Auron MacIntyre warns: Conservatives are making the same economic mistake that doomed Democrats in 2024



When Biden’s White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre repeatedly downplayed Americans’ frustrations over high milk and egg prices, she helped solidify the voter anger over affordability that directly contributed to the Democratic Party’s electoral damage in 2024.

BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre is concerned the conservatives are now making the same mistake.

“Conservative pundits and influencers are repeating the exact same mistake, telling consumers that everything's fine and only economic illiterates would think grocery, gas, and housing costs are too much,” says MacIntyre.

But this is disastrous messaging, he warns — especially heading into midterm elections.

“Elections aren't won by lecturing voters that their problems are imaginary. This is politics 101,” MacIntyre says. “Professional political actors adopting this strategy months before midterms is both bizarre and dangerous.”

The reality is, most Americans are still struggling in the current economic climate.

“Conservative pundits may produce charts, cite aggregate statistics, and explain that certain indicators look healthy, but none of that will save the GOP any more than it saved the Democrats who insisted that Bidenomics was working,” says MacIntyre.

Right now, he explains, “food, health care, child care, education, insurance, housing, electricity, and gasoline remain punishingly expensive.”

While MacIntyre understands that honesty with voters about the current economic situation is a death sentence for politicians, downplaying the predicament isn’t helping either.

“There's only so much Trump can do about the structural inflation and accumulating debt. He can, however, avoid taking actions that make the problem worse,” he says, pinpointing the ongoing conflict in Iran as a major contributor to America’s economic strife.

But when Americans complain that the war is driving up gas prices and forcing the U.S. to borrow or print tens of billions of dollars to pay for it, they’re called “stupid or selfish” by “the very same pundits” who support the war, he explains.

MacIntyre speculates that these politicians will “blame any disastrous midterm results on the people who oppose the conflict, but the political reality is obvious.”

“The central issue is not that voters have developed a sophisticated position on Iran. Many of them probably care very little about the strategic details. What they do care about is that everything costs more. Telling them that they lack economic literacy has roughly the same electoral appeal as shooting a puppy on live television,” he says.

To hear more, watch the video above.

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‘It is illegal to be white’: Auron MacIntyre calls out white woman’s guilty verdict for using a racial slur



On April 28, 2025, Shiloh Hendrix was at the park with her child when she got into a confrontation with a man after she allegedly called his child a racial slur.

The man began videotaping her, which he later posted to social media where it went viral.

Over a year later, Hendrix has been found guilty of disorderly conduct against the man operating the camera, and BlazeTV host Steve Deace — alongside millions of freedom-loving Americans — isn’t happy with the outcome.

“What does this case tell us about the current state of the culture we’re in?” Deace asks Auron MacIntyre on the “Steve Deace Show.”


“That it is illegal to be white,” he answers, pointing out that the man in the video “was accused of sexual assault against a 16-year-old.”

“So, we have a Somali criminal, sexual assaulter, doing this, creeping on this woman with a child in the park, but she says the same word he does,” he explains. “They both say exactly the same word, but one of them was convicted of a crime for doing that.”

“And the only explanation — there’s literally only one — is that she was convicted for being white. And, of course, we see this conviction alongside Anthony Fauci and his testimony this week. And as nice as it was to see Anthony Fauci embarrassed, we all know that pretty much no penalty is coming for Anthony Fauci,” he says.

“So, we now live in a country where Shiloh Hendrix can be convicted of a crime, but Anthony Fauci can kill millions of people, destroy the economy and the lives of millions of children, and receive no penalty,” he adds.

MacIntyre tells Deace that the justice system is “entirely eroding before our eyes.”

“What she’s being judged for, therefore, is her whiteness, because if two black people were saying this to one another in any context, we wouldn’t be here with any kind of a trial in Minnesota or anywhere else,” Deace comments.

“We would just call it a rap video,” MacIntyre adds. “And that’s obviously the case. This man was harassing a woman with a child in the park. He has a history of [alleged] sexual violence against minors, but she is the violator here.”

“And let’s be clear ... she was found innocent of directing the slur at the child. It was only the slur directed at the man who was harassing her, the [alleged] sexual offender ... who she was ultimately convicted of harassing,” he continues.

