I don’t know how relevant this is now, but here’s a link to another post where I expressed my thoughts on what kind of pitfalls you might most likely face – https://lemmy.world/post/36867409
By the way, what is this phenomenon on Lemmy? Let’s say people are reluctant to read and comment on old posts published just a couple of days or a week ago, but with new ones, it’s a completely different story. What kind of psychology is this? Or it seemed to me?
Funny how UBI is typically considered a left-wing policy in the US, yet the only place in the country that actually has a UBI is traditionally considered pretty conservative.
Alaska has a thing called the Alaska Permanent Fund which was funded with an initial investment of oil and mining revenue. It pays out around $100 a month which is not really something to live on but definitely helps for struggling Alaskans.
I think a viable model for UBIs on a national scale would probably involve something similar. Perhaps a one-shot tax on the mega-rich to get the initial funding and then it’s used to run a state-owned investment portfolio which invests in various sectors of the economy and then pays out the profits to the citizens.
Organized (left or right) politics don’t support UBI because UBI redistributes power, and a power concentrating answer to any oppression complaint is to switch the balance of supremacism. Neocon/Zionist first rule in USA needs you to be miserable to be distracted from war and Israel budgets by gaslighting. CIA determined rule in other democracies is to make you miserable and destabilized, so that your puppets can give more tribute to US and its corporate champions.
As specific examples, leftist EU parties are still pro Trump/NATO and the collapsing austerity requirements of 5% of GDP for US weapons. In NY State, a DEM governor proposal to offer universal healthcare (same general justification as UBI) was rejected by union leaders because healthcare misery is a union recruiting/power imbalance.
Hate, misery, and crime are features that right wing needs for fascism, but left politicians can do quite well as controlled opposition, and get their share of oligarchy trickle down. Fighting the right on bandaid programs to create a new/bigger hierarchy, rewarding left supporters, is reward for fighting political war on left’s side.
Just a little clarification on the Alaspa PFD (Permanent Fund Dividend), it’s not paid monthly, but rather annually, and the amount it pays out changes from year to year depending on oil revenue for that year, which is where the fund comes from in the first place. This year it’s only $1000. For an idea of amounts, in 2020 it was only $992 (Covid just ruined everything everywhere) while in 2022 it was as high as $3,284.
It is still basically UBI though, even if the amount per year isn’t even enough to entirely offset the added expense of living in Alaska.
UBI is a bad idea because it reinforces and relies on the capitalist idea of money. We should make basic resources themselves free, like a supermarket you can walk into and take stuff without paying, rather than giving people points to buy stuff that costs points.
Fundamentally money is a way of allocating limited resources. As long as there remains greed and limited resources, there need to be such limits. All anti-capitalist campaigners seem to rightly agree that human greed is a constant factor, so it would be crazy to forget it here.
If you give out money the people who own stuff (rich people) will just increase prices and take all that money.
If you print £100 and give it to every person, then yes. But if you tax every person with progressive taxation so that the poor pay little or no tax, and then give everyone £100 using the proceeds, no, because you are changing the distribution of resource-allocation-units between the people who had the most and the least of them previously.
So, why don’t they do just increase all the prices now?
Because people can’t afford it?
Increasing the money supply does lead to inflation, but it’s not as simple as you make it seem. It’s worth pointing out that generally people intend UBI to redistribute money rather than add to the current supply. If necessary, there’s no reason that you can’t have stronger price regulation for any destabilized industry.
Because even if there is inflation, that doesn’t mean prices go up evenly. For example, staple foods are fairly insulated from inflation because of steady demand and low barriers to entry. If it seems noticeably profitable, a lot of people can start producing it and undercutting each other. Industry collusion is very hard to achieve the more players there are that can sabotage the group.
If UBI covers only basic needs (implied by the B) that are purchased at steady amounts regardless, that opens up the lower classes to a lot more optional spending. So you would probably see the most price increases on things that are currently bought by the upper middle class. Expensive hobbies, premium brands of things with cheaper alternatives, and services in general would probably become more expensive from induced demand.
I agree and my reply was a bit short and incomplete. I’m mostly worried about things like housing and infrastructure. Very expensive and mostly privatized. With that also access to the workers and companies that can actually build stuff.
Yeah, I’m not sure how those would be affected overall. Housing unfortunately has been going up in price quickly for a long time despite largely stagnant wages. But I expect having a reliable stream of income would be a significant benefit for low income people to be able to afford at least what they would have otherwise. It’s an area that really warrants more attention regardless of whether UBI is implemented.
