Hacker News Reader

Comment by laser | Hacker News Reader

If the government guarantees a basic income, you're really only guaranteed (at best) until the next election cycle. Just recently, seven years after its passing, the ACA was nearly reverted, which would have kicked millions of people off government-subsidized health insurance plans.

View on HN

That's why I have approximately 0 faith in the pension plan my government(s) have in place. I'll save for my own retirement so I'm not high and dry when they mismanage the funds or change policies or whatever.

While it is less likely, nothing is guaranteed. You assume your investments will be around until you cash them out for retirement, and they are all dependant on something not failing:

* Direct stock ownership depends on the company growing, not failing, not being bought out, etc. * Mutual funds depend on the fund manager not going under / properly managing assets. * Bonds depend on state institutions honoring them. * You can't really save for retirement in a bank because their rates of return are below inflation. You lose money in banks. * Hoarding fiat is obviously bad. * Any asset you would try to store long term is subject to market volatility at the least and potential obsolescence at the worst. You simply cannot guess what anything will be worth decades from now.

The current US administration knows full well that throwing tens of millions of people off insurance will probably cost them the disenfranchised working class that elected them in the first place and lose them their majorities in congress and the presidency. I fully expect them to stab themselves in the foot with this, since a lot of monied interests benefit from the absurdly inefficient default state of healthcare where many people depend on emergency rooms for all problems, but in the same vein repealing social security would destroy their voting base unless they made it a grandfathered in shutdown where the next Democratic administration could just reinstate it and nobody on benefits would lose benefits.

>Mutual funds depend on the fund manager not going under / properly managing assets.

Err, no. This is not a risk of properly structured mutual funds. The manager does not directly hold assets - they make decisions about what to do with the assets, which the custodian executes. And the fund's management has no recourse to the assets held by the custodian. How the fund goes under is if the assets they hold go to zero value.

There's still execution risk, though, which is why passive management is ideal. I'm pretty sure VTSAX can successfully hold a market-cap weighted mix of the 3600 largest US firms pretty much indefinitely. The risk is that the largest US firms stop being generally profitable, like what happened in Japan.

Which is also _another_ reason UBI is a terrible idea that is bound to fail.

Actually, the fact that it hasn't been unrolled completely yet without backlash is a testament to how angry people are when you try to take their protections away.

Also, similar to the ACA, individual states can attempt to block the roll-out.

In the case of BI, I disagree. Politicians will see this for what it really is -- the most direct way to buy votes (by promising increased BI). It would be quite popular with both parties, I'm sure.

One party's platform is built on the fear of socialism - they will most definitely oppose this and use it to get votes, but by egging it publicly.

If we're living in a world where BI is a reality, it will be embraced. Once social programs are implemented, they're nearly impossible to remove -- see ObamaCare. Republicans have given up on going back to the old system and have, well, embraced a tweaked ObamaCare under a new name. They'd do the same with BI.

"Democrats promising $30K BI? Well we're gonna do $35K!"

This is circular logic. In order for BI to become a reality, it first must be embraced. In order for BI to be embraced, it must first be a world where BI is a reality.

You keep referencing ACA, but there is currently a new bill to repeal it: https://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/06822f49-...

The argument from the parent posts rely on ACA being repealed already. If the ACA does get repealed then the above arguments hold but this hasn't happened yet.

My point is that bringing up the ACA repeal is moot, either way, because it's repeal is still active and not finished.

No, in order for BI to become a reality you just need a Democrat majority to pass the legislation.

The irony of course being that all the existing social programs which are "nearly impossible to remove" will have to be removed to fund the BI.

BI is the opposite of socialism when it's coupled with dismantling certain pieces of the social safety net. We don't need WIC or CHIP if we have universal BI, for example.

That depends on a great deal of factors, I think.

Even if we guarantee some sort of income floor, there will still be those who, despite that guarantee, need additional assistance. Whether it's because they have more children than the average, are irresponsible with spending, are victim to a drug habit, unexpectedly lose their jobs, or succumb to medical debt, we have to come to grips with the idea that UBI won't be a cure-all.

Even if we acknowledge (and not all will) that most people who are dependent on safety-net assistance are perfectly good and responsible, depending on what the amount is, what their life circumstances are, and a myriad other factors, I don't think we can take it for granted that UBI obviates those specific-purpose programs for the remainder of those who need assistance and for whom UBI is not ideal.

