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You're making the huge assumption that the rest of society has the same values you do, and the only thing stopping them from a revolution is oppression from above. This assumption is dead wrong.

I'll point out a little bit of the recent history of respect, dignity, power, control, FREEDOM in my country:

Jim Crow did not happen because of people's strong belief in respect, dignity and freedom. The Southern Strategy wasn't so successful because of people's strong belief in respect, dignity and freedom. The Tea Party hasn't been so successful because people are lazy and don't care about working conditions, or because of their strong belief in respect, dignity and freedom.

All these are successful because people, especially people who don't feel socio-economically secure, would rather defend their place in society over improving society for everyone, if that improvement means they just might stand to loose some benefits on an absolute scale. It's been the Republican party playbook for 50 years now: use people's fear that other people's success might mean they compete with you for social standing to stop any attempt to give basic human rights to all races and genders, strengthen the social safety net, unionize, etc.

The majority of people in the US have proven over and over again they will vote to lower themselves one notch down the totem pole if it will lower those below them two notches. BI will not fundamentally change that on day one.

I totally agree that people don't live their lives in numbers, but they do live their lives based on a number of competing desires and mental heuristics that differ from person to person, though with some useful demographic clustering. I highly recommend you read some moral psychology, like Haidt's The Righteous Mind so that you understand better the various desires and drives people have that get tied up in their politics. This book that spends a good amount of time dealing with the moral differences of egalitarian and hierarchical individuals and this free course on behavioral economics are also related and highly recommended.

People's values will change over time as they become less fearful, but if you think giving a Republican ~10-15k would instantly turn him into a Communist, I can only conclude you've never met a Republican. A "Taxation is Theft" march on Washington is orders of magnitude more likely than a General Strike.

Also, you seem to assume that the rich are a fundamentally different kind of person than we are. They aren't. We have the same tendencies as they do, and roughly the same mix of egalitarian and hierarchical value systems as they do.

TL;DR: The problem isn't just Them and their biases and desires keeping us down. The problem is Us and our biases and desires keeping each other down.

It's all good. Technology is getting us closer and closer to what spiritual teachings always said. We are one. And nowadays a day doesn't go by without some abuse exposed through a smartphone camera, or a leak of some sensitive information, or a whistle blower, etc.. Humanity is exposing all its ugliness for all to see, whether we want it or not.

Take Basic Income. An idea is spreading like wildfire today. It's really funny actually how we all pretend to be separate when you can see how information spreads today and how we end up all talking about the same things.

Hence, I'm not worried about echo chambers and any other dystopian scenarios. It makes for good headlines, but it simply is not possible.

In fact recently I read about this scientific theory of flow, the constructal law

> ‘for a finite-size flow system to persist in time (to live) it must evolve such that it provides greater and greater access to the currents that flow through it’

Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organizations

https://www.amazon.com/Design-Nature-Constructal-Technology-Organizations/dp/0307744345

For this reason of optimized flow, rampant inequality is simply unsustainable =) What an optimally designed society looks like I don't know, and it might not mean UBI, though it seems likely.

"the future belong to societies (which are open to change) which liberate our flows" (...) "and also through rule of laws and governments which are free to change"

How a single principle of physics governs nature and society: Adrian Bejan at TEDxMidAtlantic 2012

This one by Allan Sheahen is considered to be one of the best books on the topic, and Allan Sheahen is one of the oldest supporters of UBI in America.

This one is also great, from a more libertarian perspective. Charles Murray is a well-respected libertarian thinker.

If you're looking for something academic, these textbooks are pretty awesome- one and two.

What a great line, and an incredibly important truth to realize and overcome to make this a land and government turkey for the people.

I'm currently reading Basic Income: An anthology of contemporary research

It's been a great and interesting read so far.

> I mean, if I hired someone to mow my lawn

If a feudal lord hired someone to mow a remote acre of his lawn and the mower, winking, reported to you that a wandering herd of goats had actually already got to it, who would you trust more to figure out whether the mower is worth what they're being paid - the mower, or the lord?

> I think the evidence is in their willingness to pay

Right, and that is the difference between our arguments and why it is wrong for you to try to analogize between them. I don't think the garbagemen know better than the mayor because they're being paid less: I think they know better because they collect the garbage. You however do think that a willingness to pay can be translated into knowledge about whether someone is worth paying.