“Again, this is just a hate speech law,” he adds.

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The GOP is blowing it with young men



When Democrats lost the 2024 election to Donald Trump, it couldn’t have been clearer that a big reason for their failure was their relentless anger toward young white men — as they even launched a $20 million effort to discover where they went wrong with these men.

However, while this should have been what BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre calls a “golden opportunity for the GOP to secure the loyalty of young men for a generation,” conservatives are instead “setting the opportunity on fire.”

“In a recent Fox News interview, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, blamed the rise of democratic socialism on Gen Z. She said that young people were raised with a silver spoon in their mouth, called them lazy, and suggested sending them to Cuba or Iran,” MacIntyre explains.

Leavitt, who MacIntyre notes “married a millionaire real estate developer more than 30 years her senior,” only made things worse when she tried to defend her comments.


“The message to young people was unmistakable: Your concerns are not legitimate, and we despise you for expecting us to fix anything,” he says.

While there are lazy men in all generations, young white men have a uniquely treacherous hill to climb when it comes to success.

“Young men, especially young white men, have been systematically excluded from educational institutions, corporate hiring, and promotion. These statements aren’t just speculation or resentment. They’re provable fact,” MacIntyre says.

“We have the data. We know what’s going on. And this is the predictable result of decades of cultural indoctrination and civil rights enforcement that trained institutions to prefer women, immigrants, and minorities whenever possible. That has real consequences,” he continues.

“Men who can’t secure education, employment, and status are less likely to marry or form families, no matter how often our culture repeats slogans about equality,” he adds.

But it’s not just empty slogans about equality that are causing the rift.

“Housing has become another barrier,” MacIntyre says. “The average first-time home buyer is now approaching middle age. Young men can’t build wealth as their parents did or provide the stability women often want before marriage.”

“One factor is simply welfare for seniors. Many older Americans failed to save adequately for retirement and now depend on the inflated value of homes they bought decades ago. President Trump has explicitly said he doesn’t want housing prices to fall for that reason,” he explains.

“That’s a deliberate choice to sacrifice young men’s development and family formation to protet older asset holders,” he adds.

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Christopher Nolan’s shocking woke sellout: Weaponizing Homer’s Western classic AGAINST the West



World-renowned director Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” is a big-budget epic adaptation of Homer's ancient Greek poem that follows Odysseus' perilous journey home after the Trojan War. Set to release this July, the film sparked scandal the moment marketing began.

Not only is Helen of Troy, who is described as a fair-skinned Greek woman in the original text, played by Kenyan-Mexican actress Lupita Nyong'o, but Elliot (formerly Ellen) Paige, a biological woman who started identifying as a man in 2020, plays a male character in the film. Although her specific role is unknown, one viral theory claims that she will play the mighty Achilles — the greatest warrior in all of Greek mythology.

BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre was surprised and disappointed when he learned about the direction Nolan’s “Odyssey” would take.

Nolan is “a man whose work has often been described as conservative or even reactionary,” he tells libertarian author and political activist James Keena.

As one of the greatest film directors of the modern age, Nolan, MacIntyre argues, “would have had the authority to tell a studio no” if it was pushing woke ideologies, like race and gender swapping.

“Why is it so hard for even some of the most stalwart directors like Christopher Nolan to avoid this trap?” he asks Keena.

“This is an ongoing assault on Western civilization and the norms of Western civilization. When you look at the story of 'The Odyssey,' it's part of Greek literature. That is one of the foundational things in Western thought,” Keena replies.

He explains that Homer’s central hero, Odysseus, is the kind of character that progressive thinkers detest. He’s “a very strong, type A male personality” who’s on a mission to return to his “nuclear family” and “re-establish law and order” in his kingdom of Ithaca, where suitors have invaded in his absence to steal what’s rightfully his.

“You can see why it sort of conflicts with what the ethos is now as to what a family should be, what a male should be like,” says Keena.

MacIntyre agrees, highlighting how Odysseus is a prime example of the patriarch archetype — the husband, father, and king who endures extreme hardship in order to return home and restore order to his household and kingdom.

