Reflecting on Scott Santens' appearance on Yang Speaks

 So, Scott Santens, UBI advocate extraordinaire, went on Yang speaks, Andrew Yang's podcast. I wouldn't normally talk about something as mundane as a podcast, but this one is a little more personal to me. 

I had no idea Santens and Yang were so close, to the point that Santens knew him before running for president. I know Yang was a relatively late player to the UBI scene relative to myself, and Santens, but I didn't know Santens influenced him to such a great extent. I'm almost jealous, then I remember how asocial I am by comparison. 

The fact is, I actually got into UBI around the same time as Santens did, and remembered interacting with him on r/basicincome back in 2013. I actually was one of the posters there that tried to develop an early UBI plan, as for me, UBI funding was my own biggest obstacle to adopting the idea. If I could prove it could be done, then I could support it, so I did research and started making UBI plans. I know early on Scott actually references some of my early plans, like in this article. That 40% flat tax model? That was my original early plan, before I refined it to a 45% tax and later to 43.5%. 

And I know Santens later made his own UBI plan, which i recently analyzed, and later ended up influencing Yang. Which is why I bring this up. I just think it's mind boggling that I know Scott Santens casually on reddit, and discussed UBI with him, and then he discusses it with Yang, who was a big time presidential candidate. And while yeah, I have issues with Yang's actual plan, I think that it's awesome that I may have indirectly influenced yang, even subtlely. Makes me feel like I'm actually doing something and making an impact on the world. 

I know I aint as famous as Santens or Yang. To some extent I dont even want fame really. I just wanna contribute to making UBI a thing, really. Fame leads to pressure, which leads to stress, which leads to burnout, blah blah blah. Would be nice if I had a steady income from my UBI advocacy, but eh other than that I'm fine with others using my ideas to some extent. Or taking them, modifying them, and making them their own. I just wanna secure the bag. 

Another reason I brought this up is because a lot of progressives question yang's intentions. But if the dude is friends with Scott Santens and is mentored by the dude to some extent, uh, yeah, he's on "our side". You might have issues with his exact policies, welcome to the club. But I really dislike how quickly progressives are willing to write him off. He's not some neolib shill. The establishment hates him too. And even worse he's getting bodied by both the establishment and progressive wings for various reasons. Some deserved, but many not.