Let's just skip all the reforms and go straight to a fictional socialist utopia. That's practical, right? Progress is a process and you don't get to skip all the in-between steps along the path....
Exemplary
Let's just skip all the reforms and go straight to a fictional socialist utopia. That's practical, right?
Progress is a process and you don't get to skip all the in-between steps along the path. Hell, it's hard enough not to take steps backward. UBI is a capitalism-compatible stepping stone to whatever comes next. It makes sense. It's hardly 'silicon valley's scam, we almost passed it into law in 1970 under Nixon, long before computers and the digital economy came along. I guess it's trendy to hate on anything people in the valley like now?
The concept of UBI (aka negative income tax) has been beaten like a dead horse by economists for decades, and scientifically studied and proven to work well as the author himself points out. This entire article comes off to me as whinging that UBI isn't 'good enough' for the hardcore socialists, and they are a bit jealous that it's stealing their thunder. Good. Let it steal away.
Reminds me of the arguments against single payer health care made by people who want fully socialized health care. Yeah, we want fully socialized medicine someday. Anyone who thinks we're going to get there without going through single-payer systems first is fooling themselves.
I do agree with the author's criticisms of how digital 'disruptors' destroy value. I just don't get why he's conflating predatory business practices with a mechanism of wealth redistribution that's intended to take some of the pain out of our ruthless capitalistic systems. I'm not seeing the connection.
I'm sure these companies (and all companies) would love to have a UBI out there so that people have more money to spend on them. That's the entire point of UBI, after all. People aren't using it to buy porsches. They are buying food, diapers, home repairs - the basics. That's why it's called basic income. It's a boon to the velocity of money which is a major factor in how much real 'work' gets done in any given economy.
Bob pays Dave $100 to repair his tractor.
Dave pays Alice $100 to do some plumbing repairs on his home.
Alice pays Bob $100 for corn he's farmed.
Nobody made any money in that overall transaction - yet everyone got some useful work done. That's velocity of money in a nutshell (the simple version). Seems like the author expects every recipient of money in this transaction to be an exploitative scorched-earth corporation rather than a person. That's not the world we live in yet, either. It one day could be, but that's got nothing to do with UBI itself. If you want a shit-ton of home-grown business to appear and challenge corporations, UBI has been proven to deliver exactly that effect, as the author himself points out.
I expect these companies would love UBI a lot less if it's set at $50k a year as the 'minimum' the government has to provide, and the funds for it are being taken out of their hides and illegal tax havens. That strikes me as the likely outcome in the long run. UBI is very expensive, and so is socialized medicine, and free education for everyone. Corporations are going to be the ones to pay for this out of their taxes, because they have all the money.
Once we're living in that world, we can talk about how to move to a socialist utopia - and if we even need to do that. The combination of UBI/health/education already looks like utopia, compared to how we live now. You want a market healthier than anything that came before it? Make sure the people who are the market have dignity, the cash and safety to take risks, the knowledge to do it well, and keep them healthy so they can pursue their goals.
I fully agree. I see UBI as a mechanism to improve the welfare system. Corporate reform is another separate matter and a different battle - one we definitely need to fight. We may even need to...
I fully agree. I see UBI as a mechanism to improve the welfare system. Corporate reform is another separate matter and a different battle - one we definitely need to fight. We may even need to have that fight before we can pay for UBI as more than a token gesture.
One of the things I like about UBI is that you can scale it up and down. You don't have to flatly say 'everyone shall be guaranteed at least $15k a year' and leave it there forever. Two decades later when automation is driving a new economic boom, you can bump the UBI up to $35k a year when you find the funds to pay for it. One possible way to get to a socialist utopia is to just keep bumping that number until it covers everyone.
People usually counter this with the 'whatabout inflation' argument. So far nobody has proven UBI has impacts on inflation - it didn't in every study done so far. The two don't seem to be directly related.
You know how they say Silicon Valley is all about reinventing things that already exist, but giving it a different brand and calling it 'innovation'? This somewhat reads like somebody reinventing...
You know how they say Silicon Valley is all about reinventing things that already exist, but giving it a different brand and calling it 'innovation'? This somewhat reads like somebody reinventing Marxism without ever mentioning it (though that might be on purpose).
Part of the reason why, I think, UBI has found proponents both in Social Democrat and Sillicon Valley circles is exactly because it represents a way to maintain capitalist hegemony, because it seems like people at large don't want to leave it. Or at the very least, they never manage to get a movement going to really subvert those structures of power. Early Marxists seem to genuinely believe the proletarian revolution was an unavoidable outcome, but nothing ended up happening.
Very interesting take I haven't seen before. As somebody who generally leans towards socialism, I agree that UBI is not really a perfect fix like some people suggest. Certain industries need to be...
Very interesting take I haven't seen before. As somebody who generally leans towards socialism, I agree that UBI is not really a perfect fix like some people suggest. Certain industries need to be government controlled and there need to be way more limits on the power of the corporation.
However, welfare state capitalism is preferable to capitalism where people starve. The only really convincing argument I read is that UBI will placate people. Which might be true, but it's a marxist refrain that's been around forever.
As a rule, I'm extremely suspicious of any political agenda pushed by a large corporation. Almost always, those corporations care first and foremost about their profit, and whatever they might...
Exemplary
As a rule, I'm extremely suspicious of any political agenda pushed by a large corporation. Almost always, those corporations care first and foremost about their profit, and whatever they might say, that agenda will somehow increase those profits.
Financially motivated politics is a horrible thing. See: for-profit prisons and what they lobby, or so-called "big oil" doing their best to discredit climate change, or tobacco companies doing their best to literally kill as many people as possible for money.
