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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: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Monday October 15 2018, @04:24PM (3 children)
The entirety of science up to the 20th century came from people who didn't have to work for a living. The engineering came from people who worked but had free time and enough money to tinker.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 19 2018, @06:40PM (2 children)
I can name a dozen pre-20th century mathematicians off the top of my head: Poisson, Euler, Gauss, Fermat, Leibniz, Newton, Riemann, Cauchy, Frobenius, Abel, Fourier, and Hilbert. They still worked for a living, but their work was something relatively conducive like math research, teaching, diplomacy, academic administration, engineer, soldier, etc.
If one actually reads biographies of scientists from this era, one sees a lot of people struggling to get by and do scientific research while simultaneously meeting their own needs.
Meanwhile today, it's easier than ever to be a scientist and thus, scientists are way oversubscribed. The problems today have nothing to do with the vagaries of living and much to do with appearances of doing science being valued more to a lot of parties with funding than the actual science.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday October 19 2018, @08:02PM (1 child)
Look again. Some like Gauss were not born to money, but he (for example) was on a full ride from the local nobility. None of them were filling out TPS reports in triplicate or waiting tables.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 19 2018, @11:05PM
In other words, he worked for a living, but his living was doing math research and teaching.
That's not what "working for a living" means. Could be a lumberjack too.