“You want to, if you're a radical leftist, undermine those things that kind of hold together the American or the Western identity,” he says.

But there’s an even deeper (and darker) reality at play in Nolan’s woke “Odyssey,” says Keena.

“When you look at the collectivist group of philosophies Marxism, socialism, communism, they can't tolerate Western civilization or the concept of America,” he says.

Their unifying objective, he explains, is to “attack it, destroy it, replace it” by infiltrating every institution.

“And so what we're seeing on all levels, not just about movies or literature, but education, music, anything that you can pick out in society right now, is essentially a collectivist assault on Western civilization because it has to be destroyed in order to make room for the socialist revolution,” says Keena.

To hear more, watch the full interview above.

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Rural America’s new plague: Hicklibs and fail-libs



Rural America was once a refuge from radical leftists. Fewer amenities and job opportunities were a price some conservatives were willing to pay if it meant their traditional values and patriotism didn’t have to compete with progressivism.

But those pastoral sanctuaries are being blotted out one by one thanks to two new phenomena: hicklibs and fail-libs.

“As media and universities became more radical, their disciples moved into rural America through government-mandated institutions like schools and libraries,” says BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre.

“Thus the hicklib was born.”

A hicklib, MacIntyre explains, is “usually a social outcast, a failson who needs a moral explanation for why he hates the community he never fit into.”

“His resentment searches for a theory that will dignify his rage, and the progressive missionaries installed in his local institutions are happy to provide one,” he says.

The message is one of moral superiority: America is evil; those who disagree are “racist, sexist, backwards religious fanatics, destroying the lives of minorities"; and “white Christian culture” is the real evil in the world.

“The hicklib's failures to fit in become proof of moral superiority,” says MacIntyre.

Having found a solution to his inferiority complex, he sets out on a new mission.

“The hicklib shows up at town council meetings in a Black Lives Matter shirt to denounce minority oppression in a community with no actual black people. That absence naturally becomes further proof of the town's intolerance,” says MacIntyre.

“He loudly organizes Pride events attended by two other hicklibs. That little clique stages protests, distributes flyers, and imitates urban activist rituals. By practicing the sacraments of their faith, they hope to summon the spirit of the age to judge their reactionary little town.”

The hicklib, MacIntyre argues, has become a “plague” for rural communities.

But as plagues often do, the hicklib has evolved.

“As the value of college degrees collapse, a new breed is emerging: the fail-lib,” says MacIntyre.

Unlike the failure-to-launch hicklib, the fail-lib is outwardly successful.

“The fail-lib worked hard in high school and gave progressive teachers every approved answer. She wrote her college entrance essay on the oppression of trans women of color in coal mining. On campus, she became an activist. She secured a degree in some woke humanities discipline and earned straight A's by repeating everything her communist professor told her,” MacIntyre illustrates.

But despite her academic success, the fail-lib fails to land the “cushy corporate HR job” her expensive college degree promised her. Turns out, college degrees no longer come with the status they used to, and the “poor, oppressed immigrants” she’s long defended are now the preferred candidates.

Instead of moving to a big, liberal city like she planned, the fail-lib is forced to dwell among the rural “townies” she disdains.

She “was promised luxury and elite influence; now she serves the people she despises while searching for any opportunity to make their lives worse,” says MacIntyre, speculating that the rise of artificial intelligence will only “intensify this problem.”

“The fail-lib might make less money than you; she may be less respected than you; she may even be despised by the townies she once mocked, but in her heart, she knows she's superior, and nothing could ever convince her otherwise.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

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The REAL reason the pro-life movement is hitting a ceiling



The pro-life movement has seen a number of significant victories under President Donald Trump.

In less than six years, Trump has stopped U.S. tax dollars from funding groups that perform or promote abortions overseas, appointed three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminated some federal funding to Planned Parenthood through Title X rule changes, protected doctors and nurses who didn’t want to participate in abortions, ended most government use of aborted fetal tissue for research, and pardoned several pro-life activists who had been arrested for protesting.

