I find it splendidly sensible that ‘ordinary’ people are able to see through celebrity endorsements. It was F Scott Fitzgerald who famously said, ‘The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind, at the same time, and still retain the ability to function’. Regular people are able to admire, even idolise, a singer or an actor – and then totally do the opposite politically to what that performer calls for.
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Samizdata quote of the day – celebs have no idea how little ordinary folk care about their luxury beliefsFebruary 7th, 2026 |
 34 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – celebs have no idea how little ordinary folk care about their luxury beliefsLeave a Reply |
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I have a frighteningly large number of nieces and daughters-of-friends under 26 who, if Billie Eilish said “jump”, would first swoon and then ask how high?
And they vote.
The “stolen land” thing is certainly the stupidest thing these people say. I occasionally go to college events, like graduations etc. and without fail they give this little speech about acknowledging the tribe who used to live there. I mean if these people ACTUALLY believed the land was stolen, presumably they’d give back whatever part they owned. And so, in that sense it is the purest form of virtue signaling. They are acknowledging an imagined wrong that they personally have the power to put right, but they don’t, but somehow admitting their “crime” makes them pure as the driven snow?
I mean imagine if someone said to you “you are right I did nick your car, and I acknowledge your title to it.” And then they drove off it in. It is the most ridiculous of all the things these morons have to say.
In regards to the foolish young women in BobbyB’s family, I guess the point to remember is that young people are generally pretty stupid. Perhaps we should raise the voting age to 30. Then again, I know a LOT of really stupid people in their fifties and sixties. The solution is obvious: restrict the franchise to participants in samizdata. That’d fix a lot of problems.
Actually, in reality the real solution is to curtail the power of government as much as possible both by limiting what they are allowed to do, and by fracturing it up into competing jurisdictions. I really wish Madison had thought of that … oh wait, he did.
The solution is obvious: restrict the franchise to participants in samizdata. That’d fix a lot of problems.
Sadly not. samizdata is peopled, mostly, by libertarians. Although their policy prescriptions are wildly different, libertarians are psychologically akin to Marxists or millenarian Christians. Or Jews. That is to say for every 10 of them, there are at least 15 different opinions as to what should be done. If you can get two votes for the same policy, you’ll be lucky.
If you get enough fractious libertarians, and set up a government modeled on the old Polish system of liberum veto – all votes must be unanimous – you might actually get the smallest government possible! Nothing would ever happen that wasn’t wildly popular.
Of course, you’d want to start at zero. Getting stuck with the current system with no shot at changing it would not be good.
I assume that she is talking about the Native Americans who inhabited North America before the Europeans found it. My understanding would be that, on a very simplistic level she is correct, simplistic being the word because reality is much more messy and untidy. Did the natives even have any concept of land ownership before Europeans arrived? Wasn’t the continent really sparsely populated so that much of the land had hardly anyone living there to start with? Where there were people living, had the current inhabitants “stolen” the land from the inhabitants that were there before they got there? Like the descendants of slaves, are the descendants of Native Americans far better off than they would have been as hunter-gatherers or subsistence farmers? Maybe someone who knows more about the history of the early settlers could enlighten me, and maybe Billie too?
On voting reform, I’m pretty sure that limiting the vote only to people who are net contributors through taxes would be an improvement.
Stoneyground,
Can you imagine what the constituency boundaries would look like if every constituency had to have an equal number of taxpayers? Wales and Northern Ireland sharing an MP?
IIRC in the 19th century there were property, residence, and poll tax requirements for voting (and sex, too).
These were abandoned with the rise of the Industrial/urban era.
Some ways to inch back to sanity:
1. Suspend voting rights for those receiving public benefit.
2. Married men get 2 votes – or feminists can finally give up alimony laws that date back to the period when women were excluded from the labor force. Married women get 2 votes after the 3rd child.
3. No public benefit beyond the 1st child born out of wedlock.
4. Genetic paternity test at any time to establish child support (they are so cheap, we should mandate them for all births).
https://worldinprogress.substack.com/p/nevil-shutes-seven-vote-system
llater,
llamas
It must be said that a welfare state allied to universal suffrage is a recipe for disaster. It has been a long time coming, but we are surely approaching the buffers now. When you give people the power to vote more money for themselves, paid for by “the rich”, what else can happen? Crime syndicates such as the Democrats and Labour are only too pleased to facilitate the grift.
