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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

I'll be very interested to see the results of the YC basic income study, and whether people actually choose to loaf around, drop off groceries for beer money, engage in self-study, or start businesses.

I don't know which'll happen. I'm surprised to see the degree of confidence exhibited by both sides of the debate, people who are either sure it'll result in entrepreneurial utopia or sure that it'll be the end of the world as everyone does nothing. My sense is that there's a good deal of projection here, where people who have successfully cashed out a startup assume everyone will build a startup, while people who wish they could do nothing but loaf around all day assume that's what everyone else will do. Personally, I just want to know, and so I'm waiting on the data before judging.

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We have data: aristocrats, trust-fund babies, the idle rich, even to Roman times. Most do nothing but follow courtly fashion; but some became politians, scientists etc.

A huge difference is being at the bottom rather at the top. Status is a motivator.

But AI may "solve" thishttp://partiallyclips.com/comic/dome-house/

We also have data on the other side too: wealthy Google millionaires who continue to work there, startup founders who are on their 2nd or 3rd or 4th startup, Plato and Aristotle, etc.

Well, technically, these are all anecdotes, but the plural of "anecdote" is "data" after all.

There's a significant difference between wealthy Google millionaires who continue to work there and aristocrats, trust-fund babies, the idle rich. The former are largely self-made whereas the latter posses entirely unearned wealth and status. They're two entirely different categories.

The point of the study is to find out whether average Americans are more like wealthy Google millionaires or more like trust fund babies. I'm curious what the results will be - since so many people have to work to survive, we don't really know what their inclinations would be otherwise.

Sorry, re-reading my comment, I didn't actually say it, but I agree that we need more data - I just meant we do have some data (with the privisos I noted).

Regarding Google-millionaire data: what percentage actually does keep working? We hear about those who do, but not of those who don't (eg Minecraft's Notch). "Newsflash: multi-millionaire relaxes" And, confounding factor: people who succeed amazingly well often keep doing whatever made them wealthy, well beyond financial satisfaction. At least, one hears of those cases - I don't actually know the percentage of how often, vs. those who take it easy. [Guess this is what brbsix meant]

Anecdatum: when I made enough from something I created, I quit. Yet, turns out I was happier before... so was probably a mistake to quit.

I have a feeling a lot of people will move to a more creative career, which probably won't be entrepreneurial. A great many novels will be written, films produced, etc.

That makes sense.

In a situation where people are given a base amount of money that covers their cost of living expenses but provides no extra money to obtain physical resources they will turn to the creation of intellectual property.

This endeavor is low cost in material but high cost in terms of time.

Seems like best-bang-for-the-buck type of investment for most people would be to lobby to increase the UBI amount and/or vote for politicians who promise to do so.

Early 90s immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union provide a window into social dynamics of multiple countries where the majority of population was largely employed by government, many in some meaningless occupations (the running joke was "we pretend to work, they pretend to pay us"), others with lifetime pension guarantees - hyper-inflated currencies, general switch to barter for any meaningful financial transaction and endless parade of populist politicians promising to increase everybody's personal wealth by passing pension and government salary rate increases.

The US did this stuff as well. Many of the woes of Social Security were set off by politically motivated benefit increases in the 1960s that.

IMO, people want to work and be useful. Ignoring that drive and substituting bread & circus is a dangerous direction.

If you weren't solely dependent on the income it generated, I think running deliveries would actually be a decent way to pass time. Fewer pressures than what I do for a living!

India, Kenya and city of Utrecht, NL have been doing basic income experiments for a few years now surely there must be data from that available somewhere.

Can you provide references to these experiments being done in India? Genuinely curios as I haven't heard of these before.

The UNICEF report on the pilot UBI in India: http://unicef.in/Uploads/Publications/Resources/pub_doc83.pd...

Footage and notes from a conference talk discussing the aforementioned experiment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lanUMETOqWc http://www.guystanding.com/files/documents/Basic_Income_Pilo...

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