Despite these wins, many pro-lifers are frustrated with President Trump’s public stance on abortion. They criticize his treatment of the issue as a state concern instead of pushing for a strong national ban or more federal limits. They also feel he hasn’t done enough to stop widespread mail-order abortion pills and condemn his calls for “flexibility” on related policies.

While BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre is fully on board with the pro-life movement, believing abortion is “the murder of a child in no certain terms” and “one of the most horrific things about our society,” he argues that many activists fail to see the reality of what the movement is up against.

On this episode of “The Auron MacIntyre Show,” the host argues that no amount of laws or Trump bans can fix the problem because the entire American system — its economy, workforce, and culture — is built on easy access to abortion.

While Auron sympathizes with the many pro-lifers who were dissatisfied with President Trump during his 2024 campaign for refusing to make big promises about abortion bans, he argues that Trump was wise to take a nuanced approach to such a deeply polarizing issue.

“Donald Trump knew that this was going to be very unpopular, and he just refused to run on it in the election. ... That makes political sense,” he admits.

Now that Trump is president, he continues to treat the issue of abortion exactly as he promised to treat it during his campaign, but many pro-lifers are nonetheless incensed.

As midterms draw nearer, pro-lifers are working to ban the abortion pill, but Auron says the timing of this initiative is unwise.

“Trump’s got enough problems with other optical issues going on — Iran, deportations, Epstein files, all that stuff. He doesn’t need another unpopular thing on his plate,” he argues, reiterating that he fully supports the pro-life movements’ initiatives in principle.

But practically, these initiatives aren’t working.

“The core issue is the state referendums. If the pro-life movement was winning at the state level after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, it wouldn’t need Trump to go out and do any of these things,” Auron explains.

“They’re doing the Lord’s work, ... a completely justified and righteous crusade. But you need to understand that if you’re losing consistently on the state level, something has happened,” he continues.

What has happened, he explains, is that abortion has become foundational in America since Roe v. Wade. What that landmark case did was “[create] an incentive structure that put abortion at the center of many of our economic and cultural systems and understandings.”

“We have made literal child sacrifice the center of our civilization,” he says bluntly.

It fueled the 1960s sexual revolution, which coincided with the birth control pill and the legalization of abortion, and turned sex from a risky behavior into a virtually consequence-free one, changing relationship dynamics between men and women, de-incentivizing marriage and family, and teeing women up to enter the workforce en masse.

“[Women in the workforce] has all kinds of huge benefits for employers. Corporations love working women. ... It basically doubles the labor pool,” Auron says.

Women also became huge money-savers for businesses because employers could not only pay women less than men to do the same job, but they could also pay men lower wages because the pressure to pay salaries that could provide for whole families suddenly vanished.

“Instead of getting one man doing the job that raised a family, you got a man and his wife both working for the same amount that just the man used to work for,” Auron says.

This shift also culminated in the need for more government. Before women entered the workforce, “Americans didn’t need a big government because women were at home, and they were building these associations, these connections, this social credit,” Auron says, “and so you didn’t have to have people step in and do all the things that women were doing.”

It also upped the nation’s GDP because all the work women were doing at home suddenly “[had] to get reterritorialized into the market.”

“When you move all of the female jobs, all of the female roles, all of the social capital that females were creating out of the economic zone and you move it into the economic zone, of course GDP goes up, line goes up, economic activity goes up because now there’s all these surrogates who have to do what women did when they were mothers,” Auron explains.

Abortion thus became a guarantee that the benefits of working women were locked in for corporations.

But the depth to which modern society is built upon the altar of abortion runs far deeper than that.

To hear Auron’s full breakdown, watch the episode above.

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Why leftism as a mental illness is a ‘comforting fiction’



As the divide between the right and the left continues to deepen, BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre explains that Americans are writing off what they don’t understand about each other as a “form of mental illness.”

“This is understandable when it comes to horrific crime. Someone like a serial killer is so violent and twisted that it's hard for us to comprehend their actions, and there is certainly a fair amount of mental illness that plays a factor,” MacIntyre says. “But today people often use this explanation when it comes to political disagreements.”

