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Cake day: June 28th, 2023

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  • You hear UBI thrown around a lot by the AI crowd, often before or after the word “obviously” and the phrase “the government will.” The people who talk about such-and-such political solution being INEVITABLE due to (some non political thing over here) have almost never spent even a moment paying attention to actual policy conversations that touch on their proposal. They usually have not looked at the political context either.

    It is, in the year 2024, a Herculean effort to get the U.S. Congress to pass a functioning BUDGET. Every. fucking. year. The institution nominally in charge of the country grinds to a halt as it debates “Hey, should society continue existing? I’m not sure” for a few weeks because some asshole decides to throw sand in the gears over what the culture war issue is trending that day. Modest improvements to existing infrastructure or policy areas are MONTHS and YEARS long battles to get passed. And in the lucky event something does get happen, no one ever looks deeply into either the sustainability of the policy nor the implementation of the policy. Making sure the-thing-we-passed-helps-the-people-we-intended-and-is-functioning is always a Next Year problem for Somebody Else.

    The very idea that, like, our government could get it together long enough to create and fund a long-term permanent UBI program is laughable. Insulting. “Well, it’s a very obvious problem that a government will have to solve” you say. “How could they not solve it?”

    My dude. Not solving very obvious problems that it is their job to solve is our legislature’s speciality. It’s what it lives and breathes for. On the metaphorical resumé of Congress, “finding reasons to not do things” is the first bullet point under “Strengths.”

    And UBI is not some trivial post-office naming bill. It would be a hugely contentious issue, as you’d have to decide fun questions like who qualifies to receive the money, how much money do they get and, most fun of all, who is going to pay for this. And whatever clever answer you think you have for that third question, I guarantee you they will immediately launch an all-out assault on your very soul once they catch a whiff of you attempting to redistribute THEIR GOD-GIVEN RIGHT to hoard piles of cash large and small alike.

    It’s an annoying statement to hear repeated because it’s such a STEM-head “on my napkin this is all very simple” reflex that totally ignores the reality of the human beings and the society they live in.



  • lobotomy42@awful.systemstoSneerClub@awful.systemsOK doomer
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    9 months ago

    Maybe. The current EA strategy is to takeover all the technocratic positions in government/business one level down from the ostensible policy-makers. The idea being that if they are the only ones qualified to actually write the reports on “alignment” for DoD/NIST/etc. then ultimately they get to squeeze in some final control over the language, regardless of what Joe Senator wants. Similarly, by monopolizing and brainwashing all the think tank positions, even the Joe Senators out there end up leaning on them to write the bills and executive orders.