Quick Intro / About me

I’m the founder of rbutr, BioNascentImmortal Outdoors, and Sports Arbitrage Guide. I’ve been conceiving and managing the development of startups, websites and web applications for over 9 years now, ever since I graduated from UNSW with majors in Molecular Biology (hons), Philosophy, and in The History and Philosophy of Science. You can see my LinkedIn profile here.

Outside of “work” I have a strong interest in issues which pertain to social justice and welfare. At the moment, my main interests are Universal Basic Income, Drug Law Policy, Ethical Non-Monogamy, and Secularism. I love to travel. I love extreme sports. Probably a neophile.

When it comes to beliefs, my permanent goal is to become less wrong. I have no interest in holding onto erroneous beliefs.

Of course I am also on Twitter and Facebook.

 

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Is a fundamentally broken question.

It implies that nothing is an option. That there can ‘be’ nothing.

OK, so “Why is there something rather than an absence of something?”

Not much of an improvement, because an ‘absence of something’ implies something. We can only have an absence of something if something exists, (or can exist?).

However you try to phrase this question it always seems to create this vision of a ‘timeline’ of sorts (without necessarily assuming the existence of time into the nothingness before existence) where there was nothing…. and then there was something. But the “nothing” that came before the “something” can’t exist. There can’t “be” nothing.

It does of course seem utterly absurd to claim that existence has always been, but how could it have ever been any other way? On one hand, I guess my argument here is fundamentally an anthropic principle styled argument. Something exists, so clearly that is the case. But the idea that ‘nothing’ ever existed cannot ever be realistically derived from our existence.

More importantly, this idea of ‘nothing/absence of something’ that we try to invoke in this context is immediately troublesome. Nothing is a real concept, no doubt. When one says “I have nothing in my bank account”, that has a clear meaning. But when we try to imagine the *absolute nothingness* of non-existence, I am unsure that the concept even makes sense.

The ‘nothing in my bank account’ makes sense because it has a context and an absence of a thing that is known to exist in it. And I think that every time we ponder this question, we naturally assume similar sorts of contexts in and around the nothing. The Christian approach for example, imagines a God being perspective looking over the nothing and deciding it doesn’t like that state of affairs. Clearly not nothing. But even if we remove god from the picture, I don’t know about you, but my brain continues to want to ‘picture’ a black abyss, an empty space, a great big “nothing” waiting for “something”. We’re either thinking of a nothing before something, or a nothing within a specific space, or a nothing that happens to someone else. Like, “How lucky are we to live in the universe which exists, rather than all those other universes which don’t exist!”

If you’re playing along at home right now, do your best to get your head around “absolute nothingness everywhere and forever”. Because it is only when you get your head around that idea that you realise that, well, sure, that is arguably an option that we can imagine – but is utterly meaningless because something does exist, and because something exists, it means, actually, in reality, in all realities, in all possible realities, there is actually no possible way for ‘absolute nothingness’ to have ever actually been an option.

I just read this out to my girlfriend and she said, “Sure it can. There was nothing, and then time came into existence and there was something.” Which again, assumes time into existence, negating the ‘nothing’. Time always was. There was never, ever, at any point, or in any place absolute nothingness.

The absolute nothing that is meant to contrast against the ‘something’ that we have, is a nonsense that could never have been. It’s not an option.

Life and Plans Update: The Socratic Web, Crowdfunding, Conferences, Writing and Travelling

Since attending the Workshop on Digital Misinformation in Montreal back in April 2016, my whole life has been on a new tangent. I was already back on the rbutr train at that point, but this workshop helped me solidify many thoughts and helped point me in the right (I hope) direction for moving forwards.

Since then I started writing more on the topic of Fake News and the problems with all other efforts to fight it. I also started posting those articles to my Medium blog, which has now become my official Digital Misinformation and Fake News blog.  This has helped me get my ideas out to many more people than I ever seemed to be able to reach through the rbutr blog (and definitely this blog, something which I am sure about 4 friends read. And probably never the same 4 friends.)

As well as that I have given a few talks/presentations, and attended a couple of low key workshops on misinformation, journalism, truth, etc, which have also helped put me in contact with more people active in the space.

I published my Socratic Web white paper the other week, and am now at the point where the next major stepping stone is crowdfunding the foundational money to get that project started, and otherwise planning/organising as many conferences as possible for next year.