Yes, but the free money that is given out is typically obtained by taking it from the people who own stuff.
That would be great but it’s usually not the case (look at COVID, the banking crisis in 2008 etc). The money is not coming from the rich.
This cannot work in the real world unfortunately. there will always exist greedy self-centered people (coincidentally also the type striving most successfully towards position of power), they will not abide by rules of courtesy that this requires.
It’s not like a situation where one greedy person is dropped in the middle of a society of altruists, and the whole thing goes belly up. It is possible to educate a society on what greed looks like, what its effects are, and how to deal with people who try to become utility monsters.
I agree with you, but also I’m not gonna say no if they did implement UBI. Anarchist mutual aid is better than money, but UBI is better than nothing
Anarchist mutual aid is better than money, but UBI is better than nothing
UBI empowers mutual aid. There’s no basic needs mutual aid required. The most important mutual aid is the ability to contribute work/time and money in exchange for share of future profits. UBI empowers you to contribute your time to something you believe will make you prosperous/happy, without the concern for eating in the next weeks.
Well, I’m wondering what kind of chaos will start, because these fascists don’t plan on stopping. They want to create cyberpunk and dystopia at any cost, even by stealing taxpayers’ money and more.
I said in a comment “hey why not universal healthcare and also ubi” and this nutcase yelled at me for over a week about it. I wasn’t going to bother with defending the idea since I was just asking “why not” and they were calling me lazy, entitled, and stupid.
Well, these are tense times, so people can be extremely aggressive, but if a collapse happens… Oh, people would become barbarians.
Oh, people would become barbarians.
The billionaire class has already hired a barbarian horde of ICE Agents to bang at our gates.
In a serious economic collapse, circa 2008, we’re going to see what happens when those barbarians can’t extract their tribute.
There are some legit criticisms from the left on UBI, it’s myopic focus on consumption, the possibility of it being eaten away due to inflation it causes and becoming a gift to landlords etc. I don’t think “the government will use it to control us” is a good one as that can be said about any social service the government provides. Should we not have universal Healthcare because if a fascist takes over he can kick you off the roles and you’ll die from a preventable disease?
Filling everyone’s basic needs will be a vast social undertaking that will require a lot of organization, just because someone might take over that organization and wield it for power doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make it, it just means we have to keep careful watch over it when we do.
I don’t think “the government will use it to control us” is a good one as that can be said about any social service the government provides.
It’s backwards, as the method of social control by the state is national security. And we’ve never seen so-called libertarian conservatives flinch at inflating the size of the Pentagon or the FBI or ICE.
The real “danger” of Social Security / Medicare / HUD is that a state official might provide a benefit that endears the public to an institution of the state at the expense of the free market. In effect, the “control” is the result of popular support for a program. And the “victims” are people who want the program expanded.
I’m pretty loud about most of those criticisms from the left and I still think it would be better than this.
A wise answer… But times are tense now, and who knows what surprises await us next. By the way, I recommend looking into what a CBDC is, in my opinion, they will also try to introduce this after digital IDs…
the possibility of it being eaten away due to inflation it causes
This is a right wing argument against UBI. If you receive 5 recruiter calls per day begging to take an employer’s money, wages will go up, and demand will go up, forcing supply/competition to catch up to take/trickle back all of people’s money back to corporatist ownership. UBI is not wealth redistribution, it is you getting more stuff while still having an end of month balance of $0.
becoming a gift to landlords
More of a left argument. But individual empowerment means freedom from structural policies that drive rent extortion. UBI means you can share rent with certainty that they can pay rent. Landlord risk against tenants not paying going down, means less risk to renting basements and attics. You have the power to pay for moving expenses to escape asshole landlord policies, or structurally oppressive cities, without needing a job in new location first. UBI means you can afford home ownership and become a landlord yourself.
A leftist brainworm is that “classes of people are assholes” and can only be eaten as a solution. The truth is corrupt market power imbalances create resentment of the powerful. UBI allows for natural “perfect competition” (all the suppliers make a fair ROI for voluntarily participating) markets, which housing is one. I said this was a left criticism, but it’s also a right criticism against inflation.
