So I watched a part Yang's latest podcast which was some talk he was doing on UBI, and there was a couple things I wanted to discuss with this.
I've been critical of Yang in recent years due to the fact that with him UBI ISN'T front and center any more and his forward movement is no longer about UBI. I mean, with me, I'm a purity testing motherfricker on my top priorities. I believe you find your niche issues and your philosophy, and you basically push and push and push on your top issues. I do believe in putting pressure on people to adopt positions that I like. I don't necessarily mean do what the palestine protesters are doing which would amount to me literally screaming in peoples' faces that they support wage slavery, but I'm not above applying political pressure with my votes and encouraging people to do the same.
Of course, I often forget, I'm an outsider to the political and Yang...isn't. He has a lobbying organization, humanity forward, where he is trying to push for UBI and UBI like ideas. He's still passionate about the subject, and you see that here, but he has a certain level of tact that I do not. He basically said that if you run a lobbying organization, you cant just go after people and shame them or attack them in order to bully them into your position, and that doing so just shuts down all progress and moved them the other way. People often forget that the rules within Washington DC arent the rules outside of it. There's a lot more civility and quid pro quo within the beltway, and while I don't like that, and I understand why voters don't like that, I do understand where Andrew is coming from. If he's trying to appeal to people directly, he has to kind of butter them up and be nice to them. So he's working with a different set of incentives there. I still criticize him on this at times as I feel like if you arent careful you can lose yourself to this kind of culture and become part of the problem, but at the same time, eh, someone has to do it. And I suck at that sort of stuff. I am more like this Bernie Sanders type "we gotta take the fight to them, blah blah blah" type of person, and I do believe in fighting fire with fire. I'm more like "we need a tea party movement based around UBI", and he's more like "pretty please Joe Manchin think of the children with the child tax credit". I mean, I might not LIKE his approach, but I do understand where he's coming from, I understand someone has to do it, and yeah I don't really think he's a sell out on UBI.
Still, give Yang does come from a much different culture than myself, I do think he underestimates the extent of the problem. I mean, he thinks of it from the perspective of we know what the problems are but the system is ineffective and everything is rigid and broken.
With me, I look at it this way, theres a lot of powerful interests that don't want UBI to be a thing, and many of them are what's breaking the system in the first place. I mean, I recall once he was on TYT's program with Cenk Uygur, and Cenk (who also tried to get people from the outside to work inside the system like AOC and have since become disappointed with what they had become), pointed out that the problem is money in politics, and Yang kind of disagreed. Yang does come at these issues from the perspective of one of the elites. And that's why I lot of leftists cant stand him. I give him a break because I understand this guy is doing more to advance my ideology or a variation thereof than anyone else. I mean what am I doing other than arguing with people online and screaming into the void? I mean, I guess that has some usefulness. I still see some of my stuff in Yang's philosophy, and I do recognize that he basically got his ideas from the head mod on r/basicincome, someone who I basically have discussed stuff before, so I guess there is room for both, but yeah, he's using his position to actually do a lot of good in the system. Still, at the same time, the left has a point. And I kind of look at Yang's exact perspective, which is informed by a more "bourgeois" way of looking at the world, and sometimes I see the deficiencies of that, including him underestimating the extent of the problem.
I mean as I discussed last night, there is a whole ideological dimension of this. People arent just nonpartisan and centrist here. They see the world through ideology, and most mainstream ideologies are pro work, with the conservative right, the most dominant force that sets the terms and tone of the debate in the US, being very anti UBI. And I also understand that these guys are quite cut throat in keeping things the way they are. They are very machiavellian and will use any means necessary to achieve their goals. And this is why I have the more hard nosed purity testy mindset I do. Because I fully recognize if we want UBI to succeed, we need to have a bit of a culture war and ideological war, that I'm not sure Andrew is willing to admit we need to have. We need to take on the cult of work and jobism. We need to take on the protestant work ethic. We need to take on meritocracy itself. We need to take on property as a natural right. We need to take on the entire link between work and income. Yang already is a step ahead, he's already at a point where he admits that this isnt working. he comes from a place of pragmatism, not sharing the ideology of work that most people have. And I respect that. heck, recognizing that in 2020 is what caused me to be a supporter of his to some degree. He literally is doing more to advance my ideology than anyone else in this country. But at the same time, he's also kinda missing the point that he is one step ahead of the rest of the country, and the rest of the country needs to get there. Not just for pragmatic reasons, but ideological reasons. We need to take on the cult of work directly. And that's MY job, to convince the masses that shifting away from how we do things is a good thing. And that's where Yang's activism falls flat. To some extent he is trying to pull the cart before the horse. And im sad to say that the country isn't there yet.
Heck that's why Im fighting so hard for Joe Biden lately. It's not that I LIKE him. He's okay, but that's all I think of him. I just recognize if he loses that our movement will be set backwards, not forwards, and that rocking the boat when sharks are in the water and they smell blood (sharks being republicans) isnt the best of ideas if you care about your long term survival. I might be willing to rock the boat if there arent any sharks, or if the sharks arent dangerous for whatever reason, but the MAGA movement is like blood lusted psycho sharks, so we can't risk that strategy at this time. "Teaching the dems a lesson" this time will just teach them that they gotta move further right and away from the crazy boat tippers.
And yeah. It's hard either way. Making progress in this country is difficult, because our country isn't set up for that in many many ways. Whether it be the structure of society, its ideological divides, the incentive system, etc., it's hard to just get what you want. It literally is like pulling teeth out of the mouth of a blood lusted shark trying to rip your arm off. It's frustrating. Anyway, I do wanna try to dial back criticism from here on with Yang. He's trying in his own way. I disagree with his strategy to some extent, but at least I know he hasn't lost himself. He's still advocating for things behind the scenes and he's a really good guy. And yeah. Just wanted to say that.
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