Which brings me to what I am doing next…

December and January

Christmas is a terrible time to run a crowdfunding campaign, so I have decided to delay that campaign until February. So over the next two months, between Christmas, New Years, and some plans to go camping on the Australia day long weekend, I will be spending my time writing more articles and applying to present and participate at conferences which have misinformation and fake news tracks. Most of my time will still likely go towards preparing a killer crowdfunding campaign so that the execution in February will be as perfect as possible.

February and March

At the beginning of February Vanessa, Leonardo and I will be moving to Koh Phangan, Thailand, for two months. Rent, daycare and food is infinitely more affordable for us there than it is in Sydney and Vanessa (who suffers from moderate-severe (30) ME/CFS) can get frequent massages to help manage her pain.

This will give me some time and space to focus on running the crowdfunding campaign, preparing for my presentation at the International Journalism Festival in April (the real reason for our travel), and beginning the creation of The Socratic Web organisation, brand, and website as soon as the crowdfunding is completed.

April and After

The beginning of April has all of us travel to Rome so that I can present at the International Journalism Festival. We’ve planned a small trip around the event and will see some of Rome, Pompeii and the area around it, Perugia, Florence, and then more to the North West as we head towards France to visit some friends in Paris. Those who are also planning to travel to Europe may consider booking a private flight from Jettly.

There is a Web Conference in Lyon at the end of April, so I am going to chase up participating in that event too. Then there is another conference in Toronto in mid May which I am going to apply to speak at too, so I may find myself heading over there if that goes well.

So our plans from the end of April are much more vague until I sort out whether I am going to these other conferences or not. Either way, we will all end up back at Ness’s mum’s place in the UK between events.

There is also a Basic Income conference in Finland at the end of August which I could be persuaded to make it to as well….

The opioid epidemic in the USA is not a good argument against drug legalisation

I have written about drug legalisation in the past. As a life-long anti-drug person, my recent conversion to a pro-drug attitude came about through massive exposure to compelling evidence against the status-quo opinion on drugs and their relative harms. I won’t rehash that all here, read my previous articles, they make a pretty strong case:

So when I encountered an article by German Lopez titled “I used to support legalizing all drugs. Then the opioid epidemic happened.” I was very interested in seeing the arguments presented. Changing my mind when I can improve my beliefs is a favourite hobby of mine, so I try to exposure myself to the opportunity as much as possible.

Sadly, German’s case did need appear at all compelling to me.

The entire argument seemed to rest on the premise that legal accessibility of pharmaceutical opioids has lead to a massive epidemic of opioid addiction (and overdose death), and that this therefore reveals to us the risk of legalising all other drugs. That given a little bit of freedom, companies will market aggressively and lobby for reduced regulations, and people will pay the price in the form of addiction and overdose deaths. You can also get help for cocaine rehab costs if you need to.

German fairly acknowledges that this may just be an American problem. That they USA has a history of free-market excesses and inability to reliably restrict/regulate dangerous things. This is important to keep in mind, since much of the rest of the world has not encountered the same opioid problem the US is encountering right now – which is very very much linked to their overly corporate and profit based medical system (rather than the more ‘care’ based system the rest of the world seems to have embraced.)

That aside, there are several massive problems with this argument.

It’s all about the Infrastructure around the legalisation

First, drug legalisation is never really about the legalisation of drugs. It is about everything which goes with that legalisation. The reliable purity and dose of the drugs. The ability to measure and research community usage rates and habits, and react to that knowledge. The ability to tax drug sales and pay for increased mental health care facilities, medical care for drug abuse victims, education of drug harm minimisation, and overall poverty reduction. The end of the multi-billion dollar drug black market, and all of the violent crime which accompanies it.

The current opioid epidemic is a direct consequence of corporate profiteering on the back of new compounds (oxycontin in particular) which they claimed were safer, but weren’t at all. To claim that this unique circumstance is an argument against legalisation is absurd. If anything, it’s an argument against corporate profiteering on the suffering of people. It is an argument that congress needs to do a better job of resisting lobbying efforts and protect the people. It is an argument that evidence based policy is needed more than ever.

This move was not a drug legalisation move – it was a money grab which abused a broken medical system.