“Abortion, hatred for Christians and white people, the mutilation of children to turn boys into girls — these beliefs are so horrible that they can only possibly be explained by a malfunctioning brain,” he continues. “Of course, that's not the only explanation.”


“The other option is that some people have a very different set of values that drive them to pursue goals that we view as evil. The average American would like to avoid this truth, because it comes with an unnerving conclusion: Your political enemies aren't crazy; they are sane people who hate you and want to hurt you,” he adds.

MacIntyre explains that believing that a radical leftist who wants to mutilate children is mentally ill “is far easier than addressing the alternative.”

“The idea that half of America is crazy because they don’t share your political views is obviously absurd," he says. "The truth is much darker. We’re at least two societies, with mutually exclusive understandings of morality and purpose, trapped in one country.”

“The theoretical neutrality of the liberal system allowed this drift to occur under the surface, but the differences have become too extreme to ignore. Both sides have their own internally consistent understanding of the world, but they’re entirely incompatible with each other,” he explains.

“One side is going to win and one side is going to lose, and the winning side is going to impose its way of life on the other. There is no way to avoid this reality,” he continues. “And obscuring the truth with comforting fictions about mental illness only ensures that you’ll be on the side that loses.”

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'60 Minutes' blasted for pearl-clutching over disaster relief, rescue operations by 'anti-government far-right groups'



CBS News debuted a "60 Minutes" report on Sunday that delved into the supposedly troubling trend of Americans bypassing official channels to help other Americans who are struggling in the aftermath of natural disasters.

"What if we told you that after natural disasters, some of those who descend on hard-hit communities with offers to help are anti-government conspiracists and white nationalists?" Lesley Stahl said at the outset of the episode.

'Shameless and transparent.'

While the geriatric talking head clutched pearls over a pattern of life-saving help from undesirable sources — namely "anti-government, far-right groups" — video played showing men helping to clear brush, distribute supplies, and reinforce disaster-stricken Americans.

Among those men reportedly featured in the montage are members of the multiracial Virginia Kekoas militia group, which provided aid in 2024 to those areas impacted by Hurricane Helene and neglected by the Biden administration.

The "60 Minutes" report — which strategically focuses on the efforts of Patriot Front and Active Club, a pair of groups regarded as white supremacist hate groups by the scandal-plagued Southern Poverty Law Center — smears unsanctioned volunteers who are "far-right" and/or affiliated with militia groups as "disaster tourists who are out to sow doubt in government, soften their own image, and gain followers."

In addition to leaning on Henderson County Sheriff Lowell Griffin's critique of the challenges supposedly posed by "misinformation" and "outside folks" in disaster areas, "60 Minutes" turned to Freddy Cruz, a program manager at the Western States Center — a Portland-based leftist organization whose bread and butter appears to be concern-mongering about perceived white nationalism — for help in framing the story.

RELATED: Klansman allegedly on SPLC payroll was 'true believer' white supremacist, not reformed infiltrator

ALLISON JOYCE/AFP/Getty Images

"These people come in, they hand out water, they help clean up the debris," Stahl said. "Whatever their ideology, they're doing something positive, aren't they?"

"What we're seeing is actually these groups will show up and generate a whole bunch of social media content," Cruz said. "We're dubbing it 'disaster tourism.'"

This and the other bizarre attacks in the report did not go over well with some of the self-giving groups and individuals who have repeatedly stepped into the breach in those moments where the government's relief efforts have proven wanting.

The United Cajun Navy — a nonprofit organization that was not mentioned in the "60 Minutes" episode by name but has for decades engaged in life-saving rescue operations, humanitarian assistance, and logistical support in areas hard-hit by floods, hurricanes, and other ruinous natural events — noted on X, "We have many media outlets that are very good to us. Then there's this trash."

"This SCREAMS 'Funded by the [SPLC]," wrote the UCN, which in the wake of Hurricane Helene joined forces on aid efforts with Mercury One — another outfit whose relief efforts "60 Minutes" smeared by implication. "Even though we aren't mentioned, we would still be happy to comment ON THE RECORD about what [horse manure] this is. It's time to put 60 Minutes out to pasture, Holla!"

