Ooh! I’m going with any one not able to fully fund current social security entitlements with current tax / national income (sovereign wealth funds accepted) as failing. SA meets that definition.
With that definition I think probably the United States meets it as well. But I guess that also assumes that it's the role of the state to fund social security entitlements. What do you think? I generally think it's not (but I'm an anarcho-capitalist), with the one exception that it has an obligation to keep its promises to people who have relied on the idea of social security.
On the "money printer monopoly": that is the basic problem. Redefining money. I do not have a solution for that. But the more time passes, the more I am sure that until THAT problem is solved, UBI in any format, and lots of other things cannot be solved, not even theoretically. I elaborated on this here:
"Is this a socialist or a capitalist idea, and does it really matter if it works?"
if a real reboot of money happens, probably that whole question becomes moot, I suspect
Last but not least, this is a trick question, right?
"What is worse: the obviously unfair endowments and outcomes of a meritocracy, or the risks of centrally owned economies where the gains of the productive reward the unproductive?"
because there would be (simplyfiying a LOT, of course) 50% of people who would tell some version of "the unproductive are the 1%" and the others who would say the opposite, no?
Would you say South Africa is a failing state? What other non-obvious countries are in IYO?
Ooh! I’m going with any one not able to fully fund current social security entitlements with current tax / national income (sovereign wealth funds accepted) as failing. SA meets that definition.
Oops, I completely missed this.
With that definition I think probably the United States meets it as well. But I guess that also assumes that it's the role of the state to fund social security entitlements. What do you think? I generally think it's not (but I'm an anarcho-capitalist), with the one exception that it has an obligation to keep its promises to people who have relied on the idea of social security.
On the "money printer monopoly": that is the basic problem. Redefining money. I do not have a solution for that. But the more time passes, the more I am sure that until THAT problem is solved, UBI in any format, and lots of other things cannot be solved, not even theoretically. I elaborated on this here:
https://stop.zona-m.net/2020/08/on-work-money-and-purpose-part-3/
"Is this a socialist or a capitalist idea, and does it really matter if it works?"
if a real reboot of money happens, probably that whole question becomes moot, I suspect
Last but not least, this is a trick question, right?
"What is worse: the obviously unfair endowments and outcomes of a meritocracy, or the risks of centrally owned economies where the gains of the productive reward the unproductive?"
because there would be (simplyfiying a LOT, of course) 50% of people who would tell some version of "the unproductive are the 1%" and the others who would say the opposite, no?
Alas - yes, the questions are designed to highlight our seemingly unsurpassable binary tribalism - and hope to hint at a middle path as yet un-taken.