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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 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.