I just can't put that topic to rest, can I? As much as several of my readers are probably getting annoyed by me chewing on the same bone and writing about the same topic over and over again, it seems like I always have new thoughts, new ideas to put to ink and feel compelled to share.
My very first article on this site was about Universal Basic Income. Following that, I wrote an article about how fake our economy is. Then an article defending scammers, briefly touching the subject of UBI. Then an article that somehow connected (sexual) consent to UBI, drawing parallels between sex and work. Then an article about how UBI unifies all meanings of freedom. Then an article literally about financing UBI realistically. Then an article about how UBI would be cheaper than the existence of bull**** jobs. Then an article touching the connection between automation and UBI. Then yet another article somehow connecting consent to UBI. That's a whopping NINE articles about essentially the same topic! Isn't it a chewed-down bone already? What more could I say about Universal Basic Income?
Ho boy, there are still some thoughts I'd like to lay to virtual ink, and I hope I don't miss any of them today. I hope, that this shall be the UBI-article to end all UBI-articles.
Why We'll Never Have It, probably
The Frankenstein Economy
To paraphrase an earlier article of mine: the economical system we live under is neither Capitalism nor Socialism, but a weird Frankenstein hybrid that combines the worst of both worlds, while lacking the advantages of either. Just like under any true Capitalist system, even the air you breathe costs money - however, just like under many Socialist systems, welfare is given to some people (albeit the bureaucracy that decides who is eligible is very byzantine), government red tape chokes anyone who wants to do business, taxes are high, etc.
You could even call this system Neo-Feudalism, as it benefits no one, but the top 1%, being hostile to both the working proletariat and small-time entrepreneurs alike. I'm not saying that my opinion is fact, but I believe that if you share this opinion with me, it becomes far easier to understand why the elite is not your friend. It becomes far more easy to rationalize the existence of bull**** jobs.
The late David Graeber - in both his shorter essay and his 368-page book - made the claim that a good deal of our jobs, possibly even half of them, are unneeded. In his book, he categorized these people into five categories. I won't get into details about that.
What stood out to me the most, was that he asked an important question. You see, these useless, unneeded jobs are largely in the private, corporate sector. In Communist countries, work was seen as both a right and a sacred duty, so in a desperate attempt to keep unemployment at zero, they invented fake jobs, or had three people do what should have been one man's job, etc. You'd think that this is specifically what's not supposed to happen under Capitalism and the ruthless market competition, yet it happens. Why does it happen?
The late Graeber spent most of the ink on explaining the answer to that question in detail, but it more or less boils down to managerial feudalism, and the ruling classes wanting to keep us working at all costs.
Reading this, the typical Capitalist or Libertarian will ask the question: if something is so unnecessary, why the devil would private companies involved in cutthroat competition actually pay people to do essentially nothing? Surely those people are worth their salary, right? Surely, companies that employ useless people get weeded out by the free market, by competition, right? Oh, you poor naive summer child...
A More Rational Answer?
Imagine for a moment, that we're in an Alternate Universe, where the culture is similar to that of Ancient Egypt, except that slavery has been abolished, and the economical system is Capitalism. If you aren't part of the hoi polloi, then all your ancestors were embalmed into mummies, you wear a nemes on your head, you already have a mastaba built for your future burial, you have two slaves servants who wash your genitalia, etc.
You might think, that a rational and profit-oriented frugal businessman will eschew all these things that waste money, but in doing so, he is seen as weird, an outcast not worth doing business with, as he doesn't display wealth. What kind of businessman worth doing business with doesn't employ d***washers?!
That's right. What should be a huge disadvantage in the capitalist market-competition is not a disadvantage at all, because literally everyone is doing it, making it a non-issue. Or even worse, those who don't do it simply get ostracized out of the market and lose. Thus, paradoxically, the company is actually getting net benefits by employing the d***washers.
Thus, if your company is making the seemingly rational decision by refusing to employ a Sales Associate, Sales Team Leader, Sales Manager, Exec Sales Manager or any other useless person with a superfluous title, you are actually making a mistake that will result in you being cast out of the market, with other companies not wanting to do business with you. "What kind of company doesn't employ an HR-PR-sales exec manager?! What a small-timer, clearly not worth our time lol..."
That's right. Even in the most Capitalistest society out there, there is a force far stronger than the profit motive: peer pressure and culture.
My Conspiracy Theory
Take on your tinfoil hats everyone, because it's conspiracy theory time!
It is my personal belief, that even if we had the money and technology to implement Universal Basic Income (and I reckon that we do), the elite would never ever implement it, because it means losing out on two important powers.
First one of these is welfare. Welfare is a particular strong means of control for the government. Do you know what is the easiest way to take complete control of a man's life? Take away his cows, then forbid him (or at the very least discourage him) from ever owning cows again, and then simply give him a glass of milk every day. Instead of being able to drink some of the milk and sell the rest for money (and spend said money on whatever he wants), the man just gets barely enough milk for himself to drink.
