Comment by ChuckMcM
9 years ago
In discussing the basic income stuff offline I realized that there is a naming problem. If you call something basic "income" then it attaches to it all of the mental imagery/modelling around the word income which is something you get in exchange for work, so without work basic "income" creates a cognitive dissonance. This effect seems exactly analogous to home "schooling" which people attaching a mental model and imagery of the word "schooling" to the activity (which is learning).
By calling a basic income system American Equity, Sam shifts the conversation away from the word 'income' because this clearly isn't "income" in the traditional sense, to "shared wealth" which is much closer to the ideas brought along. I think it is a reasonable way to look at it, although I continue to believe that what is the fundamental factor is keeping wealth inequality in check. Extreme wealth inequality is just as unstable a system as extreme wealth equality.
Random question which struck me about this discussion.
Let's take a company like Google and re-imagine it.
From its public statements we know that the bulk of Google's employees cost Google money and cut into its profit. Nearly all of its profit comes from its search advertising business and everything else mostly loses money. If Google was structured as an "economy" than the 1200 or so people who were responsible for search advertising would be like the world wide 1%. They would enjoy lavish perks, free food, daily massages, etc. While all of the other employees would have to work very hard every day doing what they were doing and hope that something didn't come along and get them fired while living out of their car on a salary that was commensurate with how much they were costing Google.
Instead, everyone at the company benefits from the work of the 10% or so of the employees that make all the money in the company with free food and buses that take them to and from work. And even though they are losing the company money by being there, the environment remains vibrant and energized because the company is so wealthy as a whole that they don't have to worry day to day that they will be fired if they do their job to the best of their abilities and be good corporate citizens.
The US is an amazingly wealthy economy. Many of the richest people in the world are citizens of the US. What I hear Sam proposing is that we create public policy around making the US a great place to live for all of its citizens, just like an Apple or Google make their companies a great place to work for all of their employees, regardless of whether they are entry level or C-suite level.
I don't know if it is possible to pull off but I do think it is worth trying to pull it off.
I think the analogy breaks down a bit when you consider that, if the company didn't anticipate that the other businesses (the self driving cars business, for example) wouldn't eventually turn a profit, they would be shut down. You make it sound like search finances all these other endeavors which will lose money forever.
Any individual endeavor could lose money forever. They could be scooped by Waymo. Their super-popular RSS software could be cancelled. The future of communication could be WhatsApp, not Wave.
But they're able to invest in the future because they have the spare resources. Maybe one of these random side projects will become immensely popular. Maybe one of these crazy side projects will become the most popular email interface ever. And even if they don't, the people are still valuable.
I'm not saying that some people won't just coast, but the potential for innovation shouldn't be locked away because "we can't afford it" - we obviously can.