RE: Universal Basic Income is our future, at least according to Mark Zuckerberg
Good article. As with any idea there are some WHAT IFs and potential bad things that could happen. Yet that causes stagnation and we try nothing new if we simply give in to those fears. So I have no problem with testing UBI but the problem I have is that if it FAILS we see a tendency of governments not BACKING up, they simple double, or triple down and the problems get worse.
Here is the only MIGHT HAPPEN negative thing that currently is in my mind about UBI, and I am sure I could come up with others if I thought long and hard and played the "Devil's Advocate" role. So I'll just talk about one.
My fear here is that this like ANY guaranteed payout the government has involved in would simply alter the market. The market could adjust overtime so the payout from UBI becomes the defacto new $0. It could all be consumed and still require you to work to survive. This is what typically happens with Minimum Wage increases. UBI in a sense is like minimum wage on steroids. It gives people a minimum wage whether they have a job or not.
I see the reasons this might be needed, as automation, and other things make it apparent that in the future there may be a great shortage of obvious jobs. The hope with UBI is we can eat and pay our basic bills, and we can then seek out and create new jobs of our own just by our activities.
Yet, what if the market adjusts and takes advantage of that guaranteed cash.
This is what has happened with the healthcare industry, with the guaranteed student loan program and its effect on higher education quality and cost, etc.
If UBI kicks in could we expect a great price increase from a great many other areas so they can tap into that guaranteed money?
Like I said. I am not against TRYING it and seeing what happens. I also don't think we should always stagnate against change due to FEAR of the WHAT IFs. Yet, I did think it was worth discussing this concern.
This is welfare, it will not work in Finland; it has not worked in America. https://steemit.com/kr/@zeropointtruth/how-mark-nwo-cuckerberg-is-banking-on-suberviance
I personally am not a fan of the government doing much of anything. My utopia is a world where we don't need government.
I didn't argue my points from this perspective though.
I simply played Devil's Advocate for what I think could happen if it came to pass.
Absolutely, I gathered that from your post, which I thought was excellently stated. My comment served to back the underlying claim. Furthermore, government is an attempt at creating utopia. Government puts the means of a monopoly of legal violence into the hands of a few, (some elected and most not) with the ideolistic ambition that this will create a stable regional power; in which trade can commence, unmolested. However, this is a fundamental fallacy because government survives principally though the regulation and taxation (molestation) of citizens' voluntary interactions. There is not need for a state because state functions can and are arbitrated by and between private entities (ie companies and individuals) without mandate of power or the use of aggression or monopoly of force. For more check this out
The Jones Plantation
Yep, I am very familiar with this. I also saw that video not long after Larken created it.
Though I also have a realization. For Anarcho-Capitalism to work a large portion of the population would need some different education. We teach very little critical thinking. It is mostly lead by emotion and people have no concepts of Appeal to Authority, Appeal to Tradition, Red Herrings, and other common fallacies.
I tend to lean towards Anarcho-Capitalism myself but I realize that if we flipped a switch and tried to do that today it would fail miserably. It would not fail due to it being a flawed idea.
It would fail due to most of the population not understanding critical thinking, and lacking understanding of self responsibility.
So as much as I'd like that type of environment and it is my ultimate goal at the moment. I do not see it as WORKING today.
Thus, I tend to focus on the critical thinking angle. That is the windmill which I've chosen to tilt. If I can get more people thinking differently then perhaps some day we can get them there. I've even had a little dialog about this before here on steemit with Larken.
My goal is the same. I just have chosen to fight where I see myself making the most difference. That is not bludgeoning them with the concepts until they agree with me. Instead I choose to engage on a critical thinking level, and hopefully inspire people to think, research, learn and eventually understand the Anarchism/Voluntaryism concepts better.
Those concepts cannot work without a population capable of critical thinking. It'd fall apart fairly rapidly.
Yes, crack work, crack goy, crack work crack
Voluntarism does NOT require critical thought. It requires nothing and that is the best part, it is in effect today. Government needs a populace to hold it together, the mere act of voluntary exchange does not. It is government that subverts the ever present forces of voluntary transaction at work, not the other way around. Critical thinking can enable companies of people, interacting in the free market to create alternatives to the institutions of society - that is just dandey. However, government monopoly of violence prices out companies that could take over the functions of government.
If there is a demand, there will be a supply. Violence interrupts this chain of exchange. What will it take to get fair priced police, military etc? A free method of exchange. When will this occur? The fall of the currency, and mass disillusionment with government coming out of cotastrophy (WWIII, etcetera).
You are an ideological brother of mine! We are first on the battlefield of the coming revolution, Steemit. Hopefully we will not need to take to the streets in defense of the free internet. Cheers.
Oh in case you didn't know. Larken Rose is here on Steemit and has been for awhile. He will occasionally get pretty active. @larkenrose
Quite a few other prominent minds in the anarchist/voluntaryist movement have also participated on steemit from time to time.
EDIT: Sadly Larken and others are missing out on big earnings at the moment as the payouts are once again in a very lucrative range.
Thanks for directing me to his page. Do you have more resources on how you came to terms with the inability of populations to accept a cohesion-free social order? (and don't say the Kardashian show's ratings)
Yep, that is the inflation argument. Great point and one that would have to be worked around some how. What good is it to get roughly $15k per year, if the cost of living also goes up by roughly $15k?! Great comment!
Interest rates are a matter off currency and supply and demand. The government both manipulates markets (food, precious metals, oil) through the use of subsidy and control of imports and exports (regionally and globally). For example, exportation of US crude oil is illegal, which is a price control on the market. Meat, dairy and crops are regionally price controlled and simulated through subsidy. Lastly, currency manipulation in the form of the federal funds rate and arbitrarily controlled currency inflation is a power vested to government and the Federal Reserve because US Dollars are fiat (not stable money). Without a doubt government plays the biggest hand in weighing economies down, with no culpability, accountability or moral grounds for doing so. Universal wage is a euphemism for mandated salary, worse net-economic effect than the price control of minimum wage labor.
Here is a critically important study to view on the issue:
"In 2007, nominal GDP was $14 trillion. Had regulation remained at its 1949 level, current GDP would have been about $25 trillion, an increase of $11 trillion. With about 140 million households and 300 million people, an annual loss of $11 trillion converts to $78,600 per household and $36,700 per person. Another way to put it, perhaps a little too dramatically, is that each page of federal regulation added since 1949 today costs the economy roughly $82.1 million in foregone output per year."