Thursday, December 17, 2015

Free Money for Everybody,and Bad Linux Bad Bad Naughty Linux - What I am reading 12/17/2015

Medium -  Silicon Valley’s Basic Income Bromance -

It’s a boulevard of all the ills Santens believes basic income will solve: the shuffling homeless people — they could get cash in one fell swoop instead of extracting it from a byzantine welfare system. Lining the sidewalk are drug dealers; they could do something else, and their customers — not having to self-medicate their desperation — might dry up, too. We pass the Crazy Horse strip club. No one would have to dance or do sex work out of poverty, leaving it to the true aficionados. The high-interest payday loan shop would lose its raison d’etre.
The thought experiment of basic income serves as a Rorschach test of one’s beliefs about human nature: some people instantly worry that human enterprise would be reduced to playing PlayStation; others point to the studies of cash transfers that show people increase their working hours and production. One cash transfer program in North Carolina revealed long-term beneficial effects on Cherokee children whose parents received some $6,000 a year from a distribution of casino profits. (The kids were more likely to graduate high school on time, less likely to have psychiatric or alcohol abuse problems in adulthood.) No one debates that $1,000 a month, the amount usually discussed as a basic income in the U.S., would only be enough to cover the basics — and in expensive cities like San Francisco, not even that. Anyone wanting to live with greater creature comforts would still have the carrot of paid work.

Hayek said in The Road to Serfdom that there is no reason a prosperous civilized nation cannot guarantee a minimum standard of living for everyone but to me this stretches beyond that.  There is a difference between guaranteeing that your citizens don't starve or freeze to death and just handing out money.  Moral Hazard is real and I believe that the fasts way to stop innovation and productivity is to give people just enough to get by, because that is what they will do - get by.


3.  Seveneves

Descriptions of the books are at the original link.  Honestly there are only 3 in the list that interest me and one of them is a DC product sos I know without looking it will be retarded.  Of the rest maybe at some point I will read them but really, I feel like a slacker if I don't at least make an effort.  Actually I read a pretty substantial excerpt of Coates book and I wan't that impressed. (I thought I blogged about it but now I can't find it)  


It's a problem with the GRUB2 bootloader.  If you hit backspace 28 times instead of entering your password it will reboot and put you in the rescue shell.  A fix has already been released.


By Dec. 31, agencies are required to report to the White House the top five areas -- network services, cyberthreat analysis, systems development, and others -- where they lack sufficient personnel.
OMB and OPM plan to publish a first-ever governmentwide cybersecurity HR strategy in April.

Like most government programs, I am sure this one will be well thought out, cost effective and will solve the problem it is aimed at without inflicting a multitude of others.  In my hear of hearts I know this to be true.

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