> Maybe his book really does contain better evidence than he's alluded to in trying to promote it

https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber/dp/150114331X

Read pgs 1-2 (not i-ii in the intro)

"absolutely lacked the latter to a great degree"
You realize he's still alive.

"most of his conclusions are imbalanced and subhuman"
Yeah, right. I'm sure you've read many of his books. Or just watched a few youtube clips.
I started reading Dawkins in 1984 and he's been a huge positive influence. Go read "The Selfish Gene" and "The Extended Phenotype" and then tell me "most of his conclusions are imbalanced and subhuman". He's a biologist. He only got into atheism education after 9/11 plus idiots continually clamoring for our educational systems to revert back to pre-copernicus.

The guy's a genius, that's pretty well established.
http://www.amazon.com/Richard-Dawkins-Scientist-Changed-Think/dp/0199214662
Most geniuses are prickly, in my experience.

Nixon was primed to begin a form of basic income until a Ayn Rand loving libertarian dredged up a 100 year old flawed study. From the excellent Utopia for Realists

Why Richard Nixon once advocated for basic income — and then turned against it.

Read Dark Money. Billionaire “donations” are powerful tools.


https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904

This design is available on T-shirts for anyone interested.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L18BF36/

The designer is Amanda Wray.

Yes and a bunch of people are doing it. It's called financial inpedendence and they're not all "rich." Many live very frugally to do it. Here are a few resources:


/r/financialindependence/


http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/


http://www.amazon.com/Your-Money-Life-Transforming-Relationship/dp/0143115766

If you want to go spend money on it, then that's your choice. Otherwise go do the research yourself.

There's also a new book out about it - Killers of the Flower Moon.

There are lots of other great documents and videos of Murray explaining his idea that he details in his book In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State

Here is the mobile version of your link

For more on this, read Russell Jacoby: https://www.amazon.com/End-Utopia-Politics-Culture-Apathy/dp/0465020011/ref=la_B001H6RZXQ_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523847041&sr=1-2

https://www.amazon.com/Picture-Imperfect-Utopian-Thought-Anti-Utopian/dp/0231128940/ref=la_B001H6RZXQ_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523847041&sr=1-5

https://youtu.be/jHx5rePmz2Y?t=125

https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber/dp/150114331X

This is unreadable. I can't keep track of this shit.

Buy this, right now. Read it. Then come back and copy edit.

https://www.amazon.com/12-Rules-Life-Antidote-Chaos/dp/0345816021

I normally don't recommend this book to anyone... but I think it may be appropriate here.

He wrote a lot about basic income in
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? http://www.amazon.com/Where-Do-We-Here-Community/dp/0807000671

I seriously don't have much hope that will happen. After reading Andrew Yang's War on Normal people. I believe that automation and it's cascading effects will devastate the workforce in America, in turn causing massive social upheaval. That is not taking into account problems beyond automation. Ultimately a systemic collapse will likely happen in my opinion at some point in the future.

The Poor People's Campaign was a poor people's movement, yes. MLK had written and voiced his support for what he called Guaranteed Income, which is what we know as UBI nowadays.

In his book, "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community", MLK argued in 1967 for Guaranteed Income as a way to lift up the poor more effectively than minimum wage.

In short, UBI was one of the policies he was fighting for in that Poor People's Campaign when he died a year later in 1968. Saying that he wasn't fighting for UBI is like saying he wasn't fighting for voting rights in 1963 on the March to Washington just because it was fighting for economic and civil rights for African Americans.

> "I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income."

It was mentioned at the same time as Blitzed was a big thing here on reddit. But a quick google for isis and amphetamine brings lots of articles captagon.

A drug that is critiqued to be mild but I believe its mildness help confuse people with newfound but not inhuman courage through their fate.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/turkey-seizes-11-million-captagon-amphetamine-pills-used-by-isis-fighters-to-keep-themselves-awake-a6744366.html
https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/3688057/captagon-isis-drug-chemical-courage-sleep-disorders-terrorists/

edit: But the world of amphetamine and other drug usage in war is greatly interesting, it almost makes war more believable (and horrifying) if you knew people we're freaking jacked and killer each others.