Ascalon
Justified & Ancient
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2009
- Messages
- 1,318
I am fascinated by that most ephemeral and yet powerful of human creations - an idea.
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident,” Arthur Schopenhauer.
I am particularly fascinated by those ideas that at first appear dangerous, but when explored are sensible and beneficial but require a major change of the status quo.
The abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, same sex marriage, and many more ideas at first seemed crazy or impossible, before going through the stages above and becoming reality.
It would appear that we are on the cusp of several other big, dangerous ideas becoming reality too: universal basic income, the abolition of poverty, the end of homelessness, financial trading taxes, universal corporate tax rates etc.
At one time or another, all of these ideas have been regarded as dangerous, subversive or impossible.
This can be a collective thread in which we can post and discuss those ideas we encounter which might fit these criteria - dangerous, seismic, but, just maybe, ultimately beneficial.
I'll start with universal basic income.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income
https://www.investopedia.com/news/history-of-universal-basic-income/
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/universal-basic-income-explained
This is an idea that flies in the face of most public finance approaches, and particularly angers certain shades of the political spectrum. However, every time it has been properly practised it has been of far greater success than any other approach to poverty.
The book Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman explores the many experiments, from Britain in the nineteenth century to Canada in the 1970s, and goes through why they were often ignored, obfuscated or downright misrepresented.
Why does the narrative persist, as repeated by many political leaders, that poor people are lazy and stupid and that if you gave them free money they would simply become dependent and spiral downward into moral depravity? Every single experiment in well applied UBI has shown this not to be the case.
What other ideas lurk at the fringes of society that are simply too wild to contemplate, too dangerous to discuss or too subversive to the status quo to ever entertain?
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident,” Arthur Schopenhauer.
I am particularly fascinated by those ideas that at first appear dangerous, but when explored are sensible and beneficial but require a major change of the status quo.
The abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, same sex marriage, and many more ideas at first seemed crazy or impossible, before going through the stages above and becoming reality.
It would appear that we are on the cusp of several other big, dangerous ideas becoming reality too: universal basic income, the abolition of poverty, the end of homelessness, financial trading taxes, universal corporate tax rates etc.
At one time or another, all of these ideas have been regarded as dangerous, subversive or impossible.
This can be a collective thread in which we can post and discuss those ideas we encounter which might fit these criteria - dangerous, seismic, but, just maybe, ultimately beneficial.
I'll start with universal basic income.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income
https://www.investopedia.com/news/history-of-universal-basic-income/
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/universal-basic-income-explained
This is an idea that flies in the face of most public finance approaches, and particularly angers certain shades of the political spectrum. However, every time it has been properly practised it has been of far greater success than any other approach to poverty.
The book Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman explores the many experiments, from Britain in the nineteenth century to Canada in the 1970s, and goes through why they were often ignored, obfuscated or downright misrepresented.
Why does the narrative persist, as repeated by many political leaders, that poor people are lazy and stupid and that if you gave them free money they would simply become dependent and spiral downward into moral depravity? Every single experiment in well applied UBI has shown this not to be the case.
What other ideas lurk at the fringes of society that are simply too wild to contemplate, too dangerous to discuss or too subversive to the status quo to ever entertain?