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Comment by pton_xd | Hacker News Reader

I think it'd more effectively go into the appropriate hands by at least charging some nominal amount. Advertise that anyone may visit the public library and purchase a subsidized internet-capable device for $20. Or $5. Free just has no chance of being an efficient distribution.

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When we're talking about fixing outlier issues in society, efficiency is sometimes counterproductive to the goal of addressing problems that exist at the fringes of society. Universality is sometimes better at addressing the problems at the extremes.

For example, some restaurants may be really efficient at providing a meal for $5, but the people who need a soup kitchen the most don't have $5.

Exactly this. The amount of wasteful greedy/hoarding behavior that is induced by free and is curbed by charging even $20 is quite high. Charging 50% of the going resale rate is probably enough to prevent hoarding and substantially curb resale.

That might be slightly too much for the aims of the program, in which case adjust as needed, realizing that you're trading off one outcome for another.

They’re not just going to hand them out to anyone who asks for one.

"user pays" prevents the benefit from occurring.

For example in New Zealand (public healthcare) there used to be a $5 copay for prescribed medication (by government healthcare doctors). There is now no copay ($0) because 3% of people would not get the medicine because of cost. This was particularly true for low-income families, Māori, Pacific peoples, and disabled New Zealanders. That said, our conservative party wants to bring the fees back: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/budget-2023-5-prescription-fee...

If people don't pay a small amount to get something important like medicine, they perhaps wouldn't pay even a a token $20 or 50% for something luxury/"unnecessary" like easier access to the internet.

Exactly. This concept is borne of "let them eat cake" wealth privilege gatekeeping/utopian magical thinking. There are homeless people and the elderly who are continually deciding whether to buy medicine or food.

It's possible to distribute benefits fairly based on limiting a physical device to 1 per person.

This doesn't preclude giving the people who might not "buy" one $50 to spend on whatever the hell they want and then having one of the things on offer be a $200 Chromebook with a $50 price tag on it.

The problem of "someone has no money" should be addressed by giving them money not a Chromebook. If a $200 Chromebook isn't worth $50 to them, I'd rather they keep the $50 and buy something that is worth $50 to them.

I admit that I am hard pressed to have sympathy for people who won't even get themselves 5 dollars to scrap together for something as essential as medicine and that may cloud my judgement, but in your example there is still a filter that prevents hoarding, as somebody has to first go to a doctor to get the prescription and the medicine will only be given to people who have some need for it.

In this case essentially everybody could benefit from getting a government paid laptop, if only to resell it, which I think means that there is a big difference between the two cases.

> no sympathy

I guess you think they chose to be both sick and poor. Perhaps you also believe children choose to be sick and kids get to select their own parents?

Fortunately I live in New Zealand where we collectively want to care for unfortunate people - even though sometimes the misfortune might be their own fault.

Yes, it costs me a car in taxes every year to pay for a first world government health system. But at least my country enabled me to be rich enough to do that. And I'm lucky to be healthy - for which I can thank my fellow citizens and past governments to a good extent.

I sincerely wish you the best of luck to be healthy and wealthy.

I’m sure there are some prerequisites, similar to how the acp is managed.

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