What hateful POS is against worldwide unification?
Vibrant ecologies have diversity. Fully unified government isnt diverse, and would be bad for at least some people. I hope all of our governments suck less, but still have each-other to compete with.
International stock index funds are, in my option, the best place to make that bet. It's been a losing bet (compared to other index funds) for decades, but you might notice that lots of folks still buy a solid amount as a hedge, anyway, because they agree with you, or at least aren't willing to bet their entire retirement that you're wrong.
Things going to shit, in the US, correlates strongly with Reagen Era economic policies. The term "trickle down economics" says a lot about why it didn't benefit most people.
In my option, all presidents from both major political parties since Reagan have done more to make it worse, than better.
My conclusion is that what's really going on is class warfare by the ultra rich against the rest of us...
I used to always use Minecraft for this. Sure, they can't do everything immediately, but I put the game on peaceful and let them explore at their own pace.
I say "used to" because Luanti (formerly MineTest, an open source Minecraft Clone*) is finished and free.
(Okay, Luanti is a lot more than a Minecraft clone. But for this discussion that's all one needs to know.)
Nice. Minecraft used to be my go to answer for a first WASD game, too.
Lately, I recommend Mineclonia on Luanti, because it's free and has stronger optimizations supporting weak laptops and big multiplayer servers. (It's a popular Free Open Source Minecraft Clone).
Well the baker, knowing that everyone has twice as much money, puts his prices up because he knows the market can bear it. That's the way I reason it.
The good news is this simply doesn't happen (in civilized modern countries).
People with more money don't buy twice as much bread, they buy other things.
The bread maker is still competing with milk producers and video game makers and artists.
You can read about price elasticity for more details (and to not just take my word for it.)
Highly inelastic goods (water, transportation, eggs) are the most likely to have runaway price increases.
But civilized countries already have public options to supply these items at cost :public water, public transport, food stamps.
This means we already have the necessary buffers against any impact by UBI. Any provider of an inelastic good who raises their price too far loses business to the public option.
Schwinn and Ferrari will all see slightly more sales with UBI as a few people use their additional income to purchase a bicycle or a supercar, but the bus lines must still run to keep them honest.
The risk is minimal because we already know what public consumption of these goods looks like, when they're free or heavily subsidized, in each civilized country.
Libby has various options to check out eBooks from local libraries.
Project Gutenberg has free and DRM free eBooks for most books in the public domain. A huge number of classics are available this way.
When I look for a specific book, I usually find that simply searching for "BOOK NAME purchase DRM free” results in plenty of results.
Sadly, I find it dramatically easier to find a free DRM free copy of most eBooks than to find somewhere to legally purchase a paid licensed DRM-free copy.
As a flawless upstanding citizen, I never partake of such amazing convenience, myself, of course.
I bought a "fixer-upper" recently, so I fill most days off with minor home repair projects. I'm using it as an excuse to build a decent little project workbench, though.
Oh, yes. I'm most cases, really old books.