I believe UBI is what's going to truly cause the start of high tech, low life on a mass scale when big government, large corporations and banks collude on an unprecedented scale to bring this economic policy about once tech begins seriously replacing people by the millions(this has already begun and will spread into seemingly 'safe' sectors). There will be an uber rich class of elites and then the rest of us.
The idea, doesn't seem to be going away and is actually becoming an increasingly popular solution to future realities of high unemployment levels (and current economic policy failures). UBI is an easy sell to the average person who is, by design, economically illiterate.
Governments, socialist by nature, would jump at the chance to have the populace even more reliant on them. UBI is also a surprisingly popular solution even amongst some prominent billionaires e.g. musk, zuckerberg. There's more but the point is, there's a lot of support for it.
>Here's where the cyberpunk high tech, low life part comes in.
More and more people become effectively useless as tech advancements continues to increase at faster and faster rates, replacing more professions. The fundamental economics behind UBI are broken, (they will inevitably make you poorer and ultimately less than cattle). Supply and demand would be completely distorted, (not to mention the massive increase in people choosing just not to work because why should they) leading to more centralised solutions and control by government and wealth siphoning off to the elite as an ongoing side effect.
However, here's the kicker, as more and more people become comparatively poorer and poorer, their standards of living will remain highly reliant on tech as it continues to get better and better and increasingly used in more of their daily lives than before. The elite especially will become more reliant on high tech solutions. So we're going to have this world of millions of impoverished people heavily reliant on high tech whom (due to economic realities) are forced into shadow economies for tech upgrades, drugs, basic necessities that UBI couldn't provide. High tech, low lives.
I'd advise any young fags here or if yPost too long. Click here to view the full text.