shapptastic

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.

Ok, so ignoring the legality of emulating switch games (it’s not exactly simple to dump a switch game without owning your own switch), are you seriously going to claim that someone who wants to play Zelda and Mario legally should get a deck? I own both, I love the steam deck, it doesn’t play switch games 60fps, no fuss, it plays an emulated version of cemu breath of the wild at 60 fps and I would tell anyone who wants to play Nintendo games to get a Nintendo console. Heck, PC games which are verified on deck aren’t always great to play on the hardware, especially older games that weren’t made in mind for consoles. The second thing I bring up is how freaking large the steam deck and other pc handhelds are versus something like the switch. If you’re on a couch or hotel room, no big deal, but on the train? In a coach seat on a plane? That size does matter. I pretty much the deck the same places I’d bring a laptop, while the switch is much more a portable bring anywhere type toy. Regardless, this isn’t a battle, I own a console too (gaming pc’s in my opinion are dying out due to cost and lack of exclusives), but buy a steam deck because you want to play pc games, not because you want to play other consoles games - unless you’re someone with the inclination to want to tweak and configure emulators.

I'm relatively moderate politically but certainly not anti-diversity, but as a hypothetical example, lets say you're a new urbanist with a full on ban cars mentality, if I suggested say, daylighting intersections and offering cheap/free parking lots instead of street parking, that opinion might be downvoted to oblivion / mods may ban me because I don't follow that orthodoxy. If you're someone who enjoys the conversation and rebuttal portion ( I do, its something I enjoy about reddit), getting 100 people into a post who all think the same is boring as sin. Honestly, if for example on reddit, r/conservative wasn't such an echo chamber, i'd contribute on that subreddit too just to hear difference of opinion and try to understand the logic behind certain viewpoints.