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Are Universal Basic Incomes 'A Tool For Our Further Enslavement'? (medium.com)
Douglas Rushkoff, long-time open source advocate (and currently a professor of Digital Economics at the City University of New York, Queens College), is calling Universal Basic Incomes "no gift to the masses, but a tool for our further enslavement."
Uber's business plan, like that of so many other digital unicorns, is based on extracting all the value from the markets it enters. This ultimately means squeezing employees, customers, and suppliers alike in the name of continued growth. When people eventually become too poor to continue working as drivers or paying for rides, UBI supplies the required cash infusion for the business to keep operating. When it's looked at the way a software developer would, it's clear that UBI is really little more than a patch to a program that's fundamentally flawed. The real purpose of digital capitalism is to extract value from the economy and deliver it to those at the top. If consumers find a way to retain some of that value for themselves, the thinking goes, you're doing something wrong or "leaving money on the table."
Walmart perfected the softer version of this model in the 20th century. Move into a town, undercut the local merchants by selling items below cost, and put everyone else out of business. Then, as sole retailer and sole employer, set the prices and wages you want. So what if your workers have to go on welfare and food stamps. Now, digital companies are accomplishing the same thing, only faster and more completely.... Soon, consumers simply can't consume enough to keep the revenues flowing in. Even the prospect of stockpiling everyone's data, like Facebook or Google do, begins to lose its allure if none of the people behind the data have any money to spend. To the rescue comes UBI.
The policy was once thought of as a way of taking extreme poverty off the table. In this new incarnation, however, it merely serves as a way to keep the wealthiest people (and their loyal vassals, the software developers) entrenched at the very top of the economic operating system. Because of course, the cash doled out to citizens by the government will inevitably flow to them.... 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... if Silicon Valley's UBI fans really wanted to repair the economic operating system, they should be looking not to universal basic income but universal basic assets, first proposed by Institute for the Future's Marina Gorbis... As appealing as it may sound, UBI is nothing more than a way for corporations to increase their power over us, all under the pretense of putting us on the payroll. It's the candy that a creep offers a kid to get into the car or the raise a sleazy employer gives a staff member who they've sexually harassed. It's hush money.
Rushkoff's conclusion? "Whether its proponents are cynical or simply naive, UBI is not the patch we need."
Walmart perfected the softer version of this model in the 20th century. Move into a town, undercut the local merchants by selling items below cost, and put everyone else out of business. Then, as sole retailer and sole employer, set the prices and wages you want. So what if your workers have to go on welfare and food stamps. Now, digital companies are accomplishing the same thing, only faster and more completely.... Soon, consumers simply can't consume enough to keep the revenues flowing in. Even the prospect of stockpiling everyone's data, like Facebook or Google do, begins to lose its allure if none of the people behind the data have any money to spend. To the rescue comes UBI.
The policy was once thought of as a way of taking extreme poverty off the table. In this new incarnation, however, it merely serves as a way to keep the wealthiest people (and their loyal vassals, the software developers) entrenched at the very top of the economic operating system. Because of course, the cash doled out to citizens by the government will inevitably flow to them.... 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... if Silicon Valley's UBI fans really wanted to repair the economic operating system, they should be looking not to universal basic income but universal basic assets, first proposed by Institute for the Future's Marina Gorbis... As appealing as it may sound, UBI is nothing more than a way for corporations to increase their power over us, all under the pretense of putting us on the payroll. It's the candy that a creep offers a kid to get into the car or the raise a sleazy employer gives a staff member who they've sexually harassed. It's hush money.
Rushkoff's conclusion? "Whether its proponents are cynical or simply naive, UBI is not the patch we need."
That's a common counter-argument, but doesn't seem to make sense. You seem to be arguing that charity-type wealth distribution is pointless in general... I'd like to settle this for myself once and for all, so perhaps you can help clarify your point.
As far as I understand it, the goal of UBI is to redistribute the wealth more fairly*, not to create wealth, and only ends up helping those that need money.
For a simpler example, if I buy someone a pair of shoes, that doesn't create wealth, just takes it out of my pocket. Sure, the overall price of shoes will be impacted because of increased demand (if this is scaled up), but other prices will decrease (maybe I won't buy an extra monitor) and the person that needs shoes will now have shoes.
The same thing happens if I (myself or via the government) give away $1000 rather than specifically buying shoes. Sure some prices go up, while others go down, and people get more money to spend on things they need.
*Fairly: As automation, etc, increases it tends to benefit people money rather than people performing the labor. The work that goes into creating that automation is often performed by a third party. For example, as solar panels get cheaper through materials research, investors can make money off of them, while coal workers lose jobs. That's not really equitable to the coal workers, who are providing currently-necessary labor.
