Yes, UBI costs a ton of money. The system is not UBI, but like UBI is (also) a redistribution mechanism; one that I believe achieves the goal more efficiently. The efficiency gains come from the economic value generated in the system by people working. That over time lowers the funding requirements for achieving the same outcomes as UBI would (ceteris paribus).
The System might have higher friction than UBI, but it also might not, as there are other features, that will make seemingly sticky points negligible. For example, people might perceive participation in the system as playing a game (there are indicators that this might be the case). Being autonomous is a hugely attractive feature too (see below)
This is probably what you are missing—in the system, people can freely choose any type of activity they want to do. In the jobs guarantee scheme, I can’t choose for example to do mapping for the Openstreetmap project, or program a computer game, if the government does not offer such “jobs”. …and to use one of the examples Scott brings up, raising a child can be reported as work and be paid.
The psychological aspect can’t be put aside. The system has been originally modeled on the behavior of volunteers, who ignore the economic aspect of their work and chase instead satisfaction of their psychological needs. The needs satisfaction is facilitated by various signals (in the volunteering domain these include the number of users, likes, badges,...). Seeking to maximize the signal makes the by-the-hour paid workers to sell their products, as that’s what they receive—a signal—when somebody buys their product. It should be noted, that also many successful entrepreneurs consider money an indicator of their skills and often get rid of much of economic value they earn in the form of donations. Trading money for “signals” is quite common.
The efficiency gains come from the economic value generated in the system by people working
I think the economic gains from the people “working” in the system will be negligible, this seems like a Double Crux (a point that if one of us will change their mind about, we might change our mind on the entire idea. For you too? For me, if I’d think the economic gains are not negligible, it would make me view your idea way way more positively)
My opinion is basically based on Econ 101, saying that (A) “deciding what to produce based on the ‘market’ demand is insanely efficient.” and (B) “Trying to guess what to produce based on a committee of professionals is way way less efficient, and results in producing things that are way less needed”, from which I conclude (C) “producing things based on a person deciding what they want to (or something like that) without even attempting to be a professional that studies the needs of the market, would be even worse than B, and (my opinion relies on the claim that: ) it will be way way less efficient than A”
4. The psychological aspect:
I bet if this would turn out to be a major aspect of the system, then the system would be out competed by games, which are insanely optimized for doing this.
A side point that I hope will not be distracting: There is a common pattern of startups that hope to convince people to do things and hoping that “gamification” will get this to happen. The actual situation is that there are very very few apps that have managed to achieve this (such as Facebook, Dualingo) except for actual games. I am just trying to say that achieving good gamification is something that was tried a lot and seems to be very hard. Also important: Whoever manages to crack the formula of “gamification” even a little becomes very very rich, so there are a lot of resources going into that problem already. But again, I hope this won’t distract from the more-main points
In NEO (that’s how the system is actually called for better or worse), all value-creation mechanisms that we know from the market economy are present, so I am sorry, but I do not think we have identified the DC :-) Try to be more specific—what aspect do you think is different?
Maybe this will help to clarify things—the crucial (hmm, do we have a suspect?) difference from a “normal” market economy, is separation of the for-the-value-creation less important aspect of work reward (the exchange value) from the salient one—the psychological signal.
About the gaming thing. That is not what NEO success or failure actually hinges on. It might be nice if it happens, but if NEO wins, it will be because it is more economically efficient than the alternatives. Apparently the 800 lb gorilla is the capitalist system, which is of course enormously successful. What does NEO bring to the ring? Separation of concerns—economic from the psychological. Capitalism rewards workers with both at the same time (money) and I see that as a source of inefficiency, because people—especially the most creative ones—are gunning for the psychological reward. In money they inadvertently get also exchange value reward, proportional to the signaling one and that causes economic inequality—a source of inefficiency. NEO also rewards the exceptional value creators more than others—with stronger signal—but it leads to inequality that is beneficial (same function as in capitalism). The economic value in NEO is constantly redistributed virtually equally among the workers, eliminating (extreme) inequality.
I claim that in NEO, a workers will do tasks that are WAY less valuable to other-people, compared to what the worker would have done in a capitalist system.
