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As artificial intelligence drives fresh excitement in the tech world, major figures such as Elon Musk are reviving an old political fantasy: universal basic income. The idea has drawn support from a strange coalition, from progressive politicians like Andrew Yang to libertarian thinkers like Charles Murray.

To its advocates, UBI is the obvious answer to a future in which machines displace human labor. But beneath the sleek language of innovation lies the same old welfare-state promise: material comfort in exchange for dependence. Its supporters speak as though it were the natural companion of progress. In reality, it threatens to rob millions of the work, structure, and purpose that give life meaning.

UBI attracts supporters for very different reasons. For Andrew Yang and others on the left, it promises relief from poverty through guaranteed cash transfers. For Charles Murray, it has represented a simpler and more streamlined alternative to the sprawling welfare state. For Elon Musk and many AI boosters, UBI solves the problem of those with too little cognitive ability to compete, left behind in an increasingly IQ-based economy.

Their motives differ, but they share a revealing assumption: that UBI is an inevitable response to progress rather than a political choice with deep moral and social consequences. In each case, the individual is treated less as a citizen with duties and aspirations than as a materialist problem to be managed.

Welfare for all

A version of UBI basically already exists in the United States. With the vast web of interlocking welfare programs offered by the state for things like disability, poverty, child care, minority status, and educational attainment, most people can find a way to qualify for assistance with food or housing. It might not provide a comfortable or desirable life, but if someone doesn’t want to work to survive in America, they often do not have to.

For many people, the state has become not a temporary backstop but a long-term provider. That arrangement may keep some households afloat, but it has not produced a flourishing class of free and self-governing citizens. It has more often produced dependence, passivity, and bureaucratic management.

The case for UBI made by many AI enthusiasts bears a familiar resemblance to the old socialist dream. Human labor may become unnecessary, they say, but machine-driven abundance will replace what is lost. Freed from drudgery, ordinary people will devote themselves to art, philosophy, travel, community, and self-cultivation. The nation will become a republic of fulfilled and creative souls, all liberated from economic necessity. It is an attractive vision. It is also the same old fantasy that material abundance can dissolve the harder facts of human nature.

The idea that AI can produce the predicted level of abundance is itself a huge, untested assumption.

Man is not a machine

AI is well-suited to handling many managerial tasks and repetitive interactions. It is far less capable in situations that require judgment, responsibility, dexterity, trust, and adaptation to messy reality. Even the systems that do work require expensive hardware, enormous energy consumption, and a dense supporting infrastructure. A country that struggles to maintain basic institutional competence should be wary of fantasies about a nearly labor-free future sustained by flawless technical systems. Before promising a world beyond work, the advocates of UBI should first show that the machinery behind that world can actually exist.

Even if one grants the premise that AI could replace most labor and generate enough abundance to meet material needs, UBI would still collide with basic truths about human nature. Men do not work merely to eat. Work gives shape to the day, imposes discipline, teaches competence, and anchors identity. People on welfare in the current system are not known for their high propensity to churn out great American novels or breathtaking sculptures. Instead, welfare recipients tend to watch television, play video games, and do drugs with their free time. Idleness, not unleashed creativity, is the fruit most often produced by removing the human need for labor.

Undoubtedly, some genuinely talented people who are trapped in unfulfilling jobs would benefit from this UBI scenario, but for the average person, it would be a disaster. For most people, even imperfect work provides something essential: structure, routine, responsibility, and a recognized place in the world.

Slaves to the tech plantation

A humanity freed from the necessity of labor would see the Pareto Principle run wild, with a small number of talented and driven people benefiting greatly as the rest fall into idleness. The mortality rate of men spikes when they retire because they lose the structure and meaning that had previously defined their lives.

UBI advocates also have a habit of addressing only the survival aspects of economic behavior while ignoring one of its most important functions — status. The status hierarchy is one of the most important aspects of how humans order our societies, and to determine our place within that hierarchy, we play status games.

Occupations can be extremely desirable for the status they confer, not just the resources they provide. A plumber may earn more than a professor, yet many people would still prefer the title and standing that come with academic life. If AI makes a base level of abundance available, people will compete over something to obtain status. Maybe artisanal, hand-manufactured items will become the new marker of status. The point is that these behaviors are hardwired into humans, and we should not expect them to disappear even if we solve the problem suddenly that they initially addressed.

AI enthusiasts rarely consider the consequences of disconnecting the entire production process from humans. Markets currently seek to maintain an equilibrium between human production and human consumption. There are artificial signals and plenty of distortion, but markets are still human-centered. If you decouple the system from human input by placing everyone on UBI, you create a closed techno-commercial feedback loop that no longer needs to be restricted by human concerns. In such a system, the citizen is no longer a participant but a dependent end user. That is not merely an economic shift. It is a transformation in the meaning of social life.

The danger grows sharper once one considers the political power UBI would concentrate in the state. The U.S. government already plays favorites, denying business loans, college scholarships, mortgage assistance, and other benefits to races, religions, or political affiliations that it finds undesirable. Every payment can become a point of pressure. Every dependency can become a tool of compliance.

It should be obvious that the state would become even more abusive if it became the only distributor of economic goods and services. Incredibly, socialists, libertarians, and techno capitalists can all make the same mistake, though it is not that surprising once you realize the underlying error. Their ideologies differ, but all are tempted by the same thin view of man as a creature defined mainly by material needs. But man is not a machine to be provisioned. We are more than just inputs and outputs; we are creatures who require meaning and purpose. That is something that a universal basic income can never give.

