shapptastic

Slackware, probably in 1997. My cousin lent me his copy, had like 100 floppies for the install.

I don’t think anyone in NY expected anything except natural gas plants to replace Indian Point at least for the short term. Its a lot simpler to build a few combined cycle and peaker units in the short term than to find property in the NYC metro that can meet peak load using renewables and battery storage. Longer term, several gigawatts of off-shore wind, enough transmission build out for upstate/Canadian hydro, some battery storage (although im not convinced we’ll build out nearly enough), and very rarely used peaker plants will get us close enough to zero carbon emissions.

To me, it always comes back down to what’s the objective, what’s are the options to solve or improve the results. If the goal is to provide basic fundamental needs for your population, define what basic fundamental needs are: is it housing, food security, a wage where people have the option to save? All of those things are moral, desirable things that I would argue every person on the planet should have. In reality, people are self interested, care about people closest to them or most similar to themselves, and we as a society don’t truly have the conversation about what impact solving that problem would have to their own social stature. Case in point, housing - among several reasons why housing is so scarce is that its in the interest of those with secure housing to limit access to it. I think UBI is similar in that it closes the gap in comparison between the middle class and the lower worker class - there’s a lot of arguably selfish justification for why that poor person deserves to remain poorer than thou. The other question which I personally think is somewhat justifiable, does UBI replace or supplement existing social safety net programs? Do you remove, say housing subsidies when you create a $2000/mo UBI? Does that establish a pricing floor for goods and services? Do businesses reduce their wages by the amount of UBI or do they decide to relocate to a place with lower taxation? Much like universal health care, I really think this is something that needs to be implemented at scale on the federal level due to the relative ease of people and companies relocating to places where their tax burden would be reduced. That being said, its insanity to ban UBI when its essentially just a reform of what we do today - republican posturing is out of control and doesn’t come with any conservative leaning solutions to the same social issues.

Don’t disagree, also pretty close to impossible to have a non distorted market place considering you’re dealing with people, not strictly rational forces. My point is more the perspective from people who may not consider a financial subsidy via UBI to be providing value as it distorts the value of income. I’m not a fan of UBI being “universal” in the sense that people who don’t need it still getting access (it’s main benefit is it simplifies access and avoids needing to prove income), but its certainly simpler and less distorting than say housing vouchers and food subsidies. That being said, I don’t think most people actually care about the well being of those less fortunate and that’s representative in our elected officials.

UBI is interesting but I find that if you’re a free market traditional capitalist, its existence (as well as welfare) is kind of a distortion of market functions. The US in general seems reticent to collectivism as a concept, otherwise welfare and SS would not be looked at as a “I paid for this” entitlement. Now, the real question to ask politicians is if income inequality is a problem? I’d wager many in private would say no.