Comment by Timwi
2 days ago
I think we're in agreement except in mere terminology. I was disagreeing with the characterization as a “distraction”, but I was also saying that if techbros pay out something for the plebs and call it UBI then it's not really UBI. I wholeheartedly agree with the last sentence of your post, and I think it won't be real UBI without a real democracy.
Ah, then we might be on the same page after all. The reason I used the "distraction" wording is because I feel like the techbros that are centralizing power around themselves often talk about UBI as a way to avoid the more pertinent questions of power and ownership.
It can be an implementation detail once we have public control of AGI. But the public control is the important part, otherwise its just another mechanism of control.