Nicolas_Colin

Yes that is the proper way to frame it :-) Being unsuccessful is part of the startup life. Being a Zombie is not!

The problem is not the salon itself. Rather it's zombie entrepreneurs being all over it, and non-zombie entrepreneurs wasting time in it trying to catch up.

Neither is happening at The Family: our portfolio entrepreneurs are busy working on their product/their customers and are on stage only when it makes sense from their roadmap's perspective.

As for the zombie "entrepreneurs de salon", they are not allowed as speakers at The Family.

Sure, will do ;-) But it was also meant as a distraction for those who are experiencing election anxiety.

A few weeks ago, I published a paper under the title “Enough With This Basic Income Bullshit”, which was extensively discussed here on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12473112

This new one is a (long-form) follow up to the UBI piece. It is meant as a contribution to a grown-up discussion about the future of progressive politics in a more digital economy. Looking forward to discussing it.

Erm but I'm not a candidate, so I don't really care for your vote. And I definitely agree with the idea that political engagement is both voice and exit.

That being said, what I suggest is not throwing away the UBI concept for the greater good. Mostly I regret the lack of participation in the discussion over social risks and economic security in general, which I don't think can be reduced to UBI and the problems it (supposedly) solves.

For lack of that participation, UBI ends up resembling a solution looking for a problem (a very bad starting point as you know if you're in the startup world). And those who support it so enthusiastically look like they're single-issue voters.

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-unethical-to-be-a-single-issue-v...

Workers engaged in the labor movement didn't fight for social insurance because it was a good idea. Rather they fought for it because some of them felt ill and couldn't afford proper care and then they died in misery.

Another way to put it: if I was aiming at building a giant tech company with a mission to provide economic security, I wouldn't start by promoting UBI but rather by solving my future customers' most pressing social problems—and those are (surprise) unaffordable housing and lack of health insurance, two issues that UBI doesn't address (or am I missing something?).

Maybe 10 years later, when you serve 1.7 billion users with a very large pool of risks, sophisticated financial tools and advanced machine learning, you'll end up with something vaguely resembling UBI. But UBI as a starting point seems like a failed startup to me.

Do something people want :-)

I meant it as a conciliatory opening...

What I meant is that if you care for economic security and lesser inequalities, then you have to fight for the whole liberal agenda (improving the coverage of all risks), not just one issue, otherwise the bad guys win this time, and the next, and the next.

I you think UBI's worth fighting (I don't), your only chance to succeed is in the context of advancing that liberal agenda in its entirety over the long term.

And right now, with Obama's legacy and Trump on the verge of winning, the main social front is social health insurance. Sadly I don't hear many tech people on that issue (for hypothetical reasons laid out in the article) and I reckon the whole UBI discussion has a responsibility in that deafening silence.

They're more stable because the rich, while paying more, also receive more. The pension amount is proportional to past professional income, as is that of unemployment benefits. Therefore old age and unemployment social insurances are not that redistributive, so the rich like and support them because they don't see it as "the rich pay for the poor".

Well, yes, that's my position:

- there have been a lot of large-scale BI policy experiments in the past in many countries, and none turned out so well on the long term. Yes it's true that technology changes many things, but I think it should be exploited primarily to improve existing benefits (considering the criticality of healthcare and housing, two major factors of both economic insecurity and inequalities);

- I think a healthcare single-payer or public option experiment would be more impactful, because this is what is currently at stake in Congress, the Supreme Court and the coming presidential election + it's important to win many small victories in the present rather than a hypothetical large one in a distant future (any union leader would agree). Finish the job on healthcare, and you'll discover that it becomes easier to advance the cause of UBI.

I guess you're more of a communist and I'm more of a social-traitor ;-)

"Means testing is how you would LOSE political support" => yes you're right. And this is the reason why those (the Republican Party for instance) who are opposed to social policy out of principle invest a lot in transforming universal benefits into means-tested benefits.

We saw that happen in many cases in the recent period of austerity, because scarcity of resources is a powerful argument to convince the rich, then the middle class, to renounce their benefits in favor of the poor.

As for "there has not been UBI" I disagree. Many supporters provide examples such as the Alaska dividend. There are many lessons to be drawn from many social policies in developed countries.

