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Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

He very nearly signed a Basic Income law. I originally read that the Democrats voted against it because it was too low, but more recently read that someone convinced Nixon that a Basic Income would have terrible consequences based on some faulty historical information about the Speenhamland system, which turned Nixon against BI. But it was close; he could have made history in a much more positive way than what we currently remember him for.

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The seventies were an odd time - the generation who had come of age during WWII were in power. And WWII had the strangest historical anomoly - wealth was most evenly distributed post WWII than at any time prior. And it was working. It seemed a great idea to experiment with other ways to keep wealth fairly distributed. What a shame power and wealth found it's way back to the few.

We will have to fix that. preferably without a global war

Everyone was equal because they bombed most of the existing capital until there were only smoking craters left and set the poor to killing each other. It should be a great example of why inequality is a good thing - everyone wants to solve inequality by raising the poor up to be billionaires, but the only way we actually know how is to destroy all the capital that the billionaires own so we all have access to nothing.

Someone else being well off doesn't have to make life worse for anyone. People need to live with that truth.

Throughout human history someone being wealthy almost always meant someone else being exploited - from obvious chattel slavery to less obvious trading networks

That these exploitations often created empires that created institutions that themselves promoted higher efficiency in trade (like protecting from piracy and brigands) was a good thing. But trade, whilst always a win win, can be and for empires always was structured to win more towards the centre of the empire

This structural inequality is found everywhere. In strong and weak forms. A weak form is commonly known - wealthy people "cheat" to get their kids into MIT or Harvard, (or even being wealthy is a cheat) and then the networks formed their help with access to resources later (see VC funds two kids from MIT with idea for ...)

Strong examples of structural inequality are found in say the Russian Federations army where the head of the armed forces has multiple houses and yachts and oddly the conscripts are fighting on a dollar a day and often come from rural impoverished areas.

None of this your fault.

But we choose our structures, our institutions in the same way we choose our built environments. If we have Houston-like 20 lane highways with nose to nose traffic when we could have please t walkable cities with electric trams and steeet cafes then yeah, none of that is the fault of the people in the traffic jams.

But it was a choice. A choice made in these cases in a democracy.

And we just assume that if people were given informed choices they would not have gone "hell yeah 20 lane highway".

So the solution to bad structures, bad institutions, bad urban environments is democracy. Is people making their voices heard and choices being made that are the informed choices people want (I assume most people will vote for "more equal")

Yet the next step is a leap of faith. Faith in democracy and human intelligence

The networks will work to keep themselves in power and are a centralising force (gather more power to self)

but human wealth now depends not on control of land but intelligent use of excess energy and political stability

So does someone have wealth today? That's nice. Is the structure of how they got it a fair one? Is it right that someone who has capital today should continue to direct the use of that capital? Is it fair that a founder gets 80% of the shares but the first engineer gets 1%? I know it was a trade but capitalism is structured like the above empires were structured - to benefit the capital city.

Is that the only way to structure the allocation of resources in the planet?

The use of coal and oil has seen an outrageous chnage in human wealth. Fantastic. And the conditions for that industrial revolution are so weird that tinkering with it seems so risky. but the two world wars showed that it is a fairly robust revolution- and if we want to get out from the oil / CO2 trap and into a sustainable future we need to overcome bad resource allocation - it's time to try new options. Private Companies are undemocratic and control about 50% of western wealth, is a hierarchy like that the best way to allocate and motivate resources? Most western nations are highly centralised - does that make for th best local decisions?

There are options

This is why those that benefit from the current status quo are trying to dismantle and destroy education, right? We can't let the people read, know, or think about what you wrote. It's destabilizing and "dangerous" to their way of life.

Err. I think that is quite extreme.

What we are seeing is an increasing number of wealthy people trying to fit into a system designed for a smaller number. I mean Harvard takes on a freshman year of 2,000 out of something like 3 million 18 year olds.

Most Ivy Leagues will have a small airport nearby. Usually Cessnas etc. On graduation day that thing is full of private Lear Jets.

The plain old wealthy, someone who worked hard built a successful company and retires - the American dream kind of thing we imagine here on HN. That person does not get a ducking look in at Harvard.

The system is failing everyone - which is kind of weird.

But nah. I don't think there are back rooms with smoke and cackling bankers working out how to stop the poor from reading.

I mean that was true in slave owning southern states but that's now just toned down to simple racism in the country club.

The problem is that the racists in the country club are only slowly coming aware how much the system is ducking them. None of them are able to say their daughters got into Harvard.

Hence Trumps popularity. He probably won't fix it but he at least says he will and blames the country club racists problems on the people that they hate (as opposed to the actual cause)

Well, mass education was never about learning to read, know, or think. It was about making factory workers, clerks, and (later) office staff.

Elite education, and especially luxury education for the children of the elite, was about learning to read, know, and think - mainly because it was still tied to an earlier humanistic and scholarly tradition where those things were important.

That lasted a short while, say until the 70s.

Now, even elite education is not about that kind of learning anymore, as those in power don't really need or appreciate those skills.

I think this is a re-work of "Chinas Totalitarian Bet". So there is a theory that the reason Middle East armies are basically expensive and crap is that the elites of the Saudis and Kuwaitis and Iraqis have loads of money but are despots and won't trust anyone but the most loyal / ethnically familial close with real power. So the tank battalions are lead not by talented colonels but by a cousin of the royal family. Spend six million training a nobody from nowhere Tom Cruise to be a fighter pilot? Make all the princes pilots. Let a sergeant train with a Anti Tank weapon. No way. They might aim at the cousin in his tank.

This is the opposite of the (more) meritocratic USA. Decision making is pushed downwards and the coherent mission is aligning all.

It is worth noting that a lot of ISIS / al-quida success is attributed to having to let go of this attitude - their central driving mission meant everyone was loyal, this decision making and training could be pushed right down into cells. Anyway I am not an expert here.

The point being that Totalitarian regiemes have a hard time making militaries that are flexible and responsive. And that rolls over to factories and civil servants etc.

Now the guardian writer Jon (?) and up with Chinas Totalitarian Bet - china knows this but thinks software and the surveillance state changes the game enough that either no-one can get out of line enough before their digital footprint catches them (again see al-qeueda) or that they can just give direct orders to be followed like Amazon warehouse packers and that will allow such flexibility and change.

So yeah mass education was about teaching the masses to think. And the people in say Victorian Britain who said this will end their way of life were actually right - fortunately for us.

The question now is can software replace our thinking? Can we all just do as we are told ? Will a society of drones be worth living in or even be productive enough to survive? And will the opposite, a more democratic more meritocratic and more fair and generous society be more productive innovative and worthwhile. I say Yes to the last and no to all others.

>He very nearly signed a Basic Income law.

What such law ever passed Congress during his tenure?

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