Put bluntly, there are people who will take the entirety of their UBI check and spend it on stupid things, and end up without money for food, or for their childrens' health. What are we to do about them?

Yes, BI involves dismantling certain pieces of the social safety net to replace it with a social safety net. The party that opposes wealth redistribution will oppose BI.

I think you're confusing the GOP's motivations and their rhetoric. See also: their failure to repeal the ACA despite having the presidency and a majority in both houses.

That's because the GOP isn't a party, it's a coalition of bickering factions that has chosen to prioritize winning over purity. (As opposed to Democrats, who prioritize purity over winning.)

Odd, I would have flipped that statement.

Tbe republican party like UBI if it comes with a reduction in welfare programs. Its the democrats that have to be convinced.

Pensions are a great use-case for smart contracts. I would feel much safer having my retirement assured by a blockchain than a bureaucrat.

How would this work? As I understand it pensions are almost never fully funded when they begin because the costs would be prohibitive. Can a smart contract guarantee that funds that are not available now will be made available at a later date?

It wouldn't work, almost nothing people want to do with smart contract can actually work because those people tend not to actually understand what a smart contract is or what it can actually do and what it can't do. Virtually every smart contract proposal is DOA due to a misunderstanding of their nature.

What's missing from your claim is any justification for it all. You're just claiming, on zero authority, that it's not possible. So enlighten us.

Why do you think it's impossible to encode the mechanics of a pension in a smart contract-based system?

I didn't need to, the comment I replied to already addressed a valid why. Smart contracts can't enforce access to funds without locking the funds up from other use, and that's not how things work in the real world. Pensions aren't savings accounts where funds are locked up ready to be used in a black box. They can't interact with the real world without trusted oracles, but we already have that in the real world and they're only real use is when they can do something deterministic on chain. In short, they're largely hype without a real problem to solve... so far.

You're just claiming it's impractical today, not technically infeasible for any reason.

1. Pensions don't currently work like this

There are many thousands of different pension systems across the world.

It stands to reason that you could create new system, and if it had significantly attractive advantages, people would use it.

2. Trusted oracles are a problem

Yup, we need more decentralized services that smart contracts can take advantage of. Wait a few years, they're coming.

3. Smart contracts are only useful for deterministic changes

Making deterministic change is precisely what you want. Do you mean statically defined? Because that's obviously not correct. And are you considering a new system specifically designed for pensions?

Virtually all innovative technology is "hype" until it isn't. I agree we have a ways to go.

Hence my final words, so far...

> Making deterministic change is precisely what you want.

Yes, but that's a problem when you have to interact with the real world which isn't.

To the extent they are funded, that money could never be rescinded. And you could negotiate early funding as a feature now, because it would actually mean something to the recipients. There are no untrustworthy promises required.

And you could do new things based on control of your pension, which might radically change how we think of them.

The main thing that smart contracts remove is the need for trust. And that's the main problem with pensions.

Better yet, one could have completely private pension plans, where everyone is safe from both bureaucrats and kleptocrats.

Congratulations, you've just invented the IRA.

It's not completely private if bureaucrats tell you what you can or cannot do with it, as well as when you may do it, stealing from you if you step outside of their rules.

Completely private accounts are called savings accounts; governments aren't telling you what to do with your money, they're telling you what you have to do in order to avoid that money being taxed, IRA's offer you a benefit, that benefit isn't without strings. Smart contracts offer nothing here you can't already do easier.

Using a broad definition of theft merely serves to raise the noise floor. Your definition of "completely private" seems like "free markets" or "perfect competition": that is, things which are free from government interference only in misanthropic delusions. As Jefferson explained, stable ownership is not a natural concept; that you are considered to "own" things absent direct physical possession is a function of society. We also collectively agree to believe in this thing called 'money', which is also not an inherent property of mankind. That society can dictate rights and rules about property is inherent to the concept of each.

The "smart contract" is still reacting to things in the real world. It's not going to magically cause the stock market to not fail. And, as we've seen, they are vulnerable to hacking.

It doesn't magically solve all problems, just the most important one. Trust.

How?

You don't have to trust anyone with access to your pension not to steal from it, because no one has access to it.

The promise that is your pension would be cryptographically enshrined in a blockchain, with full transparency.

That's... that's not really true. For one, we've already seen how these "smart contracts" can be hacked. I can almost guarantee that they will put something in them that will allow them to take the stuff back.

And that hasn't really explained how the funding would be there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com