Is that our double crux?
You said:
if NEO wins, it will be because it is more economically efficient than the alternatives
I don’t think that is the case and have listed some arguments supporting that view. What makes you think that NEO workers will produce less valuable output?
(my “less than firm” commitment is “less firm” because this is too early to unambiguously commit to a project, for example there me unexpected-to-me problems like you just raised—the need to maybe coordinate the entire planet to move over at once or something like that. But still, me saying that some vision would get me to potentially want to work on it myself, even fulltime, is saying a lot, for me, and is said with the intent of showing I’d care about that)
Ok, in capitalism, people pick tasks based on “how much are people expected to pay for this [as a proxy for how much other people want it]”
In NEO, people pick tasks based on.. what seems fun? (With zero anything like market research, right?)
And I think that picking which tasks to do is very important to overall efficiency. Do you agree with this?
Your objection seem to focus on the most important difference between NEO and capitalism—the autonomy to choose whatever one wants to do. If I understand, you imply that more autonomy leads to slacking. The need for autonomy is however critical condition for the emergence of intrinsic motivation and a large body of literature (keywords: self determination theory) shows superiority of intrinsic over the extrinsic motivation in various domains (creativity, persistence,..) The literature also shows that intrinsically motivated employees produce more valuable economic contributions. Many things in psychology are disputed, but the existence of the two types of motivation and superiority of the intrinsic one is not.
I could list a number of examples that confirm the notion that people in general want to be useful to others, but I think I could not do a better job than the scientists studying motivation. Maybe one example for all. Just look at volunteers, like the FOSS programmers, Wikipedia editors or Openstreetmap mappers. No economic carrots or sticks that would force them supply labor and yet, their output is so valuable that it is being massively appropriated by the commercial sector.
Re. 1 - most people in NEO would choose the task that pays the most—just like in capitalism. The payment in NEO has purely signaling (non-monetary) form, but that does not matter. Also in capitalism only the magnitude of the payment ultimately matters (the signal), not the exchange value it represents (that gets ultimately converted to status—a form of the signal)
The more creative people would also do what they do in capitalism—choose the thing they like to do. Elon Musk types would build Teslas and flamethrowers, other would found My Lackey, or Kozmo.com. Some will succeed, some will fail. We love them all in NEO.
Re. 2. - as I wrote previously, motivation is plentiful in NEO—and of the right kind. The “most people” category I mention in point #1 above are motivated extrinsically, but there is a scale from Extrinsic to Intrinsic and “most people” would be much closer to “I” in NEO than if they worked in capitalism and consequently would be more performant (and happier).
You are actively trying to get buyers to pay as much of their money as possible for the stuff you make. When they pay, they do so to the System, which converts the payment to a numeric reward (I call it the Merit reward). The money is destroyed in the process and the seller of the product receives Merits. Individual’s Merit score is a reflection of their abilities, or their popularity. It can not be transferred, you can not buy anything for it and everybody can see how an individual’s Merits were earned.
You would know that you would earn more for building a car vs chair the same way as in capitalism—by selling them. Market determines the price—no change here from capitalism.
The NEO currency is fully convertible and is called Chron. Where do Chrons come from:
you do some work,
get some proof you did the work (link to a github commit page, photo, video recording,...),
create a report in rovas.app and attach the proofs,
rovas.app will send request to two algo-determined users to verify your report,
if your report gets approved, you get 10 Chrons for every hour of your work
Every work report belongs to a project you create. When you are buying somebody’s product, you go to that product’s project in rovas.app and reward it. You can do it with your Chrons, or with national currency.
Yes, UBI costs a ton of money. The system is not UBI, but like UBI is (also) a redistribution mechanism; one that I believe achieves the goal more efficiently. The efficiency gains come from the economic value generated in the system by people working. That over time lowers the funding requirements for achieving the same outcomes as UBI would (ceteris paribus).
