This problem can be attacked in a couple of ways, one way is to increase compensation sure, but another is to make it possible to have healthcare and housing on the salary they do offer. The chasm between pay and cost of living is huge and growing.
Except according to half of the people in charge it would mean The Wrong People would get money and all they would do is buy drugs. And that's why we can't have nice things.
There are many countries with universal healthcare and a decent social safety net (Scandinavia comes to mind).
Why haven’t we seen this explosion coming out of them?
And the flip: Shouldn't Scandinavia be overrun with drug-addled do-nothings if social welfare is so bad?
I’m just skeptical of the parent poster claim that a Cambrian innovation explosion awaits us all if we would just welfare harder.
Oh btw, “Scandinavians” only includes countries in the Swedish axis of influence, so to include Finns alongside one has to say “Nordics”. Finland is Nordic without being Scandinavian (technically)
The Scandinavian social safety net is excellent and I think the positive effects of that are apparent. People can take larger risks than they can in the US, but still nowhere near as large as they could with UBI
Does anywhere have something close that we could see partial "explosion"?
Or is the completely novel?
You might argue that there's more tech came out of the UK (which still has some sort of healthcare, and had free education until recently) than there should considering its population and economy size. E.g. ARM, HTML, cloned sheep... Also quite a bit of popular music came from the UK. And Harry Potter was written by a person on state benefits.
If you are a risk taker, especially a young one, lack of UBI or health insurance is not going to stop you. It never has in the past, when those things didn't exist.
These are your types who currently bootstrap themselves and grow slowly rather than seek explosive growth by way of external funding, and I think you’d see both see this group grow and become more bold if basics like housing weren’t something that was ever in question.
I anecdotally know a number of people, both in and out of tech, who would prefer to be independent contractors or small-business owners - in fields that they know well, and stand better than even chances of ending up with higher total compensation - but have families. Their fear of losing healthcare benefits (temporarily, whilst they get their businesses off the ground; or longer-term, should their businesses fail) keeps them working for others.
The sibling post about "calculated risk" is correct. The conclusion these folks have made (not to strike out on their own, under current circumstances) is likely the correct one, but it's a continual drag on total economic potential. Worse, this is a cost which isn't captured by calculations of what's currently spent on health-care, nor can be off-set against what a more robust social safety net would "cost". It is, nevertheless, considerable.
> Except according to half of the people in charge it would mean The Wrong People would get money ...
If you look at that 'half' as people representing the status quo power, they don't want an explosion in such things that cause change.