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Isn't Big Think funded by the Kock family[0]? I'd take this information with a grain of salt, they typically lean hard on conservative perspective. [0] https:/

Isn't Big Think funded by the Kock family[0]? I'd take this information with a grain of salt, they typically lean hard on conservative perspective. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Think

alehul 8y ago
Pretty much all of this research is funded by one side or another— we should always be as scrupulous as possible in examining an argument, and assume there's money behind it. Also, pedantic here but it's Koch, pronounced like "Coke", rather than Kock. :)
- kadendogthing 8y ago
  >and assume there's money behind it. I mean there is always going to be money behind anything. It's largely how our society works. You instead should ask yourself what end goal the money is being spent for.
- dingaling 8y ago
  > but it's Koch, pronounced like "Coke" Doubly pedantic but in the original German it is pronounced Kawcchh
jatsign 8y ago
Kind of an ad hominem argument. I'm a liberal and I think we probably will need a UBI at some point, but I do see the point he's making, where a lot of big tech proponents seem to side-step the problems they're helping to create (loss of jobs) by calling for universal basic income.
- lallysingh 8y ago
  Is it side-stepping if UBI actually happens?
  - jerf 8y ago
    He gives an argument that the answer is still "yes". If UBI happens and Uber et al still ends up with all the money, then the argument still holds. Using a non-existent UBI as an argument for how they behave today is another level of problem.
- simonh 8y ago
  Plenty of western countries, including the US and UK have record high employment, and plenty of un-filled open positions. The unemployment we do have is a skill shortage, not a jobs shortage. Meanwhile China has employed hundreds of millions of people and salaries there have boomed. None of this shows any real sign of a squeeze on overall employment. I know there’s a lot of talk about AI putting people out of work, but it doesn’t actually seem to be happening yet. Automation has been putting people out of work for hundreds of years now, yet there are more jobs than ever. Ultimately maybe we’ll all live in a Star Trek future when ‘work’ is synonymous with ‘slavery’. We’re a very long way from anything like that, yet people talk a lot as though it’s already happening when it really isn’t.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
Alex3917 8y ago
I mean Douglas is right that that UBI doesn't solve every social or economic problem, but this does seem a little out-of-character for him.
Reedx 8y ago
Their most popular content shows another story: https://www.youtube.com/user/bigthink/videos?view=0&sort=p&flow=grid https://www.youtube.com/user/bigthink/videos?view=0&sort=p&f...
closetohome 8y ago
It's funny how often conservative propaganda is posted here, and how quick people are to make excuses for it when it's pointed out. And how quick they are to downvote anyone who calls them on it.
uxp100 8y ago
UBI is a libertarianish policy, and Big Think has published pro-UBI articles in the past. OTOH, Rushkoff's objections are from a left perspective, and leftists in general seem to be coming out against it. In the past some less-radical leftists have been for it (and one or two very atypical communists), but now that it is officially coded "tech-bro" I see leftists reiterating conservative arguments against minimum wage, except against UBI. It's odd.
- cbHXBY1D 8y ago
  As someone on the left and someone who has actively participated in multiple socialist parties in the US for years, the opposition to UBI from the left (DemSocs, Marxist-Leninists, various flavors of anarchists) is because we see it as a way for the ruling class to gut social programs instead of supplement them. The idea of "guaranteed income" argued for by people like MLK was a way to abolish poverty forever. Here's some MLK quotes on it from his book Where Do We Go From Here: https://medium.com/basic-income/mlk-on-guaranteed-income-bfd060fd5314 https://medium.com/basic-income/mlk-on-guaranteed-income-bfd...
  - burfog 8y ago
    Well, that's part of the deal if UBI is ever to get off the ground. Normally UBI is considered to be sort of a truce between the left and the right. The left wants the UBI, and the right wants to get rid of government bureaucrats. The left gives up on the government bureaucrats ("gut social programs") and the right gives up on tossing out all forms of welfare. Of course, both sides are motivated to break the truce. You just admitted that in fact, wanting to not "gut social programs". Enforcing the truce doesn't seem possible.
    - cazum 8y ago
      Well, one obvious solution there is to simply accept no compromise and vote the right and corporations completely out of power.
      - 8y ago
DennisP 8y ago
