[hn_throwaway_99]

All you have to do is look at the state of the world today to see this is the endgame. Huge swaths of humanity live on basically subsistence level agriculture, and it's not like we're all sending UBI to them. The top .001% can see the rest of us fall a lot further before they have to worry about who will buy their products.

[interstice]

I don't really get this, you still have to go outside once in a while as an ultra rich person surely? Why not spend some relatively tiny amount of resources on fixing terrible roads + picking up trash + healthcare for the homeless? Does this happen and I just don't know about it?

[winter_blue]

In India, you've got lots of relatively-speaking well-off people. And extreme poverty that would shock and boggle the mind. Poverty worse than in sub-Saharan Africa. Millions of the "middle class" (which is just making over $12k USD a year) literally drive their cars through impoverished streets into their homes.

[fwipsy]

Because "wealthy" is relative. Because the sort of people who do that stop at just "rich;" they don't make it to "super-rich."

[dec0dedab0de]

healthcare for the homeless means seeing more homeless. It’s much more effective to let them die.

[dec0dedab0de]

just for the record, I don't believe this, it's just why a rich person might not want to provide healthcare for the homeless.

[iknowstuff]

Hmm I share your concern but we do regularly develop new economies? The EU pumped a ton of money into eastern Europe, the west collectively did the same by outsourcing to Asia which is now the largest market for very significant industries.. Latin America and Africa have been abused and hollowed out for centuries but seeing decent growth now, so I'm more optimistic

[Brendinooo]

This is such an odd take, when the percent of the world doing subsistence farming has never been lower at any point in human history, and a mixture of capitalism and technological innovation is the primary driver of that.

[hn_throwaway_99]

To clarify, I'm not arguing that capitalism is inherently bad or that it hasn't pulled huge swaths of people out of poverty.

What I'm pushing back against (which I often see in discussions of UBI) is that powerful people will give out free money just out of the goodness of their heart or because "they'll need people to buy their products". We're transitioning out of an era where labor has held (historically) a lot of power, but now technology is heading us down a path where capital will hold the vast majority of the cards. And a lot of the discussion around stuff like UBI just feels like hopium to me: "Surely with an abundance of riches we won't just let people die in the street!" But yes, we actually do let people die in the street already, especially if they're kinda far away.

The powers behind tech and AI are not going to give up that power willingly, or from the good of their hearts.