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Comment by gravypod | Hacker News Reader

Most of my friends who are communists are calling this "class control" and I'm laughing at them because they are getting what they wanted just without mass riots and murders of the rich.

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How are they getting what they want? What communists (and in a lesser sense, socialist countries) want is less of a chasm between the lower and upper echelons of society. Just this day it was posted on Reddit that a top London banking boss will already have made more since the start of the year than an average worker will the entire year (!!). All UBI does is make sure everyone has a baseline to live from. That's great, but its just a sedative for the masses. You're a lot more likely to riot if your kids are starving. I wonder what will lie beyond UBI. 3D-printers for everyone? Everyone can print a fancy car, a lobster, a new arm, etc.. which would basically make everyone completely equal.

>That's great, but its just a sedative for the masses.

As opposed to the great energy drink of communism?

No, and some difference will always be there. That's healthy - it aspires people to be more. But I'd like it to be more like Star-Trek: people work hard and achieve things for the prestige. If you become captain of a star ship, you're admired, and you (for example) still get more pretty ladies fawning after you than the helm officer. And he does so more than a dude who wants to do nothing but play GTA:XXIV on the Holodeck. But that dude can get the same food, education and modes of transport as the captain, if he so desires.

Good thing we just invented replicators.

Most importantly, the kids of the holodeck videogame player are not condemned by the sins of the father, and the kids of the starship fleet captain don't get to ride the coattails of their father either.

Hardass "realists" love modeling the market as anarchic self-interested atomic agents until it comes to giving their own kids a leg-up even if they don't deserve it. Then it's all biology and social psychology.

> sins of the father, and the kids of the starship fleet captain don't get to ride the coattails of their father either.

You need to watch more DS9, Voyager, and TNG.

You think Star Trek is realistic?

I see UBI as this:

   * Wealth redistrobution
   * Basic standard of living
   * Safety net

That's pretty communist in my mind. I know the purists out there will wave their hands and say "this is just an attempt of the bourgeois class in an attempt to lul the proletariat into a false sense of safety while what they are really getting is life-long survitude to their masters" because that's what my communist friends think. I think that with a rational look at this you can see it as an attempt to level a playing field in a communist fashion. Everyone starts off at a level playing field where they cant go hungry and have a basic standard of living.

From the US that seems like voo-doo communist magic.

Also, I find it funny that the communist, who argues for the rights of the lower classes, is asking... I'm not going to say it. You put it best.

"You're a lot more likely to riot if your kids are starving."

Or in other terms:

"You're a lot more likely to <do what I want> if your kids are starving."

It's funny how that works out.

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