It looks like this is a program targeting 10 "at risk" individuals. These are people who, DEMOGRAPHICALLY, would show a greater likelihood of turning to crime in order to live their lives.
They then are paying these people $300 a month in order to commit to the program, which includes stuff like meeting with probation officers, finding a job, and so forth.
This is basically testing the liberal theory that crime is a result of lost opportunities. With a UBI-like stipend, the theory is that less worry about money will allow these people to focus on rebuilding their lives and reduce the "necessity" of crime that these people sometimes feel.
In other words, the money isn't a reward for not shooting people. It's a stipend designed to see if providing a UBI can lift people out of situations that may make them desperate enough to fall into violent crime.
This is just a "UBI reduces criminality" experiment, and again, it looks like it only affects ten people currently.
It's a framing issue. I COULD say that a traffic ticket is just me paying the government for the right to speed whenever I want, but that's not exactly an honest way of framing how it works.
You can Spin it ANY way you like.... its is Still Fucking Communist Bullshit...!! ...There's right and there's wrong...No Inbetween...If you fuck up you face the consequences of your actions... SIMPLE...!Just Obey The Fucking Law...SIMPLE...!
I can absolutely see it from your perspective. These UBI experiments are always going to be controversial for that reason. Many people aren't hugely supportive of paying people for meeting the basic requirements of being a good citizen, but some liberal theories will say that if someone is stuck BELOW those requirements, then we can either just shoot them like a wounded horse, or we can try to find a humane solution that prevents the need to turn to crime in the first place.
And considering the speed at which automation and AI is developing, I wouldn't say that exploring UBI is necessarily a bad thing, even if we separate it from crime. We're heading to a world where cheap machines are going to take over an enormous number of jobs in a capitalistic slaughter, and we have no way to offer these displaced people a way to afford food.
It's not bad to dip our toe into some solutions before we end up with entire states of people out of work when WalMartTron takes over all farming duties in Iowa.
You mention "lost opportunity" but crime is about "bad personal decisions" and those decisions come from a person's character.
There are far more people living in the worst poverty one can imagine that do not end up committing crimes.
I have known people who have everything they need and all opportunity available to them who still commit crime. Just look at Bernie Madoff. While he didn't physically kill anyone, he did much worse. His was a failure of character.
No amount of money is going to give someone the character to make good decisions.
It's definitely worth at least exploring another perspective on this story.
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2021/09/01/san-francisco-mayor-new-programs-financial-incentives-not-cash-criminals/
It looks like this is a program targeting 10 "at risk" individuals. These are people who, DEMOGRAPHICALLY, would show a greater likelihood of turning to crime in order to live their lives.
They then are paying these people $300 a month in order to commit to the program, which includes stuff like meeting with probation officers, finding a job, and so forth.
This is basically testing the liberal theory that crime is a result of lost opportunities. With a UBI-like stipend, the theory is that less worry about money will allow these people to focus on rebuilding their lives and reduce the "necessity" of crime that these people sometimes feel.
In other words, the money isn't a reward for not shooting people. It's a stipend designed to see if providing a UBI can lift people out of situations that may make them desperate enough to fall into violent crime.
This is just a "UBI reduces criminality" experiment, and again, it looks like it only affects ten people currently.
It's a framing issue. I COULD say that a traffic ticket is just me paying the government for the right to speed whenever I want, but that's not exactly an honest way of framing how it works.
You can Spin it ANY way you like.... its is Still Fucking Communist Bullshit...!! ...There's right and there's wrong...No Inbetween...If you fuck up you face the consequences of your actions... SIMPLE...!Just Obey The Fucking Law...SIMPLE...!
I can absolutely see it from your perspective. These UBI experiments are always going to be controversial for that reason. Many people aren't hugely supportive of paying people for meeting the basic requirements of being a good citizen, but some liberal theories will say that if someone is stuck BELOW those requirements, then we can either just shoot them like a wounded horse, or we can try to find a humane solution that prevents the need to turn to crime in the first place.
And considering the speed at which automation and AI is developing, I wouldn't say that exploring UBI is necessarily a bad thing, even if we separate it from crime. We're heading to a world where cheap machines are going to take over an enormous number of jobs in a capitalistic slaughter, and we have no way to offer these displaced people a way to afford food.
It's not bad to dip our toe into some solutions before we end up with entire states of people out of work when WalMartTron takes over all farming duties in Iowa.
You mention "lost opportunity" but crime is about "bad personal decisions" and those decisions come from a person's character.
There are far more people living in the worst poverty one can imagine that do not end up committing crimes.
I have known people who have everything they need and all opportunity available to them who still commit crime. Just look at Bernie Madoff. While he didn't physically kill anyone, he did much worse. His was a failure of character.
No amount of money is going to give someone the character to make good decisions.