Do government services indirectly promote infantilism?
First what exactly do I mean by infantilism? I'll define it below.
Infantilism
To be infantile is to be childish. Infants rely on their parents 100% to survive. Infantilism is defined by me as the deliberate promotion of the the idea that the poor are like children, or to be treated as children, or to be offered services, protected, etc.
We may be seeing some of this with the SEC which claims to "protect" non-rich aka "unsophisticated investors". These non-rich investors lose the ability to make choices for themselves and participate in the market because the government or some politicians think they cannot manage their money or aren't sophisticated enough to make their own choices. This sort of policy reduces the investor to the position of the infant and empowers the regulator into the position of the parent who knows what is best for the child.
Universal basic income vs universal basic services?
So now lawmakers in the UK are pushing "universal basic services". I interpreted this policy stance as potentially evil because it offers the same sort of risk of promoting infantilism as other controversial policies. Some people may need help and may need services but how are people supposed to strive to become better if treated as infants from the start?
An analogy I used was that UBI (Citizen's income) is like giving an allowance to citizens. UBS ((universal services) may not even just be given to citizens so perhaps foreigners can enjoy the service but also it puts the citizen in the role of infant again. It places the citizen in the role of service consumer and puts the government in the role of service provider. It removes choice, market dynamics, worst of all it removes the possibility of learning financial literacy.
How can a poor person learn to manage money if they only ever have services? How can a poor person participate in capitalism without the money to do so? And even with money there are laws to tell poor people how they can or cannot spend it. If it's services then the poor may not even be able to choose between service providers and if it's food stamp service the poor might not even be free to determine what they can eat.
Having an allowance vs living with parents
At least when you have an allowance you are learning about markets, capitalism, and developing financial literacy. Allowances encourage personal growth. If you live with parents who do the shopping, who do the cooking, who do all the adult decisions, then how exactly can you learn to make adult decisions? In the United States the value or goal of many is to become financially independent and while this may not be true of the UK it at least is worth discussing whether or not governments purposefully encourage dependency, infantilism etc.
Conclusion
Basic income allows people to choose service providers which creates a market. The government being the exclusive service provider disallows the market dynamic. When people receive basic income which isn't means tested they can work and pursue actual sustainable growth and personal development while if it is means tested there is discouraged because access to the services could be revoked if personal growth or economic sustainability is pursued. Is the ideal to have people dependent on government services or to create a market for services so the cost of services goes down over time?
Governments once did public transportation but never did it well. Uber now is disrupting that service once provided by the government. The cost of living could go down due to the Amazon effect and blockchains could give people the opportunity to dig themselves out of financial ruin with wisdom and luck. Crowd funding does have risks but also opportunity, and the same applies to basic income vs basic services. Basic income provides greater opportunities for those who have ambition while basic services are safer but may discourage or even punish risk taking.
Nice article. For me I'll always go for basic income.
This article from the Guardian (an English daily) has a major flaw - it assumes that universal basic income (minimum wage in the US) is a good thing.
In the days of fractional reserve banking and fiat currency, all this means is inflation.
Universal basic income is not "minimum wage". How can you confuse the two?
Please educate me on how they’re different - aside from the fact that you have to actually work to get minimum wage. I guess I just answered my quandary - UBI is more like our welfare...
Do you mean as a reference value (minimum wage?). Not the same thing.
It wouldn't necesseraly do that, the first experiments come from private entities or individual people funding them, so no new money is being printed. It doesnt need to be the government to do it.
Inflation will always have it's impact, but thinking about it there is also a few crypto experiments wich would have the oposite effect of"deflating" in value.
Two words: bread and circus.
interesting your post
thanks for sharing
good luck for you.
When people get a universal basic income they will move to Bulgaria and other nice places with a cheap currency to multiply the value of their basic income. Depending on the requirements, they will fly 2 or 4 times a year home to do the paperwork.
With such a system in place, it'll take 5 years until no-one is working anymore and things fall apart.