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Think of it: The government prints more money or perhaps — god forbid — it taxes some corporate profits, then it showers the cash down on the people so they can continue to spend. As a result, more and more capital accumulates at the top. And with that capital comes more power to dictate the terms governing human existence.
UBI really just turns us from stakeholders or even citizens to mere consumers.
Meanwhile, UBI also obviates the need for people to consider true alternatives to living lives as passive consumers. Solutions like platform cooperatives, alternative currencies, favor banks, or employee-owned businesses, which actually threaten the status quo under which extractive monopolies have thrived, will seem unnecessary. Why bother signing up for the revolution if our bellies are full? Or just full enough?
Under the guise of compassion, UBI really just turns us from stakeholders or even citizens to mere consumers. Once the ability to create or exchange value is stripped from us, all we can do with every consumptive act is deliver more power to people who can finally, without any exaggeration, be called our corporate overlords.
No, income is nothing but a booby prize. If we're going to get a handout, we should demand not an allowance but assets. That's right: an ownership stake.
https://medium.com/s/powertrip/universal-basic-income-is-silicon-valleys-latest-scam-fd3e130b69a0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @10:11AM (8 children)
Most of the populace hides it quite perfectly. If you cannot offer a reliable way to unhide it, truth or falsity of your hypothesis means precisely nothing.
What percent of usual hobbies are meaningful and productive? What percent of regular jobs, come to that?
A person doing the work doable by a robot or a program, is by definition not more creative than said robot or program. Same as with a slave turning a wheel in place of a horse; when a human being gets reduced to a draft animal, it's "meaningful" all right but with the wrong type of meaning.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by rleigh on Monday October 15 2018, @01:08PM (5 children)
"Most of the populace hides it quite perfectly."
I find your attitude regarding your fellow human beings revolting. Given the opportunity, most of us have the aptitude to make something of ourselves. All of us can contribute something to society at large, no matter how small or insignificant. You don't need to be one of the elite to be useful and have purpose.
"What percent of usual hobbies are meaningful and productive?"
It doesn't matter whether your or I think something lacks meaning or is unproductive. Hobbies aren't meant to be so. The meaning lies solely within the person doing the hobby. It has meaning *for them*. But... hobbies alone aren't sufficient for most people to be the sole focus of our lives. We have family, friends, jobs, and other things going on; the hobby activities fill the fits of free time we fit around all the other stuff. We all need things in our live which provide the purpose and meaning which motivates us to get up, and live in the real world. UBI would remove that for a significant number of people. The incentive to get up, go out and earn some money to keep your family going is really important; our society isn't organised the way it is by accident, and we topple the key pillars of the stability of our society at our peril.
Gaming can be an interesting diversion. But it's not a substitute for real life. It's a waste of your life if not indulged in with some degree of moderation and self-control. It can't substitute for the meaning and satisfaction gained from doing real stuff that affects the real world, not for most people. Even the most casual conversation with a stranger has more meaning and importance then self-indulgent time wasting.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @02:19PM
And I find your attitude placing your emotions before demonstrable facts lunatic. So what? You, I, and the populace are what we are.
Once more: WHAT aptitude has someone with an IQ of 70 in a world of robots and (simplistic) AIs? Stop regurgitating sound bites and THINK.
Now you start contradicting yourself: "Gaming is fundamentally meaningless and unproductive." is what you argued just ONE message ago. Doublethink, or amnesia?
Yeah, sure it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labour#Punitive_versus_productive_labour [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Monday October 15 2018, @02:26PM
And... exactly how UBI suddenly robs such a person of the aptitude of making something of himself?
This is like saying "A trapeze artist will suddenly lose his aptitude if he trains with a safety net".
Because UBI is exactly that: a safety net arresting your financial fall if you drop hard from what you are attempting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 15 2018, @10:09PM (2 children)
I see nothing in your post indicating that the attitude is wrong. I'll note here that a better approach would be to note that if there really were an overwhelming population of destroyers versus creators, we wouldn't have a civilization in the first place.
Gaming is one way to get those most casual conversations with strangers on the other side of the world. It's not bad communication-wise as hobbies go, if you're playing massive multi-player.
My view on this is that this is much like genetic expression. A gene "expresses" itself, if it has some concrete effect on the world. If that effect is positive to the organisms ability to survive and reproduce, then the gene survives to spread itself through the population. Similarly, when we do stuff in the real world, be it a job or a "hobby" with real world application, we influence the world in a way that improves our survival and improves further our ability to shape the world. A UBIer with a full time hobby of games may be improving themselves, but they don't have independence. They won't have much ability to control their lives, if someone pulls the plug on their UBI.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @03:38AM (1 child)
Same goes for lots of people with jobs. Heck in the USA their health care is often tied to their job.
Those people would have even less power and freedom than the UBI consumers the submitter objects to - since they would have to work to live - they would be shackled to their jobs for many hours a day for a wage that won't go up if the robots don't get more expensive or worse. There are plenty of people in the world who don't have independence from their jobs. And a minority that if freed from having to do their jobs might actually come up with stuff that's interesting or even useful to many others, even if it would be a one time thing and not a "job".
Right now the robots are far from good enough to most people's jobs for cheap enough. But if the robots get good and cheap enough, why should people be forced to compete against the robots just to survive? That's just a race to the bottom.
Just think of the Chinese and Indian workers as the first wave of robots. Are the jobs they took really coming back to the USA? The Chinese workers can still compete with the robots for now. And they certainly can outcompete many workers in the USA: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/01/16/169528579/outsourced-employee-sends-own-job-to-china-surfs-web [npr.org]
The Chinese companies are looking to replace those workers with robots. They will be forced to climb up the ladder to escape the robots, or die. Guess whose jobs some of those workers will take?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 16 2018, @04:01AM
Well, if you pulled their UBI, they'd still be employed. If you pulled their job, they can always find another. It's not like a UBI where you can't find another sugar daddy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @02:04PM (1 child)
Many industries have developed out of hobbies - PC's, most things electronic, aeroplanes, rockets, drones, SCUBA. travel, GNU, linux.
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Monday October 15 2018, @08:45PM
While this is certainly true, it does not imply that it is sustainable or desirable for society at large to live this way.