When welfare states first tentatively began in the late 19th century, the amount of welfare was very restricted (to the “deserving poor”), and the franchise was also restricted to ratepayers. I rather doubt that anyone back then could have foreseen a time when about a quarter of the workforce lived off benefits, or when sturdy beggars would arrive on our shores from Africa and be accommodated in luxury hotels. Mind you, they would have had trouble with the idea that a pound sterling would not have been a gold coin, but a blip of electricity created by the Bank of England, and that is at the root of most of the problems we face today.
Ben,
Do I get an extra vote for beating my serfs?
@Stonyground
Like the descendants of slaves, are the descendants of Native Americans far better off than they would have been as hunter-gatherers or subsistence farmers?
I think this point is worth considering. If you look at memes you’ll see all these supposedly wise statements from First Nation leaders about how we are just stewards of the land, and how we learn lessons from the buffalo etc. Brookfield Zoo, near where I live, has them all over the place.
(BTW, I much prefer the term “First Nation” than “Native American”. If you were born here you are a native American, and to reserve that term for First Nation people is almost to concede the notion of “stolen land” in itself.)
But here is the brutal truth — the First Nations as we found them were a stone age people. They did not have metal tools except a few random meteoric finds. They did not have horses, many of them owned slaves, and their lives were short and brutal. Their treatment of women in particular was often quite dreadful. It is also a huge mistake to treat these first nation peoples as if they were one thing. Each of the different nations were very different. The Cherokee for example, in the east were relatively sophisticated for a stone age people, however, when they were removed to Oklahoma, a little detail that we are supposed to forget is that they brought their slaves with them on that trail of tears. I guess some people wept more than others.
But sticking with the C’s the Comanche were a completely different kettle of fish. Far more akin to something like MS 13, they were a violent gang of thugs who tortured their victims, men, women and children, seemingly for the fun of it. One of their favorite practices was to bury their victims up to their neck in the baking sun, then cut off their eyelids to make their tortuous death even more horrific. There is a famous story of one incident when they skinned alive a six year old girl in front of her parents. And, in terms of the ancient tribes, the Comanche were a new tribe started in the 18th century as an offshoot of the Shoshone. This should be obvious since their culture was built around the horse, which was reintroduced into the Americas by the Spanish.
And shall we talk about some of the more “civilized” peoples from Central America, like the Aztecs? Their religion is almost a byword for cruelty and bloodletting. Some of the things they did, often to children, are quite simply too horrific to relate. Their temples ran crimson day and night.
And of course, all the tribes were constantly at war with each other. I mean talk about stolen land, they were constantly stealing and destroying one tribe against another for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived. For many tribes, war and destruction were just part of their culture.
Of course none of this absolves some of the terrible things that the Europeans did to them, the destruction of the buffalo and the deliberate biological warfare with smallpox are two of our most terrible legacies. But this idea that the First Nations were these pure, wise, innocent victims is just a total lie. It has nothing to do with the truth. Most of them were a stone age people, ignorant, often cruel, mostly at war, and five thousand years behind the Europeans that overcame them.
I’m not necessarily in favour of democracy, however, I think on most issues the real problem is the elites, not the masses. On most issues the masses have sounder opinions overall than the elites. For example in Britain, the masses overall are against large scale immigration, were in favour of leaving the EU, and are almost always against unnecessary warmongering. Unfortunately the past few decades show that the masses can vote for whatever they like, the government always continues mass immigration.
In America I suspect the average citizen wouldn’t have touched Jeffrey Epstein with a two mile long stick after his first conviction for soliciting underage prostitutes. Based on all the recently revealed data it seems many elite figures across left, middle.and right were still very keen to be associated with that degenerate.
One reason I am sceptical of democracy is it gives a legitimacy to the current elites that they don’t deserve and by spreading the illusion the masses are really in control it means the problems can be blamed on them rather than the real power brokers in society.
These ideas about changing voting rights don’t align at all well with history. The history of the franchise might be summed up as “the broadening of the franchise to prevent the disenfranchised from burning the place down.” So there is no going back.
Regarding Martin’s point, I think there is a famous saying attributed to Churchill — democracy is the worst system except for all the rest. But that’s not true, there is a better system — it is called freedom, which is to say making the government as small as possible so that democracy largely doesn’t matter too much, because it only affects a small part of your life. And, as I mentioned earlier, federalism, which is to say the fracturing of power, so that if you don’t like one particular set of laws you can always move to the next town or county or state over. Which is to say competition in government.
