Free food, free shelter, free TV, free health-care, free dental, free gym membership, no need for a car, no utility bills, low environmental impact per person, the watchful authorities rarely fail to observe crime in progress.
Sounds like paradise? I described a prison. Oh, mind that you can only eat what the authorities deem is acceptable, your residence is standardized and equal in size to those of your neighbors, your TV only shows the content the authorities deem appropriate, you have little choice in employment because the authorities assign you work, etc.
This is the reality those “enlightened” few wish to move Europe and America towards. Glorified slavery - not slavery to one man, but slavery to “all men” (the collective state). One votes for the kindest master, for the one who promises to set the chains loosest and set the whip softest. The Hegelian “rational society” lies at the confluence of fascist, socialist, and communist ideals, promising to transform the fear, challenges, uncertainty, and pain of the individual into a collective geist. It is the height of nihilistic historicism to seek to supplant the individual with the collective. hoping to bring about some “ideal form” for a state.
They will achieve only a social boneyard.
I’m sort of startled to see even the very liberal SF Chronicle spewing this sort of madness.