Monday, 8 January 2018

Charity giving away $86 million in Bitcoin donates $5 million to fight poverty...with cash

quote [ "Bitcoin has changed my life," says the charity's founder. "I have far more money than I can ever spend.

"My aims, goals and motivations in life have nothing to do with having XX million or being the mega rich. So I'm doing something else: Donating the majority of my bitcoins to charitable causes." ]

Something something positive posts.
[SFW] [people] [+7 Good]
[by JWWargo@6:05amGMT]

Comments

evil_eleet said @ 1:45pm GMT on 8th Jan [Score:3 Underrated]
Odd how many times CNBC avoided using the words 'basic income' before finally defining it as a "sometimes" used phrase.

I was going to post this today. Bitcoin fund donates millions in cryptocurrency to universal basic income charity

In other basic income news, Scotland Is Set to Run Pilot Universal Basic Income Schemes.

And, Basic income's transition from radical idea to legitimate policy | Basic Income News
norok said @ 5:02pm GMT on 8th Jan [Score:-4]
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evil_eleet said @ 5:22pm GMT on 8th Jan [Score:3 Underrated]
UBI is a capitalist solution to a capitalist problem.
norok said @ 6:49pm GMT on 8th Jan [Score:-3 Boring]
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midden said @ 5:27pm GMT on 8th Jan [Score:2 Underrated]
The heart of the problem is that with the incredible increase in per capita productivity, it just doesn't take the labor of nearly as many people as exist to keep everyone well fead, housed, clothed, entertained. An alternative to a UBI would be a 25-30 hour work week that still pays a living wage.
raphael_the_turtle said @ 7:56pm GMT on 8th Jan
I don't know what came of it, but a German Union was pushing for a 28 hour work week. I don't think that solves the issue, but it's probably a good stepping stone For them, at least. Here in America it's a different culture and I think as long as you're trying to prop up the system you're going to be disappointed with the results, what seems like compromises quickly get turned around into back stabbing.
midden said @ 8:41pm GMT on 8th Jan
I agree. That's why I think a shorter, well compensated work week is a better solution than a UBI. Yes, everyone should actively contribute to society, but why not have twice as many people actively engaged in doing so, but only half as often?
raphael_the_turtle said @ 10:33pm GMT on 8th Jan
I'm not sure you interpreted what I wrote the way I wrote it. Specifically the latter half. In the US, in general, people are being more productive now and being paid less thanks to technology. If hours are cut, which for many people they have been so employers can avoid having to give them healthcare, what makes you think employers will make up for that by hiring people when they can just demand more productivity? Which they've been doing already?

I think we may also disagree about what constitutes contributing to society. If a person is getting UBI and using that money to cover their cost of living and the occasional luxury item then their purchases are contributing to society. They're paying sales tax, they're contributing to GDP, they're creating demand in the manufacturing ecosystem, they've even got more free time to attend to friends and family which can lead to a stronger, healthier community. Almost all the US jobs created since 2005 are temporary, If the majority of jobs being created are gig jobs is it really worth it to be forcing people to run around like chickens with their heads cut off just for the illusion of "active" contributions? There are many ways to contribute to society that don't require some poor kid with a bachelor's degree wearing a green t-shirt and doing someone else's food shopping, or putting a sticker on their car to play taxi, or pissing in bottles to be a delivery person.
midden said @ 11:45pm GMT on 8th Jan
Hmm. We both might be missing each other. What I meant to say is that I don't think we should be propping up the system with a UBI, since the culture of the US is pretty antagonistic to that way of thinking. Not that it can't work or that it's a bad way to do things, just that it'd be a really hard sell in this country. On the other hand, there's plenty of work that needs to be done to keep people engaged. There's more than enough productivity to take care of everyone. We still need X number of hours worked to provide everyone with what they need, but instead of having half the population working 50-60 hours at jobs society actually needs while the other half are scrabbling to find even low-paying busy work, let everybody work half the week at a meaningful job for a good, livable wage.

Yes, those jobs you mention are empty, soulless, precarious ways to just scrape by, if you're lucky. I'm saying we need twice as many electricians and plumbers and production line workers and utility engineers, and far fewer busy work, "well there's lots of people who need to do something to survive and we can get away with paying them peanuts, so why not make a job of it and we can make a profit off them?" jobs.

