average user and apparently the large user base who don't give a damn about status updates.

The whole strategy to impose Google Buzz was disaster. First things first, you shouldn't really play with one of your favorite product unless you have full faith and knowledge that it will complement.

They should have employed the Google Wave strategy to release Buzz or just made Buzz as an opt-in feature and then geeks could use. The change of any kind is intimidating for the normal user and Google should have taken that into account.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have to say that Eric Schmidt's record on privacy does not inspire confidence.

</comment><comment><USER7> Google took the address book of each and every buzz user and made a subset of that data public with little or no warning that this behavior would occur.

This is a huge, huge miss step for a company who wants to be the banker for all of your personal data.

Trust is everything.

 _Look at how many services Google offers_ They can know your buying habits, where you live, where you are _right now_ , your credit card number, your friends, your contacts, your browsing habits. _If they can't be absolutely trusted with your data it is game over. Period. The end._

</comment><comment><USER8> Well, a lot of them were confused. You have to have a public profile for any of your buzzes to be visible, and in order to have a public profile you have to fill it out.

</comment><comment><USER9> This headline is very misleading. Here's the actual quote:

 _"I would say that we did not understand how to communicate Google Buzz and its privacy," he said. "There was a lot of confusion when it came out on Tuesday, and people thought that somehow we were publishing their email addresses and private information, which was not true."_

The context where he's using the the word "confusion" is completely accurate, and in no way makes it sound like he's blaming the user, which is what this headline implies.

</comment><comment><USER10> This guy is damaging Google.

<comment><USER11> ..finally decided to jump on the "Poor man's email" bandwagon, using their email system as a base.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/google-ceo-twitter-a-poor- man...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-ceo-twitter-a-poor-mans-email- system-2009-3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> When dealing with potentially the largest user base in the world, any "confusion" is the fault of the design and development team for not designing, testing, and redesigning a user-friendly (for whatever that term is worth) system.

I used to have a female acquaintance who would complain that "all men are assholes, every guy I've ever dated has ended up cheating on me." I had a male acquaintance who would complain that "all women are bitches, they give me their number and then never answer when I call." They both didn't like it too much when I pointed out that each of them were the common denominators in their respective problems.

When complaints about your company's approach to privacy pop up in large quantities, what's the common denominator? Thousands of "confused" users who don't understand that their privacy wasn't violated/isn't really important after all, or one company with a wrong-headed approach to privacy? When faced with frequent failure, it's not the world out to get you, it's your own failure. But when you have an agenda to push, like focusing on attractiveness over maturity or integrity, looking for quick access to sex instead of building relationships, or creating a master database of people's preferences to serve them the most uniquely targeted ads that they will be the most likely to click on because you don't have a real product to sell, then you tend to ignore the signals around you and push blindly through.

</comment><comment><USER13> In context the quote isn't as damning as the headline makes it sound, but he still does sound out of touch with a) his user base b) his company's other reactions to the situation c) his company's mission statement. While the rest of Google has been apologizing and fixing things and basically keeping with their image (as much as they can after they messed up so horribly), he's taking the approach of an extraordinarily stereotypical business-exec-suit- corporate-CEO-type. Blame-shifting, saying it's not that big a deal, that sort of hot air.

</comment><comment><USER14> Every-time this guy opens his mouth something ignorant and unsympathetic comes out and a bit of my Google-love dies. :-(

</comment><comment><USER15> Is saying someone is confused about something the same as calling a person "confused"? I think I would be offended if when I was confused about a new feature someone said I was a "confused" person...

<comment><USER16> Good thing he didn't say that then!

<comment><USER15> Exactly my point. The submission's title states that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> ...and in the past, companies used to call bugs "features"

</comment><comment><USER18> My biggest lesson from The Design of Everyday Things is that if a lot of people are confused with how something works, it's the designer's fault, not the person's.</comment>