Unfortunately this looks to be the pattern for most of the season. Last time out, Max's win was an aberration caused by three factors coming together: a) demanding circuit, b) hot weather, c) drivers limited to fairly soft tyre choices.

We saw today that if you take out one of those factors, Red Bull can't get close, and it's a Hamilton procession. We had harder tyres today, as we did for the first UK race... and Hamilton won by a huge margin.
Given his championship lead at the moment, he looks all but nailed on for another world title.

Thank you.


This is the important point. I have two questions for those who have posted in this thread, but who are opposed to (at least trying) UBI.

I am in favour of trying UBI, but I'm not a UBI-zealot. It's just that I see it as potentially the best solution to a certain problem. Inequality is high, and is worsening. There are more people than there are jobs. But the biggest problem is the near future, with ever-increasing automation. Many skilled jobs will be at risk of automation as AI develops. The solution won't be to retrain people, because there will be far too few jobs available. If we do nothing, unemployment will be huge. A small minority will make vast fortunes running largely automated companies. Some lucky people will have jobs. Many won't. A radical redistribution of wealth will be required in order to keep society functioning. Otherwise we will be faced with a huge 'worthless' class, with little to no prospect of ever finding a job, and jobs themselves will be so scarce that employers can offer to pay a pittance and still get huge numbers of applicants. A degree of inequality within a fair society is good, it gives people something to strive for. But beyond a certain point it is hugely destructive. The world's richest man, Jeff Bezos, has over $190b. That's $190,000,000,000. Meanwhile, 1 in 3 people in the world don't have access to safe drinking water. This is an extreme example to illustrate the point... but do we really want this situation to continue to worsen? Yes, I'm aware that a US-based UBI would not be available to for example people in sub-saharan Africa... but huge inequality exists even within the US.

So my two questions, specifically to these people, are:
1) Do you agree that if nothing is done, then inequality will worsen and jobs will become increasingly scarce, and that this is a problem that will need fixing?
2) If so, what options other than UBI might be viable?

I am genuinely interested in answers and different opinions. I'm in favour of UBI largely because I think a solution is needed, and I can't think of anything that might be better.

This is a bit silly. Income is the money you have coming in. Wealth is the total money you have. Excluding other assets for simplicity.



Okay, I'll indulge you. The $5 UBI is too extreme for this example as you're putting it higher than most people's earnings, but we can establish a decent level. And obviously this is all a huge oversimplification as we're ignoring other tax revenues and other government spending.

Sure, governments can do that if they want. It's kind of a throwback to Soviet-style communism, though, so I'm not sure why anyone would think it's a good idea. Also this suggestion is utterly different to UBI; I'm not sure how you've made a connection. UBI does not involve nationalising industries, forcing clothes on people, rationing food, or limiting consumer choice. UBI is simply a more equitable distribution of wealth.


Many countries are running (or considering running) limited trials; the idea is gaining a lot of momentum. Certainly no country has been running full UBI for all citizens for a long period of time, I'll agree on that. But the argument of "this thing hasn't been done before, therefore it's a bad idea" is not particularly convincing. If everyone went along with that, we'd still be living as we were thousands of years ago.
And on your point of "nothing is free and it can never be"... once again, UBI is redistribution of what is already there. There is nothing 'free' or created out of nothing.
Alice has $8, Bob has $2. I redistribute this so Alice has $7 and Bob has $3. You can't argue that this is impossible, where will all this money come from? That doesn't make sense.


Again, we are not giving people free money. The £10k was purely illustrative, but we are not giving people £10k on top of what they already receive after tax. We are giving on top of what they receive before tax is applied. This is a crucial difference. I am certainly not suggesting a £10k UBI involves everyone in the country gaining £10k post-tax income. The average person would not be expected to gain at all, other than having the UBI segment guaranteed rather than from employment.
UBI involves taxing people more, removing the expensive welfare bureaucracy, and then giving the proceeds from these two approaches equally to everyone, to ensure that everyone can afford to live. Poor people gain. Average people see no change (other than having a safety net). Rich people lose some money. That's all. The specific figures involved are speculative, that's why countries are trialling it (or considering trialling it).


I should add, although we disagree completely with one another, I enjoy the discussion. If everyone agreed all the time, we would never question anything and we'd never advance.


