India floats the idea of a universal basic income

> But hey, since 40 years of social democracy has failed, let's keep doubling down and giving people more "free" money.

... you mean the countries with the highest quality-of-life measures? The Scandanavian nations, Canada, Australia, NZ, all of which have vibrant economies, high average wages, and strong middle classes?

The US with their pathological fear of their own government is not what I'd use as a particularly characteristic example of social democracy.

> those that don't kill themselves are going to revolt.

There has already been civil revolting in recent times. The police being shot at during the BLM stuff is what it looks like. The days of organising a 'continental army' and taking the current government head on are long gone (in developed countries, at least). Making an organisation large enough to even start to annoy the US military would be nipped in the bud long before it happens. But there will be lots of small-scale or individual revolting.

The methods of government in the US are not going to change (eg: the Electoral College) because fairer systems would work against the current parties in power, and changing the constitution itself is extremely difficult, even for something as conceptually simple as 'no more alcohol' ('new electoral process' doesn't stand a chance). So, barring massive social disaster, things will carry on as-is. Trump will do a lot of damage to convention and will highlight lots of edge-cases, but the underlying systems will barely move.

There will be revolts, but it's not going to change anything structurally.

> isn't to demand people not buy tvs with ubi, its just to make sure you can have the bare necessities and little else

'little else' = TV in your example, so these amount to the same thing

Because the cost of 'bare necessities' varies by region (housing prices in particular), the only way you'll make this work is if there's a government bureaucracy somewhere that looks at market prices and then calculates some formula that gives you exactly the amount of money it takes to buy X amount of housing, food, etc.

But then you can always turn around and bunk with a friend and then spend it all on luxuries and video games, or secretly move someplace cheaper to live and pocket the extra money. So either you allow people to nakedly game the system, or the government is now in the business of monitoring where normal people live.

I would venture that the vast majority of people will benefit from a small amount of income compared to the small amount who will take advantage of the system.

>1. Property rights is the reason that technology is augmenting humans 2. Unified global culture is the reason that technology is augmenting humans 3. Having a genetic legacy is evidence my "premise is not necessarily true"

>You are definitely moving the goal posts by #1 and #2.

That's not moving the goalposts. Please read up on what "moving the goalposts" means because what I'm doing is not that. You're being incredibly intolerant to my arguments, to the point of making wildly false accusations about them to avoid actually addressing the points made.

I thought the link between #1 and #2 was obvious to you, but I guess I need to spell it out. Neanderthals never got access to the technology of humans, because they were not part of their culture. All humans alive today can access all classes of technology from around the world, because we share the same global culture, and moroever, can fully utilize said technology to augment our own abilities, because we have property rights and thus can come to own technological devices. An additional point, which I alluded to, is that the market is driving costs down and thus making technology more widely available over time, which is a very positive trend.

It's only "moving the goalposts" when you ignore the fact that #1 and #2 were responses to different arguments made.

>1. Why Neanderthals were augmented despite not having property rights (#1, above)

You're moving the goalposts! The crux of the debate was not about why technology augmented humans in the distant past. My point was that in the modern age, due to people having property rights, technology is augmenting them. And that wasn't even my central point. My central point is that technology augments humans, and because of this, we don't face a threat of being made obsolete by machines. Are you seriously this oblivious to your own rank hypocrisy?

>2. What my premise has to do with genetic legacy. From what I gather, you assume that as long as the people alive today share genetic material with other species, either alive or dead, my premise is inaccurate. Why?

Because genetic success is one very widely used metric of success. It's the determinant of all biological life afterall. Why wouldn't it be a measure of success?

>3. What your premise actually is. Are you talking about genetically legacy, or something else? Is all that you are saying is that those alive tomorrow will at least share some DNA from those already dead? Not much of a shocker, is it?

Yes I'm talking about genetic legacy, and yes, the success of any human being would be a success for all human beings by this metric. How is that unclear? How is challenging the premise of your argument moving the goalposts?