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

[John Clark]

On Mon, Oct 6, 2025 at 10:21 AM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:


> *>>…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.*
>

*As I recall back then I insisted there is a difference between saying
having a perfectly balanced budget is neither necessary nor desirable, and
saying the budget deficit can be infinitely large with no unfortunate
consequences. Things have changed but you still can't have an infinite
discrepancy between money taken in and money spent, but the discrepancy can
be arbitrarily large. Well OK… to be honest if you start talking about the
cost of building a Dyson sphere before Christmas then things might get a
little dicey economically, but other than that I'm not worried. *

*John K Clark *
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