Heroin is the worst

Second, it is revealing that of all of the illegal drugs out there, opioids, the class of drugs most widely renowned for their addictiveness and risk of death by overdose is the one which somehow managed to be the one to slip through and become the ad-hoc experiment in legalisation. It makes sense. Alcohol and tobacco are already way up the list of the most dangerous of the drugs, so why not make the other top contender for most dangerous also publicly accessible while many other far safer drugs continue to carry strong prison sentences?

Opioids are the worst drug ever to go through withdrawals from. After alcohol of course, which can kill you from the withdrawals, unlike opioids, you can actually seek help from addictionrehabclinics.co.uk. Opioid withdrawal just feels terrible. Opioids are also the most addictive drug there is. After nicotine of course. It is well documented that opioid and nicotine addicts all agree – giving up smoking is infinitely harder than giving up opioids. Seeking professional help through addiction treatment rehab can greatly assist individuals in overcoming the challenges of opioid and nicotine addiction.

Not only are they near the top of the list for addictiveness, they are also at the top of the list for risk of overdose. That is, the difference between a good high and a deadly dose is just a small error of measurement, or a simple mistake of re-dosing too soon, or getting a more pure batch than usual etc. Death is unfortunately easy.  And this is the drug which we, as a society, get to use as an experiment on (poorly executed) drug legalisation?

Do you know what the overdose threshold is for LSD? The big scary drug which everyone knows is going to steal your sanity from you? We’d love to know. No one has found it yet. It is hypothesized to be about 10,000x the usual dose. If you ever get your hands 10,000 doses of acid, let me know.

I’ll resist getting bogged down in the long list of examples like this, but just know that virtually every other drug out there is significantly less addictive than opioids, significantly harder to overdose on, and far less harmful across the board. Except for alcohol and nicotine, of course.

So why the fuck would we look at the opioid epidemic in the USA as anything at all informative about what drug legalisation would look like? It tells us nothing other than some of the difficulties we will need to prepare for with that one specific troublesome drug.

But luckily, legalising all drugs will even help with that! Which brings me to my third point….

Some drugs reduce drug abuse

Other drugs help reduce opioid addictions and overdoses. States with legal marijuana have lowered rates of opioid dependence. Marijuana is often used to control pain just as effectively as opioids, and it doesn’t have the same addictive problems nor overdose risks. Psychedelics have shown incredibly promising results in the area of breaking addiction. Drugs like Ibogaine in particular not only help addicts to change their perception of themselves and their addiction, but actually change their neurochemistry, breaking their dependence on the opioid chemicals. But of course, all of this is currently illegal, so not only is this sort of treatment essentially unavailable to all of the opioid addicts, but it is also nearly impossible to meaningfully research and establish true efficacy and rigorous treatment protocols. So even if you are sceptical of the claims that psychedelics can help cure addicts of their addictions, good for you! Legalise the fucking things so we can do the science finally and establish the fact one way or the other. There are some drug rehabilitation centre that can treat you well.

Drug abuse is a symptom, not a cause

Fourth, and possibly the most important failure of this article, is that fact that it completely failed to mention the real cause of addiction. Drugs aren’t the cause, they are the symptom. They are the easy out when people want out. They are reliable, cheap, and they make life bearable when life isn’t bearable.

The problem behind the opioid epidemic isn’t opioids, it is a growing population of people who hate their lives. OK, I am putting that harshly, but the point is what matters here. Addiction happens because people are escaping from something in their life. Or perhaps more often, they are looking to add something to their life which they feel is missing. They feel alone. They feel worthless. They are in pain!

Every individual is different, but you can be pretty sure none of them set out with the intention of getting addicted to opioids. No one chooses to do this. But something does keep you coming back.

Johann Hari’s fantastic book and Ted talk, and animated summary covers it very well. Humans need connection. If we lack that, we will connect with other things which give us the same sort of feeling. Drugs do that on the neurochemical level, and so are easy to lean on when we feel alone. Our modern world is creating a generation of lonely, isolated desperate people who end up depending on drugs to feel whole again.

Maybe the problem with the opioid epidemic isn’t the legalisation of opioids, but the complete failure of modern america to support healthy communities of connected happy individuals?

The opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety, it’s connection.

What does the opioid epidemic teach us about drug legalisation?

It teaches us that anything can be poorly executed, and that society has a heap of problems far far worse than drug use, drug abuse, and drug addiction.