I totally agree that spending money on stuff is contributing to society. If everybody's got a decent paying job, and some security, they'll spend money on lots of stuff they actually need and keep the wheels of the economy turning.

I think we're mostly agreeing. But maybe I'm just being dense.
raphael_the_turtle said @ 12:48am GMT on 9th Jan
I think we can both agree the system needs to be drastically reworked but I think we disagree with what constitute propping up the system. From my point of view, cutting hours still leaves you with an employers' market. You're still going to have technology undercutting people's livelihoods. You've already got employers cutting hours without paying more just to save themselves from paying for benefits. And while electricians, plumbers, and other more hands on jobs seem like sure things, job loss is not just about robots and AI. How long before there's an uber for them? We already have day laborers, it seems like just a matter of time before someone makes an app out of that whole concept so that a site foreman can post a job each morning and bring in the highest rated, but lowest bidder on-demand. In other words, cutting hours doesn't solve the problem.

Whereas with UBI, it's still propping the system up, but it's also removing the chokehold that an employer market has over them. People can opt-out of the job market if they want, they can take more risks with what they'd like to do with their life, they can even hold out for better paying work, forcing employers to treat them like human beings instead of a disposable tools. To me, that's less propping up, so much as evolving towards something more humane.
midden said @ 1:04am GMT on 9th Jan
In a rational nation, I totally agree with you. This is not a rational nation.

To prevent it from being an employer's market, people would have to be able to say, "Hell, no, I'm not going to work 60 hours a week if I can live a perfectly comfortable life and raise my family only working 25." But how do you make that happen? You enforce a living wage at 25-30 hours a week. The government would need to seriously stomp on some toes to make it happen, and there would be a hell of a fight. But that seems a more winnable fight in the US than telling Americans who tenaciously hold to the fantasy that achievement is mostly based on merit, that those Useless Lazy Bastards who don't want to Work are going to be TAKING YOUR MONEY!

If I were King, though, I'd totally go for a UBI.
raphael_the_turtle said @ 1:37am GMT on 9th Jan
You're right, it's not a rational nation. Bush Tax Rebates. They don't really have a problem with people getting free money, they have a problem with the packaging. It's far more likely you'll get everyone to be okay with getting free checks than you'll be able to get the government to put a leash on corporate america.
HoZay said @ 6:09pm GMT on 8th Jan [Score:-1]
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norok said @ 6:58pm GMT on 8th Jan [Score:-2]
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conception said @ 8:13pm GMT on 8th Jan [Score:-2]
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norok said @ 11:22pm GMT on 8th Jan [Score:-2]
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conception said @ 3:12am GMT on 9th Jan [Score:-2]
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midden said @ 8:38pm GMT on 8th Jan [Score:-2]
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norok said @ 11:31pm GMT on 8th Jan [Score:-2]
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midden said @ 11:52pm GMT on 8th Jan [Score:-2]
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conception said @ 6:32pm GMT on 8th Jan [Score:-2]
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norok said @ 6:51pm GMT on 8th Jan [Score:-4]
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conception said @ 8:07pm GMT on 8th Jan [Score:-3]
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norok said @ 4:13am GMT on 9th Jan [Score:-3]
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steele said @ 7:16pm GMT on 8th Jan [Score:3 Underrated]
Ahem. Do you know why I downmod?

Because on a nice positive post about Charity and Basic Income, this misinformed individual is sitting here trying to to argue that poverty isn't an issue. This is what's called hijacking the narrative. It's what norok does, it's what numbers does, it's what Fish does. They're not being "conservative" trolls, because they're not being conservative. Conservative left the building quite some time ago. They're either incredibly misinformed, in which case you're not going to inform them in this environment (and frankly some of you are practically picking on them at this point,) or they're just here to stir up shit. Either way, it is far more merciful to downmod them and move on, please.
JWWargo said @ 9:09pm GMT on 8th Jan
Maybe my standards are too low, but I don't see how norok is hijacking anything/trolling anyone. Their opinions aren't popular, yes, but they never seem malicious or hateful, at least any I've read.
steele said[2] @ 9:35pm GMT on 8th Jan [Score:3 Informative]
It's not about being malicious or hateful it's about derailing the conversation. Norok spreads some pretty ignorant ideas that we shouldn't even have to be entertaining. He's claimed that socialists don't care about poor people because they just hate the rich, in another thread he says he's against socialised medicine because he shouldn't have to pay contribute to other's health (apparently not understanding how insurance works), he's upmodded white supremacy bullshit, any mention of capitalism's faults lead to anti-socialist rants. To name a few.