The System might have higher friction than UBI, but it also might not, as there are other features, that will make seemingly sticky points negligible. For example, people might perceive participation in the system as playing a game (there are indicators that this might be the case). Being autonomous is a hugely attractive feature too (see below)
This is probably what you are missing—in the system, people can freely choose any type of activity they want to do. In the jobs guarantee scheme, I can’t choose for example to do mapping for the Openstreetmap project, or program a computer game, if the government does not offer such “jobs”. …and to use one of the examples Scott brings up, raising a child can be reported as work and be paid.
The psychological aspect can’t be put aside. The system has been originally modeled on the behavior of volunteers, who ignore the economic aspect of their work and chase instead satisfaction of their psychological needs. The needs satisfaction is facilitated by various signals (in the volunteering domain these include the number of users, likes, badges,...). Seeking to maximize the signal makes the by-the-hour paid workers to sell their products, as that’s what they receive—a signal—when somebody buys their product. It should be noted, that also many successful entrepreneurs consider money an indicator of their skills and often get rid of much of economic value they earn in the form of donations. Trading money for “signals” is quite common.
Ok nice
1.
I think the economic gains from the people “working” in the system will be negligible, this seems like a Double Crux (a point that if one of us will change their mind about, we might change our mind on the entire idea. For you too? For me, if I’d think the economic gains are not negligible, it would make me view your idea way way more positively)
My opinion is basically based on Econ 101, saying that (A) “deciding what to produce based on the ‘market’ demand is insanely efficient.” and (B) “Trying to guess what to produce based on a committee of professionals is way way less efficient, and results in producing things that are way less needed”, from which I conclude (C) “producing things based on a person deciding what they want to (or something like that) without even attempting to be a professional that studies the needs of the market, would be even worse than B, and (my opinion relies on the claim that: ) it will be way way less efficient than A”
4. The psychological aspect:
I bet if this would turn out to be a major aspect of the system, then the system would be out competed by games, which are insanely optimized for doing this.
A side point that I hope will not be distracting: There is a common pattern of startups that hope to convince people to do things and hoping that “gamification” will get this to happen. The actual situation is that there are very very few apps that have managed to achieve this (such as Facebook, Dualingo) except for actual games. I am just trying to say that achieving good gamification is something that was tried a lot and seems to be very hard. Also important: Whoever manages to crack the formula of “gamification” even a little becomes very very rich, so there are a lot of resources going into that problem already. But again, I hope this won’t distract from the more-main points
In NEO (that’s how the system is actually called for better or worse), all value-creation mechanisms that we know from the market economy are present, so I am sorry, but I do not think we have identified the DC :-) Try to be more specific—what aspect do you think is different?
Maybe this will help to clarify things—the crucial (hmm, do we have a suspect?) difference from a “normal” market economy, is separation of the for-the-value-creation less important aspect of work reward (the exchange value) from the salient one—the psychological signal.
About the gaming thing. That is not what NEO success or failure actually hinges on. It might be nice if it happens, but if NEO wins, it will be because it is more economically efficient than the alternatives. Apparently the 800 lb gorilla is the capitalist system, which is of course enormously successful. What does NEO bring to the ring? Separation of concerns—economic from the psychological. Capitalism rewards workers with both at the same time (money) and I see that as a source of inefficiency, because people—especially the most creative ones—are gunning for the psychological reward. In money they inadvertently get also exchange value reward, proportional to the signaling one and that causes economic inequality—a source of inefficiency. NEO also rewards the exceptional value creators more than others—with stronger signal—but it leads to inequality that is beneficial (same function as in capitalism). The economic value in NEO is constantly redistributed virtually equally among the workers, eliminating (extreme) inequality.
I claim that in NEO, a workers will do tasks that are WAY less valuable to other-people, compared to what the worker would have done in a capitalist system.
Is that our double crux?
You said:
I don’t think that is the case and have listed some arguments supporting that view. What makes you think that NEO workers will produce less valuable output?
Before I get into “what makes me think that NEO workers will produce less valuable output”,
If I’ll convince you that they’ll produce less valuable [to others] output, would you drop NEO?
If you’ll convince me that they’ll produce more valuable [to others] output, I will probably want to work on it myself
Yes, I will, regardless of your less than firm commitment to helping out in case I am right.