It teaches us that drug legalisation is really irrelevant in the scheme of things, because our world is pretty messed up already, so maybe there are more important things for us to be doing with our time, resources and money than hunting down victims of those circumstances and throwing them in prison for the chemicals they choose to put in their bodies.

Trump and Selling a Scam

Trump Remorse immigration block twitter tweet

Watching the shit-show around the Trump campaign (and now adminstration) reminded me of every dodgy sales process I have ever been witness to.

The Scam Sales Process

When they first start talking to you they are your best friend. They are smiles and helpful and ultra-friendly. The thing they are selling you is amazing. It is great and will do everything you need. Nothing to worry about. Just say yes, and it will be smooth sailing, easy, and you will be so happy about it all.

You decide to give it a try, and you enter phase 2 of the process, the actual purchasing. This is where the truth starts to come out a bit more lucidly. In order to part with your money, you might find out that the quoted price didn’t include some tax or other. Or that they failed to mention some ongoing fee, or some extra cost for some peripheral service not part of the actual package/product etc. The salesman is still your best friend of course, but you can start to see the cracks in what they had been telling you. But they’ve done a good enough job, and you think you really want the product/service, so you continue because it will still be worth it. It does, after all, do everything. Solve everything. It will make you so happy. Your new best friend promised it would.

As soon as you purchase, you enter phase 3. The salesperson bids you farewell, and you never hear from that person again.

Now, you have to deal with customer relations officers, and they never seem to be quite so friendly or helpful as the salesman. When the product doesn’t perform as expected and you complain about it, they insist that it was never meant to do that thing the salesperson said it would. Or at least, that you think the sales person said. Did they say it? Or did you just think they did? Maybe it is your fault for assuming what they meant. You should have clarified.

Depending on what you have purchased, phase 3 can be quick: “This new peeler broke within a week of buying it”. Or it can be drawn out and painful. “This holiday package deal I purchased continues to reveal problems and new charges”.

A personal experience I had recently was that I was stupid enough to purchase a caribbean cruise packaged deal in the USA through Grand Celebration Cruises. After agreeing to purchase, but before our cruise, the slow drip stream of disappointments was amazing. We slowly found out about new charges which were very clearly omitted in the original sales pitch. The super friendly sales process had changed into a cold “What do you want now?” customer service system which clearly didn’t want to do anything to help ensure we actually enjoyed our vacation. Customising the package to our needs was painful.

Before going on the holiday, several hundred dollars in fees, taxes and other expenses were added to our costs for this ‘all inclusive, premium, VIP service’ package which we purchased. When we arrived, it only got worse. We ended up spending more than $600 USD in levies, room fees, taxes, service charges, and other unexpected costs which in every other travel experience I have had would all be included in the upfront fee.

We were already pushing our budget to the limit taking this holiday, so this constant stream of new expenses was a constant source of stress for us throughout the entire holiday. We really struggled to enjoy ourselves at all.

The point is, that the reality of the holiday was so very much worse than the sales pitch made it seem.

The Media and Politics

Watching the media covering Trump feels a lot like this process to me.

Sure, in the beginning there was a lot of mockery of Trump. No one took it seriously and most made fun of him. Shocked at what he said, the media just constantly covered him.

With all of that coverage though, I can easily imagine plenty of people falling for his words. He appealed to primal emotional states. I can imagine how he seemed like a friendly guy. He was there to help them out, personally. He was there to solve their problems. Trump told everyone that he knew what was wrong, and he would solve it.

And enough people bought it.

He won the election, and phase 2 began. He started to retract some of the things he had said. He talked about how “Drain the swamp” had “played well” and that he never really liked the phrase himself. Some of the things which people thought he was just saying for effect, he doubled down on, saying, no, he was really going to do those things.

We hasn’t president yet, but people were starting to see that they were conned. They hoped it wasn’t true, but the cracks were beginning to show.

Then, he was sworn in, and phase 3 began. No longer could his actions hide behind his words. There was no sweet talking away the actions which were now playing out.

The actions are real, and they have consequences. People are slowly waking up to the fact that they have been scammed by a conman. The bad deal is revealing itself, and people are having buyers remorse.Trump Remorse immigration block twitter tweet

It is only going to get worse.

Click here to see what Trump did in his first week in office.

Just trust the billionaire! A response to “5 criticisms of billionaire mega-philanthropy, debunked”

I too initially thought the criticisms of Mark Zuckerberg’s new philanthropic foundation were in bad taste. Perhaps a little bit of sour grapes. Overly cynical.

