This is a way of ending a persons life, and providing a politically legitimized means of doing it.

I don't think people understand just how nefarious this is. This can and will be used to control entire societies, in ways that past dictatorships could only dream of.

You can design this system to silence ALL political dissent, in a very subtle and undetectable way - the same way homelessness is legitimized and acceptable politically, in western society - and the way the system works, will encourage the support of everyone in society (lest they literally be scored into oblivion as well, for not cooperating or being enthusiastic enough...).

It makes 1984 look like an Athenian democracy, in comparison. It's one of the most ugly and dangerously totalitarian things I've seen in my lifetime.

All this article is missing, is the some reference to magically superior AI, that is going to obsolete all jobs (which, ironically, would fit perfectly - as distributing AI/automation benefits as a UBA is exactly what the author is looking for...) - just to complete the hype-laden tropes that the article is riding upon.

You don't build a new economy, by doing what the tech oligarchs exploiting everyone in todays economy, say you should do. There's a fucking reason things are the way they are, today - and a reason why these people are in the position they are, today - and benevolence plus desiring equality for all, isn't one of those reasons...

Ask yourselves: Why the fuck are these people so desperate to make us believe, that there can't be enough jobs for us all? This goes back well over a century guys, it's not new...

The way you control the workforce, the population at large, is by creating an artificial scarcity of jobs. You create a scarcity in the very means that people require in order to survive, then you have complete fucking control over them.

The UBI doesn't solve this. It masks the problem.

The way this problem is solved is by ensuring that enough jobs are always provided. It's the principal no.1 goal of economics. It's also a problem that has been completely solved long ago, yet is subject to a constant political tug of war that spans decades and generations, where the required solutions go in and out of the realm of political acceptability, in and out of the Overton Window.

The best present-day formulation of the solution, is the Job Guarantee policy - like the New Deal on steroids - it prefers that the private sector provides all the jobs required (and actually pumps-up the private sector until it does provide enough jobs), but while the private sector fails to provide enough jobs, the Job Guarantee program itself will provide the jobs, putting people to work in temporary public employment and training, e.g. on infrastructure projects and such.

I went to Google a link to the Job Guarantee description just now - a policy I've advocated for half a decade, with little success online - and I just see now that Bernie Sanders has catapulted it into the mainstream:
http://uk.businessinsider.com/...

That's another trope from the open source community - don't criticize unless you're willing to help. It doesn't come across well, and motivates people to not want to be involved.

It's the one thing most missing from open source projects - quality assurance reporting the problems all the end users will see, before the end users see them - hopefully leading to them being fixed, before release to end users. It's a boring, less prestiguous and more tedious job - but if you don't have it, you're always going to be missing the mark on each release.

Haven't you read the news lately? Evidence is so boring and passé now, we don't bother with that anymore - particularly when it comes to Russia.

And just think about how many intelligent life forms are out there in all those galaxies, brushing their teeth right now!

The UBI:
1: Destroys the entire welfare system - replacing it with the UBI.
2: Does not replace the requirement to work, because it will be set at a low level.
3: Is a business subsidy in disguise, as businesses will slash washes to soak up the UBI, over time (look at the trend of not sharing profit from increased productivity).
4: Will be destroyed as soon as a big enough financial crisis hits - because it will become 'unaffordable' at that point.

So guys, when the party ends you're lining up for slashing of wages, complete destruction of your welfare system, and a massive subsidy to businesses in the meantime - with no fucking plan of what to do when the policy comes crashing down...

It's the worst own-goal imaginable. Yet people don't fucking see this.

You can never accurately test this until self driving cars are the norm.

If instead you took all the resources required just to meet full compatibility with Windows, and instead put that into proper Quality Assurance for the most popular Linux distro and the software it most commonly depends upon (forking out all of those projects from their toxic communities, that hinder proper quality development...) - then Linux would simply obsolete all other platforms, as the de-facto standard operating system. The fact is, the quality of Linux is just not up to scratch. Until your everyday fuckwit can use it without any frustration, then it's a waste of breath to even be talking about any of this. That day won't come, until someone with tens of billions puts the money into paying a gigantic team, with the aim of un-fucking all of the problems with program quality and usability, across the most essential parts of the Linux ecosystem - while expecting fuck all in return. That's all there's ever been to it. The problem is the community, the incumbent developers and community, stuck in their ways, holding back all progress in this direction - such that it's going to require a Fuck Load of money, to get people to do things properly.

Damn, and I should bought an 1080Ti - I better chuck that in the bin now and wait for my new phone.

Sounds like every conversation I've ever had about a persons devout religious beliefs.

Ya, when AMD get competitive Intel strips off all those pesky security checks hampering performance.

Jesus christ where do these crypto-fetishists get their ideas from...Deflation gives existing holders of money, a greater share of societies wealth, while not having to do anything to earn it - the people who benefit the most from this transfer, are those who already hold a lot of money - i.e. the wealthy.

If the dollar or any other major national currency switched to accepting deflation, it is a transfer of wealth to those who are already wealthy, at the expense of those who have to go out and actually earn money (whose wages will be growing smaller and smaller over time).

These crypto-fetishists seem to have invented their own batshit version of economic theory, for hyping Bitcoin and the like - and they get away with it because the economics profession has very little legitimacy these days, as it's mostly batshit itself - just an economic theory warped for justifying political/economic status quo's, rather than trying to define how economies actually work...

Translation - the industry's desperately trying 'self-regulate' - aka squeeze every last drop out of its customers - fast, before the government regulates for them.

...because it usually is, and if you try to explain it in any level of detail, you just get the polite yawns of boredom and disinterest ;)