Do you think that the future will be a better place? Why or why not?

I sadly think that is going to be the UBI model. People existing, not living and entirely beholden to whatever scraps the government deems they are worth.

Humans have an incredibly strong "us vs them" mentality. We will naturally find any reason to separate ourselves in to groups and look down on people who are outside that group. Unfortunately right now it's politically advantageous for politicians to use that instinct to demonize groups like people who need some kind of welfare (or any kind of minority).

But if we get in to a situation where over 50% (or over 90%) of the population is living on UBI I hope that it stops being good politics to demonize them. Of course, that might depend on if politics over the next century are dominated by average people, or dominated by wealthy donors. If we let ourselves get in to a situation where 1% of 1% of the country controls almost all the wealth and also controls all the politicians and uses them to suppress the rights of everyone else that would be a disaster. I'm cautiously optimistic we can avoid that fate (although maybe we should be paying more attention to campaign finance and particularly public financing of elections now?)

/r/AskReddit Thread Parent