Readit NewsOn the second thought, it seems like that's a very good question, for these two processes are maybe in a positive feedback loop. This year we pay more attention to news, and this makes us both more susceptible and more exposed to things like "the moment to act is now".
Like another comment here mentioned, the diversity of content (and maybe slightly less political news) is why people like HN, so maybe I've just been lucky to be able to 'curate' my Twitter similarly.
So to ensure equality is to lower the bar? Isn't this going to create more inequality? We know that economically-challenged families would not, statistically speaking, be able to afford tutoring, so they depend even more on public school teachers to teach their kids. Yet the answer of the SFUSD was to push students less in school. Guess who will eventually suffer?
I find it insulting and outrageous.
Back in 2013 when The Associated Press was hacked with a tweet of "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured" and erased $136 billion in equity market value:
Archive: http://archive.is/8lCMV
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/04/23...
This twitter hack could have literally destroyed economies, started a war, potential for black mailing politicians and others etc.
This really needs to be looked at with much bigger eyes. This wasn't just a bitcoin scam.
Heres the thing: even if you believe people are being irrationally afraid, telling people they are stupid and should just suck it up isn't going to get people to cooperate. Do you want to be smugly right, or do you want things to actually get better? People are scared, that's just a fact, and they need to feel confident that action is being taken in their best interest. Telling people that only 1% of them will die so it's all okay is telling people you don't care about them - they notice, they're not dumb.
We all know that this is an exceptional event and that there will be missteps. People will forgive mistakes and setbacks and take on more risk if they are confident that there is a plan - but so far there isn't one. We're almost six months into this and the messaging is still chaos. The lack of a national strategy is what is causing this pandemic to worsen. The rot really does start at the top.
The United States is currently choosing the worst possible combination of options. We locked down - causing enormous financial damage, but we didn't follow through with the lockdown nationally to actually stomp the virus. So we get to have the deaths and have the financial damage as well. Yay us!
Regardless, it's embarrassing how careless the political-left, whatever you want to call them, carelessly use the terms nazi, racist, white supremacist, etc.
I worry about three things with UBI though and they're more social than economic.
1. Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. We can see this a little bit with the coronavirus relief packages.
2. Predators - individuals and companies will find a way to take your UBI check from you as fast as possible. We can see this in housing where some governments give poor people vouchers for rent. Those vouchers are targeted by slumlords who find a way to give you as little as possible for them. There will be rampant scams and bad behavior in areas where the UBI makes up a larger portion of total income.
3. Charity - let's say we actually give every person enough money for food, housing, and utilities. Some people will mess up. They could spend it all on an addiction or just make a bad investment. Even with UBI they could still end up hungry or homeless. Will we help them? Or will we say "you had your UBI, the rest is on you". This changes the morals of how we treat people in the worst times.
I wish all of the above wasn't true. But I just don't think America can handle UBI and I'm not sure how that's going to change.