[FRIAM] The case for universal basic income UBI

Wed May 12 03:46:00 EDT 2021

I just want to share two stories with you regarding reciprocity.

1 Years ago I had to be in Miami for a couple of months for business and my
family joined me. My one son was ill and got treatment at the Jackson
Memorial Hospital. There was one nurse in particular that went not the
extra mile but million miles to help us with everything that she possibly
could. When it was time for us to return home we obviously wanted to
express our gratitude. Her reply was to request us to do to others what she
has done to us.

2 The deputy chief justice of South Africa Raymond Zondo had a similar
experience in his life. His family was very poor and a local businessman
helped so that he could study law. After completed his studies he wanted to
repay the businessman, but in Zondo's own words:
“When I asked him what arrangements we could make so I repay him, he said
don’t worry. Do to others what I have done to you. I thought that was very
important and in my own small way I try to do that,” said the judge.
Taken from https://www.goodthingsguy.com/people/judge-raymond-zondo/

On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 23:56, Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

> Lazily composing at least two upshots of this conversation (and the
> smart-contract parallel one):
>
> 1) I think Russ brought up what *I* thought was implicit in Reciprocity
> (though I understand why it is not  since I borrowed my use of the term
> from gift economies, not adhering to the (obvious) mathematical meaning
> that most here would jump to):   My intended connotation of Reciprocity
> included both "spirit of generosity and gratitude", so it is excellent that
> those were called out as possibly essential (or at least efficient?) in
> improving the state of our relations.
>
> 2) Glen opened the question of "transitivity" which I think you (Jon) are
> addressing here with good motivation.   In my smart-contract
> considerations, the point would be that the values one attached to "raw
> value" (money/crypto¢) in their transactions would propogate through.   For
> example, food stamps cannot (directly) be redeemed for non-food items
> (specifically alcohol, tobacco, pet food, sunglasses) and if I paid a 500%
> surcharge on the few gallons of petrol I run through my Extended Range EV
> as a way to decline to participate in A) blood for oil wars and B) clubbing
> baby seals in the arctic, those crypto¢ would *avoid* the pockets of the
> warmongers and seal-clubbers and settle in the pockets of those who went to
> the effort to get their oil without that.   Of course, just like there can
> be black/grey markets in food stamps "hey buddy, I'll give ya $.50 on the
> dollar for those food stamps!",   there would surely appear
> money-changers/launderers who would *try* to cross-connect the drinking
> water with the black water for their own profits.   In principle, pervasive
> use of smart contracts *could* make that vanishingly harder and harder with
> adoption.
>
> 3) I knew "at least" would come in handy.   My intuitive conception of
> Reciprocity is that it is as much about back as forward propogation.
> SteveG will love the opportunity for a Dual Field encoding I think.    By
> taking Renee to dinner for Mother's Day, he not only acts as a proxy for
> her own children in some sense, I would like to believe he did it *because*
> Renee's motherhood has already been her gift to him... whatever benefits he
> gets from a step-role, from Renee being a better partner having raised
> children, etc. and that dinner is to honor and reciprocate for something he
> has *already received* from her (see 1 above, "gratitude").
>
> The spectral graph and circuit analysis Jon points to may well be
> useful/important for measurement/analysis of how well a system is working.
> Ideally the implementation is entirely local in the sense of agents on
> networks of transactions.
>
> Smart contracts are an implementation of distributed computation where
> computation (complex decision making) is deferred to the last (or most
> appropriate) place in the network.  For example, the fueling depot that
> accepts my anti-war/anti-ANWR crypto¢ for petrol passes it to his wholesale
> source which passes it through the "circuit".... the gas pump owner doesn't
> need to know (or share or even have an opinion on) what "values" are
> embedded in my crypto¢, he simply takes his "service cut" on the
> transaction as does each other middleman right up to the guy gently
> scooping teaspoons of bubbling crude out of an artesian well to run through
> his handmade still.   His still produces no better (maybe worse)
> heptane/octane than BP or ARCO but he *still* gets paid (ultimately by me)
> for so gently milking the dino juice from the earth for me.
>
> - Steve
> On 5/11/21 3:21 PM, jon zingale wrote:
>
> I have failed to follow this discussion very closely. That said, to what
> extent could frameworks like those that underlie spring rank
> <https://github.com/cdebacco/SpringRank> or gauge-theoretic price as
> curvature <https://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.3043.pdf> give reasonable
> characterizations of reciprocity over circuits? To what extent does
> Levine's
> <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002251938090288X>
> (painfully straightforward) solving for eigenstates?
>
> * Apologies for any paywalls, I am often stymied to find better access.
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