alt Hacker NewsThis is a genuine problem indeed and part of the appeal of an UBI. The idea being that if the rules of redistribution are dead simple, then that helps minimize the potential for grift, which in turn minimizes the potential danger of a redistributor class.
That said, it is fundamentally important that nobody has too much power, and that power changes hands on a regular basis.
At a global scale, this necessitates taking power away from the capitalist class.
Ideally that power just doesn't go to anybody, but to the extent that it has to go somewhere, it almost doesn't matter where. Or perhaps it's better to say that there are many options that are acceptable and better than allowing power to continue to accumulate unchecked.
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we had this UBI experiment during COVID lockdown and PPP loans, and what happened??
People splurged all government given money on luxury items and unnecessary stuff, or just gambled it way on stock market or betting.
UBI does NOT work in the US and will never work. More sensible approach is what China does: low prices.
Just massively lower prices for basic cost of living items, so that even Uber driver could live normal life
> it is fundamentally important that nobody has too much power
> taking power away from the capitalist class
An obvious and apparently irresolvable contradiction.
Capitalist power is inherently anarchic and isn't power at all. It's simply order emerging from the anarchy of the market. But the ability to take that power away from them, no matter how you measure it, itself falls into the category of "too much power" with wide margin. And with this amount of power there will be no change of hands that hold it.
The fundamental problem is that power and resources are always captured by Cluster B types, and Cluster B types are poison to every form of social organisation.
So it's true it almost doesn't matter, because you can absolutely guarantee you're going to have growing inequality, political instability, and a culture of dishonesty, abuse, and contempt, unless you keep Cluster B types far, far away from resource dominance, strategy, and enforcement.
If you follow UBI out a few generations, there will be nobody left to tax, which funds it.
The end result is total system collapse or forcing people to work through total government control, which is where all communist systems end up.
UBI creates a slave class. It's just a dressed up and renamed system that's been tried many times before, and failed.
I'm not sure why every new generation thinks they discovered something new.