“the government will use it to control us”
It’s an absurd criticism, because UBI is freedom from government discretion. Although its the right that threatens to take away healthcare from classes of people (trans), SS is not up for discussion as “for republicans only”. Medicaid is a “lower race” program that is attacked while Medicare is a “Republican constituency”. UBI is power redistribution that doesn’t give rise to the “American History X” accusations of “programs tilted just for the subhumans” divisiveness. We all get the same deserved dividend respresenting our equal ownership share of the country, and its tax revenue.
Filling everyone’s basic needs will be a vast social undertaking that will require a lot of organization, just because someone might take over that organization and wield it for power doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make it
The UBI distribution organization is the IRS. Trump’s IRS crony takeover is just about preventing audits for those who bribe him to ignore their tax fraud. It won’t be used to change your/general people’s refund formula.
forcing supply/competition to catch up
How though? There’s no mechanism in UBI to increase production to match the increased demand. If anything its could decrease production / supply as less people work and choose to just live off UBI. Increasing the amount of cash in the market doesn’t increase productivity/ supply, otherwise printing money would work. Increasing aggregate demand / money without increasing aggregate supply / productivity just leads to inflation. This is what I mean by its myopic focus on consumption, production also needs to be considered. Everyone wants to focus on the “to each according to their needs” part and not the “from each according to their ability”
Yeah certain industries can scale up relatively cheaply to match this increased demand but things like housing which have a limited supply that expands relatively slowly will just see price increases. You said this could cause increased competition for landlords but it will also cause increased competition for housing.
If there are 4 houses and 5 households and before UBI 4 households made enough to afford $1,000 in rent and they got the 4 houses, after UBI of $1,000 the landlord can use the threat of renting to the homeless person to raise the rent until that homeless person is priced out again. If you increase the amount of money people have without increasing supply then the people will use that money to bid up prices until you’re back to the old distribution of resources.
The alternative to UBI that the left has been pushing forever, especially the African American left, has been a universal jobs guarantee. Anyone can go into a government office and they’ll give you a job with decent pay. Since you’re putting people to work you can actually increase productivity and supply to match the new demand. You still get all the guarantees of income and the benefits that entails of getting out of bad situations but you also are able to pressure employers for better labor standards. If the government is offering a living wage for 3 days a week then other employers will have to match that. It’s also more politically viable, trying to convince middle America that “free money” is a good thing will be a lot harder then convincing them that a jobs guarantee is good.
There’s no mechanism in UBI to increase production to match the increased demand.
There will normally be import pressure if every local supplier refuses to increase supply to meet the large demand, and economic growth, increase that UBI affords. Fine, our usual scarcity economics are proven profitable. But, any supplier can take share and profits by increasing supply instead of being part of cartel extortion strategy. Import pressure is key to lowering prices if cartel is “succeeding”.
If anything its could decrease production / supply as less people work and choose to just live off UBI.
You will get 5 job offers per day, and if you refuse them all, everyone else will get 10 job offers per day. You can understand that working a little bit will let you afford more beer and videogames, or consider raising a family. Inflation/work is self adjusting. If everyone hates all work, then work pays awesomely, and prices may rise enough that work still feels needed to stay ahead. Too many people just love work at any wage, and GDP-based freedom dividends makes full time time off more attractive.
after UBI of $1,000 the landlord can use the threat of renting to the homeless person to raise the rent until that homeless person is priced out again.
UBI+work allows you to upgrade your housing. UBI+homelessness will always be able to afford a shoebox, and lifestyle that doesn’t involve harassing people/tourists for spare change. A fixed address shoebox can help with job search in a job market desperate for more workers, and being among the population receiving 5 recruiter calls/emails per day.
a universal jobs guarantee.
Categorically demonic leftist proposal. Create a hierarchy to manage “useless jobs”. Enslaving population’s time to dig and fill holes, is theft of their time that they could pursue to provide useful work, or enhance skills for future useful work, to society. The theft of time and energy able to enhance individual’s lives is categorically evil. Leftist politics is about creating bureaucratic hierarchies to put bandaids on oligarchy, in order to reward leftist allies with bureaucratic positions. It is an unnecessary expense/evil to provide income to people.
but any supplier can take share and profits by increasing supply
Increasing supply in almost every industry requires more labor though. With UBI you get a labor shortage though as less people will work, and the people that do work will be demanding higher wages like you said, pushing up the price of the finished goods.
