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It should come as no shock that I'm generally in favor of basic income/negative income tax/whatever you want to call it. However, there are a lot of aspects of it where there is a disconcerting lack of discussion.
I often see BI framed as a blanket replacement for all existing social service systems. This is often touted as its main benefit, it being far more efficient to simply send people checks than run multiple complicated bureaucracies. It should not take much reflection to realize that this is both wrong and dangerous. Even with basic income, there will still be people in need. There will be people who spend their money on alcohol, or other drugs, or invest in crypto-currency scams, or convert it to cash and get robbed. Maybe you're comfortable writing off those who spend their money in counterproductive ways (I'm not, for the record, and I think you're failing a basic moral test if you are), but even that dodge doesn't solve the problem. Those people will sometimes have kids, and those kids will need social services. I absolutely refuse to countenance any system which doesn't try to help children in need.
BI as blanket replacement is also dangerous in a strategic sense -- it creates a single point of failure. The social support systems in the US have been under attack for decades, and while they are deeply wounded at this point, they still exist. Having a complex network of overlapping, partially redundant social programs is a feature, not a bug. They can only be eliminated one by one. We need defense in depth against short-term political swings.
Neither do I see any effort to move society into a place where BI would flourish. Our society deeply values having a job. That is the main source of meaning for many people. This is dramatically shown in the jump in suicide rates after retirement and in depression rates in the unemployed -- even the unemployed who are not hurting for money. It would be foolhardy to switch to BI without trying to address such an obvious problem. Since it's a general values change, it's an effort anyone can contribute to by interrogating their own emotional responses and changing their actions. For instance, I know I tend to use "amateur" as a pejorative and "professional" as a compliment. I find the aesthetics of cheaply 3D-printed objects to be downright repulsive. I have trouble using any conversational ice-breaker other than "so what do you do?". These biases are natural enough, given the culture I was raised in, but they would be highly toxic in a world with basic income. This hasn't been high on my list of personality pruning, but I've been trying to change my thinking (or at least outward actions) on these subjects for years. Changing these kinds of cultural values isn't easy, but we know the curve can at least be bent by concerted effort. Internet groups have developed extensive intellectual tools for discussing and approaching these kinds of problems. Yet I haven't seen any effort to even start such a discussion when it comes to forming a society that can safely and humanely deal with permanent 25%+ unemployment, and I'm troubled by that.
I find these issues concerning primarily because I've yet to be convinced in the goodwill of many of the most prominent basic income proponents. A much simpler explanation is that the idea of BI provides a convenient smokescreen for dismantling the social safety nets that we currently have in place, while never actually instituting anything new in return. (I.e., the social equivalent of dismissing mass transit development needs because autonomous cars are going to solve everything in 5 years.) The relative lack of visibility of issues such as the above only reinforce this fear for me. We're a supremely rich society, controlling an amount of surplus value that is almost unthinkable. There is no doubt we could implement BI if we wanted to -- but we still need to face potential issues humanely, rationally, and as soon as possible.
I often see BI framed as a blanket replacement for all existing social service systems. This is often touted as its main benefit, it being far more efficient to simply send people checks than run multiple complicated bureaucracies. It should not take much reflection to realize that this is both wrong and dangerous. Even with basic income, there will still be people in need. There will be people who spend their money on alcohol, or other drugs, or invest in crypto-currency scams, or convert it to cash and get robbed. Maybe you're comfortable writing off those who spend their money in counterproductive ways (I'm not, for the record, and I think you're failing a basic moral test if you are), but even that dodge doesn't solve the problem. Those people will sometimes have kids, and those kids will need social services. I absolutely refuse to countenance any system which doesn't try to help children in need.
BI as blanket replacement is also dangerous in a strategic sense -- it creates a single point of failure. The social support systems in the US have been under attack for decades, and while they are deeply wounded at this point, they still exist. Having a complex network of overlapping, partially redundant social programs is a feature, not a bug. They can only be eliminated one by one. We need defense in depth against short-term political swings.
Neither do I see any effort to move society into a place where BI would flourish. Our society deeply values having a job. That is the main source of meaning for many people. This is dramatically shown in the jump in suicide rates after retirement and in depression rates in the unemployed -- even the unemployed who are not hurting for money. It would be foolhardy to switch to BI without trying to address such an obvious problem. Since it's a general values change, it's an effort anyone can contribute to by interrogating their own emotional responses and changing their actions. For instance, I know I tend to use "amateur" as a pejorative and "professional" as a compliment. I find the aesthetics of cheaply 3D-printed objects to be downright repulsive. I have trouble using any conversational ice-breaker other than "so what do you do?". These biases are natural enough, given the culture I was raised in, but they would be highly toxic in a world with basic income. This hasn't been high on my list of personality pruning, but I've been trying to change my thinking (or at least outward actions) on these subjects for years. Changing these kinds of cultural values isn't easy, but we know the curve can at least be bent by concerted effort. Internet groups have developed extensive intellectual tools for discussing and approaching these kinds of problems. Yet I haven't seen any effort to even start such a discussion when it comes to forming a society that can safely and humanely deal with permanent 25%+ unemployment, and I'm troubled by that.
I find these issues concerning primarily because I've yet to be convinced in the goodwill of many of the most prominent basic income proponents. A much simpler explanation is that the idea of BI provides a convenient smokescreen for dismantling the social safety nets that we currently have in place, while never actually instituting anything new in return. (I.e., the social equivalent of dismissing mass transit development needs because autonomous cars are going to solve everything in 5 years.) The relative lack of visibility of issues such as the above only reinforce this fear for me. We're a supremely rich society, controlling an amount of surplus value that is almost unthinkable. There is no doubt we could implement BI if we wanted to -- but we still need to face potential issues humanely, rationally, and as soon as possible.
no subject
I think it is likely that any effort "to face potential issues humanely, rationally, and as soon as possible" (which I agree is needed) will continue to be stymied by an apparent movement, crossing different levels of our society, to let people seen as non-productive, or unnecessary to the success of the rich, die off as the social safety nets are removed piece by piece, and often, in the cruelest ways possible.