But! That doesn't mean that any idea pushed by a corporation is immediately a bad one. The fact that Uber and other companies may try and exploit UBI is not an argument against UBI. It's an argument against those companies and the rules surrounding them, or lack thereof.
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...
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."
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.
If the good folks of Uber or any other extractive digital enterprise really want to reprogram the economy to everyone’s advantage and guarantee a sustainable supply of wealthy customers for themselves, they should start by tweaking their own operating systems. Instead of asking the government to make up the difference for unlivable wages, what about making one’s workers the owners of the company? Instead of kicking over additional, say, 10% in tax for a government UBI fund, how about offering a 10% stake in the company to the people who supply the labor? Or another 10% to the towns and cities who supply the roads and traffic signals? Not just a kickback or tax but a stake.
Let's just skip all the reforms and go straight to a fictional socialist utopia. That's practical, right?
Progress is a process and you don't get to skip all the in-between steps along the path. Hell, it's hard enough not to take steps backward. UBI is a capitalism-compatible stepping stone to whatever comes next. It makes sense. It's hardly 'silicon valley's scam, we almost passed it into law in 1970 under Nixon, long before computers and the digital economy came along. I guess it's trendy to hate on anything people in the valley like now?
The concept of UBI (aka negative income tax) has been beaten like a dead horse by economists for decades, and scientifically studied and proven to work well as the author himself points out. This entire article comes off to me as whinging that UBI isn't 'good enough' for the hardcore socialists, and they are a bit jealous that it's stealing their thunder. Good. Let it steal away.
Reminds me of the arguments against single payer health care made by people who want fully socialized health care. Yeah, we want fully socialized medicine someday. Anyone who thinks we're going to get there without going through single-payer systems first is fooling themselves.
I do agree with the author's criticisms of how digital 'disruptors' destroy value. I just don't get why he's conflating predatory business practices with a mechanism of wealth redistribution that's intended to take some of the pain out of our ruthless capitalistic systems. I'm not seeing the connection.
I'm sure these companies (and all companies) would love to have a UBI out there so that people have more money to spend on them. That's the entire point of UBI, after all. People aren't using it to buy porsches. They are buying food, diapers, home repairs - the basics. That's why it's called basic income. It's a boon to the velocity of money which is a major factor in how much real 'work' gets done in any given economy.
Nobody made any money in that overall transaction - yet everyone got some useful work done. That's velocity of money in a nutshell (the simple version). Seems like the author expects every recipient of money in this transaction to be an exploitative scorched-earth corporation rather than a person. That's not the world we live in yet, either. It one day could be, but that's got nothing to do with UBI itself. If you want a shit-ton of home-grown business to appear and challenge corporations, UBI has been proven to deliver exactly that effect, as the author himself points out.
I expect these companies would love UBI a lot less if it's set at $50k a year as the 'minimum' the government has to provide, and the funds for it are being taken out of their hides and illegal tax havens. That strikes me as the likely outcome in the long run. UBI is very expensive, and so is socialized medicine, and free education for everyone. Corporations are going to be the ones to pay for this out of their taxes, because they have all the money.
Once we're living in that world, we can talk about how to move to a socialist utopia - and if we even need to do that. The combination of UBI/health/education already looks like utopia, compared to how we live now. You want a market healthier than anything that came before it? Make sure the people who are the market have dignity, the cash and safety to take risks, the knowledge to do it well, and keep them healthy so they can pursue their goals.
I fully agree. I see UBI as a mechanism to improve the welfare system. Corporate reform is another separate matter and a different battle - one we definitely need to fight. We may even need to have that fight before we can pay for UBI as more than a token gesture.
One of the things I like about UBI is that you can scale it up and down. You don't have to flatly say 'everyone shall be guaranteed at least $15k a year' and leave it there forever. Two decades later when automation is driving a new economic boom, you can bump the UBI up to $35k a year when you find the funds to pay for it. One possible way to get to a socialist utopia is to just keep bumping that number until it covers everyone.
People usually counter this with the 'whatabout inflation' argument. So far nobody has proven UBI has impacts on inflation - it didn't in every study done so far. The two don't seem to be directly related.
You know how they say Silicon Valley is all about reinventing things that already exist, but giving it a different brand and calling it 'innovation'? This somewhat reads like somebody reinventing Marxism without ever mentioning it (though that might be on purpose).
Part of the reason why, I think, UBI has found proponents both in Social Democrat and Sillicon Valley circles is exactly because it represents a way to maintain capitalist hegemony, because it seems like people at large don't want to leave it. Or at the very least, they never manage to get a movement going to really subvert those structures of power. Early Marxists seem to genuinely believe the proletarian revolution was an unavoidable outcome, but nothing ended up happening.
Very interesting take I haven't seen before. As somebody who generally leans towards socialism, I agree that UBI is not really a perfect fix like some people suggest. Certain industries need to be government controlled and there need to be way more limits on the power of the corporation.
However, welfare state capitalism is preferable to capitalism where people starve. The only really convincing argument I read is that UBI will placate people. Which might be true, but it's a marxist refrain that's been around forever.
I'm pretty happy being placated if the alternative is starvation and social unrest.
As a rule, I'm extremely suspicious of any political agenda pushed by a large corporation. Almost always, those corporations care first and foremost about their profit, and whatever they might say, that agenda will somehow increase those profits.
Financially motivated politics is a horrible thing. See: for-profit prisons and what they lobby, or so-called "big oil" doing their best to discredit climate change, or tobacco companies doing their best to literally kill as many people as possible for money.
But! That doesn't mean that any idea pushed by a corporation is immediately a bad one. The fact that Uber and other companies may try and exploit UBI is not an argument against UBI. It's an argument against those companies and the rules surrounding them, or lack thereof.
Walmart pays its employees so little that they're forced to rely on food stamps. Is this an argument against food stamps, or against Walmart?
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."