The premise is nonsense. UBI is a means of distributing wealth in a economy where the marginal cost of producing goods and services approaches zero. It's a means to offer a transition into post-scarcity economy and a means to keep the ones at the lowest position in the pyramid at bay, because any other option would be more expensive. Rather having people who's jobs have been taken by robots grab kalashnikovs and start taking what they want society will chose to give them UBI. Those societies that will not do so when time is due will fail. UBI raises the bottom to which one can sick to something resembling a frugal but dignified life.
Uber and other shared economy services is just a transition from "private owned cars" to "robot cars used as a commodity" by transition over something that resembles taxis but really is nothing other than people doing lowly work that will be replaced by robots within 10 years. The main part about Uber is nothing but a piece of software anyway. I expect something like Waymo cars becoming attached to the Uber API or something like that within the next 5 years.
The Uber drivers of today will then get UBI. Where they don't, they will cause trouble, understandably.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Well one of the arguments in favor of UBI is it provides the financial stability/assurance to take risks.
If you're guaranteed to have at least enough money to make rent and keep yourself fed, maybe you can spend some time looking for a better job, or go back to school/get a new skill to move into a different profession, or rally for better pay and working conditions with less fear of getting fired over it (and being able to quit, which puts at least some weight in your position as an employee).
Or maybe you could take a chance at quitting your current job and starting a new business, since it's easier to afford to taking that risk.
=Smidge=
Every road and highway in the US is already a toll road, via the gas taxes collected (which, nominally, are supposed to pay for the roads - but rarely are dedicated to that purpose). In California, the State makes ~$0.50 per gallon; with about 15 billion gallons of gas purchased annually, that's around $7.5 billion in tax revenue, which is well above CalTrans (and local municipality) spending on road repair. Gas taxes are the tolls we pay to maintain the road - it's just often that the pot of money is raided for non-road use and thus poverty is claimed when it's time to raise more taxes/tolls for roads.
In 2014, about $324 billion (page 5-18) was spent on all transportation initiatives by local, State, and Federal agencies. This includes transit as well as roads. Those same Governmental agencies collected about $355.1 billion (page 5-21), making transportation more than self-sufficient - if it was all spent on transportation.
The Federal Government made $39 billion in gas and road taxes alone, even through it spent just $33 billion total on all transportation (a large portion of which went to transit). Of that $39 billion in revenue from roads, the Federal Government spent just $3.2 billion supporting roads.
Far from "capitalist roads killing you with tolls", we're already being excessively tolled by the Government - it's just done a gallon at a time.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
40+ years and trillions of dollars after Johnson declared war on poverty and here we are wondering how to enslave more generations in poverty with even more expensive schemes.
If people want to see where this gets them, just look up here to Canada. ~100 years of the federal government paying natives under treaty, and it's effectively collapsed their entire culture and society. Laziness is an inherent human trait, and without something that pushes large swaths of society to improve themselves it just all goes screaming downhill.
Om, nomnomnom...
That's not how it worked out though, is it?
Somehow, in our late-stage capitalism, the "agreement" part has become less and less apparent. And the truth is, that you're confusing capitalism with free markets. They're not the same, and therein lies the difficulty.
The problem with capitalism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You're ignoring that both sides in the transaction gain from a voluntary exchange.
Yes, but that doesn't mean that they are gaining equally from that transaction. Indeed, chances are pretty good that the corporate entity is gaining a whole lot more from the transaction than the consumer is.
Unfortunately, for many transactions the consumer has little choice. We don't get to choose to simply not eat, for example (and most working people don't really have the option of spending half their day fishing).
What the article writer seems to miss in my mind is that UBI needs to go hand-in-hand with a reasonable minimum wage. UBI shouldn't be a way for government to simply provide cheaper labour for corporate entities -- that's simply corporate welfare. UBI needs to be balanced with a reasonable minimum wage to prevent these sorts of abuses.
Yaz
it would change society drastically. You could live where ever. Right now people go where the jobs are. I'm in a major city and I hate it. I'd much rather live in something about 1/3 the size where I am now. I don't care for night life, don't like traveling and hate traffic. But I'm stuck here because this is where the jobs are and I need money.
Also, lots of folks don't _want_ the poor to have options. I worked for a fast food joint in the 90s and the owner had figured out one of her managers' husband was using the insurance for life saving meds. This was before Obamacare did away with pre-existing condition denials so she was completely trapped at that job. Literally a death sentence for her husband if she ever left. As soon as the owner found out she jacked the manager's hours up to 60+/week (salaried of course). This went on until her husband eventually succumbed to his illness and she quit soon after.
The ruling class are well aware of the value of desperation and happy to exploit it.
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