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posted by martyb on Monday October 15 2018, @05:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the perpetual-motion dept.

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


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  • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday October 15 2018, @11:44AM (4 children)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Monday October 15 2018, @11:44AM (#748971) Homepage Journal

    "As productivity and automation continue to improve the only viable alternative to the UBI is mandatory busywork."

    Nonsense. You know, there's a reason that we don't work from sun-up to sun-down on the farm anymore. It's called industrialization, and it reduced the average working hours from "all of them" to maybe 60-70 hours per week. Further increases in industrial productivity have now reduced this to around 40 hours per week.

    Why are people scared of further increases in productivity? What's wrong with reducing the average work week to 30 hours? Or 20?

    With very few exceptions, the real problem lies elsewhere. Back in the bad-old-days, just about anyone could milk a cow or swing a scythe. With industrial jobs, the required skill levels rose, and there were fewer unskilled jobs. Today, that trend continues: there are ever fewer unskilled jobs. What do you do with people who have no useful education and no useful job skills? That is the real problem, and it is a societal problem that UBI, by itself, will do nothing to eliminate.

    Cold, hard truth: aside from a few heart-rending anecdotes, most people with no education and no skills are found in self-perpetuating subcultures that are a net drain on society. While we shouldn't just let them starve, we definitely should kill off the subcultures. Yes, cultural imperialism. Specifically, capitalism is the best system in existence [duckduckgo.com], and it is predicated on the individual incentive to work for your money.

    What that means is this: If you want to pay UBI to the uneducated and unskilled who cannot support themselves, fine, that's a decent thing to do. However, this must be predicated on eliminating the subcultures that create the uneducated and unskilled. Find a way to ensure that their children get an education and acquire some sort of job skills. If that proves impossible, then eliminate child bearing so that the subculture dies out. Want UBI? First, sign up for your free vasectomy or tubal ligation.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @12:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @12:14PM (#748982)

    and it reduced the average working hours from "all of them" to maybe 60-70 hours per week. Further increases in industrial productivity have now reduced this to around 40 hours per week.

    Business owners and certain classes of professionals (eg: top lawyers) still work 70 hours a week.

    eliminate child bearing so that the subculture dies out. Want UBI? First, sign up for your free vasectomy or tubal ligation.

    Covered here [soylentnews.org] but would it still be considered eugenics if it were voluntary? At least better than promoting eugenic ideologies [inews.co.uk] to the idiot classes or thinking the nazi comparisons [lbc.co.uk] are unwarranted.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Monday October 15 2018, @04:33PM

    by sjames (2882) on Monday October 15 2018, @04:33PM (#749115) Journal

    We never worked from sunup to sundown except in myths created to pacify people working 10 hour days in the mines and factories.

    In the middle ages, "a days work" meant from sunrise to noon or from noon to sundown.

    Farming had and still has busy seasons surrounding planting and harvesting but it also has slow seasons where you're just fixing things and letting the plants grow.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @10:39PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @10:39PM (#749261)

    What do you do with people who have no useful education and no useful job skills? That is the real problem, and it is a societal problem that UBI, by itself, will do nothing to eliminate.

    Cold, hard truth: aside from a few heart-rending anecdotes, most people with no education and no skills are found in self-perpetuating subcultures that are a net drain on society. While we shouldn't just let them starve, we definitely should kill off the subcultures. Yes, cultural imperialism. Specifically, capitalism is the best system in existence [duckduckgo.com], and it is predicated on the individual incentive to work for your money.

    Hello modern Puritan. That is some seriously stupid shit which will actually lead us into modern slavery. There is no escaping automation.

    Inventing bullshit jobs will lead to societal unhappiness and a general dystopia predicated on forcing people to work miserable meaningless jobs. Such jobs already exist in relative abundance and it is a problem.

    UBI would 100% help those problems, and those subcultures you refer to are often symptoms of our societal problems with wealth disparity. Someone who decides they don't like being useless would be able to go to school without working two shitty jobs, someone who wants to create their own business could at least start without worrying about starving, etc. These points have been made many times in this thread and it is sad that you are stuck in the Puritan mindset where only the whip is capable of getting people to be useful for society.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 15 2018, @11:49PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 15 2018, @11:49PM (#749294) Journal

      Hello modern Puritan. That is some seriously stupid shit which will actually lead us into modern slavery. There is no escaping automation.

      Why do you think there's a need to escape automation? Automation creates jobs too. I'll note that the developing world doesn't have a problem with automation. Maybe it's time to figure out what they're doing right?

      Inventing bullshit jobs will lead to societal unhappiness and a general dystopia predicated on forcing people to work miserable meaningless jobs. Such jobs already exist in relative abundance and it is a problem.

      Why would we want to employ people for bullshit jobs rather than useful jobs? There is this assumption about automation that hasn't proven out in the real world.

      UBI would 100% help those problems, and those subcultures you refer to are often symptoms of our societal problems with wealth disparity.

      I don't buy that some war on slacker subcultures will be anything other than a total cluster. But I can think of a really obvious reason why the subculture doesn't have wealth. Because, if any member were to get wealth, it'd be parceled out and spent by the rest of the culture.

      Someone who decides they don't like being useless would be able to go to school without working two shitty jobs, someone who wants to create their own business could at least start without worrying about starving, etc.

      They can already. It takes saving money, finding the cheap choices, and a bit of planning. I doubt UBI will make much difference to the sort of people who'd take such risks.