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I haven't read Humankind yet, but a recent review I have read[0] gives a mix of positives and negatives to it. A lot of the cited studies are controversial in their own right: S.L.A. Marshall's claim that only 15% of soldiers in WW2 fired their weapons is based on subjective evidence, omits mention of whether they had any opportunity to fire, and has many other flaws that have since been picked apart, for example.

This is not to say that our negativity is justified! Only that Bregman seems to have as persistent a bias to positivity as other writers have to negativity.

[0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-human...

Anthropologist Joseph Henrik has a theory about H.Sapiens vs Neanderthal using a Copycat vs Genius metaphor explained in the book Humankind [1]

Copycats are 10x more social
Geniuses are 100x more inventive

1 in a 1000 Copycats will invent a new fishing rod but will share this knowledge with 10 others

1 in 10 Geniuses will invent the new rod and only teach to 1 other

Given a 50% sucess rate for learning:

A max of 1 in 5 Geniuses will ever have the new Fishing Rod knowledge in a population (50% invented and 50% learned)

Copycats will get to 99.9%

[1] Humankind: A Hopeful History https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52879286-humankind

also

[2]https://aeon.co/essays/forget-the-lone-genius-it-s-copycats-...

Every system I have ever heard of has the "system will crash in the future" fear. Capitalism will eat up all the resources and pollute us to death. Democracy will lead to mob rule. Philosopher kings get replaced with crappy kings. Social security was supposed to have gone bankrupt several times by now.

The thing about UBI is that it in no way, shape or form, prevents people from doing whatever is needed or profitable.

There are a number of people which have sufficient funds to live off $1000 a month and they continue to work. Heck, even the bloggers who talk up such schemes are still producing something of value to the society.

Humans like to work, just not necessarily for a boss. A UBI removes any disincentive from working and allows you to keep what you make except for the tax rate unlike welfare which taxes income at 100% . It allows you to be creative. Right now, we are ignoring the contributions of millions, if not billions of people because they are kept at the edge of survival. Imagine if we created a world that allowed all the billions of the world to contribute imaginatively, cooperatively, and productively. That is what UBI promises, but it does require faith and trust in humanity (read Rutger Bregman's Humankind book for a primer as to how to shed the lies we've been told about human nature).

As for hard maintenance of systems, that will probably cost more to pay people to do it, but it seems very reasonable to reward essential hard work more than we do now.

One final thought. What do you expect you or others you know would do if you had $1000 a month per person in your family given? Maybe some would want to sit around for decades doing nothing, but that personally sounds like an awful life to me and I suspect most would agree.

> So a great story but I don't know how much can be extrapolated from it about human behaviour in general.

Given that this really happened, a lot.

Lord of the Flies came out of the fantasy of an English superintendent. Yet, it has permeated our culture as a cautionary tale about human behavior. It is 100% fiction.

I’d like to recommend Humankind by Rutger Bregman - a wonderful book dismantling the toxic narratives we have about ourselves.