Today I Learned

Actually my point wasn't so political, haha. I was just making a joke 👍

I would like to point something out though: You said, "without capitalism this doesn't work." Capitalism is an orthogonal concept to socialism. It sounds like you're confusing socialism with communism which actually is (sort of) the opposite of capitalism.

Socialism isn't as absolute as capitalism or communism. You can have socialist policies inside of capitalism. For example, infrastructure, a military, firefighting services, medical services (e.g. the VA), etc are all socialist services that exist in the US right now.

Some things work better when they're socialist (shared resources/common goods) and some things work better when they're capitalist (well-regulated competition between private interests). There's an infinite number of ways to decide whether something or how much of any given thing should be socialist VS capitalism but it mostly boils down to two things: Economics (math) and/or fairness (human nature).

You use capitalism (e.g. private ownership/sales) for goods or services that are non-essential but scarce. Most of the time this means, "stuff": Food, consumer goods, cars, etc. but it also works for a lot of services like design work, restaurants, cleaning, repair, etc.

You use socialism (e.g. state-run organizations) for goods or services that are essential or non-scarce: A military, infrastructure, policing, firefighting, environmental monitoring/pollution controls, etc.

Examples of where capitalism has failed over and over again, often catastrophically:

• Firefighting
• Infrastructure
• Military (private militaries are always bad news!)
• Medical care (See: Current state of healthcare in the US!)

Examples of where socialism has failed over and over again, often catastrophically:

• Housing
• Food
• Consumer and industrial goods

I could actually go on on and on about what's best managed by government and all the ways in which capitalism needs to be regulated but I don't have that kind of time right now (hehe). If there's one takeaway I want you to have after reading all this it's this: Always remember that just by having a military you're living in a socialist state. Everyone is pooling their resources (tax dollars) to maintain that military. It's socialism. You're a socialist!

Agreed. This has nothing to do with UBI or its goals. This is what socialism looks like in an exceptionally wealthy society.

I don't even think UBI is practical; just take a look at inflation today to see what businesses do when they hear people have a bit of spending change.

If the government wants to guarantee that people have food and shelter, they should do it directly.