In France alone we had two BI-like programs which, for various reasons, underwent slow financial and political destruction: - the RMI/RSA, about which I wrote in the article - less known is the "régime des intermittents du spectacle", which works like a universal unemployment insurance for freelancers in the entertainment industry (and it costs so much money to the taxpayer that governments regularly try to kill it). It only survives because the entertainment industry is a powerful lobby in France.

I wrote the article, whose point is precisely that: what I called "bullshit" is the endless "problem-solution" conversation around basic income which, in my eyes, ignores politics as well as history and drains the political will to fight on other fronts, such as universal health insurance in the US (or affordable housing).

I agree as for what Blair did for the NHS, but it was precisely his way to deal with the NHS being a thorn in the side.

What's interesting is the underlying philosophy: instead of providing citizens with money, the New Labour tried to rebuild the best system possible for rich and poor alike. A UBI is unable to achieve that goal in healthcare.

As for the French example: I agree it isn't the theoretical concept of basic income (and thought I wrote so). Rather my point is that this is how basic income would end up after 1 or 2 electoral rounds.

How so? It's exactly the way it's grouped and organized in all European social systems. It's also the framework used by Yale University's Jacob Hacker in "The Great Risk Shift" to discuss US social policy: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Risk-Shift-Economic-Insecurity/...

(I wrote the Medium article)

Maybe in the future you can vote for a party with which you are not perfectly aligned, then weigh on it while it exerts power to bring it closer to your views?

I happen to think it's the greatest challenge to be tackled by civic tech startups...

See this older story https://salon.thefamily.co/software-eating-politics-the-case...

Proof of current progress: http://a16z.com/2016/05/16/regulatory-hacking/

I can't wait for regulatory hacking to join the field of social policy. Many people will convert to social realpolitik at that point :-)

Thanks for replying. I'd say Silicon Valley is synonymous with tech industry here (the article effectively mentions "Silicon Valley and its satellites").

As for the second argument, I trust there is much progress in terms of tackling politics and history in SV, but many sources contributed to forming my opinion:

- In "Googled" (published in 2004), Ken Auletta of the "New Yorker" explains in great detail how clueless Google initially was in dealing with Washington, DC., a trait he claims can be linked to the naïveté of engineers who see the world as a collection of "problems" all waiting for a "solution". As an engineer myself, I really recognize that engineering bias. Yet I agree the engineering culture may be stronger at Google than at other tech companies. But it's still dominant in the tech industry.

- In his "Secret History of Silicon Valley" conference, Steve Blank constantly jokes about the fact that people in Silicon Valley are ignorant of history, to the point where even students at Stanford University don't have a clue about who was Frederick Terman.

- More recently, another "New Yorker" article told the story of Mark Zuckerberg "getting an education" in his failed attempt to transform the education system in the state of New Jersey—see http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/19/schooled

-In Europe most of us are appalled at how clumsy SV-based tech companies are when dealing with local governments and adapting to the various cultures, institutions, and special interests => hence the many problems that Uber, Airbnb, Google, and others have here in Europe on the regulatory front (Apple being the latest to suffer that fate with the infamous €14B European tax bill).

Maybe it's a false impression. Or maybe in Silicon Valley those who are genuinely interested in geography, history, and politics are not in the executive seats and so far fail to make a difference.

But I can assure you that the tech industry's passion with basic income has a direct consequence on the ground: when you try to open up the discussion about the future of social policy, the tech people's response is always: "nevermind those complex policies from the past, basic income will solve everything". Ugh.

In most cases the reason is that they read the books by Peter Thiel and others, they read the blogposts by American Entrepreneurs and VCs, they believe the hype around basic income, and, I'm sorry to say, I think they don't have a clue about what it takes to build inclusive and sustainable social institutions.

I wrote the article so I hope you'll continue reading :-)

Technology destroys some jobs and it creates others, but those new jobs are numerous enough only if we put in place the right institutions (sustainable and inclusive). We're not there yet (and I don't see UBI as one of those).

This is an older article about job destruction and job creation: https://salon.thefamily.co/another-100-days-a-digital-new-de...

It's true, but those two arguments exist only on paper.

In practice, my guess is that it wouldn't be long before UBI is converted a means-tested benefit, for both financial and political reasons.

As for advantage number 2, yes you're not told how to spend that income but chances are that income is far from enough to pay for proper healthcare / childcare / elderly care or well-located housing.

The history of the social state shows us that transferring money to people is not enough: you also have to supplement the market and correct its imperfections.

