When I said people will chase after the same goods and services, I meant that the total number of tangible goods and services worldwide will not change because people are getting UBI relief. People will chase after food, shelter, clothing, and other Maslow’s hierarchical needs from a finite pool.

You made an interesting point about the government not judging who gets UBI and who doesn't. However, I'm unsure if that's sufficient to rectify the market-wide distortions this free money will generate. Something to ponder about..

Please help me understand how UBI will keep people fed. When everyone gets UBI money, they chase after the same tangible goods and services. Will that not make everything much more expensive, bringing everyone back to square one? As @denlillaapan points out in #811381, money is the intermediary between production and consumption and a signal to coordinate economic activities. When UBI takes place, it distorts the entire market as you can earn money without producing, and we end up no better than when we started. PS: I am also learning on this topic and would appreciate it if any of my premises are misguided.

I would argue that there is no such thing as harmless government interventions. Each job adds up, and the taxpayer(you and I) ultimately pays for it. State-subsidized jobs create artificial market distortions and malinvestment by directing resources to non-market-determined ends. The government cannot efficiently allocate resources or determine what jobs are needed. Though I agree with @stack_harder, this seems like UBI with extra steps. UBI represents institutionalized theft through taxation and would lead to an inflationary environment like what happened after Covid QE in the US. So, I am not sure it makes it okay to justify it through the lens of UBI. Having said this, I am not sure what will happen to those displaced by AI and LLM in the future. I guess, they must find a way to be productive in a way that is out of reach of LLM/ML models.

With both nominal and real changes making things complex, how would you suggest folks attribute price changes accurately? Let us take, for example, the cost of eggs in California(using data from Perplexity here for convenience's sake).

We can attribute it to going from $1.4(in 2019) to $2.8(in 2023), a 100% increase in 4 years due to nominal inflation. We can also attribute it to going from $2.8(in 2023) to $9(in Dec 2024) due to avian flu(H5N1) leading to the culling of hens across farms, which is the real/underlying cause leading to 221% increase in one year. The total price rise from 2019 to the end of 2024 is 540%.

How do you wade through all this complexity to make actionable decisions when govt data is questionable? Are there tools that you use to help attribute underlying vs. nominal causes for price changes?

I can only open a channel with SN to increase spending capacity via Alby Hub using an on-chain balance. I cannot open a channel to increase receiving capacity using Alby Hub through SN. The only options I get are Megalith, Zeus, and other LSPs. When I dabbled with LND and Thunderhub a few years back, there was a way to rebalance lightning channels. However, I cannot find a way to do that using Alby Hub. I remember why I stopped working with lightning a few years ago. The complexity can be overwhelming. If I have to install ThunderHub, LNDG, or something like that, I will be back to square one.

In order to open a private channel with SN, where can I find the channel details?

Yes, I am new to SN, so I hadn't thought about its business model. Now that I read more about it, it makes sense. I am glad SN doesn't have ads, and I am happy to contribute to its financial sustainability in the long run.

Thanks, I missed this if this was there in the FAQs. Now I know what a Sybil attack is. Learning something new every post here on SN :)

I just want to make sure I am not making some basic mistakes. If that is the norm (like the Apple app store 30% commission norm), I guess I will have to live with it.

Also, this issue of reducing routing fees will be good to get started. Right now 30% of the zaps received are going out in the form of routing fees(I guess) #838895

I guess I still need to figure out what Cowboy Credits(CC) are. Why do we need CC when we have sats? What is the exchange rate between them? I see some people trying to get in on it by spending sats. I hope it doesn't turn out to be a sh**coin. I feel this has to do with SN going non-custodial at around the same time I joined with full force, but I need to figure out its nuances. I haven't spent much time on this topic, so I don't want to talk too much about it.

Haha, sorry, I need to get accustomed to the markdown formatting in SN.

Amen to that! I have missed this abundance mindset from my 20s.

I have been diving deep into Austrian economics and would like to hear more about how you connect it to marginal utility. Did you mean that the first few sats you get from posting boost the abundance mindset worldview? Will this also mean once you cross a 1000 sats threshold, you will start to hit diminishing returns? Haha

I have always felt it is difficult to contribute something 'original' in the pre-LLM world(I decided against pursuing a PhD because of this feeling), and it was difficult for me to overcome that and start writing. With LLMs, I guess my insecurities shot up manifold when these LLMs were coming up with decent content. It was a feeling of how the reader could even know that I was not using an LLM.

I totally understand your obsession with unlocking the medium of exchange. If one has to retire from their stack at some point, the stacker needs to figure this out sooner rather than later.

SN seems to be an excellent, though unexpected, use case for MoE. I used to write blogs, but after LLMs, I felt demotivated because I couldn't determine if the author was an actual person. But having to pay sats to post anything seems like an excellent mechanism to ensure quality/thought by humans. I said 'unexpected' because you wouldn't imagine that in today's centralized world of Insta/X, you would need to exchange information and notes for value. Posting and replying are free there, and the quality of writing and thought can be pretty abysmal. Don't even get me started on engagement farming there, sheesh. In summary, SN is Adam Back's Hashcash proof-of-work system for limiting email spam in a more privacy-focused cyberspace. I totally dig it!

Thanks, am going all in on exploring MoE in 2025 :)

I was finding it difficult to do lightning channel management a few years back, so I abandoned LN, except for having very few sats in custodial LN wallets. I feel like some tools like AlbyHub have made this a lot easier nowadays. It’s still a pain, but less of a pain than in the past, haha.

The first time I came across SN was in a local Bitcoiner Instant Messaging group a few months ago. I would read SN every now and then. I wasn't too active as a daily active user

Lately, though, I have been trying to get used to BTC as a MoE instead of only HODLing it as a SoV. So, I decided to spend sats generously(before, I felt spending even 1 Satoshi to post was not HODLing and was like spending a piece of Manhattan real estate—you know where this came from, haha ) and then properly signed up here. I am very pleased with my decision so far :)

Thanks for the welcome. You guys are very kind! I don't think I received such a welcome when I joined nostr or any other platform. Feels like I'm in the right place.

This reminded me of those guys in Vegas who pull down the levers on slot machines while automatically adding $20K to their bank accounts. Before I tried this game, it looked alien to me. And now, after the ease with which I could deposit and win/lose sats, I can relate to them frightfully.

Damn, I didn't know the default zap was for a 100 sats! In hindsight, this post deserved it 😅

Evolutionary psychology suggests that it’s a way of expressing our connections with our group, helping to clarify who belongs to 'us' and who might be considered 'them.' Once those battle lines are drawn, it's hard to redraw them despite evidence to the contrary.

The article presents some compelling analogies that must be shared with Elon Musk, given his keen interest in the pressing issue of declining fertility rates globally fertility rates across the world