Welfare is given conditionally to people without jobs, people with disabilities, people living in exceptional poverty, etc. (tho, the Byzantine bureaucracy makes sure that only a small fraction of the eligible actually get their welfare, while a few fraudsters get through the cracks). Welfare carries a stigma with it, completely demoralizing recipients. Because it is conditional, it completely deprives the recipient of any remaining motivation to actually try to find work (as if the demoralization wasn't enough). It's essentially a trap that keeps the recipient in perpetual poverty, completely dependent on the government's mercy, and lacking the energy, morale or motivation to rise above their situation.
The second weapon of control is work, paid labour - or should I say, forced labour? Don't be fooled: while under a Despotic Empire, Feudal Monarchy or Communist Dictatorship, you are literally forced to work at the point of a sword, at gunpoint, in a "Capitalist Democracy", the exact same coercive force still exists, albeit cloaked up and camouflaged, with the enforcer being the economical system in itself rather than any human being - money is required to gain access to vital resources, and the only way to acquire money is to work (unless you are part of the lucky few), which means that all the (would-be-)employers hold all the cards, and you depend on them. The economical system threatens to withdraw your access to vital resources - or, as some people who say, "leave you to your own devices" - if you refuse to enter a highly abusive relationship where you're technically free to walk away at any time, but doing so has highly negative consequences. Even the whole "leaving you to your own devices" is a giant fraud, as most countries have outlawed homesteading, and if you created your own farm, power plant, etc. in the middle of nowhere, the government would still find an excuse to bother you and attempt to extort you.
And that's not to mention the fact, that after 40-60 hours of work per week, you are tired, and lack the energy to challenge the system or educate yourself about the evils of the system. Remember what happened during the Summer of 2020? People went out to the streets and protested for a cause they considered right (a cause I am against, by the way). And they could do that, because it was in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, with millions having lost their jobs, many receiving stimulus checks, etc. In other words: people had time and energy.
If we had a Universal Basic Income and work was made optional, people wouldn't be perpetually tired and out of energy, people would have time and energy - and the government doesn't want that.
And those are the two keywords here: time and energy. The elite doesn't want you to have either of those. They want you tired and sleepy, so you lack the power to resist their agenda, to educate yourself, to question their nonsense, or God forbid, rebel against them.
But if it's the government's fault, why are private companies inventing fake jobs? Why is the bulk of fake, bull**** jobs in the private sector, rather than the government sector?! And here comes the real conspiracy: the government manipulates the market and creates regulations that choke smaller businesses and result in the creation of full-time paper-pusher jobs, while big businesses cheer. Their competition is systematically eliminated: while they shrug off regulations, small companies drown in them, and people are too busy with their full-time jobs to create their own businesses anyway. It's a win-win situation for both big government and big business, a mutually beneficial agreement.
Useful Idiots?
Every system - no matter how bad - has its defenders. These people can be neatly divided into three categories:
Direct beneficiaries of said system.
Those who have important business connections to the maintainers of said system.
Useful idiots who defend said system for one reason or another.
I hope I'm not revealing anything new by saying that Communist China is an oppressive surveillance state and rather tyrannical. No? Good. Because, in spite of this, there are many Westerners who still defend the Chinese Communist Party.
Many Western companies - such as Apple - have important business ties with China, hence them lobbying against measures to sanction China for the crimes against humanity it has become guilty of (Uyghur forced labour, Falun Gong organ harvesting, etc.), and I knew an American far-righter who supported the CCP because....? I don't even know why, and I don't really care for the motivations of a deranged supporter of tyranny.
Just like that, the biggest supporters of the current status quo are a mixture of those who benefit from it, and those who get exploited by it. If we implemented Universal Basic Income, who would be protesting against it the loudest? No, it wouldn't be the billionaires we'd be taxing to finance it - it would be the common plebian, the 40+ years old disgruntled worker who had to suffer, and wants everyone else to suffer too, refusing to accept a future where the younger generation will live better lives than he did. Gone are the good old days of people sacrificing so much to create a safer and more comfortable future for their descendants.
Then there are people with old-fashioned morals. Calvinists, who believe that "idle hands are the devil's playground" (and thus work must be done, even if it's unnecessary and doesn't create value), greedy people who would sooner burn down their farm and food supplies than give even one morsel away for free and foolish dreamers who foolishly believe that they can succeed in a system that was specifically engineered to keep them down.
Economy and technology are no obstacles to Universal Basic Income. Fears of inflation and questions of "who will finance it?" or "who will do the work?" are all just distractions from the real Elephant in the room: the fact that we already live in a post-scarcity world, we just pretend that we don't. The technology to automate away most unpleasant jobs is already there, what's missing is society's willingness to embrace said technology and the changes it will bring.
It's a paradox, really. We are inventing new labour-saving technology and automation specifically to make sure that people have to work less (hopefully not work at all in a not-so-distant utopian future), while at the same time, we insist on people having to "earn" basic necessities like food, drinking water and shelter. It's one giant contradiction.
