France and Germany? WW1 / WW2?
Japan and the US in WW2? IIRC, at the time, Japan and the US were trade partners, and Japan imported the bulk of it's oil from the US.
Yet in both cases, they still went to war.
I think the lesson is that ideology trumps economics.
One could argue that Capitalism was the reason Japan went to war against the US. Japan was worried that the US would cut off all oil exports to Japan, so they attempted to gain control of the pacific in order to solidify access to oil. They needed to keep their machine going.
Idk if I would call (pre-wwII, post rise of Hitler) Germany truly "Capitalist" though.
Capitalists (as in profit seeking companies and people) seem to have very little to do with it. That is a political decision on the highest level.
Errr, the US did cut off all oil exports to Japan in August 1941. As you say, though, they needed to keep their machine going; the obvious prospect of a US declaration of war in response to their planned (and executed) seizure of oil-producing regions in the South Pacific was the key motivation for the "pre-emptive strike" on Pearl Harbor.
German both in WW1/WW2 had governmental elites in control that were not beholden to the broad capitalist (market). The capitalist (and Im not just talking big industry people) who were standing to lose from war, had no (or not enough) political power.
The question is how reliant are the political elites on the broad bushiness community.
P.S: Yes, Hitler was helped to power by many large Capitalist but after he solidified control he and the political elite were no longer reliant on them.
> On a cold and rainy February afternoon in 1947, one year before the Games Center was established, First Secretary H. M. Sichel of the British Embassy in Washington telephoned Loy Henderson, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and African Affairs. He had two messages from the Foreign Office which were "rather important." They were of a sort that normally should be delivered by the British Ambassador direct to the Secretary of State, George Marshall, but since General Marshall had already left the office for the weekend perhaps, Sichel suggested he could drop off the notes, have a "brief" chat about them, and allow Mr. Henderson a weekend of reflection on them before briefing the Secretary prior to meeting the British Ambassador on Monday morning.
> Sichel arrived as State Department employees, after a comparatively dull week, were donning their raincoats and galoshes to take off for an indoor weekend. Loy Henderson, who habitually worked until eight or nine o'clock even on Fridays, had sent off all his secretaries and was alone in the office. The scene was the one of utter calm that skillful dramatists often establish to provide the psychological setting for a shattering announcement. The announcement, which Mr. Sichel delivered in the course of his "brief chat," was certainly shattering.
> The two messages were official notification that the Pax Britannica, which had kept order in much of the world for over a century, was at an end. Specifically, His Majesty's Government could no longer afford the $50,000,000 or so that was required to support the resistance of the Greek and Turkish Governments to Communist aggression either, as in the first case, by guerrilla warfare or, in the second, by direct military action of the Soviet Union. Either the United States Government would fill the gap, or it would go unfilled - or it would be left to the Russians.
[...]
> With the British announcement, delivered so calmly by Mr. Sichel, the United States was given the choice of becoming an active world power - an "on-the-ground" world power, as a lecturer at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute was later to put it - or seeing the Soviets become a more menacing feature of world politics than Nazi Germany could ever have been. Mr. Sichel said, "I hope I haven't spoiled your weekend."
- The Game of Nations, Miles Copeland (https://www.amazon.com/Game-Nations-Amorality-Power-Politics...)
I liken UBI to easing credit for home mortgages. Easy credit doesn't make houses more affordable, it just makes it easier to borrow more money for a more expensive product.
Sam Altman does not understand or appreciate the above point.
Maybe because the above point is dubious at best?
In a complex domain like an economics, it is very hard to make proclamations such as yours with anything resembling your certainty. Depending on how UBI is implemented (and how close to full employment the economy is, how much other government spending there is, how it is financed,...) there might be an effect on inflation. But it would probably be nowhere near enough to 'be a wash'.
The debate on UBI isn't settled yet by economists. More experiments are needed and will shed more light on it.
Your comparison with easing credit is nonsensical.