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Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments

scottsantens.com

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Re: Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of many reasons that FDR was the worst president in US history.

I'm talking about the ability of people to concentrate soft power with capital. At least with federal programs there's _some_ ability for the average person to influence how the program is run, even if it's abstracted through Congress and elections. The alternative is neo-feudalism.

I don't agree that there's any substantive difference in what you're complaining about and what you're proposing as a solution. The scenario in both cases is people being dependent for essential livelihood on organizations administered by strangers with their own motives.

However, the status quo reality doesn't fully reflect what you're complaining about, because the "ability of people to concentrate soft power with capital" is something that is distributed widely across society, with a vast plurality of institutions and communities, having varying and often opposing motivations, all having the capacity to independently develop their own capital.

Conversely, the political state is a single institution with structural incentives that converge toward a single set of objectives, and no, the electoral process is not a sufficient mechanism of accountability.

Effectively, what you are arguing for is taking the pattern that you find unfavorable in the first place, and putting it under the control of a single centralized monopoly with insufficient safeguards against abuse.

Re: Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments

#192
post #162
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An that's already illegal, so there's already a basis for legal action against SuperPACs that engage directly as part of candidates campaigns. So what else are you proposing?

> An that's already illegal so there's already a basis for legal action Is it? It looks to me like they're exploiting loopholes, which is legal. The article's from 2015, and I understand that stuff is still going on (e.g. Ron DeSantis's campaign and SuperPAC coordinating through open letters discussing strategy). > against SuperPACs that engage directly as part of candidates campaigns. Who said anything about "direct…

> The article's from 2015, and I understand that stuff is still going on (e.g. Ron DeSantis's campaign and SuperPAC coordinating through open letters discussing strategy).

If this is actually happening, again, it's already illegal.

> Who said anything about "directly"?

The only thing the law applies to is behavior that directly violates precisely-mapped rules. I don't know what alternative you're proposing, other than to allow subjective, ever fluctuating criteria to determine who is and is not acting within the law -- if so, that is just not the way our society works.

The idea of allowing the state to preemptively control public discourse because some people might occasionally break the law and get away with it -- a risk with all laws in all cases -- is both based on a dysfunctional approach to law (that increasingly encumbers the general case to address worst-case outliers until the general case no longer functions), and also has the terrifying implication of allowing incumbent politicians to manipulate public discourse for their own factional benefit.

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