How does he plan to enforce that, I wonder? It's easy enough to keep kids from migrating "in" but what about children born in wireheading city?
Does he plan to prohibit that through forced birth control + forced abortion? He did mention "birth control will also be available for free" -- maybe by "available" he means "required." Or will he just "ship out" any children residents have within some time frame, and drop them at an orphanage in the "real world"?
10 there's some terrible line that, once you cross it, you're fucked
20 and yet people invariably drift across that line for different reasons
30 it's awful! it hurts our hearts to see it
40 someone draws a new line at great individual and social cost to deal with the horror
50 goto 10
We should also be realistic. The 47-year-old meth addict living on the streets is probably not somehow going to turn his life around and create the next Uber. He can either do meth on your front porch, or he can do meth somewhere else. Likewise, prison — way more destructive to human dignity than Wireheading City — is the only way to easily get free food and shelter in the US, and many people misbehave inside because they don’t want to be there.
This is really the long and short of it. SF closed down a clean use space after the pandemic and the end result is now the people doing drugs are doing it less safely, and they're doing it out in the open and shitting on sidewalks. If you don't do some form of harm reduction or other aid, they just do the shit in the streets. If you throw them in jail, they're a massive sink on the system.
I'm not sure a burning man city is the answer, but things have gotten pretty bad, and incarceration and shuffling people around hasn't done shit. Time to get creative.
Oddly enough Star Trek Deep Space 9 had a 2 part story set in 2024 where the homeless are put in “Sanctuary Districts” away from the rest of society. This proposal sounds disturbingly similar.
No one needs government handouts. No one needs to have his income confiscated. This is such a stupid communist distraction. It's an invitation to slavery.
We have hard and real money and it's time to encourage other people to hustle by innovation instead of throwing away their humanity.
Terrible program. Terrible idea. It will be used to farm humans, slavery, sexual abuse of children and worse. It's no good.
It used to be that he who gives to a beggar does him and himself a bad favor.
These days, he who gives to a beggar is celebrated for being so generous. And non-profit organizations who are supposed to fix the problem attract more donations the worse the "problem" becomes.
I was about to say "yeah but people who do drugs in this fantasy get sent off to Wireheading City so there won't be significant drug use in the rest of the country"
But then I realized that's obviously dumb, some people do drugs occasionally but would be unlikely candidates for Wireheading City as a result. I think he really wants homeless people to go there, not partygoers who happen to get caught with a needle in their arm.
To change the subject, just now I noticed this ridiculous statement:
Wireheading City will be the first American city to offer UBI, except instead of money, you get basic necessities
So um...not UBI at all. The very thing that distinguishes UBI from other forms of welfare is that it's a direct monetary handout. Whoever wrote this probably knows that so why in the world did he call it UBI and then immediately contradict himself in the same sentence?
The point of UBI is that "basic necessities" are so individually variant that governmental attempts to accurately assess them result in inefficiencies that could be overcome through a simplified handout system. E.g. medical needs are super personal, and variable family sizes also result in different housing needs. UBI is "supposed to" cut through that mess by just giving the needy money and then letting them figure out what their own needs are.
Saying "we'll do UBI but instead we'll just give people what they need" completely misses the point of UBI, which is that the government doesn't know what someone needs, but it does know this: if that thing can be bought with money, money should be a reasonable substitute.
(BTW I think UBI is a bad idea but I do think it's worth pointing out that this author seems to completely miss its point, and he does this so spectacularly, his error crosses over into funny)
10there's some terrible line that, once you cross it, you're fucked20and yet people invariably drift across that line for different reasons30it's awful! it hurts our hearts to see it40someone draws a new line at great individual and social cost to deal with the horror50goto 10