[sama]

We've started giving money to a small pilot group. We're still working out the kinks but expanding it slowly.

The plan is still to run the pilot until we're confident everything is working well (especially with issues like making sure no one loses eligibility for income-based benefits) and then start the full-scale study.

[jimmydddd]

Yes. Losing eligibility for programs is a big issue. Reminds me of when I had an elderly family member's situation optimized for maximum benefits between medicare, medicaid, subsidized housing (section 8) and other benefits. One of her (well-meaning) neighbors found out she wasn't getting a certain benefit and took her (without advising me) to an agency to sign her up. Unfortunately, that event had cascading effects that caused her to lose other benefits. The situation took me a year to undo.

[anondon]

What is the status of the MOOC? When can we expect additional details?

YC should consider writing the occasional blog post about the projects it's working, it would be interesting to follow and the feedback from HN might be useful.

[cookiecaper]

Would YC really be upfront about the success or failure of this experiment? Most people are shy enough about failures in professional contexts where impacts are isolated to the company itself. The outcome of this pilot has real potential political ramifications, further disincentivizing those who're committed to basic income (as YC obviously is) from revealing any serious flaws or difficulties experienced, beyond the typical already-pretty-strong impulse to keep failed experiments under wraps (and when they are discussed, to generalize and gloss over the more painful/sticky parts).

I know we all admire YC here, but let's be practical about it. They're not going to drum up any more bad press for themselves than necessary.

[evanwolf]

It's all about the feedback loop. Failure analysis (where necessary) is more than a bumpersticker obituary. And we also need to catch lessons learned along the way, both the microfailures we learn from and the assumptions we tested and proved correct/incorrect. Last, it's vital to turn periodic recaps into more organized and systematic bodies-of-knowledge so it's fast/easy to learn from the history we're writing together.

[labster]

I'd expect them to report accurately. You have to remember, the expected result of a startup is failure, so they're used to dealing with that. I don't see why this would be any different.

[sama]

We'll announce details on structure and timing in January.

Good idea; I may try something like a "State of YC" update once every 3-6 months.

[tomcam]

Thanks, would love that if you can find the time.

[jbpetersen]

Perhaps something like status.ycombinator.com for the briefly summarized current states of various things?

[_andromeda_]

Egalitarianism always collapses on itself. The incentive structure that is created when you take resources from producers to award to non-producers (who are often indolent actors) is horrible. Many many experiments have been conducted and all failed miserably leading to the suffering and death of millions. I mean, Soviet farmers usually opted to kill their livestock as opposed to having government take it and redistribute it equitably. We don't need to go through that again. These notions should be nipped at the bud.

[tmnvix]

> The incentive structure that is created when you take resources from producers to award to non-producers.

I'm sorry, but this is idealogical nonsense. The classic 'non-producer' is the rentier. Quite the opposite of what you seem to be implying (i.e. that the needy are the 'non-producers').

[_andromeda_]

It really isn't a question of the rentier class vs proletariat. Capitalism solved that problem a long time ago. Surely, capitalism has lifted billions from poverty.

Anyone can make it if they apply effort. Anyone. There is no discrimination against hard work, smart work.

A non-producer simply means, someone who is not providing a good or service of value to a willing buyer.

[aninhumer]

>It really isn't a question of the rentier class vs proletariat. Capitalism solved that problem a long time ago.

How exactly did Capitalism solve that problem? We still have stark class divisions between people who make the majority of their money from capital ownership and people who have to work to survive.

[_andromeda_]

>We still have stark class divisions between people who make the majority of their money from capital ownership and people who have to work to survive.

It is true that there are divisions, but anyone can now participate in the acquisition of wealth and resources. You can save and reinvest until you attain your goals in life but most people are engaged in the consumption of capital goods such that even if they wanted to set up a small business, it gets to be increasingly difficult.

I also don't look at it in the sense that people HAVE to work to earn a living, I see it as people GET to work to earn a living. Your entire outlook on work is flawed and needs to be reevaluated. Work is good. Work allows us to eat, get shelter, clothing and move civilisation forward while at it.

[aninhumer]

>Work is good. Work allows us to eat, get shelter, clothing and move civilisation forward while at it.

Work may currently be necessary, but it is not "good". For most people it is boring and unpleasant, and a world where they could do something else would be a better world. Telling people who spend the majority of their lives working two jobs and still live in poverty that they "don't HAVE to work, they GET to work" is a hollow joke.

[tmnvix]

> Surely, capitalism has lifted billions from poverty.

True. And while I think capitalism is generally a good thing, lifting people out of poverty doesn't make it a good thing necessarily. By that measure communism in China would be a good thing - after all, Mao also lifted millions out of poverty. Many dictators have done the same.

> Anyone can make it if they apply effort.

