"It was hard to end slavery, but it was not impossible. It is impossible, though, to change the law of entropy.”

If the device on which I'm reading this would have allowed me to highlight, then the above quote would have been one of several that I would have singled out.

I loved the article and found little to disagree with, though I wasn't entirely convinced by Ng's criticisms of UBI (which could anyway live alongside CBI perfectly well in my view) - I felt there was a flavour of the view that has been ingrained of 'money for nothing' 'encouraging the lazy not to work' etc etc.

I'm not aware of any serious research that supports this in the form it is fed to us by populist media where it is always the 'poor' (aka too lazy to earn money) who are cast as the lazy ne'er-do-wells without the wit the become valuable members of society. Yet, if examples are needed of society's drones who live off others and make no useful contribution, then all the ones worth mentioning come from the ranks of the privileged, draining societies resources on unearned money while giving back nothing of value.

But that was a side issue to a good article and I've made note of the book.