this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2026
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Everyone conscious has the ability to preform some type of labor so…. Let’s just skip this stupid argument and just say UBI.
UBI keeps capitalism and thus inequality. It’s a zero sum game where people’s wealth will flow towards the rich, enabling them in future to amass power to undo UBI and repeat the mistakes we have now.
Better solution is to ditch currency and focus on meeting people’s wellbeing needs directly.
You can’t ditch currency. Currency isn’t some grand invention of the state. It’s the direct result of beings valuing things at different amounts at different times. Technically current is using any stand in to ease the trade barrier but colloquially some people use love as a currency. Many kinds of social animals trade and what they trade could be deemed currency.
You can 100% ditch currency, you don’t not need a trade or barter based system. Humans have been operating on a gift economy model for hundreds of thousands of years, currency and trading is a blip in our history.
People are capable of supporting each other without profit incentives.
So let's say I really want to investigate superconducting magnets, because I really like that field and want to do research. I need processed rare earth products that only exist on the other side of the globe.
In your gift economy, how would I proceed to acquire those?
I suspect these policies often assume that either we live in startrek or we’re back to the woods and have no need for superconducting magnets :-/
surely no other people have any benefit or incentive to find those superconductors and so no one would be willing to aid you in your research, including people who could get those minerals, right?
Is being flippant part of the economic model or an extra? Doesn't get me closer to those hard to extract materials that are in very short supply.
You shouldn't state this as fact. It's not, archaeologists have been arguing between the formalist and substantavist theories of economic models for decades now. You seem to be favoring the formalist view, but there is a strong arguement to be made that market principles such as supply and demand existed deeper in the past as well.
While there may not have been currency, the historic economics of humanity were certainly greater than a gift economy model.
Yup. Gets even easier once all the emancipatory technology innovations cease being classified, suppressed and secreted to maintain the corporate monopolisation rigged game of kleptarchy. When that stops, obsoleting currency/money becomes a greater viable potential, if not just removes some areas from profiteering. Such things are not cosmic fundamentals. Greedy eyes are on water, air, sunlight.
I imagine quality would improve and enshitification would cease, without corrupt fiat currency driving churn. And [as we currently are, it's an] accelerating churn at that, in a desperate race to the bottom. Unsustainable. Essential vital necessity to move beyond it.
UBI may be a stepping stone, perhaps a step away from reducing currency/money to mere resource accounting, on to greater things yet. But yes, not if left in the hands of the current oligarchs, nor in any such system that so readily gives oligarchs absolute power.
Sublimation out of their rigged game trap may come fast [, or not at all, only piecemeal placatium fakery].
You can absolutely do away with currency if the current mode of production got abolished. Currency itself is a necessity in a society that produces commodities for exchange, which creates rise for social constructs such as value, value forms like money, the possibility for an innate crisis and so on.
The first 2 chapters of Capital explains this, the commodity production system was a historical development rather than something coming out of nature (no chemist was able to find value through microscope), and we can certainly produce things to satisfy needs rather than exchange, with a much lower amount of work hours needed to do so.
No. Currency is convenience and convenience wins 99% of the time.
Yeah I’ll pass thanks, currency and capitalism is killing the planet and us along with it.
Nothing easier than being dead tho I guess.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
Order of operations matters.
There's always a better perfect solution. If you're not willing to work for something achievable because your special vision for how things should be is the only thing you care about, well, that's why leftists fight each other instead of fighting the fascists that have taken over the usa and are in the process of taking over the rest of the world.
You have 1,000 slaves. Do you accept freeing 500 instead of fighting for all to be free?
Fight for what’s right, fuck compromise that perpetuates suffering. That’s what centrists do.
Do the thing that helps now and work to do the things that help in the future as well. Why would I allow 500 slaves to remain in servitude just because I can't free all 1,000 right now?
Accepting freeing 500 doesn't mean stopping the fight to free the other 500.
Should the Union during the US Civil War have refused to free any slaves until it could guarantee all slaves would be free?
I think the proposed situation is that the slavers will agree to free 500 slaves if you let them keep the other 500. Would you take the deal?
I mean, that is the situation stated? Unless you mean "You are forbidden from engaging in abolitionism ever again", which is generally not what people object to when they decry 'reform', which rarely, if ever, comes with such terms in the contexts it's discussed in on here.
Choices should be made fundamentally on two issues: reduction of suffering, and improvement of strategic positioning. If it does both, it is morally necessary to take it. If it helps one goal, but does not harm the other goal, it is morally necessary to take it. If it helps one goal, but harms the other goal, you must make your own estimation of the relative value of each.
