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Somfin
Oct 25, 2010

In my🦚 experience🛠️ the big things🌑 don't teach you anything🤷‍♀️.

Nap Ghost

Ytlaya posted:

I feel like a lot of the discussion in this thread is people talking past one another, because one side is arguing about the ethics of labor compensation while the other is arguing about what is practical. The former are, as best I can tell, arguing that we should always keep the fair and ethical outcome as a final goal, even if it might not be fully possible. The fact that some work might end up, even after centuries of improvements in technology/automation/etc, still existing and being unpleasant enough that people are unwilling to work it without additional compensation (in a world where all human needs, including leisure/recreation, are provided to everyone) doesn't change that it should still be the goal to reach a point where all labor is compensated equally.

Agreed. Your ideals should always push further forward than what is practical. Let the pragmatic realities restrain the implementation of your ideals, not the ideals themselves; and always strive to make those realities get the gently caress out of the way when your ideals are worth pushing toward, which they should always be. Don't let the ideal be "everyone should be able to keep themselves alive," the ideal should be "everyone should have the life of luxury that billionaires currently experience."

I was a practicalist / pragmatist for a while and it sucked. It's an easy way to feel like you're smarter than those idiots who believe in pushing society toward the impossible goal. Don't be silly, you can't reach the impossible, look at my humble achievable ideals and how easy they will be to achieve once I actually start trying.

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MixMastaTJ
Dec 14, 2017

Yeah, pretty sure all but a couple of us would agree that the next move is UBI then start chipping away the worst elements of the private market.

The real disagreement is whether it's ideal to completely remove the free market or if some part of it will always have a place in society.

V. Illych L.
Apr 11, 2008

ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

i think UBI under capitalism would be a *terrible* idea and would only entrench consumerism and come at the cost of the remaining welfare state. the very weakest would inevitably suffer as the capitalists maneuvered to cut all collective areangements, and UBI would provide excellent cover while the world boils

the only hope we have is somehow imposing socialism, which i honestly feel is quite pie-in-the-sky eniugh to begin with. all policy should be subordinate to the elimination of private property and building solidarities to that end

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
There is a strong argument that the job guarantee is the socialist version of the UBI. Uncoupling labor and value is actually anathema to Marxism. Personally, destroying the "any reasonable accommodation" part of the ADA makes UBI a nonstarter to begin with.

Somfin
Oct 25, 2010

In my🦚 experience🛠️ the big things🌑 don't teach you anything🤷‍♀️.

Nap Ghost

V. Illych L. posted:

i think UBI under capitalism would be a *terrible* idea and would only entrench consumerism and come at the cost of the remaining welfare state. the very weakest would inevitably suffer as the capitalists maneuvered to cut all collective areangements, and UBI would provide excellent cover while the world boils

the only hope we have is somehow imposing socialism, which i honestly feel is quite pie-in-the-sky eniugh to begin with. all policy should be subordinate to the elimination of private property and building solidarities to that end

The people at the bottom are going to be the ones who die first, and the maneuvers you're talking about are all happening regardless. Do you think that folks at the top aren't already pushing to cut everything they loving can? Have you seen Europe's blind, insane adherence to austerity? A UBI has a chance of preventing people from starving, something that arbitrarily rationed and slashed social services are failing to do. Hauling up the lower classes might not be "strategic" enough for you but it's the right thing to do. Worst case scenario, fewer people starve. Fight for the social services at the same time but get the UBI out. We can fight for many things at once.

"Imposing socialism" is fun rhetoric but it has historically gone poorly. I say we strip the human rights of every billionaire and see where that gets us.

V. Illych L.
Apr 11, 2008

ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

yeah people at the top are trying to cut as they always have, but UBI would allow them to drive a wedge between the people who see the general welfare system as basically insurance and those who cost lots of money in e.g. disabled care

without shattering the power of capital, we're hosed. the only way to really do that is to strategically undermine the hold of capital on people and build solidarities through collective agreements, organisation and, when welfare is to be done, using universalist programmes

UBI under capitalism would only serve to entrench the class and consumer system, and would itself be a trivial target for subversion later, being extremely expensive and vulnerable to the exact same attacks as they're using on the conventional welfare state

it is an attempt at revolutionary change which accepts the neoliberal premise of individual consumer autonomy as paramount; it serves to reinforce the dogma of the day about individual consumer decisions being the 'real' decisions, and it would be actively detrimental to the social coordination which we absolutely need if we're going to save ourselves

it's a dead end for any left-wing politics because it doesn't address the need to eliminate the bourgeoisie as a class interest, and would imo serve to further entrench that. every revolutionary critique of the social-democratic welfare state applies tenfold to UBI, and more besides

Somfin
Oct 25, 2010

In my🦚 experience🛠️ the big things🌑 don't teach you anything🤷‍♀️.

Nap Ghost

V. Illych L. posted:

every revolutionary critique of the social-democratic welfare state applies tenfold to UBI, and more besides

Name one.

CAPS LOCK BROKEN
Feb 1, 2006

by Fluffdaddy

Babylon Astronaut posted:

There is a strong argument that the job guarantee is the socialist version of the UBI. Uncoupling labor and value is actually anathema to Marxism. Personally, destroying the "any reasonable accommodation" part of the ADA makes UBI a nonstarter to begin with.

