It’s because of COVID that people have forgotten.

Covid mostly killing old people, and being limited by the lockdowns taught far too many people that they don’t need to worry.

Measles mostly kills babies and toddlers, and without herd immunity those rates of child deaths are going to shoot back up to thousands a year.

Humanity has a 2-3 generation memory.

We’re going to need to be taught this lesson again the hard way.

Sorry kids.

The administration of a basic income sitting outside of the government?

The government already has a list of every citizen registered via birth or immigration, and provides identification for people. They’re always going to need to do that. There’s really no reason to replicate that level of information outside of the government.

Most people would just go online and register where you’d like your money to be sent (Direct deposit, Mailed cheque)

However, you would still need a few call centers to handle issues, and If someone needs in-person support, the government already has common government service offices like DMVs and service centers that can provide in person service if required, saving significant money on needing dedicated service locations just for this one service.

Tl;dr Economies of Scale matter, and it doesn’t make any sense to replicate the parts that the government already does and has to continue doing.

It depends on what you mean by social welfare programs.

A basic income system requires very little administration, and what parts of it are required wouldn’t make sense to have it sitting outside the government.

I’d rather see a basic income than need non-profit food banks needing to exist. Grocery stores already exist, are reasonably competitive, and are enormously more efficient if people have the money available to use them.

For things like helping people with disabilities, where economies of scale are mostly irrelevant, ngos and non-profits can make more sense because they can specialize according to the need.

Improving your input, and the system message can also be part of that. There are multiple optimizations available for these systems that people aren’t really good at yet.

It’s like watching Grandma google “Hi, I’d like a new shirt” back in the day and then having her complain that she’s getting absolutely terrible search results.

Because you can’t really have parts of both.

Either you have wealth redistribution, or you don’t. A lower amount is still wealth redistribution.

You can have a government, or you don’t. A smaller government is still a government.

So if someone wants some wealth redistribution, and some government. They are just arguing how much of a Libertarian Socialist they are, not how much of a anarcho-capitalist they are.

I personally am a Social Democrat. Capitalism is good most of the time, just make sure you’re holding the reigns tight so it goes in the right direction. Skip capitalism altogether for specific industries where it just doesn’t do very well and have the government run those ones directly.

I’m neither a libertarian socialist, nor an anarcho-capitalist. Not even close to either of them, because again, it isn’t a spectrum.

Agreed, mostly.

I don’t really care about a balanced budget. I’m fine with running deficits forever, as long as they keep the debt to gdp ratio at a reasonable value.

As you mentioned though, I care a LOT about what they spend it on. If they’re dumping it into systems that don’t provide stimulus to the economy that is sustainable long term, that’s bad.

Even bombs can be important by stimulating local wages, resource production, manufacturing, etc. however I’d like to see more investment in productivity improvements in my country (Canada) because we’re falling behind. My preference would be to see more government investment in education, transportation, renewables, and supporting tech. Less investment in oil and gas.

There’s no such thing as the middle. It’s not a spectrum.

Sometimes things are actually just distinct beliefs.

You can’t be in between Christianity and Hindu for example. They aren’t attached to each other, they are distinct.

You’re mostly correct, but I would like to add a piece that not everyone understands.

The government issuing debt can be good for the government because of inflation and economic stimulus.

When the government sells debt, it sells $ in the future for a different (usually lower) price today. It doesn’t actually pay interest, the effective interest is determined by how much the market is willing to pay for it.

Lets say the government sells a billion dollars worth of bonds, which will pay out in 20 years, they sell it today for three quarters of a billion dollars. Sounds like a bad deal, right? The government is clearly losing a quarter of a billion dollars.

Except, the government doesn’t have to pay it back with money from today, it pays it back with taxes it will earn 20 years from now. If in those 20 years, inflation is say… 3% on average. Lets just ignore compounding to make it simpler, and say the costs of everything goes up by 60% over those 20 years. Assuming the tax rate stays the same (and ignoring compounding effects) they’d be collecting 60% more actual dollars than they would today. Paying back a billion dollars from taxes at that point is now easier than it would have been to try to raise 750 million from taxes today.

The government just “made” money by borrowing money. Really, it comes from inflation eating away at wealth, which is why the government printing debt like this usually causes inflation. All things inflating equally is a wealth tax.

Side note: The current inflation issues we’re seeing are not happening equally; wages are not going up as fast as inflation on common necessities like housing and groceries. That’s a different problem, not caused by government debt printing.

Then there’s the economic effects of spending the money now. More economic activity today usually means more taxes collected overall throughout the years that whatever they spent the money on benefits people. A new bridge or road, better air traffic systems to allow more flights, safer oceans to protect shipping, etc.

Just look at Japan.

That is what a country with next to 0 immigration looks like.

I’m talking about a country with a declining population, a stagnant economy, and declining quality of life.

Add it to the mountain of reasons I’m not likely to cross the border and give them any money anytime soon.

It actually ascribes too much agency to individuals.

The technology is out there, there’s no shoving this back in the box. No matter what individuals decide to do, only laws will regulate this, and only laws that can be enforced.

Even if the US decides “no AI” a bunch of other countries are going to laugh at them, and then use AI to beat America at pretty much anything that can take advantage of AI to improve it.

It would be no different than a country refusing to use electricity or automobiles.

No they aren’t. Musk is only around 700-800B as of the end of 2025.

Because the guy you want wool clothes from wants beef instead of the lentils you chose to grow, and the person who wants your lentils only has chickens, and the guy who wants chickens has cabbage, and the guy who wants cabbage builds houses, and the guy who wants a house has pork.

Money exists to make transactions easier. Barter sucks as a primary trade mechanism unless everyone already makes almost all of what they need themselves and the barter is just on the side to spice things up a bit.

Can you explain in a rational way how getting rid of money helps?

The people control the government, even in America, if idiots don’t wanna vote or can’t pay attention long enough to understand reality then they have exactly the laws they deserve.

Glad I don’t live in such a shithole.

We haven’t done it on climate change, why the hell would people change for ai?

You don’t need to prevent rich people to remove money from elections. There are laws that other countries have passed that effectively nuter their influence on that.

Economics is about studying how it works, not forming opinions on how it should work.

If you want to discuss changing economic systems entirely, then discuss that, not ways to break the current one.

Our current economic system would not function with the changes proposed. All sorts of problems occur if you try to tax wealth when it’s created. Companies would receive no investment because anyone with money would have already hit the threshold and wouldn’t benefit from investing it. Not to mention that founders would be forced to walk away fairly early in the business even if they succeeded without investment.

Capitalism is inherently exploitative. You can’t have a profit as a company if you pay workers the same amount that you earn. If you pay workers out the entirety of the value and cut out the shareholders, you’ve just created socialism.

In my opinion, guided capitalism is the best system. Which means adding taxes and regulations to prevent the worst problems.

Like the fact that we already tax wealth somewhat when it’s sold off, and my proposal adjust inheritance taxes to 100% over a certain dollar value (10-20 million for example)

So as the company you founded gets bigger, you’re forced to just give more and more of it away to the government until you don’t control it anymore?

I would much prefer to see a higher estate tax, 100% of all amounts over 10-20 million.

If you know you can’t keep it you’re far more likely to do something useful with it while you’re alive.