RE: The Moral Question of Using Unconditional Basic Income to Refuse Employment
Right now someone can get $12,000 from the government for not having a job while someone who has a job gets the same income. Basic income would double the total pay of the employed. Someone with no job would have $12,000. Someone with a $12,000 job would have $24,000 in total. That's paying people to work instead of not work.
this argument is the carrot and the stick... there wont be ANY job market... from TV anchor, movie makers and actors, to surgeons, hedge fund managers, physicians, stockbrokers, fast food workers, factory employees, cubicle positions... etc ... there won't be any job market in 15 years from now, and in 5 years we'll begin feeling the pinch.
There already are supercomputers writing the news... journalists will to go at some point
UBI is based on the assumption that there will be a market... based on the numbers above, everybody will get 12,000.
UBI rejects the reality of megacomputers/automation/robotics, based on this OP it is rather blatant
If your taxes go up $4,000 to pay for basic income, and you receive $12,000 of basic income in return, you are $8,000 better off. You can also look at that as paying $8,000 less in taxes. It's a giant tax cut.
The Founding Fathers were anti-taxation... taxation throughout history has been misused and still abuse people 24/7, with UBI, we'll get more of the same. Tax money will go to fund a "minority report type of society" aka smart cities, paying taxes to be spied on 24/7.
I challenge UBI on the ground that the theory ignores reality (that more knowledge de-materializes the meaning of life) and mankind history. Its metaphysics have very shaky foundations
If there's half as much paid work available in 20 years as estimated, that means full-time can be considered 20 hours per week instead of 40.
UBI doesn't reject the reality of automation it embraces it. It also recognizes all the work there is to do that isn't paid, like care work, volunteering, and open source coding. It also better enables people to create work.
Look too at Steemit itself. This is a platform that will exist on top of basic income. You would earn your basic income as a floor with earnings like this on top.
Additionally, there is no reason to assume a basic income should be $12k in a world with no jobs. That's silly. A basic income should rise with increases in productivity.
I suggest something along these lines, looking at Alaska as a model to copy and expand upon:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/extreme-wealth-inequality-alaska-model
thank for responding but it still doesnt add up, in my view, UBI may have a so-called wealth effect as a mixed economy ingredient. When referring to 12k it was based on your example.
You see, I do not believe that wealth can be created nor destroyed, the metaphysics of a money-free society borrows fro Nature itself, which functions as a zero-sum game. Because man evolves at a much higher level of awareness he cannot murder/exploit. So the zero-sum game can only be achieved with a money-free society.
One cannot make profits without extracting from a bottom or increasing profit margins. But I digress, we have had both for centuries long. Nearly 7 millions of africans have died so far in the coltan war, so corporations can get this mineral needed for electronics much cheaper, There is blood on all of electronics... so how is UBI going to resolve this? And dont you worry, such examples abound, I could go on an on. A new system is a system that also puts an end to corporate crimes. I'd suggest by the same token "the high price of electronics", a doc exposing the the toxicity of chinese factories, every year 1000s of chinese getting cancer to make our electronics... then you have countries like ghana which we dump on for 30billion worth of our e-waste and which poisons africans in turn. Those highly toxic e-dumps exist in china, india and pakistan too... so please, how can UBI fix that?
The world needs real solutions not just a band-aid solution for the west... developing countries will not get UBI most likely, additionally we have the cashless society that is being thrust upon us and which has so many downsides. But that is another chapter, for another time.
UBI and money-free (which too embraces futurism) are two different premises. UBI is just another keneysian version of the old (what we have now), and monetarism-free promotes the end of darwinism at the expense of the masses, which is at the root of all the planetary ills.
Like I said, UBI theory doesnt seem to be really interested in fixing our world mess. Its metaphysics are poor, and will not bring about any real change. With the prediction of 70% of joblessness in 10 years or so from now, this means that 70% will all get the same amount of money to muddle through and, we can trust that it will not be cumulative.
Making people believe that there will still be "jobs" is selling a illusion. That is maybe why america has a $100 trillion unfunded liabilities black hole. They do not know how bad it really is.
Moreover UBI doesnt address the threat that is AI, the Hive Mind Cloud.
Years before I started researching basic income I discovered the ideas of Jacque Fresco about a resource-based economy which I thought and still do think makes a lot of sense in our future. The key problem was always and remains to this day the avenue of transition to such a new economy. It was when I started looking deeply into UBI that I realized it was the tool of transition - the missing ingredient. This is also why Peter Joseph, founder of the Zeitgeist Movement, is pro-UBI as well.
You appear to want a society that is beyond money. So do I. To evolve in that direction, it is imperative that we decouple money from work. Money cannot be seen as something people require in order to live. As long as that is true, people will care a great deal about money and how to acquire it. Once a minimum amount of money is given to everyone simply for being alive, people will begin to look differently at money. Money will no longer be required to live, and so people will begin to look at money differently, as well as work differently. People will find other goals in life than money, goals like relationships and personal development.
Basic income is about Maslow's Hierarchy. If we cover the first two levels of the pyramid, everyone will start reaching for the upper levels instead of only the bottom two. Scarcity limits thinking. The scarcity mindset effectively reduces IQ by about 14 points. Remove the scarcity mindset and people effectively those 14 IQ points back. Thinking shifts from short-term to long-term.
As long as you think of UBI as only money, you're not seeing the emergent effects of such a system change. One of the effects of UBI is babies are born healthier due to better maternal nutrition. That means we're talking positive epigenetic effects. Kids raised in poverty develop less surface area in their brains compared to kids not raised in poverty. This is structural. Kids lifted out of poverty do better in school and develop positive personality traits. These kids grow into healthier adults with fewer health problems and a greater tendency to be honest and work together well with other people.
If you study all these effects, it's impossible to look at basic income as a "band-aid". The elimination of poverty is not a band-aid. I'd even argue it's one of the points of civilization itself.
The world exists as it is in large part because we do not guarantee that everyone starts above the poverty line. Once we do that, so much more becomes possible, including a resource-based economy thanks to a population of people who no longer worship money, who grew up in healthier environments, who are more educated, more happy, more willing to work with others, more intrinsically motivated, and oriented around abundance instead of scarcity.
UBI is the key to the world we both appear to seek. If you disagree, I highly suggest studying more of the effects observed.
I recommend reading the following in consideration:
https://medium.com/basic-income/human-park-a-mammals-guide-to-stress-free-living-17f6cab007b3
https://medium.com/basic-income/post-capitalism-rise-of-the-collaborative-commons-62b0160a7048
https://medium.com/basic-income/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a
Cheers!
He is for a money-free and resourced based society. And it is pretty obvious. I can assure that Peter Joseph is anti any taxation schemes. He will rather push his resource based theory than saying "money-free" but that is what he means.
I have heard that Joseph said that the basic income should come from the top 1%' s wealth... not by government managing/distributing it. But he doesnt believe it is gonna happen. I agree with him.
"Zeitgeist - Moving Beyond Money" Peter Joseph, Zeitgeist Movement
Published on Mar 27, 2011
In his latest film, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, director Peter Joseph presents a case for a transition out of the current socioeconomic monetary paradigm which runs modern global society to a new sustainable resource based economy. Everyone suffers under the system that exists and suffering is inevitable, not because of politics or policy, but because of monetary existence. The system is flawed. Money is the problem. The focus should be resources, such as food, health and other aspects.
sure I look at the end goal and I agree with the quote here... BUT... the top 1% will make sure it doesn't happen, the top has serious track records proving this. And that explains my stance against UBI, that among other things.
ps: a world with people working out of passion is a world of creators, that's the only metaphysics that can save humanity.