There are definitely examples of US military boondoggle projects that didn’t result in high end military equipment getting made, but I think it is safe to say there are quite a few individual military tools and vehicles, supply chain notwithstanding, that are amazing triumphs of technology that have no equal.

You can definitely make the case that the volume and overall scale of our military production are excessive in the extreme, but I think to remain intellectually honest, we must admit that they are good at what they do, even though what they do is not always good.

I don’t think the poster meant that a Russian civil war will be nice for his online experience.

There is substantial belief in the western world that Russia is using these “troll farms” to destabilize foreign governments. If true, that would be considered by many to be an act of aggression that he and many others would welcome the end of. The fact that a period of strife in Russia is what caused would be unfortunate, but the fact remains.

What I personally would do is:

• implement a progressive income tax that scales to 100% at the highest tier.
• include all income from all sources, including inheritance and capital gains (especially those in fact) in income such that it counts toward the progressive taxation model in the previous step.
• implement a public fund for the retired and disabled paid into from the income tax base from all taxpayers (my country already has this called Social Security, but it is undermined by corrupt tax policy).

That isn’t the hard part, though. Like i said, there are a ton of solutions to THAT problem that can work, including yours. The really hard problem is that I am not sure how to protect a government from allowing officials elected under false pretenses from dismantling the solution for disingenuous reasons, like is happening throughout the entire developed world in real time right now, despite their varied social, economic, and governmental structures.

ETA: I would also include people with debilitating mental health as among the disabled for purposes of eligibility for the social fund aid.

I’m sure that’s true, but again, the positive outcomes you’re describing are the result of the poor peoples’ increased buying power and reduced economic uncertainty. I don’t believe the specifics of HOW they got those things makes very much of a difference, if any. UBI is one way of many to do that.

And you are again correct: there is no way to “dry run” new social programs fully. You can only create small “labs” to partially test them, which is way better than nothing, but still leaves great unknowns. The only truly tested social and economic structures are the ones we’ve seen really used in the real world.

The fact that all past models have eventually failed doesn’t necessarily mean they were bad, though. It means that they were inadequately protected and eventually were corrupted from within (not counting conquest, which I think is safe to say is outside the scope of this conversation).

I mean at the scale at which it would be used. A small pilot program that has millions of eyes on it is not going to get undermined by bad actors because everyone is watching. It is good to create tests and pilot programs to try new economic and governance systems, but it is also important to remember that those are idealized lab conditions.

Also, consider the context of the discussion. Literally any system where money is put in the hands of those in poverty is going to immediately result in improved conditions for those people and increased local taxable economic activity. I could give them a UBI stipend, big tax rebates, increased wages, or even drop cash from planes. The point is that it is not necessarily the method that made the difference but the result. In this case the result is “get buying power to poor people”, and any system that achieves that is going to be an economic and social good.

I’m just not convinced UBI is the safe way to do that. Its an inescapable fact that any government is going to have internal forces trying to undermine its protections to enrich themselves, so it is wise to remember that any government systems we come up with that are not made highly resistant to capture are only going to serve their intended purpose temporarily.

UBI is the new hotness in terms of popular modern means talked about to undo the ever-growing wealth gap, but it is completely untested in the real world. It has challenges even on paper, including the ones I alluded to above involving being exceptionally susceptible income uncertainty and government corruption.

And you are right to point out that anything we do now to correct the wealth disparity problem is wasted if we don’t do enough to prevent another regression back to this same state again. I’m sure UBI could work under the right conditions, as well as many other solutions, but the real success or failure of the program will be measured based on how well and for how long it can resist attempts to dismantle it by bad-faith actors.

I am pretty sure there’s a lot of agreement here on the core of the issue, I just have doubts about UBI because it puts the fate of the most vulnerable citizens with the most easily-ignored political voice even more into the hands of their government, who often do them dirty.

I would personally consider it very shaky ground to found a family on if my ability to support them came in the form of a government stipend I have no direct control over.

Can’t we instead restore the economy to functionality rather than slapping a big “UBI” patch on the big crack in the dam?

Restoring earning power to the middle class such that a single income can support a household will give families the stability they need to start families with out handing over all the mechanisms of the economy to a single, potentially untrustworthy entity the way UBI does.