Andrew Yang stopped his campaign some time around today. I was not necessarily opposed to Yang, but was by no means an ardent supporter either. Here's I share some thoughts about Yang's political messages/campaign.

First are some impressions/observations:

• Yang campaigned hard on Universal Basic Income, $1000 bucks a month for pretty much all adults in a certain age range
  • I accept Yang's point that this is probably a better redistribution scheme than other existing programs, layers and layers of bureaucracy, etc.
  • I would not like to see the government expand; it is unclear to me if Yang's Freedom Divident (aka NEET bux) would be accompanied by cutting government spending elsewhere
  • If UBI were to come to be, I'd expect a proliferation of subsisting people living ant-style (ari-zoku) for free; talk about danger for epidemics! A specialized class of rent-farmers would likely thrive too... (speculation)
• Yang's race/ethnicity is a whatever to me
  • But I see you racialists out there choosing Yang just because he's "of color" or "Asian" just like people chose Obama for similar reasons
  • I think that there are both people more inclined to vote for Yang because he's Asian, and also people who would choose not to because of that... ...or maybe it's more about him appealing to the "nerd" demographic
• Talk of the threat of Artificial Intelligence and climate change without talk about populations/demographics gets the noggin' joggin'
  • Should governments decide which groups to subsidize (and hence increase) at the expense of others?
  • (Insert Leftist critiques of big oil, tobacco industries, and related topics)

Yang appears to me to be a pretty good guy, and a sincere person. In this way, I think he has a trustworthy "feel" like Sanders. However, I do believe his policies in general would drive America to be worse and worse; sorry Ayn Rand brainwashed me.

Dichotomous Political Opinions

From the right, I like how Yang

1. criticizes the inefficiency of government
2. has a scheme to allow capitalism, but with some safety net
   • see how people relate UBI to "classical liberal" thought
3. rouses swamp-drainy thoughts and criticisms of the legacy media on the Dem side (search term yang media blackout)

From the left, I like how Yang

1. Has a redistributionist scheme that is more universal than anything we've seen before
2. Seems relatively peaceful, not war-hawky

Open the Third Eye; Optics and Meta-Cognitive Stuff

I dislike the 'MATH' campaign thing and all that nerd stuff; I see that Yang is a lawyer too, not an engineer or even a veteran (C.f. Tulsi Gabbard) so I suspect how "in touch" with reality he is on the physics of the world. Math is wallowing in abstractions; how does this map to reality?

This doesn't matter to most people who just clamour against "CLIMATE CHANGE" and view they have "SCIENCE" on their side without understanding a thing about it, besides what they've heard, akin to how most people accept the traditions/religions handed to them. (Note: I'm not denying climate change or criticizing traditions/religions here, I'm just making a point about how people accept/reject ideas presented to them...)

The memes were with him...

(...but many were probably by top-down design)

In any case, I hope that this whole Yang ordeal encoruages people to criticially evaluate the sources they get any information from.

In this blog post, I cite nothing and just say my impressions. No fake news here. Just opinions. Is your news just opinions too?