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Notes -
To expand on a comment I made in the previous thread, the situation in Minnesota has made me realize that in the impending AI revolution, in the best case scenario (where we don't get slaughtered by Skynet; we have machines to do our labor for us; and there is some sort of social assistance for all the newly unemployed) it's pretty likely there will be a huge amount of social unrest, separate and apart from issues arising from the AI revolution.
I had assumed that in such a scenario, most people would either pursue interesting hobbies or self-destructive hedonism. But the situation in Minnesota makes me realize that a lot of people are going to look for political causes and use those as an excuse to harass others while feeling morally superior in doing so.
Obviously these things are very difficult to predict, but the Summer of Floyd is instructive, I think. A lot of the rioters were people who were furloughed during Covid and collecting unemployment insurance.
I think this is precisely the reason that we're unlikely to see UBI, even if we somehow reach a post scarcity society.
The 'U' in UBI means 'Universal'. It means that people will receive it even if you don't like them. There's a portion of the population who absolutely will not accept that. Unfortunately, they're also the loudest and have enough energy and free time to end up in positions of power when any program that calls itself UBI will be enacted. Think of a bad HOA committee, granted the power to decide whether or not you'll live in an apartment or starve to death in a gutter.
Everything will be means-tested. Everything will be revocable if you commit a crime. Everything will be contingent. The definition of those things will change every time new hands are on the levers of power.
We'll see political graft and handouts, but not UBI.
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