How basic income could fail in America
Basic income seems to be an acknowledgement capitalism does not work for the majority, wealth concentrates at the top,  and self interest of a few take precedence.<p>Here are a few tiny scraps is akin to a kind of feudalism. How do they assert influence in a such a structure? Is life to become a spectator sport? Do people gain purpose from a collective goal in which each plays a part or one in which they sit on the sidelines? Wouldn&#x27;t a better option for most then be to echew industrialization and &#x27;progress&#x27; and revert to the land and village like communities.<p>The costs of too many unemployed and underemployed is far too high on multiple levels including to those who are not in either group than any social or welfare net and it&#x27;s absence leads to higly unstable and fractured societies.<p>But is basic income really an answer in an inherently calvinist society? Add to that the preponderance of the soulless ideology of Rand among sections of US society and the entire social goal it seems has been effectively reduced to celebrating personal achievement and supermen and superwomen.<p>There are large questions around human progress, how to define it and the best way to achieve it that need to be revisited. Is a society merely economic interests coexisting or does it mean more than that?