If you're trying to have a conversation with your friend about Earth's tectonic plates because Mount St Helens is showing activity again and their little brother shows up and start going off on claims of a Flat Earth, would you say that's derailing of the conversation? Can you see how that fucks the conversation if you go from discussing an actual issue like volcanic activity to arguing about whether or not the earth is flat with somebody who isn't going to listen to anything you say and may not even be capable of grasping what you're talking about?
Mythtyn said @ 1:46am GMT on 9th Jan
I don't know. I see some of their comments as actually trying to participate in conversation. Yes some of them are trollish and or deserve to be downvoted, but some don't deserve that but receive it anyway. Maybe their view points are opposite the majority here, but they seem to get needlessly downvoted even for a mundane comment. I've never seen them directly attack another person here maliciously (unless attacked first).
steele said @ 2:09am GMT on 9th Jan [Score:2 Underrated]
Personally, I would rather than see them downmodded than someone try to engage them into a polite discussion which invariably leads to the same bullshit over and over again. Numbers has been here almost since the beginning with multiple accounts because he didn't feel like following the rules. Fish is here purely to rile people up and revels in it. And norok wasn't even here three weeks before he was causing problems and then straight up lying to try and to get people to pity him with up mods. The downmods have labels for reason, they express a dissatisfaction without having to get into a 20 comment flame war because it turns out all they're really looking for is not a discussion but an argument. As far as I'm concerned they've lost all my trust and people who are giving them chance after chance are dooming this site. And if that's what y'all want to do, fine, but I'm going to fight against it. I still have hope for the place.

They are handy for testing out my spam defenses tho. Because ultimately that's how they behave. They just happen to spam misinformation and negative discourse.
norok said @ 3:38am GMT on 9th Jan [Score:-2]
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raphael_the_turtle said[1] @ 7:12pm GMT on 9th Jan [Score:-1]
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norok said @ 7:23pm GMT on 9th Jan [Score:-3]
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norok said @ 7:28pm GMT on 9th Jan [Score:-3 Troll]
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norok said @ 7:42pm GMT on 9th Jan [Score:-3]
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5th Earth said @ 2:23am GMT on 9th Jan
If I may present another viewpoint, the wonderful thing about SEs format is that it's very difficult to truly derail a conversation. Its totally possible, easy even, to have multiple threads of discussion going on simultaneously on any given post. Ignoring any one of them is as simple as rolling the scroll wheel. Any time I engage with (for example) Numbers, it's because I have made a deliberate choice to do so. He's not drowning anything out, or preventing me from reading anyone else's posts, and if I choose to wade through his shit because it amuses me, it's only a trivial inconvenience to anyone else to ignore both of us. In this very post, Raphael and Midden are still having a lovely intellectual discussion about the relative merits of UBI, even while this whole thing with Norok is going down. The two threads are nicely compartmentalized.

RE: picking on people, I freely admit that's what I'm doing most of the time in these cases. When I argue with Numbers I do it because, by continuing to be obnoxious in a locale where he's (often explicitly) unwelcome, he's declaring himself rhetorical fair game. Either he's a troll, in which case calling him on his bullshit is at worst troll-feeding, or he's genuinely interested in interacting in a hostile environment, in which case I don't think it's unethical to call him on his bullshit because he should clearly be expecting it to happen.
steele said @ 2:39am GMT on 9th Jan [Score:2]
When you call them on their bullshit all you're doing is giving them a platform that gives their bullshit more exposure to more people. You're putting it in front of more people's faces and that's what this site then becomes, their bullshit. When bots come along it's their bullshit that gets scraped, when visitors come along it's their bullshit that they see. I know people that take time away from the site because of the bullshit. Hell, I would like to take time away from the site because of all the bullshit. There's a whole wide world of ideas out there but anytime we try to inch even slightly outside the norm one of them pop up to try and derail the whole thing. Applauding because occasionally a flower pops up from all the bullshit still ignores that we're all knee deep in bullshit. ;)
HoZay said[1] @ 6:36am GMT on 8th Jan [Score:1 Interesting]

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