---
Edit, additional:


Negative income tax is a different method to UBI, which results in a similar outcome. Below is a good summary. Which option you prefer is probably dependent on your ideological perspective with regards to taxation. There's a compare-and-contrast scenario at the link below, too.
_{https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-nit-and-unconditional-basic-income-ubi-what-makes-them-the-same-and-what-makes-them-different#:~:text=A%20negative%20income%20tax%20(NIT,and%20taxes%20different%20amounts%20back.}

Why would I be shocked that some countries have very low GDP per capita? I'm sure that's obvious to everyone. UBI is a form of wealth redistribution. It doesn't involve creating new money out of nothing, it doesn't magically make everyone rich or eliminate corruption or raise entire countries out of poverty. No-one ever suggested that solves all the problems in the world. But it does reduce inequality.


It's not my idea. Although my example illustration should be fairly simple to understand.


No, I'm not saying that, please read it again. I said: "There would have to be some tax changes, yes, particularly at the top-end". The bit about the tax-free allowance is saying that UBI partially funds itself. If you get £10k UBI, that increases the amount of tax you pay on your earnings even without adjusting tax bands, because the UBI takes up most of your tax free allowance.

UK tax bands up to £150k income:
up to £12.5k - no tax
£12.5k - 50k - 20% tax
£50k - 150k - 40% tax

Say you earn £60k a year, the first £12.5k is tax free, the next £37.5k is taxed at basic rate 20%, the next £10k is taxed at higher rate 40%.
Now say you get paid £10k per year UBI. You still earn your £60k from your job, but now of that £60k, the first £2.5k is tax free, the next £37.5k is taxed at 20%, the final £20k is taxed at 40%.

Obviously this increases tax revenue, which can partially fund UBI.
It can also partially be funded by the massive simplification to the welfare system - everyone gets the same basic amount, eliminating wasteful bureaucracy.

But this won't fully fund it. You'd also need to increase tax percentages. Take that person who earns £60k, a fairly decent salary in the UK. It might be reasonable to increase tax such that with their £10k UBI plus their income, they have the same amount of money coming in from UBI + salary as they did from salary alone in the old system.
Poor people would tend to gain under UBI. Rich people would tend to lose. Average people would not really notice much of a change. The difference being that the UBI is guaranteed, a universal safety net.
UBI does not mean giving out new money to everyone, it does not mean everyone becoming richer.... it's just a form of wealth redistribution!

I still think this is all about ETH rather than BTC. It's hard to argue that the ETH-driven whole market rise isn't the reason that BTC finally held above $10k.
If ETH continues to surge upwards it will bring other alts and then BTC along for the ride.
Often it is BTC that pulls the alt market along. But sometimes ETH is in the driving seat, as the only alt strong enough to pull up the whole market.

So I think the question of whether BTC breaks that $12k threshold in the near future depends largely on what ETH is doing.

UBI doesn't mean creating more money. There would have to be some tax changes, yes, particularly at the top-end, but I don't think it would be excessive. Removal of the tax-free allowance on its own would generate huge revenue. People currently aren't taxed on the first £12.5k (for the UK)... if we had £10k UBI, then you'd only earn £2.5k before you'd get taxed, so an extra £10k would become taxable... and if you're a higher-rate tax payer, then an extra £10k at higher rate, too... and that's without adjusting the bands at all.


If you already have a decent income, chances are that UBI wouldn't mean that your total income would increase, because of off-setting through tax changes. What it would mean is that if your business failed completely, you'd still have some guaranteed UBI coming in. UBI isn't magic money printer, it's a form of wealth redistribution. If you already have a decent income, chances are you wouldn't gain - except through living in a more equitable and harmonious society.


You're probably right. But even if the UBI takes people up to the poverty line and no further, they'd still gain some small amount of power.

The current rise, which has been going on for a while now, is all about ETH. It makes a change from everything being about bitcoin!
Bitcoin couldn't break and hold above $10k. And then suddenly ETH started a surge, on the back of anticipation of 2.0 and some DeFI FOMO.
ETH then pulled the other alts up too, and eventually bitcoin followed, pushing through and holding above $10k because of the momentum imparted by ETH.

And then for the last few weeks, ETH has been struggling to break through that huge $400 barrier - look at the historic charts, $400 is a crucial price point for ETH.
And now, finally, ETH has broken through, which is why it is surging again.