This is the problem with UBI , it focuses only on demand and consumption on the assumption that increasing them will magically make supply increase to match. But demand doesn’t create supply, labor does, its the core of productivity. Someone’s gotta be making the food we all get to eat, and caring for you when you’re sick or old etc. If more and more of those people decide to go on UBI then there will be less of those to go around and the supply that will be available will be expensive as the people that continue working will demand a higher wage for there service.
UBI + homelessness means you can afford a shoebox and a lifestyle…
Not sure what you mean by this, by homeless do you mean unemployed and a shoebox just means a small APT, or do you mean actually homeless and a shoebox is just a PO box to have a permanent address? Assuming you mean the former, again you aren’t building more shoeboxes so that shoebox that the homeless person wants to rent with there UBI is probably currently occupied by a person who will use all there UBI to bid up the rent so that they can keep there housing as theyre now competing with those homeless people with UBI to keep from being homeless. This works further up the housing ladder as each tier will bid up prices to maintain there housing in the face of rising competition from the lower tiers who now have UBI. So rents increase, but the housing situation for everyone remains the same.
As for the jobs guarantee it doesn’t have to be, nor should it be for most people, digging holes and filling them in. The other benefit of it is that we as a society can decide on what work is useful and not the market. Under this a job could be caring for your dependents at home, building green infrastructure, environmental restoration, building affordable housing etc. work that the current market based system doesn’t value. With UBI you keep that market system of labor and that work doesn’t get done but a lot of socially destructive work like say running a casino keeps going.
UBI actually makes it harder for the government to do these projects as the government wouldn’t have the money for it and labor prices would also go up. It’ll be hard to build actually affordable housing if all the government budget is going to UBI and construction workers now cost twice as much in wages.
UBI works on the assumption that there’s not enough work to be done and that a sizable chunk of the population can stop working and we’ll be fine. That’s not true, not only do we have to keep working on all the things we currently are, we need to do more to transition to net zero and figure out how to sequester millions of tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere, that’s not going to happen by itself.
With UBI you get a labor shortage though as less people will work, and the people that do work will be demanding higher wages like you said, pushing up the price of the finished goods.
People will work if they get a good enough offer. That a company’s competitors hope that slavery returns after UBI is implementented is an opportunity for those companies who understand that it will stay forever and hire the people they need to take consumers money. Where imports from slave labour nations is an option, as it mostly is today even with tariffs, then imports can displace higher housing spending. Immigration, AI, Robotics are all alternatives if no one wants to work, and if no one wants to work, everyone is happy to not have to work, and still get cheap enough products.
The other benefit of it is that we as a society can decide on what work is useful and not the market.
Market is absolutely better at deciding what is useful. There still can be functions that are best/only provided by government, and need staff, but those should be proposed government functions/programs because the programs are good. A job guarantee is first you must sacrifice 8 hours per day, then we decide what’s best for you to spend your 8 hours on.
caring for your dependents at home
UBI allows for caring for people/dependents. You don’t need unionized child/dependent care. If I am caring for someone full time already, by all means, bring your dependents to me for extra income for me. UBI can make me more friendly to community on setting a fair price compared to slavery, union supported slavery, economy that forces extortionist pricing for care.
It’ll be hard to build actually affordable housing if all the government budget is going to UBI and construction workers now cost twice as much in wages.
Social housing in much of the world is “income based rent” that rewards getting a 3 bedroom space even if you are single. Rules disallow sharing, and there may be other stupid/oppressive rules too. The best bargain is to only earn grey/black market income to make the housing free. UBI is a far better housing solution. I previously mentioned sharing, or if you are not interested in work, moving to a community where work availability is a non-concern. Expensive housing is exclusively because work opportunities are awesome, or it is a tourist paradise (often convenient for part time work). Welfare/unemployment insurance rules often stipulate that you are not allowed to move.
UBI works on the assumption that there’s not enough work to be done and that a sizable chunk of the population can stop working and we’ll be fine.
UBI only needs to work on principle that you deserve an equal share of tax revenue. Our slavery system works on principle that Oligarchists best rewards are only from slavery, and that paying higher wages to attract people with “fuck you” money cannot possibly be profitable. It’s an argument for even harsher slavery conditions. Oligarchs, and only oligarchs, must decide the only possible economic path.
we need to do more to transition to net zero and figure out how to sequester millions of tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere, that’s not going to happen by itself.
