Except that you never gave them money.

I see many positive sides to basic income systems, but what about inflation? If everyone, including those with normal jobs, get enough money to survive extra every month, will this not dramatically increase inflation? There is (significantly) more money floating around, but not (enough) more work done.

I image it would be visible first in the housing market. They set the basic income such that you can afford to live in a cheap house. But now everyone has more money, but there ain't more houses, so the rent increase, and the basic income is no longer enough.

True, and it's even better than my analogy :-s

I want to show that all cars are red, so I go out and start counting cars. It turns out that not all cars are red, but by choosing every seventeenth car, except if the previous one had a number-plate ending with an odd number OR a number x such that the x-th fibonachi number has a 4 as the second digit, THEN all those cars are red! Dang, that's actually what I meant, forget that thing about all cars red. Publish!

Another serious issue is that it is hard publishing negative results. So even though every researcher is playing by all the rules, they might not know that 500 others have done the same trial before and failed, and this is just the 1 in 500 which accidentally gives a positive result.

In Norway you go 8 weeks without support if you quit yourself (or get fired for some reason you were fault at yourself), but then you start getting help (as long as you are actively seeking a new job). But in addition to this everyone can apply for basic support to help you sheltered and out of starvation. The latter you only get if you actually need it, so if you have e.g a house, car or similar they might make you sell that first. This basic support is extremely low, enough to keep you alive, but if you can work you will prefer to work. My impression is that it is the same in other Scandinavian countries as well.

Are you maybe not referring to the paper "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by Eric S Raymond? I can't seem to remember that Mythical Man Month used the terms cathedrals or bazaars. The ESR on the other hand does, and it actually refers to Emacs development as the cathedral.

Or the dead sexy "Practical Common Lisp". It is free and good. http://www.gigamonkeys.com/boo...

Why? Is there any reason to think they are smarter than pigs or octopuses? If you eat e.g Norwegian whale you eat a whale (Mink whale) which is in no way endangered (Least Concern)[1]. 80% of the animals are killed instantaneously on impact[2], so little unnecessary suffering. The rest are pulled in and killed with a riffle. Compare this to big-game hunting where you have to run through the forest trying to kill the animal you just wounded. Or to industrial-produced meat where the animal might live their whole life in a small enclosure, possibly never having seen the sun. Personally I don't eat beef unless I have good reasons to believe that it got to, at least, walk freely outside in the summer. Similarly with pork and chicken. Visiting the US I basically practice vegetarianism. Whales on the other hand, I eat with the same good conscience that I eat (shot-in-the-wild) moose. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...

Move to Europe. Many Europeans, especially in tech, are quite critical to all the American surveillance, and would probably be quite sympathetic to these whistle blowers. Their actions might even make it easier for them to get jobs in Europe than otherwise! Europe also needs programmers. Most of Scandinavia speaks so English so well that one can get a job speaking only English (if you have high-valued skills), so you have other options that Britain.