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RE: Why bother with circle jerks?
I can see your concerns. Well I wanted to post about the topic anyways. Maybe I can get you with some emotional statement ;). I cant even say for sure that BUI will work, but it is a much simpler experiment than Anarcho-Capitalism ;)
I'm pretty sure it will be tried. Yet not all the problems in the world are due to lack of money. Anarcho-Capitalism is a LONG TERM goal. It deals with a lot more issues than those simply existing due to money. Yet I don't expect to see it in my life time... if it ever happens it'll be likely generations from now. Just taking stepping stones towards it.
If UBI has some magical way of not running afoul of my three points of concern that I mentioned, I haven't seen them yet. So if it does work it could be a good thing. Yet many things SOUND good until they are implemented. If they want to try it as an experiment... go for it.
Sadly governments don't seem to like to admit if an experiment fails... they just keep pushing it. That is also a concern. If it fails, will they take a step back?
On that note I have a nice anecdote from German politics:
we had the "Pendler-Pauschale". It was meant to endorse people to take jobs further away from home by giving them 50 cent per month for every kilometer to work.
A few years ago, when we had elections, some of our politics proclaimed: We want to get rid of these unnecessary subventions in the free market. People thought, 'hey they want to stop all this strange money flowing from state to corps' (see food subvention ie).
They got rid of one subvention after the election, they killed the Pendler-Pauschale.....
UBI has the potential to fulfill one of the bug goals of socialism; no extreme poverty. Thats why its kinda important to me.
My biggest problem with socialism has always been WHERE DOES IT COME FROM. The answer generally is they take it from people and redistribute it.
To me that is theft, unless it is voluntary. So a lot of my concerns will be around the idea that people think it is okay to force other people to do things just because they think it is a good idea.
One size doesn't fit all. Yet so many systems try to pretend it does.
UBI though we will see. :)
yeah but people always think of absolute communism when they think about socialism. I would never advocate that private persons cant own and gain. I just want it to be controlled, eventually even capped.
I thought it was unfair to claim all goals of socialism are achieved by eliminating poverty, but I think when it comes to 'taking from the rich and give to the poor' UBI is all we need.
This could be true. As long as those 3 concerns I mentioned don't kick in. Those in power always seem to come up with ways to exploit and corrupt even the best sounding ideas.