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This is basically the communist vision (in its original, positive sense) -- Universal Basic Provisioning achieved through automation and a moderate amount of community service. People are always quick to point out how governments will inevitably screw this up, likely making things even worse than they are now, but I think the idea has merit at least in principle. Unlike the idea of Universal Basic Income. Free markets and free money just don't go together. Especially if this money is given to the "productive underlayer" of society rather than investment bankers. That will just collapse the house of cards from the inside out. Administrators, middle managers and VPs of sales do not a functioning economy make.


I agree that historically such movements always ended up badly, e.g. Russia and China. I'd argue that Russia and China picked Socialism not because they had abundance of materials, but on the contrary, because they were too weak back then, so that Socialism gave them the tool of collectivism to fight against external threats and built up industries quickly.

We have never tried something like that (as you said UBP) in a rich country. I guess Norway and Sweden are closer? But I'm not sure.

Agree with your points on UBI.


I do wonder sometimes how UBP would play out in a developed country... Would it remove the need for bullshit jobs and refocus the market-oriented part of the economy towards real progress? Would it make people happier? Or would it make people spend even more of their lives scrolling, swiping and retweeting? In any case, this is a purely theoretical exercise -- even more so than UBI, the idea of UBP is very much incompatible with neoclassical economics, which thoroughly dominates economic and societal thought in most of the developed world.




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