Comment by jonahx

Comment by jonahx 2 days ago

> In my view the most productive people of every field are not incentivized by money and would do it anyway.

The idea that money is not an effective incentive to drive behavior is wishful thinking. Even just among devs, even just among devs who truly love programming, most would be doing very different work, and working for different organizations (or none at all) if money weren't the driver.

> Hence UBI here would mean that the dev would not have to monetize.

Ok, but the dev might still want to monetize, and we're back to the original question.

scbrg a day ago

> Even just among devs, even just among devs who truly love programming, most would be doing very different work, and working for different organizations (or none at all) if money weren't the driver.

Somehow I can imagine that a world where a the brightest minds of a generation didn't spend their prime optimizing ad clicking wouldn't necessarily be a complete disaster.

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mlrtime a day ago

Optimizing ad clicking is profitable and the thing that would [partially] pay for UBI. That stops happening and money/value stop being created. The market is not 0 sum.
It's good to talk about UBI, but people taking it seriously have no idea how to fund it.

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- loglog a day ago
  
  That's right, much of the market is negative sum.
  
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laserlight 2 days ago

> Ok, but the dev might still want to monetize, and we're back to the original question.

It's alright. Those who would like to monetize can. There are others who wouldn't and UBI would utilize that surplus talent, which otherwise had to perform tasks they weren't skilled at to earn a living.

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Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe a day ago

> most would be doing very different work, and working for different organizations (or none at all) if money weren't the driver.

With UBI I wouldn't be surprised if those would be even more productive doing something else they want. And others who couldn't do the CS curiculum even though they would have loved to because they had to find a job quickly would plausibly be at their place instead.

I really view UBI as something that puts oil in the society: people have less friction to be at the spot they're better at. People who want to do nothing will not slow us down anymore. And jobs that nobody wants to do would finally be paid by how much they suck instead of how much money your parents had to educate you.

> Ok, but the dev might still want to monetize, and we're back to the original question

I don't really see the issue. We're far from having shortage of ways to make people pay: ads, paywall, soft paywall, begging, rate limits. What's the issue with those? I certainly don't like them as a user and as a member of society but am fine with people doing that.

Especially with UBI in place: if the dev is putting a paywall, they have to compete with people that have plausibly much more freedom of time and mind to allocate to another free foss project. So in the end it becomes less profitable to be adversarial against end users.

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jonahx a day ago

> And others who couldn't do the CS curiculum even though they would have loved to because they had to find a job quickly would plausibly be at their place instead.
Unfortunately, also wishful thinking. A particular kind of wishful thinking endemic to naturally highly curious, academic achievers (not a dig, I am one). But -- and if you don't understand this, spending some time teaching at universities makes it abundantly clear -- most of the world is nothing like this. They aren't being held back from their natural passions and curiosities by the demands of living. They would not suddenly flourish under UBI.
> With UBI I wouldn't be surprised if those would be even more productive doing something else they want.
For the people that do naturally love creating and are good at it, they might "even more productive" in one sense -- creating more stuff that they, personally, value. And personally I'd love to do that, but it doesn't maximize value across society. That's one of the main things money is. It's a constraint forcing the production of consensus value. In a world of infinite resources that ceases to matter, but we're still very far from that.
> People who want to do nothing will not slow us down anymore.
Who do you think is supporting them? Until we have robots taking care of everyone for free, support is still a cost levied on other humans.

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- Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 12 hours ago
  
  I am aware that most of the world isn't like this. But I am also aware that there are many people who more than anything want to share things they made, have a positive impact etc. In other words : there are 10x engineers and 10x altruists and some are even both. I am convinced that they collectively could make basically unlimited progress on things we all agree on: less sick people, more happy people, less waste, better environment, etc. I'm sure you've seen some random genius on youtube who built things in their backyards that are normally only buildable by conglomerate with advanced logistics. I just want them to not have to worry about an algorithm and sponsors and accomodate spaced for them to worl together on things.
  > it doesn't maximize value across society
  Well you'd have to define "value" here. I am sure GDP would plummet because bullshit jobs would plummet. The current society is doing maybe a decent job at producing but a terrible job at making it "across society". We still have millions of people dying every year of very preventable causes just because of the lack lf coordination. I think this would be better if we had less noise in our daily lives caused by the system so inefficient that we have bullshit jobs.
  
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Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe a day ago

> The idea that money is not an effective incentive to drive behavior is wishful thinking

It is obviously an incentive. But I think it's not an effective one and has many morally bad side effects.

I highly recommend taking a look at the work of Daniel Pink related to money as an incentive. See The Puzzle Of Motivation (~20min) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y

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