The real obstacle isn't economics or technology, but society's unwillingness to re-think how it will work in a post-automation future. So we just keep delaying the inevitable and inventing fake bull**** jobs, keeping the 40-hour workweek a constant, and UBI a utopian dream.
Every Age Has Its Victors and Losers
I'm not revealing anything new by saying, that every big breakthrough, every time an era ends and a new one is ushered in, some people stand to win, others stand to lose. Every age, every era has its haves and have-nots.
When the Paleolithic gave way to the Neolithic, the farmer first suffered from constant droughts and famines, was shorter, weaker and less healthy than the hunter-gatherer, but through sheer numbers, managed to beat the hunter-gatherers and colonize much of the world.
The invention of metals such as bronze gave power to the elites that monopolized access to these metals, and thus the weapons made from said metals. The Bronze Age was an age of aristocratic chariot warfare and human sacrifice - yes, even in the Old World.
When the Bronze Age ended and the Iron Age began, iron - by virtue of being much cheaper than bronze - allowed masses of peasants to arm themselves and overwhelm the chariot-riding aristocrats, which led to the creation of more quasi-democratic, tolerant and cosmopolitan mosaic empires, and the end of human sacrifice in the Old World (Afro-Eurasia), for the most part.
During the Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the chainmail and stirrup gave power back to the aristocrats, but improvements in transportation and communication technology (such as the viking longships) empowered the local nobility at the expense of the monarchs, decentralizing Feudal European realms.
Gunpowder democratized warfare, but also empowered the monarchs to (re-)centralize their realms at the expense of local nobility. Nevertheless, masses of peasants armed with guns became quite the threat to tyrants, as the United States has shown us.
Then finally, the Industrial Revolutions - because there wasn't just one, but actually four (and we're in the middle of the fourth one, as of 2021) - saw the rise of labour-saving technology, which concentrated - and continue to concentrate - wealth and power in the hands of a privileged few. And thus, we are at crossroads: we are inches away from another major technological breakthrough, and the question is - how will we handle it?
a) We can just choose not to handle it all. Let technology displace all the jobs, and we either let the people who lost their usefulness to the economy starve to death, or invent fake jobs for them, like we have been doing for over 70 years, but that's just delaying the inevitable.
b) We can go the Luddite way, and keep down technology to prevent unemployment.
c) We can implement a Universal Basic Income, so that everyone can benefit from the technological breakthroughs.
Scoff as much as you like at the idea of wealth redistribution (initially, I was hostile to it too), all major technological breakthroughs increase wealth disparity by concentrating more wealth and power in the hands of fewer and fewer people. And guess what: too high wealth disparity is bad for the economy! Your economy!
Yes, even if you are an ultra-Capitalist, guess what: rich people don't spend their money, rich people don't consume as much of their wealth as poor people do. If the masses don't have enough money to consume, your precious economy will simply grind to a halt. What are you going to do then, Capitalist?
Unless you want to be a Luddite and you want technological regression, there are really two options: either continue the eternal cycle of inventing fake jobs and then automating them (which really is just delaying the inevitable, and deferring the decision to the next generation), or partially redistribute the wealth of those who stand to benefit from the increased automation, from no longer having to pay people for work (which really is indirectly paying for their rent, for their food, etc.), as the human workers are replaced by automatons who can do their job 24/7 and don't have to eat or sleep.
Technology has made the "It is mine, mine alone, I'd rather burn it all down than share even one morsel for free" mentality outdated. If you have that mentality, I regret to inform you, that you belong to a museum, and your mentality is part of the problem. The world is interconnected. We live in a society. Machines and technology have to benefit all of society, not just a few shareholders.
It's time to do away with the notion that everyone has to work and contribute to society, when they are simply incapable of doing so under the framework of the current system. Maybe we can keep this notion, if we include in the group of contributors people who write Wikipedia articles and open-source software for free. But otherwise, we simply have to do away with it. Technology made it obsolete.
We have to completely re-think how our society will work. If we implement UBI and free people from the stress of forced labour, we will most likely see a Golden Age of art, science and humanism. Don't believe the nonsense that people would spend their extra free time doing alcohol, drugs and wallowing in their depression - their issues were created by the current system to begin with. The system we live under creates problems, and then sells (fake) "solutions" to it. It has to be rejected.
Closing Thoughts
I used to believe that maximizing economical freedom and minimizing intervention was the (gate)way to maximizing social freedom. But now I believe that my past self was wrong. Why? Just think about it.
Is there true Freedom of Speech in a world, where all it takes is for an angry mob of SJWs to dig-up a 10-year old Tweet of yours and get you fired, thus depriving you of your means of survival? No, there isn't. There can be no true Freedom of Expression in a world, where your survival depends on the whims of someone who can fire you any time for any reason.
Without Universal Basic Income, there can be no real Freedom of Speech and Expression.
