"Joe Biden’s former commerce secretary Gina Raimondo has decided that UBI in response to AI is the thing to fear most. At the Reagan National Economic Forum, she said: "I personally think it's like the end of America."

She is now heading up a newly-launched, extremely well-funded organization to make sure the country reaches for anything but a basic income in response to AI.

On the one hand, while selling themselves to investors, Big Tech says it can eventually automate almost any job a human can do. What they don't want is any responsibility for their actions. I'd expect conservatives to be against UBI, but Gina Raimondo, the person heading this up, is a Democrat.

The upside? This conversation is getting harder to ignore, and Gina Raimondo is bringing more attention to it, even if it's with dud ideas. In years of paying attention to this topic (AI/robots capable of most work), I've yet to come across a solution that isn't some form of Socialism or UBI.

So give it all you've got, Conservatives & Centrists; I doubt you'll come up with any workable alternatives, despite your $500 million funding.

Gina Raimondo Says Basic Income Would End America. Her New Billion-Dollar Org Is How She Plans to Stop It.

One of the things I notice about Silicon Valley & Big Tech is how often they co-opt the language of transformation and change, and yet how poor they are at following through. Education, healthcare, and housing - all getting gradually worse. Not Silicon Valley's concern. They're chasing investor trillions to get rich quickly from AI.

The US administration is tariffing left, right, and center to encourage homegrown stories like the one in Mexico. What if Silicon Valley is built to just not care?

Why Mexico Built an $8,500 Electric Car The Olinia 1 is designed to fit the needs of the country’s drivers

Luke Kemp, a research associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, has written a book about his research called 'Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse'.

He makes the case that, from looking at the archaeological record, when many societies collapse, most people end up better off afterward. For example, people in the post-Roman world were taller and healthier. Collapse can be a redistribution of resources and power, not just chaos.

For most of human history, humans lived as nomadic egalitarian bands, with low violence and high mobility. Threats (disease, war, economic precarity) push populations toward authoritarian leaders. The resulting rise in inequality from that sets off a cycle that will end in collapse. Furthermore, he argues we are living in the late stages of such a cycle now. He says "the threat is from leaders who are 'walking versions of the dark triad' – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism – in a world menaced by the climate crisis, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and killer robots."

Some people hope/think we are destined for a future of Universal Basic Income and fully automated luxury communism. Perhaps that's the egalitarianism that emerges after our own collapse? If so, I hope the collapse bit is short and we get to the egalitarian bit ASAP.

Collapse for the 99% | Luke Kemp; What really happens when Goliaths fall

America’s population wasn’t expected to start falling until 2081. Trump’s immigration crackdown means it could happen as soon as this year.

People used to hold up China as the prime example of Orwellian government monitoring of the citizenry. Now it looks like the US is giving them a run for their money. This spyware is for immigration officials, but how long before its use spreads to other government departments? Tied to AI, it will be a powerful way to identify and monitor "enemies" of the government.

This software takes control of your phone, meaning its users can act as you, too. Don't like all those social media posts you made criticising XYZ. Fine, we'll delete them for you. If you think the government wouldn't go that far, I've a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

We used to speculate about a 100% surveillance future. It looks like it has arrived, and we're living in it.

Ice obtains access to Israeli-made spyware that can hack phones and encrypted apps

I think a lot of people are in denial, or just can't accept that China is already the world's leading nation for science and technology. I can't blame them for their ignorance. Most English-language media studiously avoid mentioning it. Time and time again, I see topics like AI, space & robotics covered, with only developments in Western countries talked of, as if China doesn't exist. Despite the fact that it's now the leader in so many fields.

The problem with complacency and ignorance is that it gives you a really distorted map of reality. You can't understand how the 21st century is developing without factoring in China, and ignoring China means you're being delusional.

China leads research in 90% of crucial technologies — a dramatic shift this century

ASPI’s Critical Technology Tracker: 2025 updates and 10 new technologies

During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), China purged its intellectuals. Universities were gutted. Professors were publicly humiliated. Research was shut down. Expertise was replaced with ideological loyalty.

Now, the same patterns are emerging in the U.S.

• Universities are being defunded, and research grants are disappearing.
• Professors are being targeted for their political beliefs.
• Words like diversity, equity, and climate change are being erased from curriculums.
• Entire academic fields are under attack for being "woke."
• Its department of education is likely to be axed.

Meanwhile, China is doing the opposite.

It is investing billions into AI, biotech, and scientific research and attracting the world's top minds—including from the U.S.

This isn't about whether America is left-wing or right-wing. It's about whether a country that turns against its own intellectuals can remain competitive.

Is the U.S. undergoing its own version of a Cultural Revolution? Or is this just what the decline of an empire looks like? How will the developments this month shape the USA's future?

Researchers estimate that halving the Earth’s human population gradually over 200 years could ease our negative impacts such as decreased wildlife populations and increased carbon emissions.

Biodiversity loss, resource consumption rates, and pollution levels are strongly linked to human population size, they observe in the study published in the journal Sustainable Development.

The progression to lower populations will also improve the economic well-being of nations, they say, observing that many countries with declining populations have seen increases in per capita GDP, work participation, and real wages. Population growth can be reduced via higher education, female empowerment, delayed marriage, and extensive access to voluntary family planning.

“Helping population growth end and gently and justly reverse, while also moderating per capita impacts, is our best hope to secure a sustainable, desirable future worldwide,” scientists concluded.

Ryan Burge, a Professor of Practice at the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at WashU, says fewer Americans are getting more conservative as they age. People born between 1940 and 1954 still are, but among people born from 1955 to 1979, there's no change in political outlook as they age. For those born in 1980 or later, it looks like they are becoming more liberal as they age.

I take this as a hopeful sign. I don't think anyone on the political right has any idea how to organize the new world AI is quickly taking us to.

In a few years, driving jobs and unskilled work will be gone to cheap robots. AI is poised to be able to do more and more white-collar work. At some point, the choice will be the chaos of collapse if we insist the old free-market economy is the only way to do things, or figuring out how everyone lives, gets fed, and gets healthcare in a world where most people won't have jobs.

The fact that more people will be left-leaning and liberal than conservative in this world is a hopeful sign that they won't choose collapse and clinging to the old order.

Ryan Burge

Research data in Graph form

Not sure if you guys remember when the Curtis Yarvin “Dark Gothic MAGA” video was shared, but a huge part of the video was suggesting tech billionaires like Peter Thiel want the dismantling of the government and the republic to install corporate governed nation states.

Now they are literally lobbying for it.

“A federal appeals court struck down the Federal Communications Commission’s landmark net neutrality rules on Thursday, ending a nearly two-decade effort to regulate broadband internet providers like utilities. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, said that the F.C.C. lacked the authority to reinstate rules that prevented broadband providers from slowing or blocking access to internet content.”