Picture of Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan and their baby daughter Max Zuckerberg

But then I took the time to read some of the criticisms and realised that they had some really good points. So I was interested to see Quartz’s ‘Debunking’ of those criticisms.

I was, unfortunately, disappointed.

Here is my paraphrased summary of their “debunking”:

Mark rightfully wants to have the biggest impact possible with his philanthropy. Therefore he is right to found his own corporation so that he can avoid paying taxes on his capital gains, and retain control of everything. Who are we to question him? And besides, you’re just jealous.

My natural inclination is actually to give the benefit of the doubt to Mark. I do believe he has good intentions. But that doesn’t make the criticisms of his move any less valid.

In a move advertised to “make the world a better place”, his first step is to avoid paying a fair amount of tax on his massive profits. That really does not inspire a lot of confidence.

Everyone not in the Billionaire class seems to be stuck paying all of their tax bill every year – but for the mega wealthy, they are special. They get to make all of their money, and keep it to!

Oh I know, he doesn’t actually get to “keep it”. It goes into the LLC.

….which he controls.

Just stop and think about this for a moment. What does a multi-billionaire do with the extra billions he has in his bank account anyway? He certainly doesn’t need it for ‘cost of living’ expenses.

Once you get past the first billion or two, everything else is just waiting to be allocated to things you think are worthwhile. Like putting it into chosen charities, or investing it into startups and companies you think will make a difference, or potentially using it for political campaigning. ie: Exactly what Mark’s LLC will be free to do.

So the reality here is perfectly clear. Mark has simply arranged things so that he can move all of his capital gains out of the company, into his control (not ownership), without paying any tax on it. It’s brilliant. He, and his family, get everything, in perpetuity, without ever paying any tax on it. Not even estate taxes!

This means his entire lineage will be in the control of many billions of dollars of wealth without ever needing to worry about earning anything. Not that they get to spend it on their own cost of living – it isn’t *their* money. Sure. But they can definitely choose to hire themselves if they need a job…

Better still, when you control vast quantities of capital (which can be invested into companies and political campaigns), it is amazing how many other wealthy people (but not nearly as wealthy as your LLC) are willing to go out of their way to wine and dine you in the most extravagant ways possible in order to secure your support.

Being in control of a lot of money has many significant benefits which go along with it.

So basically, this is a great way to lock in your profits without paying capital gains tax, and also guarantee that your dynasty remains for many generations to come, never needing to pay estate tax either.

A great big F you to the government. And a call to the population to “Praise me!”

In my opinion, the criticisms against Mark and his “Philanthropy” stand. Nothing has been debunked.

Now we have no choice but to let him carry out his business as he sees fit. Hopefully he will actually live up to the ideals he has set forth for himself. Hopefully he will actually make a difference. Hopefully he will make the world a significantly better place.

You’re in charge now Mark.

Why they can’t Coexist….

Found this on Facebook. Just wanted to transcribe it here, partly because a friend couldn’t clearly see the text on Facebook 😀
Why they can't coexist meme image

Why They Can’t Coexist. Original, apparently from Truth-Saves.com.

The texts of [Christianity], [Islam] and [Judaism] order the elimination of [equality], [paganism], and of each other. Both [Islam] and [Christianity] claim to be religions of [Peace], but [Peace] is a world without [Islam] and [Christianity].

[Islam] and [Judaism] have conflicting promises of land ownership. [Paganism] is a very broad term but all of [Paganism] support living by non-evidence-based-claims, causing conflicts for [Peace]. [Taoism] says to find harmony in everything, good or bad, preventing the seeking of [Peace] and [Equality]. The less a self-proclaimed follower of [Christianity], [Islam] or [Judaism] actually follows the teachings of [Christianity], [Islam] or [Judaism] the more [Peace] and [Equality] can thrive.

[Christianity], [Islam] and [Judaism] claim their way is the only way and cannot coexist with anyone. [Taoism] can only coexist with the [Pagans] who also follow [Taoism]. [Equality] can coexist with most of [Paganism]. The only ones that allow for completee coexistance with each other are [Peace] and [Equality], and the unmentioned [Atheism] and [Humanism].

The Stoned Ape Hypothesis and the Original Memetic Cambrian Explosion

A thought struck me after attending Burning Seed over the weekend (Burning Man for Australia) about the value of psychadelics in human prehistory.