He complains that UBI would funnel more money to the people producing goods. At the end he advocates "universal basic assets," distributing ownership of productive assets instead of just income. If anything it's more left-wing than UBI.
- frenchy 8y ago
  > distributing ownership of productive assets instead of just income Yeah, that's pretty much standard communism ("collective ownership of the means of production"). The million dollar question, is "how do we go about doing this without setting up a fascist state?"
  - cazum 8y ago
    I think you mean authoritarian state. Fascism is a specific right wing thing.
    - burfog 8y ago
      No, and until a decade ago there wasn't anybody trying to push that falsehood. Fascism involves heavy government control of everything. "All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state." -- Benito Mussolini That is anything but right wing.
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        It's absolutely right-wing. It's not libertarian, but libertarian isn't equal to right-wing; you can have right-libertarians, but even the most extreme of those is more moderately right (and within the wide classical liberal tradition) than fascists, who are essentially—while certainly there was some novelty involved in Mussolini's time—a conscious throwback further right to classical conservatism.
        burfog 8y ago
        Libertarian isn't equal to right-wing, but neither is nationalism or racism or anything else that you may see in fascism. Fundamentally, the left is about collectivism and the right is about individualism. The difference is whether you think the state is a provider or a parasite. It's about wanting the government to take care of you or get out of your way. It's about wanting the government to make everybody have equal stuff or an equal opportunity.
jerf 8y ago
Actually, the idea that the Koch brothers fund only "conservative stuff" is not terribly accurate. They fund things all over the map. "Conservatives" don't particularly trust them either. If you really get down to what they fund, instead of reading people's screeds about them and scapegoating, it's rather hard to characterize. (I've also seen them called "libertarian", but they have rather more left-wing and big-government stuff than you would expect with that.)
- solidsnack9000 8y ago
  Care to provide some examples of non-conservative stuff that they fund?
  - jerf 8y ago
    Well, this video and universal basic income in general, for one: https://www.thenation.com/article/a-basic-income-would-upend-americas-work-ethic-and-thats-a-good-thing/ https://www.thenation.com/article/a-basic-income-would-upend... It is true that you can find conservative thinkers who have been in favor of UBI, but it is not a generally-conservative idea right now. The general conservative idea remains to try to "get government out of the way" of the economy and let the free market provide people with jobs. I don't see conservative sites talking about UBI in positive ways; I see it as a generally liberal idea where one of the arguments the liberals are using is that some conservative leaders have written about it positively in the past. (Which is a valid enough argument.) "Nobody" "knew" that certain conservative thinkers had written positively about UBI until it was picked up as a liberal, left-wing idea and somebody found those arguments. (Note I am merely mentioning certain arguments, not making them.) The Koch foundation has also been fairly vigorously anti-Trump: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/koch-brothers-donald-trump-clash-resistance-conservative-billionaires-network-us-president-charles-a7560706.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/koch-broth... , including opposition to the immigration restrictions from certain mainly-Muslim contries, a relatively liberal perspective. Whether or not you consider some of the other mentioned positions "conservative" starts getting down into some weeds. (i.e. "Is Trump conservative, and is opposing Trump therefore anti-conservative?" is something you could write a lengthy essay on that would largely come down to "it depends on which definition of conservative you're using", and would really be more a springboard for examining the relevant definitions and how they differ.) I'm not saying they aren't often in the position of opposing liberalism (which I think may be more accurate than "being conservative"... there are more than two sides to the world), but it's not 100%, either. It's more complicated. Nor am I particularly defending them here, either. I'm not a huge fan either, just for different reasons than most people here. Again, going back to "there's more than two sides in the world".
swayvil 8y ago
Ok. That makes sense. I think that Douglas's argument addresses a strawman : UBI fails to fight the evils of capitalism. Which is totally not the point of UBI. The point of UBI is to increase the efficiency of our economy and to improve the living conditions of our population, which results in all kinds of other improvements. And I think that this is obvious. So ya, I gotta raise my eyebrow at Douglas.