The problem with democracy is really not who is voting, it is that the consequences of the vote and the government it produces are often quite cataclysmic. Of course this is moderated by the corruption in the system — which in a sense is a necessary part of a democracy with an expansive government. In a pure democracy the masses at the bottom can vote themselves largesse from the treasury, and that is moderated by the people at the top buying off politicians to keep it from going too far. Of course that rich people have power over government has a lot of nasty downsides to it. But, in a sense, without that corrupt access and control, the whole thing would burn down. It gives the masses at the bottom some sense of power and control — going back to my original point that the broadening of the franchise is in a sense a mob control mechanism — but keeps it from going too far.
It is a messy compromise necessary for a big government democracy to work. How much better if your vote didn’t matter due to government not making much difference in your day to day life, rather than because it is so heavily diluted.
FWIW, it is also one of the reasons that the US Congress being so broken is a pretty big problem. It essentially removes them from the equation and so we tend toward an imperial presidency and an activist judiciary to fill the legislative vacuum, both of which are far from desirable.
Fraser Orr – yes James Madison was correct.
As for it being a sign of “first rate intelligence” to believe logically contradictory ideas at the same time – no it is not. It is a sign of indoctrination – brainwashing.
Scary part, to me, is that the bulk of them are quite intelligent. (Not all. Some are dumb as rocks.)
I’ve asked a few why they would credit the beliefs of their favorite-du-jour singer or actor or whoever.
Their basic response has always been, “who else can we trust?” News is partisan, everything can be faked, you cannot believe anything that you don’t witness with your own eyes right in your presence . . .
So it becomes, for them, the only remaining source of trust. They tell me that they try to discern good character, and then give credence to what such people say.
So, I can’t fault their theory. I follow some of that theory myself. I can fault their execution, however, as they seem to choose to trust some vapid sloganeers.
I’ve said before that while the US constitutional system may have slowed the slide towards tyranny and dysfunctional government, I think now the rot has set in, that same system probably just reinforces the rot by making change increasingly difficult.That constitutional order also continues to give it legitimacy even if large parts of it are now interpreted in ways completely alien to past generations. Mantras heavily pushed to Americans in the past, such as America being a nation of immigrants and America as a universalistic state just seem to be now pushing the country increasingly towards chaos.
@bobby b
Scary part, to me, is that the bulk of them are quite intelligent. (Not all. Some are dumb as rocks.)
FWIW I’m not sure that “stupid” in this context is necessarily the opposite of intelligence. I think the ability to reason about things is fine but, for most people — dare I say all people — the use of logic is constrained to certain domains. And religious and group-belonging type things such as political affiliation is not one of those places.
But, FWIW, they do make a good point — who do you trust? And if they are transferring their trust from the mainstream media to flaky, capricious celebrities, I’m not 100% sure that is a downgrade. The celebrities are just vapid and dumb, the media are mendacious and malicious.
@Martin
I’ve said before that while the US constitutional system may have slowed the slide towards tyranny and dysfunctional government
I have this friend who is about as MAGA as can be and he is part of an organization pushing for a new constitutional convention. I think this is about as dumb an idea as could be. For it to be successful would require that the small government types would control, either the constitutional convention or the senate and that is almost certain not to be true. A constitutional convention would not lead to reinforced free speech or gun rights, or better control over the government by the people — it would mean exactly the opposite on ever issue.
And the same with the filibuster. The filibuster would not release all these libertarian Republican senators to get runaway government under control. Instead it would release all these big government republicans to do even more harm than they are already doing. To be clear, the filibuster protects us from Republicans as much as Democrats.
Best we can hope, as you said, is to slow down the rot and hope that the AI/Robotics future that is barreling down the road will rescue us from our folly.
BTW, we are seeing federalism in action right now. California is trying to get a “one time wealth tax” on the ballot that, were it to get there would probably pass. This would be a tax of 5% on the wealth of people making more than a million dollars a year to pay for their out of control profligacy. So this is a tax on unrealized capital gains, which is where wealthy people have most of their supposed wealth, which is shocking, and would cause a serious drop in the capital markets. And of course the funniest part is that it is described as a “one time tax”. Right! Pull the other one, its got bells on it.
And of course all the rich people in California are fleeing as fast as they can fuel up their Gulfstream G800s. Frankly they’d be insane not to — which of course will drive California even deeper in the hole.
