I'm glad to hear someone else calling out Bregman.

His work is very flimsy, and I have been a hater for close to 10 years [1].

I think Bregman skirts close to the "Effective Altruism" movement and his work has similar problems of choosing flashy, exciting, elitist projects over boring, uncomfortable, policy changes.

His enamourment with "AI!!!" (exclamations mandatory) is par for the course. Basically a fantasy that if AI leads to enough layoffs, the rest of society will accept a transition to UBI (against their own interests)

Bregman has been going on about UBI for decades and I've never seen him do the actual maths. In Utopia for Realists he argued the budget deficit can be completely made up by the cost savings of having fewer benefit systems. It's fantasy

[1] https://www.breck-mckye.com/review-utopia-for-realists-rutge...

> I think Bregman skirts close to the "Effective Altruism" movement and his work has similar problems of choosing flashy, exciting, elitist projects over boring, uncomfortable, policy changes.

I'm sorry, but what? The most prominent EA projects focus on cost effective interventions that save and improve lives.

Give Well's current top recommendations are medicines and nets to prevent malaria, vitamin A supplements and promoting regular childhood vaccinations. None of them are flashy or elitist.