Actually, talking is not the only way. Were 19th century factory workers content with talking? No: they initiated the labor movement and conquered the modern social state.

The fact that so many people talk about BI without leaving their job, raising funds, going on strike, founding unions, etc., is proof in my eyes that we're having an intellectual discussion, not waging a political battle.

The one precedent of authentic political action in the current context, the foundation of the Freelancers Union, was meant to fight for health coverage for freelancers, not a monetary benefit.

The dynamic (converting universal benefits into means-tested benefits) happened 2 years ago in France with universal childcare benefits ("allocations familiales"). It's true that people weren't happy, but the pressure in favor of austerity was just too much and it was implemented very gradually.

It hasn't happened to Social Security because, if I'm not mistaken, the pension amount is proportional to what you earned during your career => hence the rich pay more but also receive more. Same with unemployment benefits.

This is actually the only way to make a universal monetary benefit politically sustainable. And UBI, with its fixed amount, doesn't match that criteria.

I sincerely regret that the US is currently missing critical opportunities such as that to deploy a state-of-the-art universal health insurance, while most of the energy of those who could support that effort is dedicated to discussing basic income.

Also I point out that real-life enactments such as the French RMI, even though they succeeded at providing critical resources to those in need, are under extraordinary financial and political pressure. That pressure explains why it's become so complex, ridden with adverse effects and hated by much of the political spectrum.

I'm fairly certain that basic income would suffer the same fate. Therefore I see it as a political dead end and a distraction from much-needed debates on critical social risks in the digital age.

I wrote the article. Thank your for your response.

I get your point about painters and writers. But my guess is that working on affordable housing would do more good on that front—and would be more sustainable politically.

You can read this convincing article by Sarah Kendzior: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/12/expensive-c...

I wrote the article. Thank you for your response. I'm certainly not the first to point out that Silicon Valley, as an ecosystem, is fundamentally uninterested in politics and history (especially social history). Would you disagree with that?

I didn't write that basic income won't work as a solution designed to fix a problem. My point is that I don't see a political path to enacting it, and even though it was enacted, I don't see how it could survive the next round of election.

So yes maybe it's time to focus on more winnable fights such as implementing universal health insurance.

https://medium.com/@Nicolas_Colin/thanks-for-all-the-respons...

I wrote the article. Thank you for your response. I don't think post-scarcity will eat the entire economy anytime soon. In particular, I think that it will still be unaffordable to access proper medical care, child care, and housing. And I don't see how UBI solves that.

Hence there are more pressing problems, like deploying a sustainable universal health insurance in the US (either public option or single payer) and reflecting on how we could make housing more affordable so that middle class and working class people can live where the jobs are located.

I wrote the article. This is not my point. The French RMI was enacted in 1988 with wide bipartisan support and really resembled a UBI at the time.

Then, in the following decades, many people, notably on the right, started to hate it and, as a result, new, conservative rules made it more difficult to claim the benefit.

(Just like, for instance, Republican legislatures all around the US make it more complicated to vote, not because it's a necessary procedural evil, but because it's in the political interest of the Republican party.)

I think that the same fate awaits UBI if it were to be enacted (which I doubt, but that's another story).

Thank you for your response. I wrote this article because it seems to me the basic income discussion is orchestrated by people, notably in technology, who are unaware of politics and reluctant to get their hands dirty.

I know that UBI, on paper, looks like it’s a good answer to many of the challenges listed at the end. But I don’t think that UBI, once put in place, would be as strong, politically, as other universal programs such as universal social insurance: => Round #1: new left-wing government enacts UBI with appropriate funding. => Round #2: left-wing government loses elections, new right-wing government decides to target UBI on the poor in order to master the costs. UBI becomes BI without the "U". => Round #3: the rich find that their taxes are too high and denounce the BI-claiming poor as welfare queens, contributing to the right-wing government winning reelection and weakening BI even more.

There are two kinds of universal benefits: the rich (and the middle class) all need universal health insurance (in case they have cancer), but they don’t really need UBI because they earn enough money from other sources.

So I’m not sure why, even if they’re supportive at the beginning, they would keep on supporting UBI under the inevitable ideological and financial pressure that comes with a polarized democratic society.

Considering this perspective, my understanding is that all the energy thrown in BI-related discussions is wasted while it could be invested in favor of universal health insurance for instance (which the US still lacks even with Obamacare, and which could benefit for the attention and design skills from the tech community).