Funny thing is that I believe that somehow California is trying to solve this issue by making the tax retroactive. But I seem to remember something in the constitution about ex post facto laws, so we’ll see what the nine wise souls in DC have to say about that.
Fraser Orr – the filibuster is going to go, the only question is will it go now – or be got rid of by the Democrats when they take the Senate (which they will – unless elections are cleaned up).
If the filibuster stays forget any chance of ending mass mail-in ballots and election machines (and so on), and forget about any chance to control government spending.
The idea of the filibuster is that the status quo is O.K. – but it is not O.K., indeed doing nothing will lead to total destruction.
@Paul Marks.
Fraser Orr – the filibuster is going to go, the only question is will it go now – or be got rid of by the Democrats when they take the Senate (which they will – unless elections are cleaned up).
Maybe you are right, but better to have three more years without the Republicans make things worse before the democrats get control than give those republican bastards three years to make it worse.
Just remember all you fiscal conservatives out there, Trump who I held out great hopes for is trying to double the military budget within a year of taking office. To be clear, currently we spend more on the military than the next ten countries combined. Doubling it to 1.5 trillion would mean we spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined. While we sit here with two oceans to protect us.
He brought on DOGE to try to get things under control and then totally failed to back them even against the most egregious of government waste fraud and abuse. That came from Republicans just as much as democrats. There is nothing fiscally conservative about Republicans. They might make things worse more slowly than the democrats, but they certainly don’t make it better. So giving the Republicans unfettered power is only slightly less worse than giving it to the democrats.
What on earth makes you think Republicans with unfettered power would make things better?
The idea of the filibuster is that the status quo is O.K. – but it is not O.K., indeed doing nothing will lead to total destruction.
The idea of the filibuster is that government always makes things worse, no matter who is in power. And that is definitely true.
bobby b. wrote:
“So it becomes, for them, the only remaining source of trust. They tell me that they try to discern good character, and then give credence to what such people say.”
and I could understand that, if it wasn’t that I don’t see why/how these young people are able (in any realistic way) to judge the credibility of their idols, any more than they can of politicians or other public figures. In fact, it would seem to me that there’s far-less basis on which to make any judgement about these people, since most of them put forth carefully-curated personae with absolutely no requirement that they tell the truth, and every opportunity to hide it. And the world of entertainment is just jam-packed with people who lie and deceive for a living, and whose personal lives, morals and ethics often turn out to be nothing but a morass of turpitude. So I suspect that what it really comes down to is ‘I like the appearance and message that entertainer (X) presents, so I’ll listen to what they say about subjects about which they often have no experience or knowledge.” Billie Eleish (sp?)may have valid opinions about the best key and tempo for a song, or the right royalty structure for a music release, but she knows no more about immigration policy of the history of land use in the US than my pet greyhounds.
llater,
llamas
Fraser : But I seem to remember something in the constitution about ex post facto laws, so we’ll see what the nine wise souls in DC have to say about that.
In fact there are two things in the constitution about ex post facto laws – one applying to the Feds the other applying to the states. However, you have mistaken the true source of constitutional law – which is not the actual constitution but the Supreme Court’s gloss on it.
And the Supreme Court has concluded that the ban on ex post facto laws applies only to criminal and penal laws, not things like tax. This is fundamental law, rather than constitutional law as such. In the sense that it derives from the judicial fundament.
A speech on a measure should be about the arguments and evidence for and against the measure – it should NOT be just reading out the telephone directory (or whatever) in order to waste time – in the hope that nothing will get done.
I should not have to tell Fraser Orr, or anyone else, this – they should know.
The filibuster is retarded (see above for why this is so) – and the assumption it is based on, that that the status quo can just carry on… is false – indeed is absurd.
The status quo of wildly unsafe elections (with masses of uncheckable “mail-in ballots”, electronic elections machines, and no proper I.D. checks before voting – especially in certain major cities), and endless wild government spending, will lead to the destruction of
the United States.
Again I should not need to tell anyone this – it is not exactly secret information.
As for the Founding Fathers – yes James Madison was a great man, but ROGER SHERMAN should not be forgotten.
Roger Sherman (the only Founding Father to sign all the key documents of the creation of the United States) warned that the wording of the Constitution was not quite tight enough to prevent corrupt people, at some point in the future, introducing fiat money and pushing wild government spending – almost everyone else thought the wording was tight enough to prevent such things.