alehul 8y ago

Pretty much all of this research is funded by one side or another— we should always be as scrupulous as possible in examining an argument, and assume there's money behind it. Also, pedantic here but it's Koch, pronounced like "Coke", rather than Kock. :)

kadendogthing 8y ago
>and assume there's money behind it. I mean there is always going to be money behind anything. It's largely how our society works. You instead should ask yourself what end goal the money is being spent for.
dingaling 8y ago
> but it's Koch, pronounced like "Coke" Doubly pedantic but in the original German it is pronounced Kawcchh

jatsign 8y ago

Kind of an ad hominem argument. I'm a liberal and I think we probably will need a UBI at some point, but I do see the point he's making, where a lot of big tech proponents seem to side-step the problems they're helping to create (loss of jobs) by calling for universal basic income.

lallysingh 8y ago
Is it side-stepping if UBI actually happens?
- jerf 8y ago
  He gives an argument that the answer is still "yes". If UBI happens and Uber et al still ends up with all the money, then the argument still holds. Using a non-existent UBI as an argument for how they behave today is another level of problem.
simonh 8y ago
Plenty of western countries, including the US and UK have record high employment, and plenty of un-filled open positions. The unemployment we do have is a skill shortage, not a jobs shortage. Meanwhile China has employed hundreds of millions of people and salaries there have boomed. None of this shows any real sign of a squeeze on overall employment. I know there’s a lot of talk about AI putting people out of work, but it doesn’t actually seem to be happening yet. Automation has been putting people out of work for hundreds of years now, yet there are more jobs than ever. Ultimately maybe we’ll all live in a Star Trek future when ‘work’ is synonymous with ‘slavery’. We’re a very long way from anything like that, yet people talk a lot as though it’s already happening when it really isn’t.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

Alex3917 8y ago

I mean Douglas is right that that UBI doesn't solve every social or economic problem, but this does seem a little out-of-character for him.

Reedx 8y ago

Their most popular content shows another story: https://www.youtube.com/user/bigthink/videos?view=0&sort=p&flow=grid https://www.youtube.com/user/bigthink/videos?view=0&sort=p&f...

closetohome 8y ago

It's funny how often conservative propaganda is posted here, and how quick people are to make excuses for it when it's pointed out. And how quick they are to downvote anyone who calls them on it.

uxp100 8y ago

UBI is a libertarianish policy, and Big Think has published pro-UBI articles in the past. OTOH, Rushkoff's objections are from a left perspective, and leftists in general seem to be coming out against it. In the past some less-radical leftists have been for it (and one or two very atypical communists), but now that it is officially coded "tech-bro" I see leftists reiterating conservative arguments against minimum wage, except against UBI. It's odd.

cbHXBY1D 8y ago
As someone on the left and someone who has actively participated in multiple socialist parties in the US for years, the opposition to UBI from the left (DemSocs, Marxist-Leninists, various flavors of anarchists) is because we see it as a way for the ruling class to gut social programs instead of supplement them. The idea of "guaranteed income" argued for by people like MLK was a way to abolish poverty forever. Here's some MLK quotes on it from his book Where Do We Go From Here: https://medium.com/basic-income/mlk-on-guaranteed-income-bfd060fd5314 https://medium.com/basic-income/mlk-on-guaranteed-income-bfd...
- burfog 8y ago
  Well, that's part of the deal if UBI is ever to get off the ground. Normally UBI is considered to be sort of a truce between the left and the right. The left wants the UBI, and the right wants to get rid of government bureaucrats. The left gives up on the government bureaucrats ("gut social programs") and the right gives up on tossing out all forms of welfare. Of course, both sides are motivated to break the truce. You just admitted that in fact, wanting to not "gut social programs". Enforcing the truce doesn't seem possible.
  - cazum 8y ago
    Well, one obvious solution there is to simply accept no compromise and vote the right and corporations completely out of power.
    - 8y ago

