Universal Basic Income and the threat of tyranny
According to the logic used in this, Alaska is an autocratic regime. But when I look at Alaska, I see a state with the lowest poverty, lowest inequality, and highest well-being of almost all 50 states. I also see a population who comes out to vote, especially when anything dividend related is voted on.<p>It&#x27;s stuff like this that really annoys me, and I feel gives academics a bad name. It&#x27;s coming up with what-ifs and not applying any applicable evidence to it. Take this for another example:<p>&gt; &quot;Will the working minority agree to support non-workers with ten or twenty children per family? Will that be sustainable?&quot;<p>Are you fucking kidding me? Does anyone really honestly think that there&#x27;s a high percentage of women out there wanting to give birth 10 to 20 times? Is that theoretically possible? Sure, but that doesn&#x27;t make it in any way probable. In fact the evidence we have again points in the opposite direction.<p>I really don&#x27;t see any value in writing shit like this. Why not next write something about the concerns of universal health care, and how people might use it to drink so much they just replace liver after liver? Or maybe people will feel they could then rob banks because if they got shot, they&#x27;d have free health care. Are these things theoretically possible? Yes. But that doesn&#x27;t make them not stupid to express.<p>Look, in general, democracies all over the world, in addition to UBI, need to be strengthened through dropping ideas like first-past-the-post, and adopting ideas like single-transferable-vote that feature more proportional representation and lack spoiler effects.<p>With that said, I only see those changes as more possible through UBI because people with their basic needs met have more time and mental space to engage in being more informed and more involved as citizens.<p>Look at how involved seniors are and how much power they have. Government answers to them. It&#x27;s not the other way around. They don&#x27;t lose the right to vote because they are no longer part of the labor market. Instead they vote in even greater numbers. And guess what happens when that happens? You get represented.<p>Articles like this are written by those who don&#x27;t bother to look at the evidence around them and instead choose to use imaginary thinking in the hopes of influencing others.<p>Basic income is freedom FROM tyranny, not the threat of it.