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The post Exclusive — Colin Madine: Breitbart Readers Can Force Google’s Hand Despite Ongoing Censorship  appeared first on Breitbart.

Here's the latest developments in the Irna conflict...

Today is April 20, a day of celebration for marijuana enthusiasts everywhere. But did you ever wonder how it came to be?

It's 1971 in Northern California, and a bunch of kids at San Rafael High School are on the hunt for a vast treasure: a secret patch of marijuana plants hidden in the backcountry of nearby Point Reyes.

Chinese organized crime has come to dominate the illegal marijuana trade across the country.

See, an older guy they know has been growing it, but now he's worried that he's going to get busted. So he tells the kids they can harvest it all and keep it — free of charge. He even draws them a map.

Every day after classes, they meet at the statue of Louis Pasteur to continue the search — always around 4:20 p.m. They begin using this as code to talk about the project. First "Louie 420," later shortened to just "420."

One of the kids has an older brother who is friends with Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh. They all start hanging out with the band, and "420" catches on as a sort of all-purpose slang for stoner culture. Later some genius figures out that "420" looks like the date 4/20, i.e. April 20, and here we are.

Oh, and those kids never did find the magical weed farm. And 55 years later, I think I know why. Ready to have your mind blown?

There was no marijuana crop. The guy just thought it was funny to send some dumb high-schoolers on a wild goose chase — complete with a corny treasure map. He and his buddies probably laughed about it once, then forgot about it. Meanwhile, these scrubs are combing through the poison oak in search of their dank El Dorado for weeks.

So when you think about it, 420 is a monument to how gullible and dumb smoking weed makes you.

Also, I've just been informed that today is April 23.

Sorry. Ever since they legalized weed out here in California, you can't roll down your car window without being forced to inhale some sickly sweet cannabis vapors. Everyone in Los Angeles has caught a secondhand high, whether they want to or not.

That's why I don't know what day it is, and that's why it just took me three hours — as well as two "Columbo" episodes and a bag of Funyuns — to write the preceding paragraphs.

Here are some other reasons legalization was a bad idea.

1. This isn’t your parents’ marijuana

Sorry, libertarians, but the whole legalization debate was built on a product that barely exists any more. In the 1970s, levels of THC (the chemical that makes you enjoy jazz music) hovered around 2%-3%. Today, it’s routine to find 15% to 20% THC in your classic "flower" — that green stuff Cheech and Chong smoked.

And nowadays we have a whole new lineup of cannabis concentrates, which can contain up to 60% to 80% THC levels. One minute you're trying to make "The Dark Side of the Moon" sync up with "The Wizard of Oz"; the next you're having a vision quest in the Vons frozen food aisle.

2. The psychosis link is real — and better established now

When it came to pot, former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson was firmly in the "it's just a plant" camp — where any suggestion that marijuana could trigger serious mental health issues was treated as laughable "reefer madness" scare tactics.

Until his wife, at the time a senior psychiatrist at a facility for the criminally mentally ill, made an offhand comment about the latest violent offender she was treating: “Of course he’d been smoking pot his whole life.”

Of course?

That was the moment that sent Berenson digging, ultimately leading to his 2019 book, "Tell Your Children."

What he found wasn’t a fringe theory, but something closer to a quiet consensus inside psychiatry, supported by study after study: Heavy cannabis use is linked to psychosis, and the link gets stronger with potency and frequency.

None of this means marijuana will cause psychosis in most users. But the fact remains that legalization normalized a product that, for a meaningful minority of users, can trigger something serious — and sometimes irreversible.

This is a trade-off that rarely makes it into the cultural conversation — and never into the marketing.

RELATED: Charlie Kirk urges Trump to reconsider reclassifying marijuana: 'Protect public spaces for kids'

White House photo

3. Legalization didn't replace the black market

One of the simplest arguments for legalization was also one of the most intuitive: If you make marijuana legal, the illegal market disappears.

But that didn't happen.

Take California, the country’s largest legal cannabis market. State analysts and industry observers still estimate the illicit trade to be as large as or larger than the legal one. The reasons aren’t mysterious.

Illegal sellers don’t test, tax, or restrict — so they can move faster and sell cheaper. They can also use banned, highly toxic pesticides to maximize crop yields. This tainted weed often ends up on dispensary shelves right next to regulated dope.

Because enforcement focuses on still-illegal drugs like meth and heroin, the marijuana black market offers an attractive opportunity for criminal networks. Chinese organized crime in particular has come to dominate the illegal marijuana trade across the country — trafficking Chinese nationals to work the farms.

4. 'Not addictive' is not really true

“Weed isn’t addictive” has become one of the most repeated — and least examined — claims in the legalization era.

It’s true in a narrow, clinical sense: Marijuana doesn’t typically produce the kind of severe physical dependence associated with opioids or alcohol. But that’s not the only way habits take hold.

What is more common — and easier to miss — is behavioral dependence, building routines around use that are hard to break, even without dramatic withdrawal symptoms.

Research from agencies like the National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that roughly three in 10 users develop cannabis use disorder — a figure that rises with daily use and higher-potency products.

It's a widespread crisis that is all the more insidious for how undramatic it is: a gradual narrowing of motivation, attention, and energy.

Harrison Smith is LIVE right now taking YOUR calls & delivering full-spectrum coverage of breaking news and exclusive information the Deep State doesn't want you to hear!

A glass of beer can provide "substantial levels" of an essential brain-boosting vitamin in your diet, according to research published in a respected German journal.

The post Cheers! German Study Finds Hidden Health Benefit in a Glass of Beer appeared first on Breitbart.

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