Anon OpinAs yet another UBI trial rolls past showing that it works really well, it's hard not to conclude that the main reason nobody adopts it is because bad employers don't want to give up their leverage over the desperate and poor to work in shit conditions for pittance.
Mike Taylor 🦕@anon_opin I don't think it's that. I think it's just so counter-intuitive that it would work, that people find it hard to believe all the accumulating evidence.
廃墟猫 🐈🌈🐈⬛🐈🐈⬛🐈⬛@mike @anon_opin I think it's definitely that. Notice that companies are excited about AI taking over people's jobs, but not suggesting giving everyone UBI because they won't need to work? Because the whole point is to force poor people into more and more desperate situations.
@Haikyoneko @anon_opin I prefer to follow Hanlon's razor.
Proto Himbo European@mike @Haikyoneko @anon_opin For most people, maybe this applies. For the people with the means to make UBI happen, who actively prevent it, I think we have several decades of evidence adding up to malice.
@guyjantic @Haikyoneko @anon_opin I don't think so. I think any politician in power would find it hard to remain in power while advocating a policy that most voters think (even if quite wrongly) can't possibly work. It will take a long, hard road of education to get past this. I don't think "just have a non-evil prime minister" is a functioning shortcut.
@mike @Haikyoneko @anon_opin You will notice I did not say anything that reasonably reduces to "the problem is an evil prime minster."
I'm not just talking about government leaders. I'm talking about the hundreds of CEOs of large health insurance companies, the many CEOs and upper management of large companies (hundreds of thousands? IDK) whose employee turnover contingencies would change with UBI, reducing their ability to set working conditions. The amount of money paid to lobbyists every year to avoid single-payer healthcare (in the USA) is pretty good evidence that, as an overall group, these folks are consciously, knowingly fighting social safety nets that could reduce their profits.
The Uruk-Hai are often motivated by different things than those of us down in the trenches.
"Malice versus incompetence" isn't binary, really. There's a continuum (at least one):
From: Incapable of reasoning beyond my puritanical upbringing plus all my friends think this way plus I lack any challenging information in my mediasphere
To: Machiavellian manipulation for fun and profit
Big-name conservative influencers and many politicians are probably closer to endpoint 1, above. Many religious leaders are somewhere in the middle. Most people are closer to endpoint 2.
Your straw man gave me a chance to type out a more full response.