Concern for human sustainability only occurs when your next voting decisions is not based on inflation resulting from yet another failed war on Russia. Poverty and stress makes you full tropic thunder, and short sighted. War mongering Zionist supremacism pillaging of your country is too hard to see, if Biden caused egg prices is all the media tells you to base your vote on. Cooperation with Russia is needed to get global warming constrained. Threatening Russia just burns more diesel.
Yes people will work, but less people will work then they do now, that will lower productivity and therefore supply and raise prices. If you’re relying on imports from low wage countries, while your own countries productivity and therefore exports go down, then that will just increase the trade deficit. So more money will be leaving the country, increasing the supply of that currency on the international market and thus decreasing its value. Another word for a decreasing value of currency is inflation.
everyone is happy to not have to work, and still get cheap products
Again where are these products coming from. Internally they will get more expensive as wages rise, externally they will get more expensive as the value of the currency falls.
You picked the one job out of that list that people will voluntarily do. Very few people are signing up to do manual labor restoring ecosystems, building housing/infrastructure. You can say this is a mindset thing that will change once people have there basic needs covered but there are a ton of rich people who don’t work for a living right now and you don’t see them on the highway picking up trash. A change in scarcity mindset isn’t going to build a high speed rail network, labor and investment will, and UBI will make that labor and investment a lot more difficult to get.
We don’t not live a slave system we live in a capitalist system, both use coercion to extract labor from the worker but they do so in very different ways. I’d recommend you read some Marx to better understand the labor relations under capitalism. Either way a UBI system doesn’t challenge the capitalists control of the means of production and thus doesn’t challenge there true power. If anything it reduces the workers power as they can no longer use there power to withhold there labor. What are the unemployed on UBI going to do if there conditions deteriorate? If worst comes to worst workers can always strike which is devastating to the capitalist class. That is one of the main differences between slavery and capitalism, a slave can’t strike and is thus completely powerless.
that will lower productivity and therefore supply and raise prices.
fun fact on definition of productivity: Revenue/labour cost. Inflation can be either profit inflation or wage/cost inflation. In general, if wage inflation is higher than inflation, then workers are better off no matter the inflation rate. Then inflation is costing the owner and consumer classes. Another fun fact: The Federal reserve is a demonic bankster organization that strives to eliminate wage increases, under a pseudo-slavery system. Interest rates are increased to prevent new housing and other business growth to prevent more hiring to drive up wages even more.
If productivity and inflation are critical economic drivers, then we should explicitly support slavery. More whippings will make you work harder. Lower pay will reduce inflation and boost productivity. The near slavery system (you called it capitalism) is as long as there are 100 applicants for every job opening, then the system is working and under control. Adam Smith just advocated for free and fair markets, and there is still a market if there are only 2 applicants per job opening or 5 employers are coveting to hire you away from what you are currently doing.
Sure UBI will tend towards wage inflation. It doesn’t stop profit inflation either. The consumer class is both better off with more disposible income, and having opportunities to compete for idleness. They can compete with higher wage earners or ownership class. As an example, most people think UBI would increase people’s demand for more housing space. Means more profit opportunity from land/ownership, more renovation work to be done, but also empowers people with free time and UBI to qualify for loans to renovate properties themselves from youtube videos. Bottom line is if housing is too expensive from profit and wage inflation, then you will have to do it yourself, but somehow housing demand and work will get balanced, but including profit/ROI for ownership class. Markets do that very well. You will buy a plunger to unclog your toilet if all plumbers charge $1000 to do it, and then become a plumber (or toilet unclogger) to charge others $900.
if wages and profits grow by 10x, then so does tax revenue and basis to increase freedom dividends by 10x. Inflation is a market mechanism. Productivity is unimportant. Humanist economics are abundance and production, but productivity through slavery is not an appropriate path towards it. Fair labour markets are.
a UBI system doesn’t challenge the capitalists control of the means of production and thus doesn’t challenge there true power.
It does, but doesn’t have to. Capital needs cooperation in order to extract profits. The bargaining power of time and work increased by UBI means “less control by capitalists”. It can also challenge ownership class by competing with it through more lending power, and the contribution of worker time towards share of future profits instead of “guaranteed high hourly wage”
If worst comes to worst workers can always strike which is devastating to the capitalist class.
UBI is a better individual empowerment than unions. There were strikes under Biden due to a good economy even if oligarchs successfully convinced electorate that it was shit. Strikes not happening now because when econony turns to shit, more blowjobs for oligarchs instead of striking against them is path to survival. Note also, import theory of currency devaluation is proven false by Trump’s forbidding of imports. Globalization has always meant that $ are not destroyed, and circulate back to US, unless the US is a shithole and there is no reason to support its sustainability, and fewer $ to give/lend back.