Shawn Hendrix, the "expert survival dad" featured on MrBeast's YouTube channel who was among those who helped victims of Hurricane Helene, said in response to CBS News' agitprop, "Not one 'left'-leaning news station reached out to me during the disaster. They pretended it wasn't happening because Biden was president and Cooper was governor, failing us badly. I was up there for months and never once saw a CNN camera or MSNBC crew. Now, over a year later, they want to create some wild narrative. They weren't there, so how did they know?"

"I, however, was there," Hendrix continued. "The only people being selective about who they helped were FEMA. I saw no racism; no one cared who you voted for. We were all just surviving and serving."

BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre tweeted, "SPLC funding the KKK story drops[.] A week later 60 Minutes just happens to run a 'hey that white guy helping you while your house was destroyed is probably a fascist' segment."

"Shameless and transparent," MacIntyre added.

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America ignores the externalities of immigration policy — while other countries bring the hammer down



Immigration policy is often argued in abstract terms — statistics, ideals, and political talking points — but its real effects are felt most sharply at the local level.

And while other countries have much stricter laws surrounding immigration, Americans like BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre are personally feeling the effects of our own lax ones.

“While the Dominican Republic is, you know, not really someplace I want to spend the rest of my life, it is a wildly, wildly better civilization, to the point where they have a wall, and they will just shoot any Haitians that get near it because they basically treat it as some kind of contamination that’s going to destroy their society,” MacIntyre explains.


“Haiti was literally founded on a satanic voodoo blood ritual. A blood sacrifice of white Europeans was the core beginning of this. ... The idea that you’re just going to have the native population rise up and slaughter the oppressor and then rule itself, that played itself out in Haiti, and we can see the exact result,” he continues.

“And yet, we see people constantly trying to bring this culture into the United States. It’s absolutely crazy,” he adds.

MacIntyre notes that this has already affected his own community, where a woman in his area “was beaten to death with a hammer by a Haitian immigrant” in “one of the most horrific videos” he’s ever seen.

“So, this is no longer some kind of abstract understanding. ... No, this is directly getting people murdered in my community. People in places I have been, I have driven by, are getting murdered because of what is going on here,” he says.

“And yet, we see the main concern is the safety not of American citizens who are beaten to death by hammers, but to the Haitians who are coming here themselves,” he continues, pointing out that the majority of these immigrants add no value to the country.

“If you look at the statistics, you can see that 65% of Haitian households are on welfare. They are dependent on welfare for their living. That means that the entire community is a net drain on the American social system,” he explains.

“You and I are paying to keep these people here and possibly murder our fellow Americans,” he says. “So everything about this from the economic argument to the moral argument is a complete lie.”

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Universal basic income is a dangerous delusion



As artificial intelligence drives fresh excitement in the tech world, major figures such as Elon Musk are reviving an old political fantasy: universal basic income. The idea has drawn support from a strange coalition, from progressive politicians like Andrew Yang to libertarian thinkers like Charles Murray.

To its advocates, UBI is the obvious answer to a future in which machines displace human labor. But beneath the sleek language of innovation lies the same old welfare-state promise: material comfort in exchange for dependence. Its supporters speak as though it were the natural companion of progress. In reality, it threatens to rob millions of the work, structure, and purpose that give life meaning.

UBI attracts supporters for very different reasons. For Andrew Yang and others on the left, it promises relief from poverty through guaranteed cash transfers. For Charles Murray, it has represented a simpler and more streamlined alternative to the sprawling welfare state. For Elon Musk and many AI boosters, UBI solves the problem of those with too little cognitive ability to compete, left behind in an increasingly IQ-based economy.

Their motives differ, but they share a revealing assumption: that UBI is an inevitable response to progress rather than a political choice with deep moral and social consequences. In each case, the individual is treated less as a citizen with duties and aspirations than as a materialist problem to be managed.

Welfare for all

A version of UBI basically already exists in the United States. With the vast web of interlocking welfare programs offered by the state for things like disability, poverty, child care, minority status, and educational attainment, most people can find a way to qualify for assistance with food or housing. It might not provide a comfortable or desirable life, but if someone doesn’t want to work to survive in America, they often do not have to.

