Hey PG,

I think you're doing the right thing. I've watched HN start to turn into a place full of snark and very useless comments. This is a great measure, but is the 1000 points karma a high threshold for the endorsers? Why not 500 or 750?

pg says 1000+ is arbitrary. It probably stands to be tuned. I wonder if this will have any effect on interesting comment sub-threads on links that don't hit the first couple of pages.

It's probably going to be for the better. My biggest concern though is that HN may become to clique-ish... Those with low karma that have interesting thoughts may now be discouraged from sharing...

I don't think that will universally be the case. Low karma might also indicate you don't post much, so you're less likely to be annoyed.

As HN becomes more popular,it will attract more and more uselss commenters.

I'm in favor of this.

Do we have any examples where this has worked before?

You could argue the system in the UK provides similar payments and could be called a basic income system if you rebrand it. Basically the system comes out roughly as:

Zero earned income. You get about £60-200 from the state per week so lets call this a £60 basic income. Typical unemployed.

Annual income £12K. No tax and no subsidies. We could rebrand as £60/wk basic income = 3K/yr and and 25% tax on the 12K. Typical minimum wage earner.

Income £50k. Roughly £35K in your pocket, £15K tax. Rebrand as 18K tax less 3K minimum income.

The system kind of works. One of the main problems is that there is a very steep effective marginal between zero income and minimum wage - a lot of people end up about equally well off in the short term whether they do nothing or flip burgers. This would be better under a straight basic income system.

I think you could improve the basic income set up by something like karma points where you get a bit more money if you are productive even if it's doing something unpaid like charity work or writing poems and less if you are criminal etc.

> The system kind of works.

Isn't it actually radically different in that you are not allowed to choose to stay unemployed, i.e. you have to be at least trying to look for work in order to be eligible for such benefits?

In other countries there are similar systems but before you get "basic income" like benefits, your property will have to be used up / sold.

Sorry, you must have misread Belleruches' post. He asked for examples where this has worked.

Last I heard the UK was a depressed shithole with a stagnant economy. Hardly a glorious example of the success of such policies.