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

[Adrian Tymes]

On Mon, Oct 6, 2025 at 10:23 AM spike jones via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> 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?

While the current borrowing limit is self-imposed, there is a larger,
externally-imposed limit it would eventually run into, with
increasingly serious consequences short of that.  Said consequences
could - and, history shows, would - chip away at the American
government's ability to govern under its own rules: "sovereignty", as
it's called.  The folks in government are unwilling to cede control of
America to whoever they're borrowing from.  Whether that's noble
(America for America's sake) or selfish (American government for the
American government's sake) is beside the point.

The self-imposed limit is what they think they can get away with,
without too much of that.  In their eyes, risking shutdown is better
than risking giving up control.