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Why the Tech World Thinks the American Dream Is Dying

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Re: Why the Tech World Thinks the American Dream Is Dying

#11

Post by spwa4 »

croes wrote: post #8
youngtaff wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where’s the money for UBI going to come from when billionaires are hoarders and don’t like paying tax?

UBI and capitalism don’t match. Quite the opposite, capitalism even enforces useless work because it’s the main source of income. That’s why all these AI bros dreams of AI benefits are BS unless they think they could get rid of capitalism

You ignore human nature. I used to say "the brain is a transformer", not in the sense of how the current batch of AI transformers work, but in the sense of an mathematical transormation. The input gets transformed into human behavior. Human behavior is not something that exists independently of our environment and stimuli. And specifically: if nothing comes in, nothing comes back out (if you actually take away inputs, right up to the point that the brain stops controlling the body and you die, but you don't have to drive it nearly that far to just make sure nothing happens anymore).

Perhaps surprisingly, humans don't object to that. Our human intelligence works by subtracting what we can predict from the inputs and then focusing on the portion that remains.

So if AI either prevents interactions with humans or makes them more predictable, then human minds just ... stop. Literally. Humans won't do anything anymore.

UBI will either fail, or it will succeed and humans will just stop.

Re: Why the Tech World Thinks the American Dream Is Dying

#13

Post by steveBK123 »

My favorite Tech Bro "AI is gonna make money worthless" cognitive dissonance is how Musk keeps saying exactly this. He has been quoted that people won't need to save anymore due to abundance, while also extracting a potential $1T pay package for himself...

https://fortune.com/2026/01/12/elon-musk-retirement-savings-...

Re: Why the Tech World Thinks the American Dream Is Dying

#14

Post by Pooge »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #6
youngtaff wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where’s the money for UBI going to come from when billionaires are hoarders and don’t like paying tax?

How are billionaires “hoarders”? They may be a lot of things, but to use hoarders is a gross misunderstanding of wealth, billionaires, how equities work and more. Bezos does not have a castle filled with a scrooge mcduck moneypool. There are not castles filled with grain that could otherwise be used to feed the starving peasants.

Velocity would be much higher if the same amount of money was in the hands of millions more people.

Corruption of politics would be much harder, too.

Re: Why the Tech World Thinks the American Dream Is Dying

#15

Post by class3shock »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #6
youngtaff wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where’s the money for UBI going to come from when billionaires are hoarders and don’t like paying tax?

How are billionaires “hoarders”? They may be a lot of things, but to use hoarders is a gross misunderstanding of wealth, billionaires, how equities work and more. Bezos does not have a castle filled with a scrooge mcduck moneypool. There are not castles filled with grain that could otherwise be used to feed the starving peasants.

They quite literally hoard the profit produced by the people that work for them. If they didn't, they wouldn't be billionaires. Pretending that because the wealth isn't in the form of a pool filled with gold coins that somehow makes it different is just misunderstanding wealth.

As far as feeding people, he could single handidly fund SNAP for a year and still have 100 billion plus.

Re: Why the Tech World Thinks the American Dream Is Dying

#16

Post by VirusNewbie »

Pooge wrote: post #14
VirusNewbie wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are billionaires “hoarders”? They may be a lot of things, but to use hoarders is a gross misunderstanding of wealth, billionaires, how equities work and more. Bezos does not have a castle filled with a scrooge mcduck moneypool. There are not castles filled with grain that could otherwise be used to feed the starving peasants.

Velocity would be much higher if the same amount of money was in the hands of millions more people. Corruption of politics would be much harder, too.

They aren’t hoarding money, you don’t understand that?

What “money” velocity would be higher? Some of these companies have very little profit compared to wealth.

Re: Why the Tech World Thinks the American Dream Is Dying

#17

Post by bryanlarsen »

steveBK123 wrote: post #13

My favorite Tech Bro "AI is gonna make money worthless" cognitive dissonance is how Musk keeps saying exactly this. He has been quoted that people won't need to save anymore due to abundance, while also extracting a potential $1T pay package for himself... https://fortune.com/2026/01/12/elon-musk-retirement-savings-...

Money at that level is about power. Unlike what must of us use our money for, power is relative, it's a zero sum game

Re: Why the Tech World Thinks the American Dream Is Dying

#19

Post by luckylion »

steveBK123 wrote: post #10
VirusNewbie wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are billionaires “hoarders”? They may be a lot of things, but to use hoarders is a gross misunderstanding of wealth, billionaires, how equities work and more. Bezos does not have a castle filled with a scrooge mcduck moneypool. There are not castles filled with grain that could otherwise be used to feed the starving peasants.

Don't most of them have prepper level bunkers on large parcels of property, a private jet flight away in case things go truly south?

Possibly, but those are irrelevant sums compared to their total wealth.

Re: Why the Tech World Thinks the American Dream Is Dying

#20

Post by analog31 »

ravelantunes wrote: post #2

If AI automates most jobs and UBI becomes the primary source of income for most people, doesn't that imply the means of production eventually have to transfer to government control? Is there a different mechanism that makes this work without that transfer?

UBI could be packaged in the form of a jobs program. There's still plenty of work to do. AI can't protect our cities from immigrants.

/s

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