umadon

No, not all. For example not a positive right to healthcare.

UBI is transparently an attempt to redistribute tax income to private companies such that no opportunity for profit stays with or is limited by government. UBI would mean no more Medicare stipulations, no more existing conditions protections. Just your ten grand a year or whatever and a bunch of private companies who have what you need, at whatever price they set.

Sure, just weird that everyone is enamored of a "literary" truth at the expense of grown-up historical research.

I think this is the message the investor class is trying to send to ordinary people: "If we can't find a place to invest at a reasonable rate of return, we will find a way to loot your bank accounts."

Solzhenitsyn's Ex‐Wife Says ‘Gulag’ Is ‘Folklore’:

https://www.nytimes.com/1974/02/06/archives/solzhenitsyns-ex...

UBI can also be inflated away to nothing. It's a neoliberal scam.

That would certainly be much better, and I actually came to the Forbes piece from an article that pointed how little of these rare earth metals e-bikes use compared to electric cars:

https://www.treehugger.com/bikes/electric-cars-wont-save-us-...

Maybe it's a bit gauche to comment first on your own link, but these quotes from the report seem most salient:

"In the long-term, widespread personal vehicle ownership does not appear to be compatible with significant decarbonization."

and

"The government should 'aim to reduce the number of vehicles required, for example by promoting and improving public transport; reducing its cost relative to private transport and encouraging vehicle usership in place of ownership,' add the MPs, stressing that the government ought to be 'encouraging and supporting increased levels of walking and cycling.'"

There are some really interesting comments in this thread, but I wonder what people think: Where does value come from?

But where does that value come from? Did Bezos create it?

UBI smells like a trojan horse for privatization of what remains of social security, disability, unemployment, etc. I would much rather have a robust national pension system than "Uber, but for retirement."

Here's how you perpetrate a wealth transfer from average homeowners to the rich:

1. Deregulate mortgage lending to cause a housing bubble.

2. When it bursts, bail out the banks, and let people lose their homes, resulting in the homes being transferred to banks and landlords, causing more speculation and price increases.

3. Meanwhile, make sure the proportion of economic growth going to workers is kept minimal, even as the stock market booms.

4. Now, these workers not only have to sell their labor to the rich for paltry returns, have their retirement (if any) invested by the rich, borrow from the rich to go to college, but also rent from them in perpetuity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRh0QiXyZSk

Right, and the enormous pressure constantly put on the average person by advertising and work to somehow be a super being: fitter, happier, more productive, etc, as the fella says.

My favorite instance of this was an Amazon review that rated a book in part based on cost per page of text.

I wouldn't pay to look at Western media either.

I would settle for 2 four-hour days, I think.

Uhh but weren't the maple trees there before that?

"I appreciate your point of view, FWIW I believe that I'm doing net positive work for the world."

Well, you're wrong. You believe this because you're getting paid a lot of money to.

HN like other social online spaces is not neutral or free from influence. For example I would imagine upvotes are trivial to astroturf.

A quick search:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=purchase+upvotes+hackernews&ia=soc...

No amount of individual behavioral changes are going to cut it. The entire economy needs to be transformed. Does anyone seriously believe the people who control the economy will just let this happen?

Yes, here in the West we are too moral for mass state surveillance.