I think the core lesson of this article isn't whether the author's right or I'm right (below), but rather that a lack of rigor and specificity should set off al

I think the core lesson of this article isn't whether the author's right or I'm right (below), but rather that a lack of rigor and specificity should set off alarm bells in our head and evoke the questions "how does he know that?" and "what does that really mean?" About the subject matter: My understanding is that, in general, software's winner-take-all economics has joined forces with globalization, robotics, and machine learning to usher in a historically unprecedented era of extremely high competitive pressure. As a result, a growing population of tens of millions of Americans aren't that competitive in the economy, which is Really Bad. The author says UBI "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. Meanwhile, UBI also obviates the need for people to consider true alternatives to living lives as passive consumers." To me, this is not a rigorous or convincing argument that UBI will exacerbate the challenges of our modern economy. Or that UBI will have the effects he claims. Or that those effects are well-defined and make sense at all.