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posted by janrinok on Monday September 12 2016, @03:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the here,-take-my-money dept.

The idea of giving people free money is so radical, even some recipients think it's too good to be true.

Later this year, roughly 6,000 people in Kenya will receive regular monthly payments of about a dollar a day, no strings attached, as part of a policy experiment commonly known as basic income.

People will get to use the money for whatever they want: food, clothing, shelter, gambling, alcohol — anything — all in an effort to reduce poverty.
...
But instead of accepting the cash transfers with open arms, many Kenyans have recently been saying "No, thank you." It's a legitimate concern: As GiveDirectly moves into its larger basic income experiment, the last thing it wants is for people to turn down the money.

Basic Income is a concept often mentioned on SN, and this is an experiment to do exactly that. Many potential recipients of the basic income are skeptical about the goals of the experiment, though, and rumors have arisen that it's tied to a cult or devil worship.

Opponents of such wealth transfers argue they lead to indolence, while another school of thought believes they would reduce poverty and directly produce economic stimulus because the poor would immediately spend the money.


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @08:33AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @08:33AM (#400582)

    FINALLY, someone among this band of the obtuse understands STEP 1.

    Marx's criticism of capitalism was largely correct

    Thomas Piketty, in his recent 696-page book analyzing 250 years of Capitalism, says Marx wasn't wrong anywhere that it counts.
    The way Oligarchy develops from Capitalism and how The Working Class has become more and more impoverished in the 21st Century is documented by Piketty and was what Marx described.

    but what he got wrong is that the alternatives sucked

    The 100,000 Socialist worker-owners of the Mondragon cooperative in Spain disagree.
    There are over 8000 Socialist worker-owned cooperatives in the north of Italy that are further proof that you are wrong.
    In Yugoslavia under Tito, their workplaces were of a similar variety; they were prosperous and contented for decades.

    The opposite of Capitalism (maximize profits; owners live elsewhere and don't give a shit about the community where production is done) is Socialism (a system that prioritizes full employment for the community and a livable social environment).
    It has worked and is still working in enough places as to serve as a boilerplate for others to copy.

    The problem is that folks keep voting for demagogic Fascists (the recent anti-Worker coup in Brazil springs immediately to mind as well as Trump's nomination).

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @09:19AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @09:19AM (#400598)

    As you are plying the benefits of socialist collectives, can you name a significant advancement (materials, design, whatever) they've made?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @09:46AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @09:46AM (#400610)

      Shaker furniture
      Oneida flatware
      Amana appliances
      Mondragon industrial machines

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @10:04AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @10:04AM (#400612)

        Bauhaus
        "Oneida no longer operates manufacturing in the United States."
        KitchenAid
        Caterpillar

        Short of the USSR (which communist seem to want to disown), I can think of any significant advancements made by socialist.

        Listing a few mostly defunct companies isn't really convincing.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @10:35AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @10:35AM (#400617)

          Trying to move the goalposts after I already scored just makes it clear you're a sore loser.
          Accent on "loser".

          -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

          • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @04:28PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @04:28PM (#400789)

            Not really so much as what qualifies as "significant" in your teeny-tiny examples doesn't even qualify as a footnote in The Big Book of Capitalism. That was pretty obvious by the counter-examples.

            At least someone else mentioned FOSS.

            Also, was the idea of moving the goalpost conceived of by socialist? Don't you get sick of appropriating metaphors made by the evil empire?

            Of course socialist don't believe in competition, so how could you ever have goalposts in the first place?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @10:38AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @10:38AM (#400619)

      Any and every successful FOSS project out there?
      There's also some good OSH projects as well.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @07:00PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @07:00PM (#400873)

      In many sectors you really don't need much innovation. Just the obvious evolutionary improvements would be enough.

      Take the finance industry for instance. Think about how many of those fancy innovations ("High-Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leveraged Funds", HFTs, derivatives, loosely/not disguised money laundering ;) ) really provide a net benefit to the rest of us in the long term. So we might be better off if stuff like banks were run by boring cooperatives instead of "innovative" corporations. Same for the post office - just incremental and obvious improvements would be fine, there's no need for "game changing" when the game is basically the same.

      We don't need "innovations" like Enron either. Nor the US "health care" industry (keep it simple like single payer, instead of having more ways for companies to suck our blood).

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @09:38PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @09:38PM (#400948)

        HFTs, derivatives [don't] provide a net benefit to the rest of us

        Yup.
        Those are simply ways for the powerful to game the system. Snake oil.

        disguised money laundering

        Yup.

        we might be better off if stuff like banks were run by boring cooperatives instead of "innovative" corporations

        No "might" about it.
        ...and those entities exist in significant numbers.
        They're called credit unions (member-owned).

        In addition, before 1967, USA also offered banking through the US Postal Service.
        Your typical well-informed Progressive wants that back.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]