America‘s Reality Check

If you are aware of many big issues and how they are related, do you want them to just keep getting worse while someone else perpetuates them for profit? Or do you speak up—however you can?

We like to use the internet to keep track of trends, connect the dots and see how different things are related.

My own trend-watching started with futurism and a fascination of /r/futurology updates. I curated a list: “Big Thoughts & Breakthroughs”. The idea was to keep track of any new major step forward for civilization, it was quite astonishing! It inspired me to compile this video.

But one day all those inspiring updates came to a halt. I began to see that

the issues facing our society and humanity were starting to outweigh progress. The list of issues just kept expanding.

I was still highly skeptical that progress was outpacing regression though, some would say I was still blinded by technological progress as I was watching Kurzweil videos about the singularity.

The first thing studied at that point was the reality of man-made climate change or as I now call it “global heat death”…The science was sound, and sobering. It is very real. How can we avoid and resolve these major risks?

It became apparent to me that there were hundreds of other severely problematic and very real issues developing here in the USA and several other nations, besides the much bigger and deadly ones like global heat death.

Instead of technology curation, I began searching for ways to resolve and reverse all the disturbing trends. If you look at /r/futurology today you may notice none of the top links actually acknowledge these problems or work to prevent these societal, cultural, and environmental regressions. (Like it used to with things like https://www.thevenusproject.com)

This concern for my future, and our futures, activated me to begin advocating for transitions to renewables and political platforms that attempted to address the majority of issues I was now concerned about.

The same issues I felt everyone else should be concerned about too.

Surely everyone is concerned about these issues? Well, that simply isn’t the case, as many people are unaware of the magnitude of distress that is now interposing the U.S… I already wrote in-depth about my journey into this and investigating solutions.

I, like many others, discovered the Sanders campaign platform. Interestingly, his big speeches highlighted many issues that were also being discussed by the Green Party platform. Not only that, even Libertarian candidate Johnson was attempting to tackle some of the same issues. Johnson’s campaign was even considering a seemingly radical idea called UBI: the idea of ensuring nobody ever lives below the poverty line.

I had not heard of UBI yet.

However, as it turned out, UBI actually addressed many of the issues on multiple of the big political platforms, including many from the Sanders campaign:

This image is now outdated, and I’ve since learned UBI *can* help in almost all of these issues, and more.

But what actually is Universal Basic Income (UBI)?

Before reading any further, my biggest hope to you is that you take a moment to fully comprehend what UBI is too:

It wasn’t long after these sobering political and global realizations that I felt that everyone needs to get involved in advocating for Universal Basic Income.

I mean that, everyone. Yes, you reading this, too! If you’ve gone ahead and read those links above, and you have doubts and concerns and more questions, that’s normal, but I urge you to please read all the links on this list: You will see that the evidence for UBI is mounting.

People like Scott Santens have had a foundational income floor for quite some time now, so if you’re skeptical you absolutely have to read this:

We should really listen to those who are already experiencing life with a foundational income floor.

During 2016 for me these massive and very real social, cultural, political, and environmental issues were now becoming hard to ignore, by that I mean in daily life. Some of them began affecting me and everyone I know, even if they didn’t quite see or understand why just yet. It became difficult to go a day without being directly affected by some kind of political issue or point—despite often trying my best to focus on my own work and own initiatives and turning off any news sources, and despite hoping and wishing they would just resolve themselves. They won’t.

They popped up even while out shopping or at a restaurant, overhearing people complaining about extortion, excessive hours, or never being able to afford a home or vehicle. 2017 has come and nearly gone and things have only gotten worse. It seems as though I have had a glimpse of what is to come, and honestly it just doesn’t look good. I needed to act.

We need to act.

I did act. People all over the world are speaking up about UBI, too. There are even individuals like Paco Vega, who is has been on a hunger strike for basic income. (@Vega77Paco)

So now it has come time for me to write out this new sobering post that mentions many of the issues and upcoming ones… and how UBI can help start the process of resolving them. I sincerely and truly hope you will decide to act in some way very soon.

This is America’s wake up call. America’s reality check. Every point below has links with more details regarding the (very real) issues.

I recommend viewing the links to see just how real the issues are, because some people that I have shown have dismissed the issues as “not real” and focus on how “we are living in the greatest time in history” while burying their heads in overtime work.

I think people are mistaking the awareness and visibility of these issues as ‘dark times’ or the ‘late stage of capitalism’ instead of a moment in history where society is sobering up to, and shining a light on, very real issues it must swiftly confront and solve now or risk diving much deeper into turmoil and regression.

I must stress that it is normal to feel anger or frustration over these issues and very tempting to throw blame, point fingers, despise trade, and get caught up in daily rants about how bad things are while others are experiencing survivorship bias. While it is important to recognize the issues themselves and highlight the perpetrators who do intentional wrongs, it is even more important to suggest and act on simple and effective solutions that have now been proven to be effective in pushing back against regression.

Here I will attempt to explain now what just a few of the big issues I feel are, and how with UBI we can begin to push back against regression.