Sadly, tragically, history has shown the “paranoid” Roger Sherman to be correct – the wording of the Constitution is clear enough for people of good will to understand that only gold and silver may be money, and that the “general welfare” is the PURPOSE of the specific government spending powers – but corrupt people can (and do) say “oh the Federal government can produce fiat money – it is just the States that can not” and “oh “the common defense and general welfare” means there is a general-welfare-spending power”).
Legal documents should always be put to the “scumbag test” – namely “how would a corrupt scumbag twist the words of this document to do terrible things” – for example fiat money (rather than actual gold and silver) and the wild government (and wild Corporate) spending which is its real motivation.
The idea that governments (and banks and other corporate bodies) should produce “money” from NOTHING, and that government should spend endless “money” to promote the “general welfare” are the ultimate “luxury beliefs” – only people living off the work of previous generations can, for a time, afford such insanity.
And, eventually, the resources created by the work of previous generations – runs out.
And yes the moral corruption of society (including the various perversions) is related to the economic corruption – the concentration, via the Cantillon Effect, of wealth and power under a few Corporate bodies.
John K,
Hear,hear. Universal suffrage is all fine and dandy so long as voters and taxpayers are basically the same people, i.e. everybody who can work does so. Once you polarize into taxpayers vs. tax consumers you are basically done for, as so many people have said in the past.
Fraser Orr,
I am a loss to understand how universal suffrage could ever give rise to small government. Those who consider themselves “have nots” will always vote for bigger government and more handouts, and they are by far the most numerous group.
The Greeks were perfectly correct, the demos is not everybody who can grasp a pencil in their grubby paw.
Roue le Jour.
Very few government programs were ever voted for by the people – and elections were NOT, normally, about “vote for me and I will give you more benefits and serivces.
The historic fact is that government benefits and services were thought up by an elite for what they thought were noble motives (NOT to win votes) – and that elite has normally been very wealthy.
All that being said…..
Once the public are used to benefits and public services (which they never asked for – but were given) it is very hard to convince them to give-them-up, after all the old Friendly Societies and Adult Fraternities are mostly gone, the churches have collapsed, and the family itself has horribly declined.
So for vast numbers of people now – it is the state, its benefits and services (such as health care) or death.
And most people are not going to choose death.
Civil Society (secular fraternal organisations as well as religious ones) has already collapsed – leaving the state as all-in-all.
And the present state, which tries to do everything (pay for health care, old age, unemployment) can not be supported – the burden is too great.
So death will be our fate.
Roué le Jour
Fraser Orr, I am a loss to understand how universal suffrage could ever give rise to small government.
Did I say it would? Government is like the grass. It grows and grows and grows, often imperceptibly. The only way to make it smaller is running over it with a lawn mower chopping it down. And when you do that it immediately starts growing again. Dramatic external events are pretty much the only thing in recorded history that have ever caused governments to shrink. Things like revolutions, wars and total or close to total financial collapse.
FWIW, I think in the next thirty years we will see one of two things in the USA: either a total financial collapse or alternatively a new AI/Robot based future that dramatically grows the economy (and by dramatically I don’t mean 6% annualized, I mean 600% or 6000%.) Either collapse which would be devastating or technology grows the economy so fast even the most profligate of governments can’t keep up. And FWIW, although I have been beating the drum about the national debt for a while now, in truth, I think it no longer matters — in neither of these scenarios will it play a role.
In this latter situation what do I see the economy looking like? TBH I think a universal income at a reasonably high level (think $100k per family) based on taxing the productivity of all this technology is where we will end up. Most people will not work — but not in the sense of unemployed layabouts, in the sense of retired person enjoying the fruits of their labor. I’m not sure what else is possible. To be clear, I’m not saying that is a good thing, but it is probably better than a collapse that would make the Great Depression look like a minor downturn. I think for sure the present political arrangement cannot survive either of these two changes.
I don’t know if I am right about this, but I’ve been thinking a lot about it recently, and that does seem to be where the economic and social trends are pointing. But like I say, I could be totally wrong. It is certainly not what I’d want to see. But I guess it is important to get beyond our emotional desires and calculate reality with a cold hard analysis. What I’m not wrong about is that we are in the calm before the F5 tornado.
Fraser Orr.
A “Basic Income” is indeed the international agenda – but it will-not-work, such a system would collapse, as money for NO WORK always does – collapse economically, and culturally (societal collapse).
