This article of mine was originally a Youtube video, which you can still watch here.
They're all connected!
Economics, politics and culture are interrelated. You can't alter the economical system meaningfully without there being a political will to alter it, and politics is downstream from culture. So it stands to reason, that economics is ultimately downstream from culture as well.
So with this in mind, whenever I talk about the future of automation and Universal Basic Income, I always say, that this is primarily a cultural problem, not an economical problem.
If we abandon the notion that work makes one noble and "he who does not work shall not eat", then robots will build us a real utopia.
But if we insist that he who does not work shall not eat, then the robots will drag us into a real dystopia, kicking and screaming.
People often say that money is the root of all evil, but this statement couldn't be any further from the truth. Bill Gates is one of the most charitable people on the planet, Universal Basic Income counts amongst its supporters billionaire capitalists like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Tim Draper and Götz Werner.
So why don't we have Universal Basic Income then?
The reason is simple: culture. Money doesn't make you greedy, but having had to suffer during the process of acquiring money does, at least to most people. Unless you are a super-resilient soul, torture makes you evil - most pedophiles and child abusers were abused as children themselves.
Misery is the true source of evil
Universal Basic Income is opposed by jealous proletarians, because they can't stand the idea of people in the future having a better life than them. When people experience something negative, a common coping mechanism is to wish it upon others. A common Hungarian saying is „Ha megdöglött a tehenem, dögöljön meg a szomszédé is.”, which literally translates to "If my cow dies, the neighbour's cow must also die".
Bogged down in wageslavery and 8-hour workdays in a shitty factory? Wish it upon everyone, pretend it's part and parcel of adulthood, and resent the hell out of people who escaped such a fate, like PewDiePie and Belle Delphine.
Lost two years of your youth due to mandatory military service? Wish it upon everyone, pretend it's part and parcel of being a man, and complain about the current generation of men being effeminate, offering conscription as a "cure".
I'm sure everyone reading the article can see a clear pattern here.
He who does not work.... shall not eat?
It is foolish to blame the rich, when the poor themselves have a mentality that only solidifies the current system. "He who does not work shall not eat" is the credo of the secretly resentful wageslave, not of the successful capitalist, who is most likely not as nearly as greedy as the stereotypes make him out to be.
Ultimately, deep down, the wageslave resents being a wageslave and wants to escape it. He's jealous. Why wouldn't he be? But he is ashamed of it, feels guilty about it, and hides it, out of fear. Because he grew up in a culture that glorifies work above all else.
The so-called "virtues of hard work" are nothing but a lie propagated as a coping mechanism, born out of jealousy for those with better living conditions.
The phrase "He who does not work shall not eat" originates in the Bible, but do you know what else originates in the Bible? The idea that jealousy and envy are sins.
The phrase "He who does not work shall not eat" originates in an era where food was scarce, while job opportunities were plentiful - today, our reality is the complete opposite: food is so plentiful that more than half of it is wasted, while job opportunities are getting more and more scarce. Christian work ethic has nothing to do with wageslavery, because Christian morality also includes the idea that sharing is caring - Christian work ethic is about working to better society and spending your energy helping people, not about being a wageslave for some company that produces goods ordinary people can't even afford, or don't even need.
