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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   38682 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025

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once we're seeing double digit unemployment, they're going to either be forced to accept UBI, or watch as the majority of the population starves.

What on earth makes you think these are the only options?

There’s going to be great variety on the make-work-to-UBI scale. I can see the Nordics embracing UBI, but the Americans? They will have you (or us) dig ditches and fill them in before they hand everyone no strings attached spending power, I’d bet on it. Your knowledge of American culture and values is still less than fully developed.

I have discussed a whole range of options in the past, including make-work. Even that is a form of UBI, just a rather shitty one, and once again, the US would be in a better position to make it work.

So are current make work jobs like hospital administrators or financial regulators UBI then? Seems like a wide definition.

Opinions differ strongly on how much of that is is "make work". From the perspective of a hospital, the administrators provide some value, even if it's due to a need to engage with a labrynthine bureaucracy and governmentally imposed regulation. Someone being paid to fill up a hole that someone else is paid to dig, is at the least, filling up a hole that might trip up passersby.

It's like saying the military is make-work, because the main reason each nation needs one is because other nations have their own.

If there's a point where humans are not employable in a free market, but rely entirely on government work or government mandated work that requires a human in the loop, it is a shitty form of UBI.

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