Let’s make clear, that we are comparing capitalism as we know it (say the Western type) and a hypothetical situation, when everybody works in NEO.
(my “less than firm” commitment is “less firm” because this is too early to unambiguously commit to a project, for example there me unexpected-to-me problems like you just raised—the need to maybe coordinate the entire planet to move over at once or something like that. But still, me saying that some vision would get me to potentially want to work on it myself, even fulltime, is saying a lot, for me, and is said with the intent of showing I’d care about that)
Ok, in capitalism, people pick tasks based on “how much are people expected to pay for this [as a proxy for how much other people want it]”
In NEO, people pick tasks based on.. what seems fun? (With zero anything like market research, right?)
And I think that picking which tasks to do is very important to overall efficiency. Do you agree with this?
Your objection seem to focus on the most important difference between NEO and capitalism—the autonomy to choose whatever one wants to do. If I understand, you imply that more autonomy leads to slacking. The need for autonomy is however critical condition for the emergence of intrinsic motivation and a large body of literature (keywords: self determination theory) shows superiority of intrinsic over the extrinsic motivation in various domains (creativity, persistence,..) The literature also shows that intrinsically motivated employees produce more valuable economic contributions. Many things in psychology are disputed, but the existence of the two types of motivation and superiority of the intrinsic one is not.
I could list a number of examples that confirm the notion that people in general want to be useful to others, but I think I could not do a better job than the scientists studying motivation. Maybe one example for all. Just look at volunteers, like the FOSS programmers, Wikipedia editors or Openstreetmap mappers. No economic carrots or sticks that would force them supply labor and yet, their output is so valuable that it is being massively appropriated by the commercial sector.
Nice, feels like we’re zooming in to our disagreement
I’d split this into:
Picking what task to do (should I build a chair or fix a car?)
How much motivation do I have for this task / how hard do I try / do I slack off
Even if NTO would be 3 times as effective in point 2, I still think point 1 is much more important, and that’s what I’d focus on
wdyt?
Re. 1 - most people in NEO would choose the task that pays the most—just like in capitalism. The payment in NEO has purely signaling (non-monetary) form, but that does not matter. Also in capitalism only the magnitude of the payment ultimately matters (the signal), not the exchange value it represents (that gets ultimately converted to status—a form of the signal)
The more creative people would also do what they do in capitalism—choose the thing they like to do. Elon Musk types would build Teslas and flamethrowers, other would found My Lackey, or Kozmo.com. Some will succeed, some will fail. We love them all in NEO.
Re. 2. - as I wrote previously, motivation is plentiful in NEO—and of the right kind. The “most people” category I mention in point #1 above are motivated extrinsically, but there is a scale from Extrinsic to Intrinsic and “most people” would be much closer to “I” in NEO than if they worked in capitalism and consequently would be more performant (and happier).
In NEO, how would I know if I’d get paid more for building a chair or for fixing a car?
(Sorry if you answered this already, feel free to point me to the answer)
You are actively trying to get buyers to pay as much of their money as possible for the stuff you make. When they pay, they do so to the System, which converts the payment to a numeric reward (I call it the Merit reward). The money is destroyed in the process and the seller of the product receives Merits. Individual’s Merit score is a reflection of their abilities, or their popularity. It can not be transferred, you can not buy anything for it and everybody can see how an individual’s Merits were earned.
You would know that you would earn more for building a car vs chair the same way as in capitalism—by selling them. Market determines the price—no change here from capitalism.
Ok, and how do I buy stuff?
(Where does my money come from / how much do I have? Can I offer my money to anyone to buy anything, just like in capitalism?)
The NEO currency is fully convertible and is called Chron. Where do Chrons come from:
you do some work,
get some proof you did the work (link to a github commit page, photo, video recording,...),
create a report in rovas.app and attach the proofs,
rovas.app will send request to two algo-determined users to verify your report,
if your report gets approved, you get 10 Chrons for every hour of your work
Every work report belongs to a project you create. When you are buying somebody’s product, you go to that product’s project in rovas.app and reward it. You can do it with your Chrons, or with national currency.