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Comment by 0xfeba | Hacker News Reader

> It reminds me of universal basic income - populist ideology that appeals to people who want more free shit.

Who are these 'I want free stuff' people? I keep hearing them mentioned as some sort of strawman, but no one can really find me any large groups of these people demanding free stuff. Most people realize taxes pay for welfare benefits.

It also appeals to people who want to eliminate 20 government and various state agencies for a single entity. We already have many convoluted forms of welfare, why not simplify it?

The whole point of a government is to benefit the welfare of its civilians.

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"Who are these 'I want free stuff' people?"

It's pretty much everyone. It's just that everyone also knows you can't actually go into a political debate with "GIVE ME FREE STUFF" and expect to get very far. But of course we all want free stuff. I want free stuff. I've got the discipline to know better than to vote for it (because for one thing I know there is no such thing as "free"), but I damned well want it.

But of course there's plenty of BI advocates who want free stuff. You can find plenty of people musing on how they'd live on nothing but the BI in any conversation on HN, if they could.

> one thing I know there is no such thing as "free"

In the US, given the production-yields of present agricultural technology, only 1% of the population would need to be employed to feed 100% of the population. That seems pretty "free."

I don't know how it would work out for other things (housing, clothing, etc.) but I expect it would be similar (with e.g. at most 10% of the population needing to work to support 100% of the population, which is less than the percentage of people who want to work regardless of personal necessity.)

In other words: we've already nearly reached post-scarcity. We should probably figure out a way to take advantage of that.

Well... the US already has the cheapest food of all the countries I've been in. Without cooking, I managed to eat with $2 a day (and I'm around 200 pounds). Small town in Georgia, maybe NY food is more expensive. (I know I was surprised at how expensive food was in London.)

What do you eat?

'That seems pretty "free."'

It isn't just economic "free" that I'm worried about. I have low and ever-decreasing confidence that BI wouldn't get tied to not expressing politically incorrect opinions on Facebook or something as we continue our march towards speech control. And I mean that just as one example. I have no confidence in the ability of our superhumanly ethical and temptation-resistent benevolent government administrators to hand out ~$10T/year and never, ever, ever have the bright idea of starting to tie it to something.

I'm an outlier in HN terms, so to translate that to HN terms, "Donald Trump, or his philosophical successor, is going to administer your BI program. Does that sound like a good idea? Do you really think it's going to be 'free'?"

Never, ever, ever isn't a reasonable expectation. You have no guarantee that they won't rip up the constitution and enslave you tomorrow. But you can expect it not to happen because you're a reasonable person and because the laws mean something, if not everything.

I want free stuff!

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