Tech C.E.O.s Are in Love with Their Principal Doomsayer
An interesting read, and I don&#x27;t see why he&#x27;d be confused. In my experience and personally a lot of intelligent people, particular ambitious startup types, <i>like</i> to be challenged (in an intelligent way). They like &quot;intellectual combat&quot;, vigorous debate. They may defend themselves vociferously (they&#x27;re also the type to have extensively thought about and researched their positions already, so they&#x27;re not lightly held) but it&#x27;s <i>exciting</i> to encounter opposed views argued beautifully, where there is strong disagreement but damn if they don&#x27;t have a point. I think some people confuse people dismissing what they consider mediocre arguments with no interest in any challenge at all. As always implementation matters a lot. I mean, that&#x27;s why a lot of us are right here on HN right? To gain information from those smarter then we are.<p>I think his interpretation of UBI is an oversimplification however that does not fully encompass many practical or positive moral considerations in support of it:<p>&gt;<i>&#x27;This, Mr. Harari told me later, is why Silicon Valley is so excited about the concept of universal basic income, or stipends paid to people regardless of whether they work. The message is: “We don’t need you. But we are nice, so we’ll take care of you.”&#x27;</i><p>There are at least a few parts to this. To get the most simple and pragmatic out of the way first, some people are interested in UBI and base level resource&#x2F;shelter&#x2F;information access purely (or at least heavily) from a coldly rational efficiency point of view. They see it as a better system all around vs an unorganized hodgepodge of defined bespoke benefits, and simply figure &quot;well if something needs to be kept around let&#x27;s make it better&quot; and go no farther then that. This also does in fact have at least some real world support as well as theoretical. Simply giving money directly to people in the developing world has yielded promising results in some initial trials I read vs trying to distribute goods. It can be made more resistant to corruption, more decentralized, and many of the efficiencies of a market economy work just as well if the economic input is external.<p>Practical considerations also encompass an expression of <i>humility</i>: even if someone cared only about the &quot;valuable&quot; humans, we don&#x27;t actually have any clear idea how that comes about beyond the roughest figures. But we do know that bad nutrition and lack of even basic opportunity can destroy potential for good. I&#x27;m <i>positive</i>, just on a pure statistical level, that we have had world changing genius level intellects in the dozens to hundreds that have been born in slums, into starvation and threats and lack of any sort of serious upward potential and have thus been utterly wasted. Enormous amounts of valuable human potential has been actively pissed away for no good end at all, in fact for negative value since that directly correlates to crime&#x2F;prison. The poor are not some lesser race, but that&#x27;s how policy has effectively treated them.<p>Both those lead into and inform a moral angle, which is that I think direct income (and in turn UBI) can also come from a much more fundamental position of <i>respect for individual humans</i>, not merely &quot;but we are nice&quot;. This may be easiest to come at by looking at the charity example: if you dig down, a lot of current schemes fundamentally come from a view of poverty being a moral failing. The view is that the poor and desperate are that way because they&#x27;re stupid, inferior beings, and in turn they must be given the goods they need (decided by their betters) directly because otherwise &quot;of course&quot; they&#x27;d fritter the money all away on booze&#x2F;drugs&#x2F;junk&#x2F;[thing giver considers a bad idea].<p>It turns out though that while sure there are hard cases there are also plenty of smart, decent people who are nonetheless very badly off due to essentially bad luck and an inability to muster the capital to bootstrap. If given a stipend they will not just spend it frivolously, but rather intelligently use it for their needs, save, invest and all the other things anyone else would do. They can be taught some basic financial literacy and offered education&#x2F;metaeducation as well with basic needs satisfied, just as others would get naturally growing up, and do even better. Offering someone badly off money rather then food&#x2F;goods of the exact same monetary &quot;value&quot; is in many ways an expression of trust and respect: that they are capable of figuring out their needs more intelligently then the giver is, and the giver is just trying to achieve the goal of supporting another human at some level and not just to indulge in some righteousness<p>Mr. Harari seems to take the negative spin of &quot;we don&#x27;t need you&quot;, but that itself seems to implicitly take as given &quot;a human&#x27;s worth is wholly defined by their capacity to work and the need for them.&quot; But UBI also makes sense if someone as an ideological stance wishes to make a world where any human has a base level of worth at birth by definition that doesn&#x27;t need to be justified. Other worth beyond that may then be found in other ways, but it should never be zero. Work has often been a proxy for that and necessary in and of itself, but if that changes down the road then a new value system will have to be created. It doesn&#x27;t have to just be about &quot;nice&quot;.