Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I read somewhere a long while back that UBI is a non-solution to wealth inequality. IIRC if you don't also radically change the rest of the regressive tax structures then the supply of cash still gets funneled upward. Most of the hype is from PR and the inherent good vibes of getting a check in the mail.
Don't get me wrong, they signed up to ooh-rah bomb brown people. But it hits a little different when, statistically, a portion of them are literally from these cities. There's an insular camaraderie in the military and they're pulled from a diverse background by design. You can't just drop a battalion on a city and expect them to behave themselves like a Texas National Guard in Oregon.
I'm also not claiming this is a good thing. A military junta doesn't make for kind and benevolent rulers, but wouldn't be bad in the same ways as the current administration.
He already functionally has full control of the country since there are no checks against him. Him getting a stamp of approval to ignore the rule of law doesn't change anything except giving his lawyers more time to golf instead of pushing court papers.
The real fight here is over optics. He's very visibly cannibalising and deconstructing the federal government and forcing constitutional crisis by marching ICE/National Guard around peaceful streets. When he has his shiny insurrection papers he can now march out the military as well, which is the only way he can exert real political control. Stochastic terrorism and 20k ICE thugs can't occupy a nation of 340 million.
But the thing is the military isn't ICE. They didn't sign up to wander around Chicago arresting maids and line cooks. They need a real, genuine, convincing reichstag fire or armed opposition to keep those soldiers from wondering why they're patrolling the streets and shooting dissidents for the emperor with no clothes. If you can't convince them to be fully on board the maga train then it gets very difficult to hold your kangaroo court to purge the left. That is going to be much more interesting than any phony act or simple declaration of martial law.
I think a lot of people are buying into the image of white guy + tac vest + gun = ICE = fed = military. These things are in no way equal but it's an important part of the administration's plans for you to imagine they are.
ICE is a big bark and a little bite. These people have minimal/no training, they are literally angry thugs on a power trip. Step back and actually think about the outrageous operations and headlines you see.
They're tough guys when they outnumber you or are tackling a 70 year old nanny, but when faced with a critical mass of opposition they tuck tail and run. The only thing they have going for them is the costume and a gun.
Turns out that watching a bunch of conspiracy videos about how brown people ruin America doesn't make you a tough guy. What actually does make you tough is years of drilling, specialized training, decades of institutional knowledge, engaging in real combat, etc. So we're back to the eternal truth: the military are the true kingmakers of the state.
In terms of personal safety you still need to watch out for ICE on the streets. However, in terms of political power they're a paper tiger. They could never lock down a city or shut down an election without massive military support. Whether the military would lend that support is an open question, but certainly not without a compelling reason (beyond the POTUS decrees it)
Oh he'll for sure be propped up and wheeled around indefinitely, but it's basically confirmed he's getting more frequent TIAs and worse recoveries despite his treatment. Real question is how bad is the next puppet going to be once he croaks.
It's a massive privacy/surveillance concern. Look at the issues that come with doorbell cams and now multiply the number of cameras and scatter them all over
It's another platform for mega corporations to track and sell data to advertisers or any malicious actors, but at an entirely new intrusive level. They no longer have to approximate what's getting your attention when they literally know what has your attention. Good luck anonymizing or hiding your usage when you can't spoof the real world in front of you.
It's unnecessary e-waste, at best providing the exact same functionality you'd get from your phone with the added benefit of... not reaching into your pocket? You still need a free hand to use it...
It's a distraction in a way that other tech can't touch. Pedestrians/drivers getting notifications shoved directly into their eyes won't end well.
It probably has all the same inherent problems as previous generations of smart glasses. Primarily: your eyes aren't designed for extended/repeated focus on an image less than an inch from your face and at the edge of your vision
For 20+ years it's been (de facto) against the law for the stock market to go down. The only exceptions are pump & dumps to keep the poors out, but otherwise any drop in our glorious free market will be manually corrected by Uncle Sam.
I did skim through, it's entirely focused on the Democrat failure as opposition with no acknowledgement of his/his employers culpability on hyper-normalization. If he cares so much, he could do something with his platform beyond hitting the same worn out Democrat punching bad that they've hammered for decades.
I think your description is utopian because it distills civilization (and by extension the universe) into a stable system in an ideal balance. Any society has to exist within its material constraints and those limits invariably devolve and shift through entropy.
Socialism (and basically all early-modern political theory) was born in a time of incredible scientific advancement. It has an implicit axiom that all factors can be solved and accounted for, and by doing so we can asymptomatically approach a perfect society.
But we know a lot more now and can prove that's just not possible. Our physical reality imposes instability on society whether we like it or not. An unstoppable, aggressive blight could destroy the agricultural output of an entire continent. Suddenly it's just not possible to give to each according to their need and only the most insular and asocial pockets of civilization survive.
There's no amount of creativity or human goodwill that can weather the unfathomable forces beyond our control. I mean, what happens to our carefully crafted socialist society when the earth's magnetic poles flip. Or when the moon finally drifts away from the earth and permanently ends our seasonal stability. Or when the sun explodes or we deplete Earth's finite resources or etc...
I don't say all of this to be unreasonably pessimistic or nihilistic, but to point out that these ideological theories are fundamentally unsound. Our current world does desperately need these socialist policies, but dogmatic adherence to them as indelible rules is counter productive.
In my opinion we should focus on instilling basic guiding principles and solve our problems in any way that satisfies as many as possible. Some off the top of my head, in a rough ordering:
Maximize political engagement and representation
Minimize our ecological footprint and don't develop an over reliance on any resource
Preserve and extend our scientific knowledge
Delegate labor and distribute resources as equitably as possible
Limit restrictions on personal freedom
You'll almost never be able to satisfy every principle, but establishing something like that as a baseline allows for good faith discussion and decision-making without the need to villify your opposition.
All gerrymandering works on suppression by dilution so it's a fine line to tread. When they try to scramble a solid blue city into 3 red districts, for example, there's a good chance that you cut it incorrectly and end up with 1-3 blue seats.
Trying to turn a whole state one color is really playing with fire, especially when you're churning out deeply unpopular policies the whole time. I'm sure everything will wash out with supplemental election tampering anyway, but this gerrymandering might not be as impactful as it's made out to be.
There's a lot of comments about how digital devices are viable/helpful for note-taking and just as good as a pen. I think that's missing the crucial point: virtually every device we own today is designed as a distraction machine.
A pen + paper isn't going have any notifications or reminders or updates or emails or texts or ads or alarms or alerts. If there's any device without those that's as reliable and as cheap as a notebook, I've never heard of it.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I read somewhere a long while back that UBI is a non-solution to wealth inequality. IIRC if you don't also radically change the rest of the regressive tax structures then the supply of cash still gets funneled upward. Most of the hype is from PR and the inherent good vibes of getting a check in the mail.