UBI will be disastrous if implemented. Long-term idleness, which is what UBI enables, the explicit reason that UBI exists, is disastrous to the human spirit, and it will inevitable reduce a large fraction of the population to a near sub-human existence.
My preferred solution to the problem (if it is a problem) is a guaranteed jobs program.
I am somewhat inclined to agree with the second sentence, not quite as much with the first. I have a fair amount of hope for such a project, just not very much optimism.Â
(FALC and UBI-plus-heavy-automation combination worries me much more)
What about a guaranteed capital program? Jobs mitigate some of the long-term idleness issues but hardly attack the source.Â
Makework feels to me like it might not be that much better than idleness, in that it teaches you, at least on a system-1 level, that work isn’t something that’s *really necessary*, and that it’s just a pointless obligation imposed by authority figures.
Seconded, and maybe it doesn’t even go far enough. Make-work is awful. I can’t overemphasize how much resentment is generated when you’re forced to bust your ass for work that you know for a fact has no point. And to be honest, since a lot of labor in our current economy, even for the employed, is bullshit make-work and the malaise is already obvious, I’m confused as to how someone could think it’s the solution.
At least in idleness you could be playing video games. (I’ve seen the hypothesis floating around that, in utter seriousness, video games are the other half of the UBI puzzle. I don’t know if I believe it, but it’s a delightfully subversive take.)
“idleness” can also involve creating works of beauty that might not be financially sustainable in the current economic environment.
think of all the scientific discoveries and works of art and literature created by aristocrats who were technically “idle”, coasting on inherited wealth.
sure, some people may choose to spend their lives cock fighting or whatever instead, but so what.
“Idleness” can involve creating works of beauty, but honestly argumate, how many people would do that? “Somebody could paint the Mona Lisa in their UBI time” is not a serious argument, because only a tiny, tiny fraction of the population has the inclination and the skills to do that.
The people who already live entirely on gov’t support, what do they do? Does it look like “scientific discovery and works of art and literature”? Do you want to dramatically expand the number of people living under those conditions?
better round them up and send them to the sugar plantations then, for their own good
Who the hell are these fucking super villains who think idleness is bad? Fuck off and head down to the salt mines if you think hard labor is so soul-nourishing. You’ve got no business forcing it on everyone else.
there’s nothing “super” about these villains
Hey, @mailadreapta, you know what reduces people to a subhuman existence? Working fourteen hours a day. Being abused by their boss and just taking it because the alternative is starvation. Having to beg for scraps.
I think mailadreapta may be the unicorn: The actually lazy person.
When evaluating social policies, people assume other people act the way they would act. The people who think people would be lazy and do nothing are the people who would immediately stop and do nothing the moment they had subsistence-level supports, rather than seeking something to do.
Also, the point about UBI is… It’s enough to live on. It’s not necessarily enough for a comfortable life. Virtually everyone I know would trade at least some hours of time for, say, money for video games or something.
But all but one or two of them would make things. If you wouldn’t, mailadreapta, that is your fucking problem, please stop blaming everyone else for a character flaw you are projecting onto them. Find something you care about enough that you’d do it even if you didn’t have to, and grow the fuck up.
🔥 technological unemployment and ubi vs wage subsidies and/or abolishing the minimum wage
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just moving along like everyone else 