Terence McKenna and the Stoned Ape Hypothesis

Alex Grey Artwork Psychedelics and creativityI’d heard of the Stoned Ape Hypothesis in the past, but have never done much research into its exact claims. Skimming the Wikipedia entry on it and a few other overviews and comments on it, it seems that the main claim is that psilocybin (the active molecule in magic mushrooms) lead to increased fitness in the humans who consumed it through greater hunting ability, greater sexual activity and enhanced religious and creative expression, and as a consequence, that lead to increased selective pressure for brain size growths.

I’m not really here to comment on that particular hypothesis at all. It does sound like a bit of a stretch to me to think that mushrooms may have actively directed our biological evolution over hundreds of thousands of years. I don’t discount it entirely though.

Memetics and Cultural Evolution

That said, I do think that there is a very good reason to suspect that entheogens (any naturally occurring psychedelic plant/organism) may have played a very real and significant role in the advancement of human cultural evolution ever since we evolved the ability to form advance cultural concepts (language, art, advanced tools, etc.).

It is no secret that human brains are copying machines. We learn by watching others do things, then seeing the positive outcomes of those actions, we copy them and attempt to recreate the positive results.

In the wider context of a tribe, it seems like we tend to codify certain activities into traditions. There is a certain way that activities must be done in order to work. If you don’t follow the ritual correctly, then you will probably mess up the meal, or fail in your hunt, or build a shelter which leaks, or whatever. So creativity in implementing well established cultural traditions ends up being quite strongly selected against.

And this is where entheogens may have a particularly strong value.

With the way that they affect our neurobiology to confuse neural pathways and thus enable ‘lateral thinking’ by simply allowing us to follow not-well-established neural pathways, creativity is very strongly enhanced(1) under the effects of psilocybin, mescaline, ayahuasca, etc.

They also tend to somewhat reduce our ‘care factor’ while under the effects. This may be equally as significant since cultural traditions are often quite strongly enforced in a social sense, and people acting out of line with them may be chastised, ostracised or even physically punished. But as we all know from the cliché stoner stereotype, no one under the influence of any psychedelic seems to really give much of a shit about anything, much less what you think of them.

These two psychological aspects combine to create an amazing potential for humans to step outside of what might be incredibly rigid social constructs and even rules, to create something almost entirely brand new. Whether it be the first art, or a new form of art, or a new method of cooking, or a new way to hunt, or even just a minor improvement to an established system…. It seems like psychedelics may have actually had a significant role in forcing forwards human cultural evolution.

To clarify:  the selective pressure on human cultural evolution would remain the same (Does it work? Do people like it? Does it make life easier? etc), but the psychedelics would have increased the amount of variety of cultural units (memes, ideas, concepts, whatever) which could be selected, and thus increase the opportunity for human culture to discover new things and improve our ability to survive and thrive.

The Cambrian Explosion of Memes

I worry as I write this that I am saying something incredibly obvious.

This phenomenon has been observed repeatedly in modern society already. Whether it be from comedians, a few famous change makers themselves, or even scientific studies which show the power of LSD in research. It is just that I had never before personally applied this notion to the limited cultural experience of humans in our earliest stages of ‘humanity’. The stages at which our experiences of cultural units – ideas, or memes – would have been so extremely limited on account of the newness of our ability to create them. And with that limited exposure to new and novel ideas, so to, I believe, our ability to be creative would also have been limited.

Perhaps psychedelics pushed the envelope and artificially created diversity of ideas where there was otherwise almost none, and in doing so, was a powerful stepping stone, potentially bringing about the first ‘Cambrian explosion’ of cultural ideas?

Do psychedelics artificially increase the mutation rates of successful memes?

Footnotes

  1. This article states that the scientific research on whether psychedelics increase creativity is inconclusive – though it is largely on account of the fact that research has been stalled for the last 40 years thanks to the unjust war on drugs (my words, obviously) – and the research techniques used back then were not as rigorous as we use these days. Nonetheless, the anecdotal evidence and not-exactly-perfect research results seems quite strong to me.

Uber Stole my Startup Idea!

OK, I’ll stop pretending now. They didn’t steal anything. But they did just launch what sounds almost exactly like an idea I spent many months developing back in 2008 before abandoning it when I realised I couldn’t possibly make it work.

Uber have just launched UberCOMMUTE.