Anyone who rants about inflation or productivity as an argument against UBI is ranting in favour of slavery and cannibalism. You are favouring desperation and extreme competition for survival just among the worker class.
Broadly speaking, UBI is a good idea for a bad system.
Public housing, public health care, public grocery stores, public transit, and public education are a good idea for a better system.
The government giving you a fixed stipend to play your hand at the free market carries a whole host of secondary challenges, particularly as we enter a 70s-era inflationary spiral. The private sector having an incentive to create tiered levels of service to capture UBI money while delivering the smallest possible economic benefit to the consumer is a huge problem in the existing market.
The fundamental problem with UBI is that landlords will still evict your ass as soon as they find a way to squeeze more rent out of a unit. You have money, but you don’t have any kind of civil right to housing.
As an initial stopgap on the way to a socialist economic model, its got merit. But as a panacea, it - much like minimum wage and child tax credits and other forms of government mandated economic floors - falls depressingly short of the end goal.
I think The Expanse had a decent “UBI” model, Basic
It covers just enough food-like substance with the correct macros for a human, everyone had an apartment and access to the internet and tv channels. I think healthcare was included to a point. That’s it. You could survive on it without much suffering.
If you wanted more, you had to go to school and work.
It’s been a while, so forgive me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t a big part of that universe the droves of people on Earth that couldn’t afford to survive or house themselves even with UBI?
They did survive, but it was kinda miserable, because you had zero budget for anything except watching ad-infested TV.
Then how did Bobby meet those homeless people on earth?
What you described in your other post is slavery masked as UBI. It’s like how Trump’s right wing talk about “freedom” when what they actually mean is nothing like the freedom people actually want or imagine.
Salaried work is effectively gilded slavery. Unless you’ve got ahitloads of capital, money is basically already limiting you to a certain bracket of “freedom” that we call your “means”, and it’s under the duress of poverty and death. The rules, particularly laws, apply a lot more strongly to those who are poor than who are rich. Interest punishes poorer borrowers and rewards those who can barrow with impunity by giving them access to endless credit.
A true UBI is essentially unconditional access to the bare necessities of life. Food, shelter, healthcare, security, and public utilities. Doesn’t matter if you never work a day in your life - you are valued because you exist. It should grant those who do not want to work a means to live with dignity, and those who do want to work a secure launch pad for finding a vocation that is right for them.
The claims this would lead to lack of incentives to work is misleading. The psychological reality is well l-raised mentally healthy people who are valued as members of a community wish to serve that community however they can, and don’t want to feel like “free loaders”. They want to be seen to be contributing and making a difference. Not to be thought of as lazy or useless. We’re social creatures and we have an instinct for living in a society. It’s why we’re here now after hundreds of thousands of years.
But, would we want to do dangerous, dirty, unfulfilling and undignified work, for shitty pay? Who will sign up to clean toilets, sweep roads, carry worksite debris to the skip, stand behind the till at the gas station or convenience store 8+ hours a day, answer hundreds of phone calls a day just to give people information they can find online? Obviously, where we can’t automate, or otherwise relieve people of the need to do this kind of work, and many hands will not make light work of the situation (e.g. instead of having janitors let’s some percentage of the office staff clean up during the last hour of the day, like how we take turns doing the dishes at home), and we actually need sufficient people doing this kind of work full tim, then clearly these jobs need to have rewards sufficient to have people sign up to them. There won’t be a need for as many as their are nowz and those who do sign up will be more efficient for the fact they’re there of their own Accord and can quit any time they want.
It will be a real challenge to transition to this kind of incentive structure under the current incentives of capitalism (not to many how fucked up it makes people’s mental health and moral sentiment towards “the other” as competitors rather than collaborators), and ultimately monetary economics will probably need a significant overhaul and it may not even necessary in the long run. There may be better ways to distribute resources that still has mechanisms for rewarding hard work and determination, unique talent or passion, risk taking, etc. to a degree that nobody will resent such people for their success.
But the way I see it, this is what progress looks like. It’s working toward this kind of world that should drive our social and political engagements. I want you to be free - truly free - to life your best life. And not so that your doing means others have to be enslaved. That should make you miserable at every moment.