As for financial collapse taking 30 years – or anything like that. Remember the monetary and financial system has been insane (utterly and completely insane) for more than 50 years – we have had out time, things are going to come to an end. The “money” is not real money (it is not a commodity that people value before-and-apart-from its use as money) – it can not serve as a store-of-value (money is NOT just a medium of exchange) – it is astonishing that this insane, utterly insane, system has lasted as long as it has.
Rour le Jour – some depressing data that supports your thesis.
British government spending and taxation are insanely high – only a delusional person (who does not see basic reality) could not want them to be reduced.
Yet only 29% of the British public want government spending and taxation reduced – which means that 71% do not want government spending and taxation reduced, or have no opinion.
In short – this nation is doomed.
Fraser Orr – I thought your support of the filibuster was odd (because it is odd – a political speech should be about the merits of faults of a measure – not just wasting time in the hope of a bribe in return for “ending your filibuster”), but I have just noticed how high you suggest the “Basic Income” will be.
100 thousand Dollars a year.
If you said a 100 Dollars a week – you might still be over egging the pudding (and even giving people 100 Dollars a week without making them work for it – would lead to disaster), as for some science fiction style increase in productivity – that is not going to happen.
People on this site (and in the press) have cited utterly absurd figures for how high welfare payments are – I can assure you that the Food Banks are not short of people who can not afford food, and many homes can not afford heat or light.
The gap between reality (grinding poverty for many millions of people) and the presentation of events (telephone number welfare payments) is vast.
A few specialists in the welfare system may indeed (YES) get these very high payments – but the vast majority of people do NOT.
Although the vast numbers of STAFF employed by the Welfare State are indeed well paid.
And, again, there is not going to be some vast rise in productivity – indeed the future will bring economic collapse, and not in 30 years, it will be much sooner than that.
Ancient Athens seems to have been the place where paying people (well male citizens – a minority of the population, if one considers women, slaves and also resident aliens) to just breath – well to engage in politics in mass assemblies. But this was NOT the Athens of its rise (then no such payments existed) this was the Athens of its DECLINE and fall, collapse.
Rome did not introduce low priced corn (it was not free at first) till the time of the Younger Gracchi brother – and by that time most Roman citizens did NOT live in the city of Rome, and the fixed priced corn only applied there (to certain people), the grain was not free till the time of Clodius (a political leader and organised crime boss) Julius Caesar reduced the number of people who could get the free grain – but he did not dare abolish the scheme (which, I repeat, was only a few years old).
Rome and a few other cities (such as Alexandria – but only after the intervention of the Emperor Septimius Severus – who also changed the system in Rome from free grain to free baked bread – but, of course, only for people on the list) had free food for some people – but the vast majority of the population of the Empire lived in rural areas and got nothing from the state.
Milton Friedman pushed the idea of a Negative Income Tax – a sort of return to the Speenhamland system that some parts of England had from the mid 1790s (but that was mainly wage subsidies – it was Thomas Paine who wanted a wilder scheme at the time, to be financed by a tax on landowners, this sort of thinking may go back to a MISUNDERSTANDING of the Book of Genesis in the Bible – bizarre though this idea is, it does seem to be the source of the idea that landowners do not really own the land if they do not pay some form of compensation to people who do not own land, for example John Locke went down this rabbit hole) – before the Poor Rates became so high the system had to be swept away by the Act of 1834.
However, handing out money to people in return for no-work leads to terrible consequences – this was understood by the Welfare Reform movement which started in Wisconsin (hardly a right wing State) and spread to the United States generally in the 1990s.
It is astonishing that some people suggest handing out money in return for no-work – even Ancient Athens, with its sliver mines worked by slaves, could not afford this – the consequences, both economic and cultural (societal) are terrible.
The International Community support handing out money – but only electronic “money” that would have to be spent on certain things, such as food. Otherwise, it is believed, the culturally decayed communities would spend the money on booze and drugs and leave their children to starve (cultural, societal, decay can happen quickly).
One can not preach freedom, freedom of choice – liberty, when one is dealing with handing money in return for no-work, even the International Community understand this bitter truth – in a world where people survived on the handing out of money in return for no-work, every aspect of their lives would be controlled by the authorities (both government and partner corporations), they would have no freedom at-all. And, in spite of this, the system would soon collapse anyway.
The world of the “Basic Income” would be a totalitarian world – and, in spite of this totalitarianism, such a world still would not last long.