"And this is the real danger of a universal basic income – it makes the citizens unnecessary to the government."
Nice to know that no matter what, we're fucked.
http://quillette.com/2017/10/09/universal-basic-income-threat-tyranny/
@AmyDentata It's nice to know that no matter what happens, we're all fucked
@mogwai_poet nah imo it's like arguing about why capitalism is bad from the perspective of "what will kings need peasants for?"
@mogwai_poet kings and peasants more or less stopped existing as explicit, literal things. so shall go the state as we know it today
@mogwai_poet and especially so shall go the political class we have today
@AmyDentata The argument still exists if you sub in "powerful people" and "less-powerful people" though
@mogwai_poet eh, distribution of wealth is distribution of power. if it cycles instead of accumulating, that's for the better
@mogwai_poet in the end, many of us are fighting for a world where private ownership of production doesn't exist anymore, and UBI is seen as either a temporary step toward that or a sneaky trap, depending on who you ask
@mogwai_poet the article itself isn't as alarmist as you might think at first glance. It's basically saying "let's talk about this angle too cuz bad things could happen," rather than "omg we're fucked"
@mogwai_poet and, for example, I think the argument that ppl will go on being violent independent of economic concerns is wrong. It will take time to heal, but imo all bigotry at some level is fucked up economics
@AmyDentata UBI isn't power cycling, though -- it's powerful people keeping the vast majority of the power, but their crumbs being plenty for the rest of us to live on.
@mogwai_poet eh, I don't agree that it has to work that way, or that it will stay that way
@AmyDentata I hope you're right!
@mogwai_poet me too. It's definitely still a gamble
@mogwai_poet minus current economic divides, unified political action from the people will become easier
@mogwai_poet I... dunno. There are a *lot* of assumptions the writer of that article is making. That statement itself is making a pretty hefty assumption.
Policy makers are looking at this as a cheaper alternative to Welfare. Capitalism/Democracy already punishes and exploits people like this with programs like "Welfare to work" that offload menial/minimum wage jobs to people on welfare.
It's a mostly positive article but... a lot of conclusions and assumptions about wealth/power.
@mogwai_poet what this misses imo is the eventual collapse of the state as we know it