Men (Not) At Work

Leftists are very excited by the idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI).

Wikipedia defines UBI as follows:

Basic income, also called universal basic income, citizen’s income, citizen’s basic income in the United Kingdom, basic income guarantee in the United States and Canada, basic living stipend or universal demogrant, is a periodic cash payment delivered to all on an individual basis without means test or work requirement. The incomes would be:

• Unconditional: A basic income would vary with age, but with no other conditions, so everyone of the same age would receive the same basic income, whatever their gender, employment status, family structure, contribution to society, housing costs, or anything else.

• Automatic: Someone’s basic income would be automatically paid weekly or monthly into a bank account or similar.

• Non-withdrawable: Basic incomes would not be means-tested. Whether someone’s earnings increase, decrease, or stay the same, their basic income will not change.

• Individual: Basic incomes would be paid on an individual basis and not on the basis of a couple or household.

• As a right: Everybody legally resident would receive a basic income, subject to a minimum period of legal residency and continuing residency for most of the year.

The idea is that UBI replaces welfare. But the crucial difference from welfare is that even those with jobs would receive it. The idea is that as we enter the age of automation, there will not be the need for as many manual workers. So, the AI machines at the factories will perform all the work and then the profits generated by the AI machines can be split, equitably of course, across everyone in the country. Those people that have the skills or the need to work can choose to do so, but there would be no obligation to work. We will just need people for the jobs that can’t be automated while everyone else lounges around sucking grapes like the last days of the Roman Empire. Leftists predict that we will experience a cultural renaissance because people will be able to turn their minds to more lofty pursuits once they no longer have to worry about how to pay the mortgage.

Yet people of a perceptive nature can immediately see what this is: it’s another method championed by Leftists for breaking the link between work and money. The Left don’t really like working. They feel there is enough money around that if it was shared around equally they wouldn’t have to work. That is the goal.

Plus, there is clearly a mismatch between the means of production and the source of UBI: UBI is a payment from the governnent. Yet the automation at businesses is in private hands. So, how is the money going to be transferred from businesses to government? Well, either corporation tax will have to shoot up or, better yet, the businesses will be taken into state ownership. It all starts becoming clear: UBI is the latest re-purposing of socialism.

Welfare was the original method that loosened the links between work and survival but welfare has a PR issue: welfare is seen as something for common people. UBI, on the other hand, is a much higher status endeavour. This is a project that lower middle class Leftists are happy to rally around because whilst Leftists love suckling at the teat of public money, they don’t like the thought of being on welfare. UBI is another way of making us all reliant on the state in a socially acceptable way. Leftists sure do love to be dependent on the state.

Anyone can see that this experiment goes against human nature. Humans have had to spend the whole of human existence trying to survive. At the very moment when existence seems assured, Leftists want to down tools and say “Right, we can take it easy now”. No, we can’t. Humans need work. Humans need competition to bring out the best in us. Humans need to strive, to innovate and to invent in order to keep moving forward. No progress will be made in a society where life has no purpose.

If the population doesn’t have to work, there will be all sorts of unintended consequences. We will have too much free time. We will become bored. We will feel irrelevant and unnecessary. Mental health issues will become an epidemic in a world where nobody feels they make a difference. I can’t imagine that peoples’ physical health will be good either: in a world where you don’t have to do anything, what’s the point in doing anything? Welfare has been around for multiple generations now. We don’t tend to view families in which 3 generations haven’t worked as being the best that we have to offer: these people have not spent the time available to them becoming really good at pottery. Nor are they seen as examples of physical perfection. Let’s not pretend that people with lots of time on their hands will use that time wisely.

Listlessness and ennui will be widespread. People will not be working out. Instead, opioids will be the order of the day. Something to take your mind off the insignificance of your life. Something to soothe that anxiety you feel that there must be more to life.

The current elevated status of Western Civilisation is not guaranteed. It would be a mistake to think we can sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labours. When the Roman Empire collapsed, the West lost the knowledge as to how to make concrete for 1000 years. As concepts go, UBI is worse than socialism: socialism also ignores human nature for progression and to be rewarded for hard work but at least people have to work under socialism.

Let humans be humans, not lab rats.

UPDATE: Caitlin Johnstone, writing in Takimag, has a much better handle on UBI than I have. I see UBI as a method for governments to take over. Caitlin sees it as a way for the oligarchs to take over. She makes a good case. Either way, we’re fucked.

Here’s a snippet from Caitlin’s article:

Think about what would happen in that situation if people decided they weren’t being treated fairly by the existing system. What recourse would they have? They can’t organize labor strikes if they have no labor. They can’t boycott if everything is made by the same corrupt system. Mass demonstrations and civil disobedience would go unnoticed by a power structure that needs nothing from its populace. Violent revolution would be an unwinnable game as security systems protecting the infrastructure of the powerful would also become automated. People would cease to be active participants in their society, and would instead be merely along for the ride at the whims of the oligarchs, for as long as the oligarchs deemed them not too inconvenient to keep around.