Date: July 9th, 2026 7:15 PM
Author: self-centered unholy school cafeteria
"When the Citizen’s Dividend was first passed, people found it shameful to quit their job and live off government largesse. But the changing economic situation steamrolled over the stigma: By now, only 26% of Americans have jobs.
What is life like for the majority of Americans now living off their dividend?
Many of the world’s evils have dramatically reduced. Malnutrition, lack of medicine, and homelessness are nearly banished. Many diseases have been cured. Crime rates are lower than ever before.
Meanwhile, most of the good things in life continue. For example, finding romance, or raising a family. People also find meaning in hobbies and competitions, and in learning and trying new things. People are wealthier and have more free time, plus there are new technologies that help, like AI matchmakers, better medicine, and AI tutors.153 And of course even the poorest people can now afford exotic vacations, amazing games, and enthralling entertainment.
People used to get meaning from feeling like they were useful, like they were contributing something to society. That feeling is harder to come by these days.
But it’s not completely gone. There are still problems in the world, and you can still contribute to solving them, partly by donating or volunteering but primarily by being politically active.154 Your vote is your most important asset.
The honest AI forecasters are helpful here. Years ago, if an AI said that one presidential candidate was better than another, people would suspect bias and the embarrassed company would retrain the AI to evade such questions. Now, thanks to transparency and improved alignment techniques, there are much smarter AIs that people can see don’t have any biases trained into them,155 that have built up an excellent track record over several years. When they weigh in on policy questions, people listen, especially when different AIs trained by different companies converge to the same answer.
These AIs say that normal people no longer have significant economic leverage over the future; human labor is largely obsolete. This puts their political leverage in jeopardy.156 There’s still a chance that things will trend towards techno-oligarchy as corporations, politicians, and wealthy shareholders get in bed with each other and gradually disempower the common folk.
But for the first time, enough people have enough freedom from the daily struggle to think about the situation deeply, and the tools to chart it clearly and work through the implications. So the quality of political discourse improves. During the 2036 election season, voters are unprecedentedly well-informed, and the politicians that win have a genuine commitment to responsible stewardship of the upcoming singularity."
and then the classroom full of lesswrong dorks stood up and clapped
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5881207&forum_id=2Vannesa#49989308)