rubycon22

What is the alternative in a situation where the government has forced many people out of work?

You were going to have to pay one way or the other. It was just about a matter of when and what form of payment. Most of the world has decided that going into debt was better than paying with the lives of their people. You can renegotiate debt later on. It's just numbers in a excel sheet or some shit. Can't renegotiate the lives of dead people.

What happened? Some people got a one-time $1200 check. What could they have done with $1200 that made you lose faith in UBI?

Or are you referring to the $600 that supplemented the unemployment insurance? But those went to people who were just recently working and had their livelihoods wrecked by government action and/or inaction. I'm pretty sure you would agree they deserve that money and it's okay for them to do what they damn please with it. Even if that means them not going back to work for some time because they have the freedom to. Imagine how less fucked we would be if we just paid the majority of non-essential workers to stay the hell home. Less competition for the essential jobs, so people who do really want to work can work and the essential jobs will be filled.

It seems like what most people in your position do is try to get as rich as possible doing a job they may dislike/hate until they can retire and then start doing whatever they love. Often, they may not reach whatever they feel is the appropriate amount of money to retire and they keep wasting time doing what they hate and end up falling out of their passions. Now imagine how it is for people who don't have the ability or credentials to get a six figure and beyond job to build up their wealth and retire. You could read this and think about how privileged you are that you have the opportunity to do something like that. Or, you could go the opposite route and take a big risk toward doing what you really want to do and hoping for the best. There is a middle ground somewhere there as well. I'm not qualified to give any concrete or actionable advice beyond this. I really wish there was a better way. Not just for people like you, but for everyone who doesn't wish to waste their life working.

This is like asking why ethnically African people have a greater right to Africa than non-African people. Sounds dumb doesn't it?

I think that's very wishful thinking. Firstly, we're assuming that this will happen:

>"Once nobody has to constantly struggle for basic comforts,"

It's definitely possible. Humans have an immense amount of potential for good. But I don't believe the people in power, with the influence to enact meaningful change, will ever let this fly. Simply because of the reason that they greatly benefit from the current state of the world. People in this class have most of the capital and generate money from their existing wealth while doing basically nothing of value. They need us commoners to consume, consume, and consume. They need us to work and labor away, as cogs in the machine that makes them profit, so that they will not have to work like us. Yes, automation will come. But who will own the factories and machines? Exactly. But even then, there will still be many things that they require laborers for. And in the future, the common people will be fighting each other over the privilege of serving this owner class at the continued threat of destitution. Just like how it's always been...

It's plausible to believe that we'll make all kinds of technological advancements, solve world hunger and such kinds of scarcity, go to Mars, or whatever. However, it's unlikely that humans will ever overcome their greatest enemy, themselves. Such a utopian fantasy is still hard to take in for most people, while it's much easier to imagine things going to shit and degenerating to a cyberpunk dystopia. Humans make the technology and so technology will never be the answer to solving human nature.

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