RE: Top 10 Universal Basic Income Articles of 2016
A few months ago I was thinking of the economy in terms of a huge game of Monopoly. When I'm winning at a game of Monopoly, I want the game to go on forever. Problem is, when your opponents all start going bankrupt, the game has to end. Only by taking steps to strengthen your opponents can the game continue. I see it as being the same with national economies. When a handful of corporations control everything from food production to mainstream media and competition is forced out of the game, you start getting into trouble. Add to this a world without jobs where average people will not be able to participate in "The Game" because they are flat broke, then the national and global "Monopoly" comes to a crashing halt. Only by ensuring that the average person can continue to participate in the economy can we have a "game" where everyone from top to bottom can benefit.
Great reading list. Thanks for keeping this topic going here!
I like to make analogies to Monopoly quite often. When we turn around 18 or so, we are all welcomed into a game of Monopoly that has been going for hundreds of years, where all the property is already owned, where monopolies already exist and houses and hotels already exist, and where the rules have been paid for by the wealthy to benefit the wealthy.
In the real world, we don't start the game with free money. Instead the money we start with exists via debt that must be paid back with interest. Instead of getting a regular income for passing Go, we must work for those who own property in exchange for some income to last just long enough to give back to the wealthy landowners as rent.
No one would agree to play a game of Monopoly as rigged and absurdly designed for the vast majority of players as the one we're all born into playing. But that's exactly the problem. No one has the choice not to play.
Basic income isn't so much Go money, or the free money in which all players of Monopoly are given to start, although both share traits with UBI. It's the power to say "Fuck you. I'm not playing your shitty game with your shitty rules. I think I'll just do something else thank you very much."
There's also some interesting science behind this as well, where without intervention, free markets will always result in a stalled market where exchanges can no longer take place.
The above study also makes me wonder about Steemit itself. I think whales are going to grow to be a bigger and bigger problem without some changes to their ability to accumulate most of the Steem.