Not at all. You can be disabled, held back by family obligations or even by a harmful family, be remarkably unintelligent, mentally ill, or otherwise be unlucky in any number of ways.

> A non-producer simply means, someone who is not providing a good or service of value to a willing buyer.

According to you. To me a non-producer is someone whose income is unearned[1].

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unearned_income Unearned income refers to income received by virtue of owning property (known as property income), inheritance, pensions and payments received from public welfare. The three major forms of unearned income based on property ownership are rent, received from the ownership of natural resources; interest, received by virtue of owning financial assets; and profit, received from the ownership of capital equipment.[1] As such, unearned income is often categorized as "passive income".

[rbg246]

Your opinions are so ideological that it leaves no room for things not being binary.

Human interactions and behaviours are anything but binary. there are so many reasons why humans behave the way they do that it cannot be wrapped up so neatly as by one theory of economics.

[_andromeda_]

It is an important issue at hand. Important issues often have binary outcomes IMO. You can either make an a priori argument for or against UBI or you can make an empirical argument. We don't need to discuss previous experiences with such initiatives. They've had calamitous outcomes majority, if not all, of the times.

It does seem as though people want to try out variants of the same thing (socialism) while branding it with new terms such as UBI or social democracy. I'm simply calling out the BS and saying, it is socialism. It has been tried over and over again and I promise you that just because you've not lived through it, historical context should make you very wary of it.

[solipsism]

Nonsense. There are social programs that have been incredibly successful. And pointing to the USSR is a shameful strawman.

[_andromeda_]

Are you arguing against basic human nature? For the vast majority of people, if they don't have to work in order to earn, most people will choose not to work. So then who supports these folks? The people who put in actual graft. But the question is, for how long? Is this sustainable.

This is a mindset and it must be fought against vehemently. You want to help people? Advocate for the following:

- hard work as opposed to indolence

- savings culture as opposed to consumption of capital goods

- innovation/engagement as opposed to being dullards

- celebrating and rewarding achievement based on genuine merit as opposed to cuddling our young ones

- skill acquisition by reading books as opposed to watching TV and partying

You want a utopia but none of the sacrifice required to attain it. That's not going to work.

[DanBC]

> For the vast majority of people, if they don't have to work in order to earn, most people will choose not to work. So then who supports these folks?

Those people are already being supported with fantastically expensive bureaucratic benefit systems. Sometimes those systems also act as a disincentive to return to work, trapping people on benefits, by making it impossible for them to get education or work experience or part time work.

Once you have these massive bureaucracies they sustain themselves by land-grabbing more work.

Here's one example from the UK. A man claiming benefits gets temporary work on a zero hour contract. He needs to sign off benefits, so he calls (because that how you do things now) the helpline.

"Is this position going to last longer than 5 weeks?"

He has no idea. But they will only take a yes or no answer.

He is unable to convey that he has no idea whether the job will last for more than 5 weeks or not.

For people who don't know the system it's tempting to just say "it doesn't matter, just take her suggestion and move on to the next question", but sadly the penalty for getting a question wrong (even if you've used their suggested answer) is that you have your benefits suspended or sanctioned.

> celebrating and rewarding achievement based on genuine merit as opposed to cuddling our young ones

You should reward effort, not necessarily achievement. Note that this is different to "cuddling our young ones". This is apparently especially important for smart children.

[notahacker]

The cost of maintaining the "fantastically expensive" massive bureaucracies pales in comparison with the cost of paying a livable basic income to everyone.

The DWP's administration costs are 3.6% (FOI request: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/what_percentage_of_th...) and only about 1.5-3% of the population is claiming Job Seekers' Allowance at any one time. The proportion of people voluntarily economically inactive and neither claiming any benefit nor paying income tax is much larger[1]. Eliminating the "job seeker" requirement is obviously going to cost orders of magnitude more even if there's no resulting change in behaviour.

One can criticise the nature of the bureaucracies and weaknesses in the way they handle people getting back into work, but the idea sometimes floated by UBI supporters that they're more expensive than just handing out more cash is flatly and unequivocally wrong.

[1]this is true even after accounting for recipients of sickness benefits. You could save a bit in some areas by eliminating all sickness and housing benefits over the BI payment level, but that's probably hurting quite a few vulnerable people...

[_andromeda_]

>You should reward effort, not necessarily achievement. Note that this is different to "cuddling our young ones".

It is to a degree a question of semantics seeing as though we're mostly on the same page on most issues. However, I'll still indulge you; sustained effort often leads to achievement. I find achievement to be the best metric to measure effort, otherwise how do you know there's real effort if a given problem is not ultimately solved?

>Here's one example from the UK. A man claiming benefits gets temporary work on a zero hour contract. He needs to sign off benefits, so he calls (because that how you do things now) the helpline.

