Comment by _andromeda_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _andromeda_ | Hacker News Reader

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This experiment has already been done. It always fails and leaves a devastating trail of destruction every time. People die and those that don't(die) leave their countries on dangerous makeshift rafts in pursuit of capitalist nations. I implore you to look at countries that have tried re-distributing income/sustenance; they always fail. Many of them actually realise that that model is unsustainable and quickly revert to bare bones capitalism. Look at China. Look at Vietnam (which is now widely touted as the country that views capitalism most favorably).

>Is it from a personal perspective or is it something you have been taught?

I have seen immense poverty and experienced it myself though to a milder degree. So, I'm not putting forward my suggestions out of a sense of being callous, quite the opposite actually. Capitalism is the best way to solve the problem of poverty and supposed inequality. Provision of goods and services of value to others is the best way to earn an income and build a truly sustainable world.

They aren't talking about a "dictatorship of the proletariat" taking ownership and control of all means of production, nothing like that at all.

But who pays for UBI? Isn't it you and I through taxes and inflation(theft)? If I then have no say in whether I want to pay up or not but the majority do want me to pay, isn't it dictatorship?

It is indicative that it is indeed dictatorship of the majority since I have received a massive number of downvotes for my sentiments on this matter.

If the majority decide that you should pay a tax, and you then become obligated to to pay that tax, that's democracy, not dictatorship. That doesn't mean it's good, it's just democratic.

Which is why democratic mob rule is a terrible, terrible idea. Removing the checks and balances on raw, unbridled democracy doesn't have a great track record, historically.

This is an argument that comes up a lot and usually it becomes clearer when this concept of democracy is simplified anecdotally:

If 5 people come to you and take your car from you, most reasonable humans would call that theft and consider it to be immoral.

The same 5 people come to you and say, we're going to take a vote on whether we should take your car and give you a bicycle, but here's the consolation, you will also be included in the democratic process. I think we all know what the outcome of such an election would be. Would you consider that to be a moral or immoral thing?

Just because I'm included in a democratic process which I didn't sign up for in the first place doesn't make it right to replace my car with a bicycle.

'dictatorship of the majority' sounds like democracy to me.

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