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Comment by unimpressive | Hacker News Reader

But what's the alternative?

Removing the incentive gradient of capitalism doesn't create paradise, it just creates a new incentive gradient that can be even more perverse and horrifying than the last.

http://www.sigcis.org/?q=node/85

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/24/book-review-red-plenty/

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But don't forget about http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/. Capitalism, while great initially, is getting very problematic now - its incentive gradients pull us more and more in directions we don't want to go. We need to alter those gradients, it's not a question anymore.

I don't think there's a coherent "ideology" that would be better (nor do I generally think accepting ideologies wholesale is a good idea), but UBI feels like a part of the right solution.

Broken-clock Ayn Rand did get something right in a scene in Atlas Shrugged where the [malicious and grossly incompetent] government figures toast to the "end of the age of money," and are interrupted by a [flawless and endlessly brilliant] capitalist who warns them that it will only usher in "the age of pull."

Power and money are largely interchangeable in a free market world where there's always a way to get what you want. At least money can be measured, and that makes it honest, sort of.

except, when you start looking into cash//fiat money (as opposed to promissory notes), it is anonymous and inherently dis-honest. What would be honest is a system where the "wealth" associated with an action could be traced. You could tell when wealth from a prostitution transaction, collected by a pimp, was paid to a councilman or official as a bribe. Our current cash system washes that stain and banks do their best to maintain that "privacy", with varying degrees of success.

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