I personally know of a man in the UK who has an arrangement with his employer to receive payments in cash only. This thereby allows him to still claim unemployment benefits from the government. The employer benefits by not paying PAYE taxes and the employee benefits by earning from two income streams putting him fiscally at par with people who have much higher qualifications than he does.

You can see the sort of rot and inefficiencies that occur when systems such as these are adopted.

[DanBC]

> It is to a degree a question of semantics seeing as though we're mostly on the same page on most issues. However, I'll still indulge you; sustained effort often leads to achievement. I find achievement to be the best metric to measure effort, otherwise how do you know there's real effort if a given problem is not ultimately solved?

HN is full of smart people who through their school life were rewarded for their achievement, not effort, and who got a rude awakening when they went to college and discovered that they were not the smartest in the room, and that the work was hard, and that they were ill-prepared for that hard work.

> I personally know of a man in the UK who has an arrangement with his employer to receive payments in cash only. This thereby allows him to still claim unemployment benefits from the government. The employer benefits by not paying PAYE taxes and the employee benefits by earning from two income streams putting him fiscally at par with people who have much higher qualifications than he does.

But that's the point. HMRC have a bunch of people employed to detect that abuse; DWP people have a bunch of people employed to detect that; local councils have a bunch of people employed to detect that.

We can eliminate fraud, and the expensive fraud detection systems, by telling people it's allowed and expected that they work in addition to their UBI.

[DanBC]

FRUSTRATINGLY I forgot to include the link to the YouTube video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KwQTsO7Kok

He wants to stop claiming benefit; he wants to declare work. His answer doesn't fit into their checkbox, and so a simple question takes 7 minutes.

[wav-part]

> Those people are already being supported with fantastically expensive bureaucratic benefit systems.

You are basically saying: We already have bad socialism so lets try good socialism. UBI is as bad if not worst. Distorted market will be least of our worries.

I am in favour of guranteed, no-string-attached food & shalter.

[aninhumer]

So distorting the market by giving people money and letting them decide what they want is bad, but distorting the market by buying/producing arbitrary food and shelter for people is good?

[thenomad]

Why on earth would I or anyone advocate for either of the extremes you're proposing here?

Acquiring skills is valuable (not just by reading books - there are lots of ways to acquire skills; yes, including watching TV) but relaxing is also valuable. Partying is valuable.

And it's fun, too.

Likewise, rewarding achievement is a good idea, but so is comforting your son if he's upset that he performed badly at something he tried hard at.

And I'm assuming we're all reasonably familiar with the idea that neither 100% hard work (120+ hour weeks, 52 weeks of the year) nor 100% indolence are great ideas?

[tlb]

Can you define "graft", as you use it here? The common definition is "the obtaining of money or advantage through the dishonest use of power and influence" [0], but that doesn't seem like what you mean.

[0] http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/graft

[_andromeda_]

Sorry, I'm a speaker of the Queen's English:

British Slang. work; labor.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/graft

[jholman]

That's not the Queen's English, HRH speaks RP.

[tomcam]

Why is the USSR a strawman?

[lancewiggs]

Because it was a dictatorship, and Communism, not Socialism. Socialism is as practiced in Scandinavia, UK, France, the rest of the EU really, NZ, Australia and so on and on. Socialism has become a dirty demonised word in the USA and that gets in the way of the equality of opportunity benefits a decent society provides.

[_andromeda_]

Exactly! I see it as basically the same thing. Redistribution of resources from producers to non-producers. You have to look at it from a very fundamental vantage point.

[solipsism]

s/fundamental/simplistic/

Fixed that for ya

[labster]

s/Egalitarianism/Authoritarianism/

[WalterBright]

No communist societies have ever been able to feed themselves - from the Pilgrims, to the USSR, to Jamestown, to the kibbutzen, to North Korea. Voluntary or coercive, the results are the same.

[_andromeda_]

If this is Walter Bright creator of D, I must say I'm in awe.

Nonetheless, I agree with you 100%. It doesn't matter what form it takes. Majority of my millennial peers refuse to even accept that socialism leads to the inevitable outcome that is communism and that it is an evil that would deprive all of us of our individual liberties to a point where all human decency will be lost.

[WalterBright]

The great thing about a free market country is people can form workers' collectives if they want to. The only thing is they can neither force anyone to join nor prevent anyone from leaving.

Many such have been formed over the years in the US, and they've all collapsed.

[_andromeda_]

Indeed a free market allows for workers to voluntarily unionise but seldom is it the case that members are free to leave at will. Any form of collectivism yields the loss of personal liberty and loss of property rights(members cannot opt out of perpetual membership fees). It doesn't help that most union leaders are disingenuous actors who exhibit acidic levels of corruption only comparable to that of majority of government bureaucrats.

[danieltillett]

There have been a lot of communistic societies over the years so I would be cautious about declaring them all unable to feed themselves. Having said this the only exception I can think of are the Doukobors [1].

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doukhobor