Social Credit (*) is mocked here as "helicopter money" here; based on this article it certainly
seems likely that the Swiss proposal to go all in on a guaranteed
non-means-tested universal income will be excessive and will backfire.
(* Historically in Canada this idea was called "social credit", which
remains the name I prefer. Unfortunately the idea was premature and also it
picked up some cultural baggage by appealing to unsophisticated and
xenophobic rural voters. But I think it's clear that "helicopter money" is not intrinsically a bad idea.)
Work and wealth have to be connected, but work and survival with a
reasonable level of dignity should not. And as machines end up doing all
the substantive work, they increasingly cannot.
An otherwise
thriving society based on the artificial necessity of enormous amounts
of pantomime work has been tried before, I think, on Easter Island. It
did not end well.
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