+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄 @bonifartius@qoto.org

At the Black Hat security conference, hackers will debut a new open-source tool called the RayV Lite, designed to let anyone hack computer chips with frickin' lasers for just $500.

https://wired.com/story/rayv-lite-laser-chip-hacking-tool/

Previously available tools to do this typically cost as much as $150,000.

I think studies I've seen "proving" UBI works have a number of major flaws.

For one, "universal basic income" studies aren't studying Universal Basic Income.

You might go "what? They gave people money, didn't they?" And that's true, but it wasn't universal. A friend of mine ended up selected for a UBI study.... But then was deselected when they discovered he had a middle class job. This means that these studies didn't look at the effects of universal basic income, but rather the effects of a means tested social welfare program, which is a different thing.

Universal Basic Income will have a potentially universal impact. It will affect the poor, but it can also have effects on the middle class and the rich, and if you're not looking at the whole picture, you aren't getting the whole picture.

Second, "universal basic income" studies aren't studying a government program of universal basic income.

They're studying what happens when a magic money fairy drops cash on people.

There are countries that has this through the magic of colonialism. Basically, you send people to go steal the wealth of the colonies and bring it home, making many people fabulously wealthy without any consequences for the people receiving the wealth.

Unfortunately the age of colonialism is over so you can't just go taking over other continents and nicking their shit, so a massive welfare program like this has to be paid for somehow, and mathematically it would have to be through massive tax increases on the entire working class. So to measure the effects of UBI you'd need to massively increase the taxes on the people who make money in your study to pay for the money you're handing out.

Some people think that you can tax just the rich to pay for it, and that's just a fantasy. Mathematically there isn't enough wealth to pay for UBI by just taxing the rich.

Some people you'll get more money back by cutting other government programs, and that's also a fantasy for two reasons. First, if you try to stop programs like medicare and medicaid to pay for UBI, you'll find out awfully quickly that you can't cut those programs (and I suspect social security would have similar challenges). Other programs like TANF are extremely limited and you'll find they simply don't have enough money to put even a tiny dent in the amount of money required for UBI.

Thirdly, "universal basic income" studies aren't studying a permanent program of universal basic income.

These studies have a fixed term. Maybe they're 6 months, or a year, or a few years, but there is a limited amount of grant money. This has a distinct effect on the behavioral effects you'd expect to see.

Consider yourself: If I said to you: "You're going to get $1000 a month for the next 12 months", what would you do? Well, knowing that the money has a time limit, I'd predict you'd use the money in ways that understand that the money is limited in scope. You might use it to go back to school, or you might use it to pay down debts, or maybe invest it. Now by contrast, if I said to you: "You're going to get $1000 a month and that's just how your life works now", would you treat that money differently? Would the reduced time pressure push you to consider looking at whether you really needed to be as productive in your life since you could potentially just get together with a few people and live a decent life under one roof? I feel like if my wife and I both had 1000 a month forever, I'd quite quickly be looking at what I could cut to just retire, and I'm a pretty high achiever. I bet a lot of other people would decide to do the same, especially if their jobs just had a massive pay cut because taxes rose like crazy.

Fourth, "universal basic income" studies can't predict society-wide consequences.

While it is undebatable that it wasn't quite the same thing due to direct supply-side disruptions, the COVID-19 Pandemic response sent massive amounts of money to individuals. This is part of why there has been high inflation for the past couple years, because people had more money but there was no commensurate increase in productivity (and in fact a drop). If we give productive members of society punishment for being productive, and we reward unproductive members of society for being unproductive, guess what sort of person you're going to build more of? And if I'm right and we'd see lower overall productivity,

Finally, there are studies that show "Universal Basic Income" isn't necessarily so great for the people getting it anyway.

Data published by Vivalt et. al. found Moderate decreases in labor supply (ie. people worked fewer hours by 1-2 hours per week), No significant impact on employment quality, No significant effect on entrepreneurship, Increased spending on healthcare (ie. people were able to spend money on healthcare they required, likely a positive), but ultimately it's likely that such a cash redistribution scheme would ultimate lead to more money in the hands of the ultra-rich and increasing poverty. https://reason.com/2024/07/25/bad-news-for-universal-basic-income/

From an economic standpoint you have to be very careful because "the map is not the territory" and money is not wealth, and wealth is not a static thing. You can give me a cup of sand, and if I'm skilled I can turn that worthless cup of sand into an expensive crystal vase worth thousands of times its original material cost. If I don't know how or I'm not willing to, then it will remain sand. In that way, wealth can be created by people from something that does not constitute wealth, and it can be destroyed of course, particularly if nobody is willing to maintain something that constitutes wealth or something that creates wealth.

There's a reason so many tech billionaires want UBI, and it's not because they're such wonderful and altruistic people (or they'd pay for it themselves). I suspect it's becuase they know UBI would stratify society into 3 classes of people: The ultra rich on the top who end up getting the money from UBI as people spend at their stores or on their platforms, the working class who end up getting taxed to death, and the underclass who would be getting free money every month and don't try to do much else. This social stratification would mean the already rich become much richer (even the taxes basically just go right back in their pockets), and the poor will become perpetually poor, and the middle class has a giant deus ex machina thumb on their back until the empire collapses.

https://x.com/DefiyantlyFree/status/1818648587112247309

"The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate."

born to catblob
forced to human

pick one

Don't believe your lying eyes, bigots! Trust them authorities and their propaganda outlets instead!