My idea was called 42ity. Pronounced “For-too-ity”, it was a perfect combination of the fortuitous occurrence of finding someone driving in the same direction as you, with a Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy reference thrown in for good measure for a product which could exactly be described as an “electronic hitch hiking thumb.”

I went so far as registering a domain (42ity.net – the guy who owns 42ity.com wasn’t interested in selling it), and setting up a blog on it, but when I realised that I couldn’t possibly afford the marketing campaign that it would take to achieve the market saturation required to make the app actually work, I put the whole project into my ex-project vault. But now, after knowing about Free Affiliate Marketing Business, and their services, I am getting second thoughts for my project.

How many people need to be actively running the app whenever they drive before you are actually lucky enough to have one driving past your location who is also going to/past your destination? A lot. The answer is definitely a lot. And until that market saturation is achieved, the app is almost utterly useless, and people would quickly uninstall it, and thus you’d never get there.

That was my conclusion anyway, and I stand by it.

Uber, on the other hand, already have global recognition and massive uptake of their main app. They actually have a chance – so good on them! I still think it will be very very difficult to get the right level of saturation to be of any significant use, but if they ever expand the app to Sydney, I will install and use it.

Oh, though they seem to be focusing on long distance driving. I was open to all drivers at all times. But they basically cover most of that with Uber already, so this is a complimentary feature to their existing platform.

Of course the ideas aren’t identical. They never are. But this is the closest I have seen to my idea – despite many numerous ride sharing apps which have been launched over the years. None ever seemed to focus on the real time hitch-hiking-style which I thought would be idea.

Here is one blog post from 2008 where I mention 42ity. And that seems to be just about the only evidence I have of 42ity left online these days.

I will try to remember to plug in my hard drive later today and find some of my mock-up images for 42ity and add them to this post.

The Seven Questions of Basic Income Implementation

From the first meeting of our Implementing a Basic Income in Australia group, I presented my outline of what I think are the fundamental questions which need to be answered before a Basic Income can actually be implemented.

In order to answer these questions we want to organise a range of experts like Caravan finance brokers, on social and economic issues into working groups so that they can discuss the consequences of each decision and how it will be beneficial or detrimental to society, economics, welfare, well-being, employment, power imbalance, freedoms, etc.

The questions are:

  1. How Much / How Often?
    $1 – $10,000+ / Paid daily – Paid annually
  2. What scale is it implemented on? Where?
    Small town? Council? City? State? National.
  3. Who gets it?
    Everyone? Citizens? Residents? 18+? Based on tax return submission? etc
  4. How is it funded?
    Local government? Federal Govt? Increased taxes? New (resource?) taxes? Debt? Transaction tax? Charity? Crowd funding? New money straight to the people?
  5. How long will it run for?
    2 years? 10 years? Indefinitely? 5 years on, 5 years off, etc?
  6. What does it replace?
    Replace all welfare? Just unemployment benefit? Nothing? Minimum wage? Wait and see?
  7. Will there be a transitional period? What will it look like?
    Instant implementation, or gradual implementation over time?

(Have I missed any? Please leave a comment below if I have!)

The answers to each of these questions often influences the answers to others. For example, if you want a National (Q2) Basic Income, it will be virtually impossible to fund that through Charity of Crowd sourcing (Q4), but there is a chance that you could fund a Partial Basic Income (Q1) for 2 years (Q5) in a small remote town (Q2) via charity (Q4).

Of course, a partial income in a small remote town isn’t the ultimate goal, so then we’re talking about a first step implementation. A trial, or a demonstration of value, hoping that it will grow to other towns or else convince enough of the population to enact a nationwide Basic Income. In this case, we’d have to design the best “initial test case implementation” and then a second “Ultimate goal implementation” and perhaps even design the strategy which will take us from the initial test to the ultimate goal.

Whether we want a small test case first or not is still to be answered. I don’t believe the NHS, medicare, welfare etc had incremental steps to implementation, so perhaps it is an error to think that a Basic Income would need it. Perhaps we should instead be focusing on the best possible design for Australia, and then fight for grassroots support of that system while lobbying political parties and getting the support of influential think tanks.

This is all just a first step. We still need to reach out to existing Basic Income organisations (BIEN, QUT, Utrecht University (BIParty NL) etc) to see what information, research and conclusions they are able to share with us which will help inform our answers to these questions.