Universal Basic Income can never happen under Capitalism. It’s impossible. Were it to happen, it would literally collapse the system. Unemployment and the threat of such is the engine that keeps people in the wage slavery grind. Take that away and nobody would opt to be a wage slave as opposed to just coast on UBI and enjoy life. And even if not everyone took the UBI route, the remaining workers would have so much bargaining power, they would dictate terms to the bosses, and we can’t have that.
Stop thinking UBI has any chance of happening in any large scale.
If UBI was only paying for housing and food, then why wouldn’t able bodied people seek at least part time employment to pay for luxuries? “Coasting on UBI” sounds like it would suck after a while considering that you would not be able to afford anything fun.
Personally, I have been happier in my life as a wage slave than I have been when I was unemployed and had my housing paid, but could never afford to do anything.
Because most people can have fun just hanging out with their friends instead of demanding constant consumerist luxuries, if getting the second would mean being a wage-slave and being grinded down by the bosses.
After a few months of smoking weed and playing video games with your friends, surely you’d get bored and feel like going to, say, Tokyo or Machu Picchu or somewhere (or taking up skydiving, or building the house you always wanted, or anything else that requires money). So you’d find work during some of your free time to save up for that.
That’s what I’m talking about—how do you afford the weed and video games if UBI is only covering basic necessities? Those are luxuries too. Piracy? How do you buy the computer? If you want to play a board game, that is a luxury. D&D? Gotta get some dice. If you make art, you need paint.
It seems like some people think that luxuries are some sort of Django Unchained exploitative dinner party, but it’s really more like every item that brings joy that is not required to simply survive. I don’t want to exist in a world without luxuries, and I don’t think you have to reject them entirely to escape capitalism.
Don’t mistake this as a defense of the American capitalistic empire—I hate it as much as the next guy—but I also enjoy my cell phone, my bong, my computer, and the occasional drink. Those are luxuries that make my life enjoyable, and giving them up would equal a pretty bleak existence.
My peep, after a few months of people chilling the fuck out at home, the capitalist system will have collapsed upon itself. Hell it almost collapsed in the 60s by the workers having slightly more leverage due to unions.
If people could just chill around without fearing for food and shelter, they would just help each achieve what they wanted without needing money.
And I assure you, there’s plenty of people who would rather not go to fucking Machu Picchu if it required becoming subservient. We know this historically when capitalism first started, no people wanted to go and work in factories when they could just chill in their villages and their communal farms. It required enclosures and extreme amounts of violence to change this.
So get rid of capitalism, the real source of most of our problems. I disagree on your conclusion that UBI can only have one bad outcome, but you’re right that the opposition would not allow such a move because it takes away their power. So let’s go after the core problem.