Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Universal Free Income and Fighting Climate Change

[Excluding the mistakes I made in reading my monitor, this is the text of the Video I recorded on December 19th, 2018]  

Sometimes, without having to be very bright, one simply thinks of a logical connection out there that one hasn’t already read about some place or heard about on YouTube.   What am I talking about?  Well, you see, I had been thinking a lot lately about the necessity for a program that would give everybody Universal Free Income, because it is inevitable that most working and salaried people will lose their jobs and careers to Robotics and other Artificial Intelligence Information and Analyses Technologies.  

So, there I was scratching my head over it and along the way up popped a picture in my mind’s eye of a World full of people sitting at home waiting for their Free Money Check to arrive in the mail (well, yes, it would be electronic transfer, but my imagination is still largely populated with imagery from the 20th Century… if not before, … you know,  I still use metaphors that refer to ‘horses’… remember horses, anyone? Beautiful animals, and their poop doesn’t stink… more than you can say for people, right?).

 Well, back to substance -- there I was, seeing all of these people sitting at home when it occurred to me, that this would be the end of Morning and Evening Rush Hours.  Then I realized that people would no longer need cars explicitly to get to Work.   You know, anybody who has ever held a job KNOWS that being chronically late is perhaps the number one reason why people are sacked (or if the bosses hate you and need an excuse, then popping in late one day would be all the documentation they need to get HR to issue you a Card Board Box, a Pink Slip, two paychecks and a Road Map).

  So, anyway, effectively the working public was forced by a kind of institutional duress into shelling out money for cars… new and reliable cars.

 But given a Universal Free Income, nobody would have to report to Work, and without that ‘gun’ of duress being held up to our heads, well, we could all get around with less reliable public transportation for whatever screwing around we still wanted to do (not that it is necessary that public transportation be unreliable, but that is what working people fear… nobody wants to get fired for the bus driver screwing up and being late.  They want to get fired for their own screwing up and being late).   But, yes, when it comes to just getting about town for ordinary appointments and shopping, then certainly the requirement to be so precisely on time will no longer carry the same pitch of anxiety as it does now under this present Regime of Capitalist Tyranny.  So,  Public Transportation scheduling could afford to be a bit blurry without it being the worst problem Humanity will face in battling for the Survival of the Planet and for the Establishment of a the first True Civilization in Human History.   Also, one of the greatest lessons learned in the 20th Century is that Nations can pay far too high a price to “have the trains run on time” (you know, the stated justification for the inception of European Fascism prior to The Great War Part Two. )


 Well, let me sum all of this up:  what this all comes down to is that IF we are all replaced by Robots, and IF we are all put out to pasture with Universal Free Income, THEN two of the largest causes for Carbon Emissions will be squashed – all that Commuter Driving, and then all that Manufacturing Process that goes into making commuter cars.

 Oh, and certainly City Planners will no longer have to agonize over expanding highways and parking lots.  Without so many cars and so much driving, it would be significantly easier for the World to Go Green, don’t you think?   Also, now that I think about it (and this was not on the Video I released), demographic population concentrations have been following Job Opportunities, and miserably overcrowded Urban Areas, with Jobs, are experiencing even more growth, making conditions worse, while Areas that have experienced business closures, while being otherwise idyllic, are being abandoned, with the last remaining economic activity involving the Opioid Epidemic.  

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