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Think of it: The government prints more money or perhaps — god forbid — it taxes some corporate profits, then it showers the cash down on the people so they can continue to spend. As a result, more and more capital accumulates at the top. And with that capital comes more power to dictate the terms governing human existence.
UBI really just turns us from stakeholders or even citizens to mere consumers.
Meanwhile, UBI also obviates the need for people to consider true alternatives to living lives as passive consumers. Solutions like platform cooperatives, alternative currencies, favor banks, or employee-owned businesses, which actually threaten the status quo under which extractive monopolies have thrived, will seem unnecessary. Why bother signing up for the revolution if our bellies are full? Or just full enough?
Under the guise of compassion, UBI really just turns us from stakeholders or even citizens to mere consumers. Once the ability to create or exchange value is stripped from us, all we can do with every consumptive act is deliver more power to people who can finally, without any exaggeration, be called our corporate overlords.
No, income is nothing but a booby prize. If we're going to get a handout, we should demand not an allowance but assets. That's right: an ownership stake.
https://medium.com/s/powertrip/universal-basic-income-is-silicon-valleys-latest-scam-fd3e130b69a0
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday October 15 2018, @06:57PM (1 child)
Used guitars, hand-me-down guitars, borrowed / shared guitars.
Speaking as a formerly very poor rock and roll musician, and one who now does the lending and handing out. I give out studio time, too.
Um... no. The number of people who picked / pick up actually useful electronics skills then and now in the military is really pretty small. Just because you can run a field radio doesn't mean you can build one. Likewise, just because you know how to run a hardened military laptop doesn't mean you can start with a blank sheet and design a microprocessor-based system.
You build such skills by digging in as deep as you can, quite often over your head, wallowing in discovery and accomplishment — and learning from failure. The military has never been about that at all; they make cogs specifically to fit pre-defined places in their machine, and once your useful skill set has been put together, that's what you do. Want to qualify for a step up? They've got a pre-defined path for that, too. Hobbies and personal pursuits of passion, however, always have been about pursuit of passion without much regard for limits or someone else's vision of what you can/should be. That's where most of the creatives find their muses. I certainly did, and it's true of everyone else I've ever known as well. Formal environments typically produce cookie-cutter results. They're certainly useful, but they're different.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday October 15 2018, @11:44PM
Enlarging, the sound of the rock guitar as we know it is achieved by setting the pre-amp "wrong". The military is not known for encouraging trying things the "wrong" way.