> I admit that I have Star Trek dreams of post-scarcity happiness I think a lot of us, here on Hacker News, do. I kinda worry that's part of the problem. But

> I admit that I have Star Trek dreams of post-scarcity happiness I think a lot of us, here on Hacker News, do. I kinda worry that's part of the problem. But you and me and Sam Altman, etc, are not representative of society at large. I was thinking of the HN crowd (myself included) when I wrote this part: > Just as you can find Silicon Valley techies who think Soylent is the only sustenance a person will ever need, intellectuals tend to think everyone could be as content as they would be living life in their heads or inventing their own destiny. Most people need to be doing something to feel satisfied and a potential UBI system addresses this need just as inadequately as disability checks do now. Cue drug epidemics. I think average people need more direction than that. I don't think that's a bad thing, but I think its a much more serious problem than the average person's relationship with money. Put another way, the problems of today and the near future are not primarily ones of money. They are ones of community and meaning. By most available data, even the poorest in the USA are doing OK on the money front, though its obviously not ideal! Some cites on that claim can be found here: https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/937200378919055360 https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/937200378919055360 So I worry UBI is solving the wrong problem first, and might make the real problem a little or a lot worse, depending on how the job landscape changes.