What next? I expect ETH will continue to rise, pull up everything else as well, but then overshoot and have a bit of a correction. Where it will all end up is anyone's guess, but I expect, given the effort it took to break through, that there is some big momentum behind ETH again, and that when things calm down again, it will hold considerably above that $400 threshold.

Yes, Friedman was broadly in favour of UBI:
https://heavy.com/news/2019/06/milton-friedman-on-ubi/


Not really. Discussion of UBI is becoming louder and louder. There have been a lot of trials in recent years, and the idea is spreading. It is popular with the left because it reduces social inequality. It is popular with the right because it reduces welfare bureaucracy. It is popular with long-term thinkers who can see it as a solution to the unemployment caused by the ever-increasing automation of jobs.


I don't agree with this assessment at all. You are talking about people trying to outbid each other for very limited quantities of products. And we aren't talking about giving everyone extra money; UBI is a form of wealth redistribution. Tax brackets will have to be adjusted accordingly. It may be that if you earn $50k after tax now, you would still earn $50k after tax under UBI, the difference being with say the bottom $10k guaranteed as UBI, and the upper $40k coming from your employment (at a higher tax rate, or without the initial lower-earnings tax-free threshold). UBI is not about magically creating free money.

Do you disagree that global polio cases have reduced dramatically since the vaccine programme started up?
Natural immunity had thousands of years to work to eradicate the virus, and was profoundly and tragically unsuccessful.
As for Covid-19, what is your opinion on the concept of viral load?

The reason I wanted to remain in the EU was actually because I despise the Eton/Oxford elite, and their political manifestation, the Conservative party. The EU, whilst by no means perfect, was at least a brake on Tory excesses.

Damn it. This is profoundly humbling. I'd assumed your lack of engagement with my clever and insightful responses in your various threads over the last couple of years was because I was on ignore. Nope. Turns out I wasn't actually being clever or insightful...

This is quite a provocative statement.


_{https://www.cdc.gov/polio/images/maps/endemicpolio19882018_final02.png}

They gave up on the polio vaccine because it worked so well, and polio has been almost eradicated globally. As of 2020 it remains endemic in only Pakistan and Afghanistan.

_{https://www.who.int/features/factfiles/polio/en/}

And please don't try to use vaccine-derived polio as a counter-argument; the evidence there is conclusive (my bold):

_{https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/what-is-vaccine-derived-polio}


Although someone might have to quote me in order for Jet Cash to see it, as I think he has me on ignore (I'm pro-vaccine and anti-Brexit)

Yes, I think that's how it has to work. An equal amount for everyone. Obviously this means that progressive income tax brackets will need to be tweaked accordingly. In part, for example, the removal of an initial tax free allowance; you earn $1 a year, you would be taxed on that $1. And UBI is only partially self-funding; we would probably need a wealth tax or some other taxation of the ultra-rich to make it viable.


The point is to reduce inequality, yes, but UBI is in large part a solution to the current (and coming) wave of automation. Automation in the past has created new jobs in new spheres. People moved from agriculture to industry to offices. What is happening now is automation of office jobs (and skilled jobs in general), and we will soon be at the point where a lot of jobs can be done better and more cheaply by machines. The anticipation is a huge level of unemployment. UBI means a minimum to live on. It means that if there is 1 full-time job available, this can be split between several part-time employees, so that each has a decent standard of living (the alternative being one person gets the full-time job, and the others register for state benefits, which then need to be assessed). Many people will still want full-time jobs, and that's fine, we are just saying that full-time employment will no longer be a necessity. UBI takes away the inefficiency of managing a complex and expensive welfare system. What it also does, is to grant bargaining power to prospective employees. In a country with high unemployment and people desperate for work, the employers can pay a pittance, and someone will still take the job, even if they know they are being exploited. UBI gives prospective employees the option to refuse a job if the conditions are exploitative.

I know this argument is used a lot, but I'm not convinced. I think it's just scaremongering by the 1%. France has a wealth tax. Denmark has a very high top rate of income tax. Both countries still have resident billionaires.


