[ExI] My review of Eliezer Yudkowsky's new book (UBI)

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: spike at rainier66.com <spike at rainier66.com> 
Sent: Sunday, 5 October, 2025 1:02 PM
To: 'John Clark' <johnkclark at gmail.com>
Cc: 'ExI chat list' <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>; spike at rainier66.com
Subject: RE: [ExI] My review of Eliezer Yudkowsky's new book (UBI)

 

 

 

From: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com <mailto:johnkclark at gmail.com> > 
Subject: Re: [ExI] My review of Eliezer Yudkowsky's new book (UBI)

 

>>…Spike I honestly don't get it. You are giving me almost exactly the same arguments you gave me five years ago before the jaw-dropping developments in AI had occurred…

 

 

>…Ja, but it isn’t an argument.  Rather a question: if we just borrow it, why not just borrow more?  Then we don’t need the insane bother and infrastructure of a tax code, an accounting industry, any of that…

 

 

 

 

John as I recall from five years ago, you didn’t have the answer to that question then either.

 

If the government can just borrow more, and the US debt limit isn’t real or isn’t meaningful, why do the silly goofs in the US congress keep periodically pretending to shut down government when that debt limit is reached?

 

That whole exercise makes no sense.  Can’t they just borrow more to pay for their agenda and provide us with whatever we want?  Why bother with the silly charade they pretend is a government shutdown?

 

spike

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

>…The asteroid is already visible even in the daytime sky and is about to slam into Chicxulub, and you're still worried about trivialities like who will pay for what…

 

I wouldn’t worry about it if I could just borrow more.  Then I would just pay for it.  But just credit limits happen.

 

>…This isn't 2020, we are living in a different world now, a different galaxy! 

 

John K Clark

 

Eh, not really, and that is where I was going with it back then: who picks up the risk cost in the event that the world doesn’t end?

 

>From what I can tell, the world didn’t end.  So who just pays for that?  I want my money, for suspecting the world would just not end.

 

Advances occurred, cool ones.  But it is still the same world, and we haven’t found any easy solutions to who pays for the money the fed borrowed five years ago and thirty years ago.  Interest costs have climbed, and that cost now dominates the Federal budget.  

 

Now I still don’t know why, if there is no credit limit, why they can’t just borrow more.  Why not just borrow it then, and leave us out of it?  Oh wait, by the way Federal government, just pay us all UBI, and just pay for that too, if you really have no limit on your credit.

 

John, that looks to me like a logical contradiction.

 

Of course the Federal government has a credit limit.  Evidence is seen currently in our pretend government “shutdown,” the periodic government version of World Wrestling Entertainment.  Sure it is kinda fun to watch if one is in the mood for silliness, but it really leads back to the original question: if that borrowing limit is just an illusion, and the real credit limit is infinite, why do Americans pay taxes?  The suckers!  Can’t the feds just borrow more?  Why just not?

 

spike

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Sun, Oct 5, 2025 at 3:19 PM <spike at rainier66.com <mailto:spike at rainier66.com> > wrote:

 

 

From: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com <mailto:johnkclark at gmail.com> > 
Sent: Sunday, 5 October, 2025 12:05 PM
To: spike at rainier66.com <mailto:spike at rainier66.com> 
Cc: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] My review of Eliezer Yudkowsky's new book (UBI)

 

 

On Sun, Oct 5, 2025 at 2:17 PM <spike at rainier66.com <mailto:spike at rainier66.com> > wrote:

 

>… I couldn't comment on Nancy Reagan's proposed solution to the illegal drug problem, "just don't do drugs"….

 

That strategy works, with or without the just.  The proper quote however is “Just say no.”

 

 

…

 

>…Then we simply borrow some more…

 

OK but who gets the profit from accepting the risk of that?

 

>…That's the strategy we've used during the 21st-century and during most of the 20th, and it seems to have worked pretty well…

 

Oh on the contrary sir.  It has led us into catastrophe in the USA because it didn’t cover the risk that the world would not end.

 

>…The only time the US has had a balanced budget was four years during the Clinton administration…

 

Ja, it was a miracle!  Or not: it was an accounting trick, as was pointed out by a German investor friend.  The USA didn’t magically balance its budget.  It arranged to have the Social Security surplus counted as revenue, which it really isn’t.  That is a retirement fund.  Now we are borrowing money to pay that back, running up huge interest costs, which surpassed national defense, is now pulling up alongside Medicare, charging toward exceeding Social Security costs.

 

It is easy to see now that Elon was right: cut this budget severely, cut it now, cut it hard.  Otherwise, the federal government does nothing but collect money to service its own debt, at which time it cannot borrow money, because investors see the risk going exponential.  They will not loan.

 

>… but that's not a very good advertisement for having a balanced budget.   John K Clark

 

If we argue that it is not necessary to balance the budget, we are left with some explanation for why we need taxes.  Can’t the government just borrow the money it needs?  Why not?

 

spike

 

 

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