RE: https://social.coop/@cwebber/116172866488754801

UBI in relation to genAI harms is absolutely a red herring. Even if it were implemented, when you play it out in your head it... doesn't look great. So let's talk about that?

What does UBI get you? A basic standard of living, not very fancy, still encouraging you to seek out work if you want more luxuries but at least you won't die in the streets. That's kinda what it is, definitionally. It's achieved through some level of taxation, wherever you want that to come from to make it effective, but corporations and billionaires are obvious big targets.

Setting aside the idea that both of those obvious targets are largely politically untouchable and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, what we're left with is a bunch of people who have been pushed out of work, who can only afford the very basic living standards in our society, and who have no way to climb out of that hole because all the "value" is being captured by automation, which is controlled by... the corporations and billionaires which must continue to be at least fairly profitable, and fairly filthy rich in order to be taxable and able to fund the UBI. It also removes the possibility of worker power being able to influence corporate direction in any way, which is terribly convenient.

The result of UBI in an AI world isn't a more comfortable world, it's a further-stratified world where even more people are pushed to "barely scraping by" than ever, the environment continues to be set on fire, and the worst people in the world have all the economic and political power.