Absolutely agree about increasing automation meaning fewer jobs available, and about UBI as a potential solution. Yes, I will be sure to contribute to that thread!
As for smart contracts, they can help to automate any sort of 'if A then B' type jobs, anything that relies on a conditional process. Ethereum for example is often seen as just a platform on which other coins can be launched... but really this only scratches the surface of what is possible. The usual example given of a job that can be automated through smart contracts is mortgage broker. But this is all in combination with the wider wave of automation of white collar jobs using AI.

No, the star doesn't repulse the light. Gravity is always attractive, never repulsive. The light travels in a straight line in spacetime, it's just that spacetime is curved around objects that have mass. A common way to visualise this is to place heavy objects on a rubber sheet. This is probably a better picture. If you imagine someone rolling a small ball from one side of the sheet to the other, the ball's path will curve as it passes close to the heavy object in the centre of the sheet. The ball itself travels in a straight line, it's just that the thing it's travelling on is curved.


But gravity is a different field, with different properties. Gravity is always attractive, never repulsive.

If you look at that sheet above, the effect of a black hole is to produce such extreme curvature that eventually, in the centre, it drops vertically. Nothing can escape. Everything, photons included, has to follow the curves of spacetime, the only difference with a photon is that because it is massless, it doesn't create its own small curvature. A photon in the above image might be an effectively weightless ping pong ball - but it still has to follow the contours of the sheet. When it passes through the event horizon of a black hole, it still falls in. And we have to remember also that we are talking about spacetime rather than space and time as separate things. Gravity doesn't just cause curvature of space, it also slows down time, which is why for a distant observer, something that falls towards the event horizon never actually seems to go through it and disappear, because the spacetime curvature is so great.

Actually, better than that screengrab, have a look at this video. The balls that are thrown at around 2:45 all travel in a straight line - across a curved surface. This is how gravity works.

Think also of the moon orbiting the Earth. What is happening is that the moon is actually falling towards the Earth (in a straight line), it's just that its speed is sufficient to keep it moving forever around the lip of the gravity well.

Income tax is progressive though, it takes proportionally more from people who earn more. Progressive taxation is wealth redistribution, just via a central pot rather than direct to individuals. A billionaire (in theory) pays more for policing and street lights than does someone on minimum wage. And it is still taking money from people in order to spend it for the improvement of the whole society. And it is the government who decides what the priorities are, because (again, in theory) the government is accountable to the whole population. And it depends on what we mean by a public service. Here in the UK, health is a public service. In some other countries, it's not. Anything that people need can become a public service. For example, internet, water, electricity, gas. Or use increased taxation of the rich to remove VAT/Sales tax, which proportionally will benefit the poor.

Thanks I'm trying my best, but whilst I do have some background in theoretical physics, I am not an expert. Please don't assume I am getting everything correct!

The Higgs boson is the manifestation of an excitation of the Higgs field. The Higgs field, as with other fields, permeates spacetime, is everywhere in spacetime, and may be thought of as a property of spacetime. So all particles in spacetime interact with this Higgs field to a greater or lesser degree. The extent of the interaction determines a particle's 'mass'. We are talking about rest mass at the moment, because we are talking about elementary particle physics and ignoring relativity. Technically, as far as I understand it, the Higgs boson manifests at the moment that electroweak symmetry is broken, where the W and Z bosons are created.
I don't think any of this has any impact on the speed of light; we are not talking about the Higgs boson travelling around and imparting mass, it is just a manifestation of an underlying field that is everywhere all the time.

Yes, photons do not interact with the Higgs field.

I would say that gravity is an underlying field, which is a property of spacetime. Relativity expresses this as spacetime curvature. When we talk about light from a distant star 'bending around' a nearby star due to gravity, this could be misleading. It is better understood as light travelling in a straight line across a curved space; it is the star's gravity well that creates the curvature.


_{https://astronomy.com/-/media/Images/Magazine%20Articles/2019/October/sunandearth.png?mw=600}

A good analogy is the flight path below. The shortest distance between Madrid and New York is the upper line, not the lower one. The upper line represents travelling in a straight line around the curved surface of the Earth.

_{https://gisgeography.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/RhumbLine-GreatCircle-2-678x421.png}

The known massless particles are photons and gluons. Photons travel at the speed of light. Gluons, I suppose, technically, travel at the speed of light. However we come back to what a particle 'is'. Gluons are virtual particles bound within nucleons, and when expressed in quantum chromodynamics we talk rather of the gluon field. Beyond this, there is the possibility that gravitons exist as mediators of the gravitational field. Again, it becomes complex, because we don't yet have a proper theory of quantum gravity.

