I like the way you end your reply, referring to the money for nothing ideal so many exploiters seek to perfect. It brings to mind that we get what we give in life, and money for nothing is worth exactly that.

I read an article today that Oregon (where I live) is contemplating initiating UBI, $1k/mth doled out with no strings attached. I thought about the repercussions of such income on peoples' lives. Will it set anyone free?

I don't think it will. I think it will do the opposite, and bind people in their leisure, rather than free them to achieve their dreams.

Unless their dreams are only what they attain while dozing off.

We often lament our difficulties, rage at the seeming senseless impediments that we must always overcome to attain anything, often enough only partially managing to keep the rent paid, or food on the table. But we gain so much from the struggle to overcome, develop in ways we could never have planned to, I have come to rejoice in hardships.

I have caught myself bursting out in laughter when the engine blows just as I am at the furthest distance from my home, on a mission of critical import the failure of hasn't even been contemplated because failure just wasn't an option. I have realized at my darkest hours that they are the good 'ol days I will look back on with nostalgia.

And I do.

If we are focused on people, we will look back with nostalgia at the challenges we overcome. If all we want is money, we'll languish flush, and forget there was ever any reason to struggle, sinking slowly into the darkness at the end of our lives.

We are the posterity of the survivors of the Younger Dryas, of the Toba eruption, the Black Plague, and every war and famine in history. Those catastrophes have taken many lives of wonderful people, leaving only our forebears to bring us into being. The struggles humanity faces make us people worthy of our miraculous lives, and I look forward to looking back on the coming strife with AI.

I am sure we will laugh about it one day, nostalgic for the glory days when we stood for society against the machines, after we have managed it.