The Permanent Underclass is not as bad as one might think

You wake up. You brush your teeth. You do whatever you want all day long. Sounds freaking good right? That's the permanent underclass for you.

The permanent underclass is the idea that you will live your life on universal basic income, you will not own any assets, and you will be happy. My question is, what's wrong with that?

One huge presumption people make when thinking about the permanent underclass is that everyone there will be addicted to cheap dopamine, be unfit, have low agency, and their behaviour will be dictated by the algorithm. That's simply wrong. Why would that even be the base case?

Humans have had access to leisure before and didn't universally collapse into degeneracy. The aristocracy of 18th century Europe didn't work. Plenty of them wrote, composed, philosophized, traveled, became obsessive horticulturalists. Some were useless, sure. But the "freed from labor = inevitable decay" assumption has been tested before and the results were mixed at best. This time is different, huh?

The idea of permanent underclass sounds like a psyop straight out of SF hustle culture to fool unsuspecting young, desperate for success dudes who want to also sound a lil philosophical while they're at it. The guys who are developing the algos or have a stake in the algos are the ones pushing this idea. They are obviously incentivized to do so. That's a remarkable amount of confidence in human weakness from the people most actively engineering it.

The idea that one needs to be a high agency math god building the next revolutionary tech product to be "worth" something is extremely flawed. One must choose to do what they desire, and if that's just chilling, hanging out with the boys over a few beers and some FIFA, then so be it.

Don't get psyop'd by these vultures anon, live your life on your terms regardless of what these people say or predict.