DennisP 8y ago

He complains that UBI would funnel more money to the people producing goods. At the end he advocates "universal basic assets," distributing ownership of productive assets instead of just income. If anything it's more left-wing than UBI.

frenchy 8y ago
> distributing ownership of productive assets instead of just income Yeah, that's pretty much standard communism ("collective ownership of the means of production"). The million dollar question, is "how do we go about doing this without setting up a fascist state?"
- cazum 8y ago
  I think you mean authoritarian state. Fascism is a specific right wing thing.
  - burfog 8y ago
    No, and until a decade ago there wasn't anybody trying to push that falsehood. Fascism involves heavy government control of everything. "All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state." -- Benito Mussolini That is anything but right wing.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      It's absolutely right-wing. It's not libertarian, but libertarian isn't equal to right-wing; you can have right-libertarians, but even the most extreme of those is more moderately right (and within the wide classical liberal tradition) than fascists, who are essentially—while certainly there was some novelty involved in Mussolini's time—a conscious throwback further right to classical conservatism.
      - burfog 8y ago
        Libertarian isn't equal to right-wing, but neither is nationalism or racism or anything else that you may see in fascism. Fundamentally, the left is about collectivism and the right is about individualism. The difference is whether you think the state is a provider or a parasite. It's about wanting the government to take care of you or get out of your way. It's about wanting the government to make everybody have equal stuff or an equal opportunity.

jerf 8y ago

Actually, the idea that the Koch brothers fund only "conservative stuff" is not terribly accurate. They fund things all over the map. "Conservatives" don't particularly trust them either. If you really get down to what they fund, instead of reading people's screeds about them and scapegoating, it's rather hard to characterize. (I've also seen them called "libertarian", but they have rather more left-wing and big-government stuff than you would expect with that.)

solidsnack9000 8y ago
Care to provide some examples of non-conservative stuff that they fund?
- jerf 8y ago
  Well, this video and universal basic income in general, for one: https://www.thenation.com/article/a-basic-income-would-upend-americas-work-ethic-and-thats-a-good-thing/ https://www.thenation.com/article/a-basic-income-would-upend... It is true that you can find conservative thinkers who have been in favor of UBI, but it is not a generally-conservative idea right now. The general conservative idea remains to try to "get government out of the way" of the economy and let the free market provide people with jobs. I don't see conservative sites talking about UBI in positive ways; I see it as a generally liberal idea where one of the arguments the liberals are using is that some conservative leaders have written about it positively in the past. (Which is a valid enough argument.) "Nobody" "knew" that certain conservative thinkers had written positively about UBI until it was picked up as a liberal, left-wing idea and somebody found those arguments. (Note I am merely mentioning certain arguments, not making them.) The Koch foundation has also been fairly vigorously anti-Trump: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/koch-brothers-donald-trump-clash-resistance-conservative-billionaires-network-us-president-charles-a7560706.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/koch-broth... , including opposition to the immigration restrictions from certain mainly-Muslim contries, a relatively liberal perspective. Whether or not you consider some of the other mentioned positions "conservative" starts getting down into some weeds. (i.e. "Is Trump conservative, and is opposing Trump therefore anti-conservative?" is something you could write a lengthy essay on that would largely come down to "it depends on which definition of conservative you're using", and would really be more a springboard for examining the relevant definitions and how they differ.) I'm not saying they aren't often in the position of opposing liberalism (which I think may be more accurate than "being conservative"... there are more than two sides to the world), but it's not 100%, either. It's more complicated. Nor am I particularly defending them here, either. I'm not a huge fan either, just for different reasons than most people here. Again, going back to "there's more than two sides in the world".

swayvil 8y ago

Ok. That makes sense. I think that Douglas's argument addresses a strawman : UBI fails to fight the evils of capitalism. Which is totally not the point of UBI. The point of UBI is to increase the efficiency of our economy and to improve the living conditions of our population, which results in all kinds of other improvements. And I think that this is obvious. So ya, I gotta raise my eyebrow at Douglas.