Freeing 500 slaves reduces suffering. Ceteris paribus, it also improves strategic positioning. If an argument can be made that, in context, it degrades strategic positioning, then the choice becomes more ambiguous, but the emphasis here is on 'degrades', not simply 'does not improve'. But you'd better be ready with a damn good argument for keeping 500 people in chains on strategic grounds when you could very well free them, and not just a general feeling of 'All or nothing'.
That's true, the hypothetical I posed isn't remotely analogous to the perfection vs harm reduction debate. I have a tendency to fixate on questions I find interesting regardless of how realistic or practical they are.
No worries, I understand that completely, I often do the same thing!
My cousin has consciousness as well as Chromosome 5q minus. She can not preform any type of labor.
Fucking abelist class traitor.
Forgive my ignorance of the condition but what are her limitations? Can she communicate? Care for house plants? Read a book? Perform any artistic expression? Can she make you laugh? Even once a week/month/year?
I'm struggling to think of a scenario where a person has any amount of conscious agency but can't do anything of that produces a even a minor amount of value, unless you're unduly restricting the definition of labor.
UBI will just cause inflation, it increases aggregate demand without increasing aggregate supply. More dollars chasing the same amount of goods leads to inflation.
It also doesn't really address inequality, anyone's relative position on the income hierarchy doesn't change, if I make $500 more than another guy before UBI, I'll still make $500 more than them after UBI, and your position on the income hierarchy determines your standard of living, not your absolute income. Eg. If you get a raise that matches inflation your absolute income may have gone up, but your relative income stayed the same and thus so did your standard of living.
We need to stop focusing on money and focus on the systems of production and hierarchy that actually determine our living standards. Money is just an expression of those structures, it's downstream, and changing that won't change the actual structures.
UBI can make lots of other dead end spending unnecessary. For example you won’t need huge unemployment offices, bureaucracy, less social workers, less law enforcement because of lower crime. All of these don’t add any value to the economy directly. You won’t need inefficiencies like social workers, food stamps, etc.
UBI increases demand in some areas. Low income folks tend to spend most of their income out of necessity. Supply will increase with demand, leading to more jobs for building housing, groceries, schools, etc.
It’s cheaper to give people enough money they don’t need to become criminals to survive. Give everyone the opportunity for education, healthier lives, become more productive members of society.
UBI is an uplift mechanism which, along with socialized housing, transport, food, healthcare, etc., provides those who would otherwise be marginalized with the means by which they can become more productive. There will be people who take advantage and live on the dole, but in all of the trials done thus far, that has been a vanishing minority. What has happened is people went back to school, learned a new trade, produced art, and made themselves better and more able to help society in a fashion that better suits their capabilities.
Is it perfect? no, absolutely not. It's a patch that can be implemented with relatively little difficulty in most "western" governments, and help a lot of people.
For your inflation argument, say I make $5,000 a month before UBI, and maybe I'll make $10,000 after. Jeff Bezos alone robs us of about $24,000 every 60 seconds and wants more. UBI would have about as much impact on inflation as pissing on a forest fire to put it out would.
UBI doesn't uplift people, again it doesn't touch the income hierarchy which is the source of inequality, it just inflates the hierarchy.
All the previous trials were limited to a set group. If you give money to a set group then yes there position on the income relative to everyone else will increase, and thus there access to goods and services. If it is truly universal and everyone gets it then the income hierarchy remains the same, just the incomes are inflated in absolute terms. Just like if everyone got the same percentage raise in a year prices would just go up by that same percentage because the people setting the prices know you can now pay x percent more. If you give a select group of people a raise though then they can now outbid others and get more products and services.
Jeff bezos doesn't spend most of the money he gets, it just gets reinvested into his ungodly hoard. If that money doesn't actually get spent and doesn't enter the economic system it doesn't effect inflation. The lower you go on the income ladder the larger percent of your money gets spent until you get to the bottom of people living paycheck to paycheck, saving nothing. If you give those people money they'll spend it right away, because they have to, and that will contribute to inflation.
Wouldn't inflation be a good immediate signal on which systems of production need to be fixed first? E.g. housing prices spike = need more housing
Also, if someone earns 1000 and you earn 500 before an UBI of 500, they earn 2x as much as you before and 1.5x after.
We have way more than enough housing. The problem is they're wildly unaffordable or hoarded by people buying vacation homes or investment properties. Some are also from inheritance that they just refuse to get rid of cause they'd lose money or some nonsense.