So...Seder released another video discussing Yang's efforts to raise awareness of cryptocurrency in washington DC, while running a smear campaign against him, calling him a grifter, blah blah blah. I'm just going to say, it, Sam Seder is a hack, but just to discuss the background of this.
The reason yang is embracing crpyto, IMO, is because there's a small but vocal segment of UBI supporters, who love the crypto stuff. They think crpyto UBI is the future and the best way to do UBI, and Yang, being the UBI guy, seems to be trying to pivot to that group for support. It's not a grift, he's just appealing to his base.
Now, I'm going to be honest, I AM actually somewhat disappointed with this. Being familiar with the internal politics of the UBI movement, there are some real nuts in it, and I generally consider the crpyto types one of them. First of all, I think crpyto is nonsense to begin with. It's like, your GPU does puzzles, and then it gets this internet funny money, and it's become valuable because it's relatively rare and hard to get these days, but it's also in demand, and yeah. I kind of find the whole trend stupid. Same with NFTs. Like, these "technologies" are dumb. I will admit I wish I mined crpyto back in the day like 10 years ago, when bitcoin was worth like 10 cents, but I just didn't see a point. I mean, it's internet funny money right? Had I known, I would've been able to pay off my student debt and maybe secure enough money to never have to work. But...honestly? I didn't know. And again, what makes it valuable? Well, it's become increasingly harder to obtain, and it's become in demand for some reason. To me, it's tulip mania, but it's lasted longer than that, so, I don't know. It's also harmful to the environment, and completely destroyed the GPU market, so it has a lot of downsides too.
Generally speaking, I can't see a UBI based on crypto working. It's not a fiat currency where the state is like "this is what we use for exchange", and it's not like existing currencies which gain value due to their relative rarity and difficulty to obtain. If you just gave out crypto to everyone UBI style, it would be like giving people monopoly money. You can't solve poverty that way, and honestly, one thing Seder proposed in the video worth discussing was just giving people cash via postal banking, as reaching vulnerable populations with no bank account is going to be hard. Anyone with a social security number should get a free bank account, with UBI deposited monthly (unless the user decides to opt for their own bank account or a tax refund instead or something).
I mean, keep in mind a common trend I've been discussing with real money too lately. Inflation. You cant just helicopter drop real money either. Monetary value is basically a function of the amount of money that exists relative to the amount of goods and services that exist. You increase the money supply without increasing the amount of goods and services, value of money just goes down. The only thing that makes UBI WORK is that it's redistributory. For every dollar given in UBI, it's replaced by taxes and existing social services elsewhere. You might have a guy getting $13k in UBI but paying $11k in taxes. You might have someone losing $300 in food stamps to get UBI. Ultimately, the net payers of UBI would be the rich and "upper middle class" (ie, those wealth suburbanites making 6 figures the democrats want to court for some reason), but basically, the whole concept of UBI is based on the fact that any extra consumption would be paid for with decreased consumption elsewhere.
You can't just....dump tons of money on people and make UBI work, and a crypto UBI is gonna be useless. If everyone has it, it's not going to have any value. So yang is trying to appeal to these guys. I actually am kind of disappointed in him for it, but not because i think he's a grifter. I think enabling the crackpots of the UBI community who actually think this is a good idea gives a bad look to the whole movement. And people like Seder are latching on.
Of course, Seder digs at Yang over everything. He also discussed how Yang wanted to remove a lot of aspects of welfare for UBI, and with me, that's just like "yeah, we're replacing bad programs with good programs, that makes sense", but they just get in such a moral outrage and complain about how UBI is bad because omg welfare. Uh, again, if we did what the left wants on UBI, it would either be prohibitively expensive or inflationary. Again, UBI can work, BECAUSE we replace spending from other programs with the UBI. And we replace a lot of the excess consumption from the extra money via taxation. THAT'S HOW IT WORKS.
Leftists. M I rite? I know Seder is technically a "progressive" more on the socdem side of things, but still. And then him and Emma Vigeland get outraged by removing the child tax credit because it reduced poverty by 43%, when I'm like HEY, WANNA KNOW WHAT WOULD REMOVE A LOT OF POVERTY?! A FREAKING UBI!
Like...that;s why I'm not a huge fan of Seder. Well, one of the reasons. We wanna talk about grifting, let's talk about the smear job "progressive" talk show hosts do to people like Yang because they dont fit their politics exactly. They're basically appeasing their audience who ALSO hates Andrew Yang, and unfairly attacking the guy.
That's not to say there aren't reasons to criticize him. I literally just did, in this article. I dont like him leaning into the crypto nonsense either. But at the same time, I recognize Yang is a legitimate actor who wants to do good in the world and I know a lot of other UBI supporters happen to believe in weird things involving blockchain. I think they're morons, but hey, Yang wants to appeal to them to get them on board with Forward. He's just listening to his voter base.
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