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Natalie Matthews writes that a year ago, a friend of hers left her two roommates at a bar to walk the three blocks home to their apartment in a yuppie Boston neighborhood. "She wanted decent sleep before a Saturday morning exercise class; her friends wanted late night food. Instead, she was jumped by a stranger on the curb of her apartment building, brutally raped, and beaten in her living room while her roommates ate burritos, none the wiser," writes Matthews. " If she'd done something, anything, differently, would it have changed the outcome of her night? It's an unproductive exercise, both she and I know. And yet when I heard about Kitestring, she was the first thought that flashed in my mind, because maybe Kitestring would have helped her, had it existed then."
Kitestring is a new service that aims to make sure people get from point A to point B safely, notifying their emergency contacts if they don't. You tell Kitestring that you're in a dangerous place or situation, and give it a time frame of when to check in on you. If you don't reply back when it checks your status, it'll alert your emergency contacts with a custom message you set up. "Perfect for blind or online meet-up dates, walking home at night, or feeling safe in any dangerous situation, Kitestring is like the virtual mom I've always needed," writes Mary Rockcastle, "especially if your mom is like mine and is never awake past 8:30pm."
(Score: 2) by tathra on Tuesday April 29 2014, @02:31AM
you clearly didnt even attempt to skim the links to see what i was proposing, because thats nothing like a basic income. a basic income only provides enough for food; the motivation to work is to have more than the bare minimum.
and there's a lot of people who say, "i have enough"; something like 500 million to 1 billion people, often known as "buddhists". beyond that, there's an uncountable number of people who are content with having just enough to be comfortable.
you seem to be saying, "it'll never work, so there's no point in even trying". why ask for potential solutions if you wouldnt ever consider them because you dont think they'd ever work? thats starting with a conclusion and working backwards, which is the kind of thing we see from geocentists, creationists, and often from conservatives in general. even if it doesnt work perfectly, it'd still be far better than our current situation; ensuring everybody has enough to survive would be far cheaper than what goes to for-profit prisons every year (between $24,000 - $200,000 each year per prisoner, totaling over $60 billion annually according to wikipedia, which doesnt include the economic cost of having those people removed from the workforce); similarly, its far cheaper to ensure that everyone has healthcare than to foot the bill for the inevitable ER visits like we currently do.
its not possible to come up with a solution that will fix everything perfectly all at once, but that doesnt mean it isnt worth trying. the only real way to address problems is one at a time. so lets fix one thing we know for a fact drives people to crime - poverty (which also drives revolutions if it gets too bad) - at a fraction of the cost we're paying to keep those same people incarcerated, and then move on to the next problem, if its known and its possible to do something about it. besides, why wouldnt you want to be sure that your fellow citizens arent starving to death? what kind of sick sociopath are you? ;)
even if it doesnt work out, it would provide lots of valuable data that could be used to refine the program or come up with a better one. doing nothing is the worst possible thing we can do.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by tftp on Tuesday April 29 2014, @03:45AM
I have a second-hand knowledge of the Nordic model, as I work with a few Swedes who escaped Sweden just in time. I heard many horror stories from them, but if hearsay is not good enough, then here is something [wordpress.com] from a well known writer [wikipedia.org]. Since then taxes in excess of 100% have been cancelled; but still Sweden has taxes above 50%. In other words, each working Swede toils for half a day to feed someone else who, most likely, does not work. This would be at least understandable if those people are ill; but that is not the case.
This is why I started my reply with the most basic question: where the money is coming from? Bureaucrats do not create wealth; only the working man can do that. The few working people cannot feed the rest; nor they are happy to do so. The Rhine capitalism tries to sit on two chairs at once - to allow free enterprise, and at the same time tax that enterprise in order to feed those who do not work. Both models are based on spending someone else's money. They do not increase the wealth of the society. At best they can keep it constant, but in practice they lower it because older workers, with their own understanding of responsibility, retire and die, and younger people - who are invariably focused on anything else but work - are in no hurry to step into the shoes of their parents. (People like them were the OWS movement - "anything but work.") The problem of those systems is that they do not create sufficiently strong motivation for hard work. As you point out, many say "The social assistance is enough." But you cannot grow the society this way. At some point the number of eaters exceeds the number of feeders. The USA is facing the Social Security crisis [alternet.org] already; it is delayed only by printing of money and borrowing from abroad.
You mention Buddhists. Sure, those may be less demanding. But they do not matter as long as other people on Earth are interested in unlimited consumption. If "the good people" do not interfere, they might just as well not exist, as they do not change the equation.
you seem to be saying, "it'll never work, so there's no point in even trying"
Then I'm lucky that I never said that. What I did is I simply spelled out some of the natural reasons why humans do what they do. It's possible to change humanity; as a simplest example, all people with undesirable traits should be exiled or killed. It will result in evolutionary pressure to be more peaceful, less demanding, more honest, etc. (I do not propose this approach; this is only to show that it can be done.)
ensuring everybody has enough to survive would be far cheaper than what goes to for-profit prisons every year (between $24,000 - $200,000 each year per prisoner, totaling over $60 billion annually according to wikipedia, which doesnt include the economic cost of having those people removed from the workforce)
Yes, but you are arguing something that we never discussed. I am not in favor of the prison industry. I agree that we do not need so many prisons and so many laws. We do not need militarized police. I think what we need instead is a swift and severe punishment for a few simple crimes. The punishment must be sufficient to ensure that the convicted person will not want to break the law ever again. (The prison industry facilitates recidivism.) At the same time, if the convict survives the punishment, he should have all his rights restored, and ideally his crime should be forgotten. Debts to the society should be paid only once.
similarly, its far cheaper to ensure that everyone has healthcare than to foot the bill for the inevitable ER visits like we currently do.
Healthcare in the West is very expensive. If "everyone" has healthcare then that "everyone" has to buy Obamacare plans for $5,000/yr per person that are nearly useless. But your wish is reality today, with Obamacare. Everyone has access to healthcare, even if they don't have access to healthy food anymore. Is this a solution?
so lets fix one thing we know for a fact drives people to crime - poverty (which also drives revolutions if it gets too bad)
I agree that it is wise to fix things one at a time; however, as I demonstrated, there is hardly any evidence that financial poverty is responsible for a significant part of crimes. I would rather say that spiritual poverty is the culprit. Not in a religious sense, of course. But what difference is there between two teenagers who find a chick on the ground that fell from the nest, if one picks up the bird and puts it back into the nest, and another intentionally and cruelly steps onto it? That's the difference that matters. This is what is responsible for crimes. Poverty is not a deciding factor; poverty was widespread for most of human existence, but the percentage of crime and criminals was approximately the same at all times.
I want to reiterate that I do not oppose the idea of a society where everyone is fed and clothed. Perhaps one day robots will do that for us. However focusing on it today could be explained only by one reason: this is the only thing governments know how to do - to collect taxes and divide them. They do not know how to grow a newborn into a solid professional instead of a gangbanger. It's too hard; one has to fix the society in many ways before traditional, full families are restored, honored and cherished for their role in growing the new generation. It's much easier to pick an easier, or shinier, target - and it's much more interesting to collect money on behalf of someone else who will never ask for a financial report.
If you fix the family, if you fix the society, poverty will disappear on its own, simply because it would be shameful to be poor. And if we approach the problem from another end, dropping cash from helicopters will not eliminate poverty because poverty is primarily a state of mind. You mentioned Buddhists. A Buddhist who owns only his robe can tell you "I have all that I need." A typical Westerner could own a billion dollar business, and he'd be still working to expand it. We'd be fine with Buddhists. But what to do with the rest of the planet?