For many people, the state has become not a temporary backstop but a long-term provider. That arrangement may keep some households afloat, but it has not produced a flourishing class of free and self-governing citizens. It has more often produced dependence, passivity, and bureaucratic management.

The case for UBI made by many AI enthusiasts bears a familiar resemblance to the old socialist dream. Human labor may become unnecessary, they say, but machine-driven abundance will replace what is lost. Freed from drudgery, ordinary people will devote themselves to art, philosophy, travel, community, and self-cultivation. The nation will become a republic of fulfilled and creative souls, all liberated from economic necessity. It is an attractive vision. It is also the same old fantasy that material abundance can dissolve the harder facts of human nature.

The idea that AI can produce the predicted level of abundance is itself a huge, untested assumption.

Man is not a machine

AI is well-suited to handling many managerial tasks and repetitive interactions. It is far less capable in situations that require judgment, responsibility, dexterity, trust, and adaptation to messy reality. Even the systems that do work require expensive hardware, enormous energy consumption, and a dense supporting infrastructure. A country that struggles to maintain basic institutional competence should be wary of fantasies about a nearly labor-free future sustained by flawless technical systems. Before promising a world beyond work, the advocates of UBI should first show that the machinery behind that world can actually exist.

Even if one grants the premise that AI could replace most labor and generate enough abundance to meet material needs, UBI would still collide with basic truths about human nature. Men do not work merely to eat. Work gives shape to the day, imposes discipline, teaches competence, and anchors identity. People on welfare in the current system are not known for their high propensity to churn out great American novels or breathtaking sculptures. Instead, welfare recipients tend to watch television, play video games, and do drugs with their free time. Idleness, not unleashed creativity, is the fruit most often produced by removing the human need for labor.

Undoubtedly, some genuinely talented people who are trapped in unfulfilling jobs would benefit from this UBI scenario, but for the average person, it would be a disaster. For most people, even imperfect work provides something essential: structure, routine, responsibility, and a recognized place in the world.

Slaves to the tech plantation

A humanity freed from the necessity of labor would see the Pareto Principle run wild, with a small number of talented and driven people benefiting greatly as the rest fall into idleness. The mortality rate of men spikes when they retire because they lose the structure and meaning that had previously defined their lives.

UBI advocates also have a habit of addressing only the survival aspects of economic behavior while ignoring one of its most important functions — status. The status hierarchy is one of the most important aspects of how humans order our societies, and to determine our place within that hierarchy, we play status games.

Occupations can be extremely desirable for the status they confer, not just the resources they provide. A plumber may earn more than a professor, yet many people would still prefer the title and standing that come with academic life. If AI makes a base level of abundance available, people will compete over something to obtain status. Maybe artisanal, hand-manufactured items will become the new marker of status. The point is that these behaviors are hardwired into humans, and we should not expect them to disappear even if we solve the problem suddenly that they initially addressed.

AI enthusiasts rarely consider the consequences of disconnecting the entire production process from humans. Markets currently seek to maintain an equilibrium between human production and human consumption. There are artificial signals and plenty of distortion, but markets are still human-centered. If you decouple the system from human input by placing everyone on UBI, you create a closed techno-commercial feedback loop that no longer needs to be restricted by human concerns. In such a system, the citizen is no longer a participant but a dependent end user. That is not merely an economic shift. It is a transformation in the meaning of social life.

The danger grows sharper once one considers the political power UBI would concentrate in the state. The U.S. government already plays favorites, denying business loans, college scholarships, mortgage assistance, and other benefits to races, religions, or political affiliations that it finds undesirable. Every payment can become a point of pressure. Every dependency can become a tool of compliance.

It should be obvious that the state would become even more abusive if it became the only distributor of economic goods and services. Incredibly, socialists, libertarians, and techno capitalists can all make the same mistake, though it is not that surprising once you realize the underlying error. Their ideologies differ, but all are tempted by the same thin view of man as a creature defined mainly by material needs. But man is not a machine to be provisioned. We are more than just inputs and outputs; we are creatures who require meaning and purpose. That is something that a universal basic income can never give.