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Comment by Wytwwww | Hacker News Reader

> other sources of revenue exist > revenue through donation

So what? Not everyone wants to engage in all of the PR/marketing stuff that's necessary to make any money from that and it would still generally result in significantly lower revenue.

> On another level, we could pivot to UBI instead of dedicating

And fund it how exactly? Even if that were sustainable why do you think that content creators should be fully content living of UBI + a few pennies in donations while people working in most other industries should be able to money the same way they previously did?

IP protection (even if often implemented in a suboptimal way which of course should be improved) have been one of the primaries force behind human progress over that last 300+ years.

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> Not everyone wants to engage in all of the PR/marketing stuff that's necessary to make any money from that

That's not a difference, PR/Marketing is already used to profit over IP work.

> Even if that were sustainable why do you think that content creators should be fully content living of UBI + a few pennies in donations while people working in most other industries should be able to money the same way they previously did?

This is assuming creators are fully content on how stuff work now, and I'm betting that's not the case for the vast majority, most of them cannot make end meets with the current system, regardless of how hard they work on their book/song/game/etc, and they have to have a side job just to put food on the table.

> IP protection (even if often implemented in a suboptimal way which of course should be improved) have been one of the primaries force behind human progress over that last 300+ years.

That's a bold claim. Most of, if not all, human progress on this period is directly attributable to the use of fossil fuel, from the steam engine to the modern use of it, and how it empowered us to do so much more with less human-hour.

Indeed, people didn't invent the telephone, television, or typewriter because they thought "wow this would be a great payout for the next 20-80 years for me and my subsequent heirs, let me invent something useful", they did it because they needed a telephone, television, or typewriter, and one didn't exist yet.

Unless this is sarcasm, you base these claim on what exactly? Inventors in the late 1800s were often notoriously litigious and highly motivated by the fact that they could profit from their inventions through patents.

The alternative option would have meant that individuals would have had to spend significant amounts of time and resources to "invent" new products, and the only ones to profit would be the companies that had the capacity to manufacture them (while keeping all of the profits for themselves). Does that seem like an environment that's highly conducive to innovation?

> they did it because they needed a telephone,

There is a pretty extensive section named "The race to the patent office" on Graham Bell's Wikipedia page.

Do you think Watt would have successful at building his steam engine had there been no patents that allowed him to attract investors? Or he would have just spent all of his live working as an engineer or a surveyor because he couldn't have afford the significant capital required to develop the engine?

> Does that seem like an environment that's highly conducive to innovation?

people invent stuff and put it out in the public domain every day, not everyone is a robber baron. look at youtube or hackaday one day, maybe you'll learn something.

That's certainly a rational, well thought out and deep argument. Never thought it about it this way...

> And fund it how exactly?

The work necessary to properly answer this question is a team of 100+ domain experts working for at least 5 years. There's no way you're getting a good answer to this question in a comment thread on a website for programmers. Why even ask that question - what value do you expect out of the responses?

It's reasonable to expect people who advocate for policy to have some idea of how they want it to be implemented.

no, i can advocate for having public rail without knowing how to lay track, how to fund it, or how to run the schedules. i can also advocate for photovoltaics and heat pumps getting funded, and i can advocate for health care reform without even knowing where that reform would go, just by knowing that the current state of the health care system is bad. there's no burden of proof when stating a preference.

If you are advocating for a position, with no idea of how to implement that position is implemented then you are just increasing the noise.

It is all fine and well to say "We should have public rail" but with out any idea of how it should be implemented and what it will take to get there, the idea falls flat on it's face. You have to be able to support it with funding increases and possibly eminent domain.

If you advocate for healthcare reform, great! So do I! And since you have no preference about how and what shape the reforms should take, you agree with me that we should abolish all health insurance companies! That would definitely reform the system but you might not like the outcome.

A large number of our current issues come from law and policy that was passed to address issues of the day with no understanding of how or why things were happening. Let's not continue that trend.

> what value do you expect out of the responses

Why even make that argument in the first place then? It's the equivalent (following your logic) of saying that "it would be nice if we were living in an utopian society with no material scarcity" which doesn't mean much unless you can at least provide some explanation of how we should get there.

> The work necessary to properly answer this question is a team of 100+ domain experts working for at least 5 years.

I don't think we live in a video game where you can just spend "research points" to develop new economic systems that somehow magically improve economic productivity and solve complex socio-economical problems?

> Why even make that argument in the first place then?

Making an argument doesn't require to describe every step to it, if I told you could use your GPS to navigate to work, you're not gonna ask me how to launch a satellite in space.

> It's the equivalent (following your logic) of saying that "it would be nice if we were living in an utopian society with no material scarcity"

Copyright have nothing to do with material scarcity, neither does UBI, that is about money, a man made social construct, not a material thing.

exactly as you say, an argument for UBI doesn't necessarily need to mean retreading the whole history of UBI designs and legislatures, it just means someone would like to UBI exist without necessarily having to be an expert on how to implement it. I wanted to eat some sushi today and I didn't start questioning myself "well how would you evolve sushi rice starting with a wild rice cultivar", i just went to the store and bought it and now i'm fine. there are experts for that sort of thing and I leave it up to them. I guess if someone doesn't realize there are experts for topics then that betrays they think they are an expert with everything.

> just means someone would like to UBI exist without necessarily having to be an expert on how to implement

I would like eco-friendly flying cars to exist so that I could avoid traffic in the morning, I think that would solve all the mass transit and infrastructure problems in major cities.

No clue how to build one but I'm sure that 500 experts should be able to accomplish it if they really tried it. Until they do that nobody is allowed to question the validity of this universal solution to all transportation related problems that humanity is facing.

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