No, I'm sure it won't. No doubt the existing ties between the countries will remain (Five Eyes, as you say). But it's inconceivable that this alliance will replace the role that was served by the EU. The principle difference is geography. Freedom of trade and movement between these far-flung nations has next to no impact when compared with these freedoms with the UK as part of the European bloc.

The UK for whatever reason (let's not get into that) has decided to go it alone in the world. If the country is looking to be part of a bigger group, then rejoining the EU might be the obvious answer. Language is not a barrier when English is the de facto international language anyway. Geography however is a barrier. Australia/NZ links make perfect sense. Australia/UK less so.

As an aside, the idea of forming a common group with Commonwealth countries and increasing its importance would I think appeal to Brexiters as I suspect what many of them really want is a return to the days of Empire.

I agree that Verstappen is hugely talented, especially using the example I gave of performance versus team mates. He utterly outclassed Ricciardo, for example, who is a good driver in his own right, to the extent that Ricciardo felt he had to leave for a different team! Hamilton and Verstappen seem to be by some distance the best two racers in the current field. We also have Alonso coming back soon - another great driver - I hope his car will be competitive.

The reason I think Hamilton is an all-time great and that Verstappen isn't, has nothing to do with talent, but merely that Hamilton is some years further along in his career. He has already proven his quality, whereas Verstappen is only starting to do so. It is likely that in 10 years' time, we will be looking at multiple world champion Max as one of the all-time greats, too.

I do still suspect that Hamilton would beat Verstappen if they were in the same car, but it would certainly be fairly close, and affected by the fact that Max has less experience to draw on at present. Lewis has, through experience, gained that champions mentality of knowing exactly when to take risks, and when to for example cut his losses and settle for 3rd place, he has the long-term championship view rather than just the current race. I'm not sure Max has that yet. I'm not sure Max quite knows when to hold back. But give it a few years.

I agree with most of what you've put

My bold, which I think is a vital point. Automation of jobs has historically led to creation of a new type of job, so workers just need to retrain. Agriculture -> Industry -> Office. However this process can't continue indefinitely. The new wave of automation through AI is removing office jobs. This will be exacerbated by the rise of smart contract crypto platforms such as Ethereum. I would expect there will be fewer jobs available in future. But even if new jobs do arise in a new sphere, we will likely still have some level of unemployment. And if you have unemployment, if there are more people than there are jobs, then this means employers can drive prices down to the lowest level that at least one person will accept. Which is partly what you're talking about with the Foxconn example. In this sort of market, the employers have all the power, and the employees have to be grateful for whatever scraps are thrown to them. I'm not going to sidetrack yet another thread, which is what happens whenever I mention UBI... but something has to happen to enforce a greater degree of wealth distribution. I don't think we can rely on companies and rich individuals to do it all by themselves.

I am in favour of automation where possible. Efficiency makes sense. It's just that we need to do something UBI to ensure that a large chunk of the population is not left behind through no fault of their own.


It depends, though. Taxation is taking earned money away from people and deciding for them how it should be spent. But you wouldn't argue that taxation is bad? Society is structured, and we are indoctrinated, such that, from a financial perspective, whatever serves our self-interest is good and desirable. Taxation forces limits to this, and forces a balance with what is good for society as a whole. Simply increasing higher level tax, or (better) introducing a wealth tax, increases the quality of society and works towards equality of opportunity. It is in the long-term interest of the ultra-rich to give a small proportion of their wealth to fund a less troubled and more sustainable world.

It is difficult to separate effect of driver from effect of car, but there are suggestions...
If we look at the Mercedes record of Schumacher vs Rosberg (2010-2012: https://imgur.com/a/SSNQN ) and then Hamilton vs Rosberg (2013-2016: https://imgur.com/a/K9Ri4 ), then Hamilton looks the better of the two.

If Hamilton consistently beats his team mates, consistently sets poles, wins races and wins championships, and from time to time produces astonishingly good performances (often in the wet) where he absolutely obliterates his team mate, then we just can't say he isn't the best ever, at most we can say there is insufficient evidence... but even then, I would argue the evidence suggests he's right up there as one of the all-time greats.