In this country it would turn into workfare where unemployed people get forced to work at Amazon warehouses and the state pays the wage instead of amazon.

wateroverfire
Jul 3, 2010
UBI has some problems in a market economy. The biggest is that if everyone has an extra X dollars per month to spend, in the medium term there will be both more economic activity (good) and inflation (bad) and the real value of the UBI will tend to go down. If the UBI is indexed to inflation then inflation leads to increased UBI leads to increased inflation and that is also bad in the medium term. That's not to say that the value of the UBI will net to 0 over time - just that whatever living standard it is targeted to grant, it will tend to deliver less than that over time because of inflation. As a general social insurance thing it is probably still good policy. Secondarily, yeah, decoupling value from work is I think a bad idea long term. People who receive from society should also be expected to contribute if they're able. Obviously if we have robots and matter replicators to do everything then that concept kind of loses its meaning but until then, yeah.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004

Babylon Astronaut posted:

There is a strong argument that the job guarantee is the socialist version of the UBI. Uncoupling labor and value is actually anathema to Marxism. Personally, destroying the "any reasonable accommodation" part of the ADA makes UBI a nonstarter to begin with.

Can there be a UBI that doesn't do this or is it somehow inextricably tied together?

This reminds me of the M4A argument that it's bad because "the poor/middle class will pay more" but we could just change the implementation so that they do not.

Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 15:40 on May 30, 2019

MixMastaTJ
Dec 14, 2017

V. Illych L. posted:

yeah people at the top are trying to cut as they always have, but UBI would allow them to drive a wedge between the people who see the general welfare system as basically insurance and those who cost lots of money in e.g. disabled care

without shattering the power of capital, we're hosed. the only way to really do that is to strategically undermine the hold of capital on people and build solidarities through collective agreements, organisation and, when welfare is to be done, using universalist programmes

UBI under capitalism would only serve to entrench the class and consumer system, and would itself be a trivial target for subversion later, being extremely expensive and vulnerable to the exact same attacks as they're using on the conventional welfare state

it is an attempt at revolutionary change which accepts the neoliberal premise of individual consumer autonomy as paramount; it serves to reinforce the dogma of the day about individual consumer decisions being the 'real' decisions, and it would be actively detrimental to the social coordination which we absolutely need if we're going to save ourselves

it's a dead end for any left-wing politics because it doesn't address the need to eliminate the bourgeoisie as a class interest, and would imo serve to further entrench that. every revolutionary critique of the social-democratic welfare state applies tenfold to UBI, and more besides

Labor organization is essentially the heart of any socialist movement, right? Way I see it, you have three major stumbling blocks to unions right now- widescale threat of poverty guaranteeing a constant flow of scabs, the national scale of businesses rendering any local organization pointless and right to work laws effectively pitting unions against the state itself.

UBI would at least solve the first, giving workers enough mobility to strike without starving and making people far less likely to jump on the first job they see as scabs.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002
A UBI would also make the poor completely dependent on existing power structures, and in reality, make other social improvements more financially difficult.

Even the US has limits to financing although they are much larger than any other state.

A UBI is still better than nothing but I would rather see social democracy than it or something significantly better.

MixMastaTJ
Dec 14, 2017

wateroverfire posted:

Secondarily, yeah, decoupling value from work is I think a bad idea long term. People who receive from society should also be expected to contribute if they're able. Obviously if we have robots and matter replicators to do everything then that concept kind of loses its meaning but until then, yeah.

Oh, no poo poo? Dude who underpays his employees thinks decoupling their value as people from the financial benefit they provide him is bad? Go figure.

wateroverfire posted:

more economic activity (good) and inflation (bad)

lmao

wateroverfire
Jul 3, 2010

MixMastaTJ posted:

Oh, no poo poo? Dude who underpays his employees thinks decoupling their value as people from the financial benefit they provide him is bad? Go figure.


lmao

Dude don't be a dick.

RuanGacho
Jun 20, 2002

"You're gunna break it!"

If you all are going to be ignorant enough to actually say "actually good things UBI aren't possible" I'm going to have to take your leftist cards and burn them in a satanic ritual to make an effort thread. This will make me especially cranky because the utilitarian value of me spending me free time correcting the perception that theres no difference between good and bad things is not how I want to spend my limited leisure time and thus is violence against me, you wrong people on the internet!

Ardennes posted:

A UBI would also make the poor completely dependent on existing power structures, and in reality, make other social improvements more financially difficult.

Even the US has limits to financing although they are much larger than any other state.

A UBI is still better than nothing but I would rather see social democracy than it or something significantly better.

You know who killed UBI in the US under Nixon? Democrats. We have learned nothing, because their objection was "it didnt go far enough".

E: I mean stop and think what argument and who's argument you just advocated Ardennes, that the US cant do UBI because the land is too big. As if money needs to be hauled around in Wells Fargo stage coaches and has nothing to do with the literally richest nation in the history of humanity mis-allocating productive value.

RuanGacho fucked around with this message at 16:34 on May 30, 2019

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

UBI has potential problems but basically all the criticisms you level at it can also be leveled at universal healthcare and I am extremely glad that I live somewhere with universal healthcare.

UBI is as good or bad as the political will behind it, if you can get it to a place where it's helping people it's going to be something that's extremely hard to walk back and take away.

MixMastaTJ
Dec 14, 2017

OwlFancier posted:

UBI has potential problems but basically all the criticisms you level at it can also be leveled at universal healthcare and I am extremely glad that I live somewhere with universal healthcare.

UBI is as good or bad as the political will behind it, if you can get it to a place where it's helping people it's going to be something that's extremely hard to walk back and take away.

You could call literally any government program that benefits the poor "making the poor more dependant on existing power structures."

I suppose if your aims are radical restructuring any marginal benefit you give the poor is going to make that less likely. At which point we're arguing for accelerationism. Which is bad.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Yeah, obviously it's not the long term solution, but unless you're holding out for a literal revolution I think giving people actual things that help them out is better than not?

Things like the NHS are big totems for the left in the UK because they're good and we rightly think of them as our finest achievements, and they give people a vision of an alternative, unless you live here while retaining an understanding of how the rest of the world is, I don't know if you can really get how incredibly empowering it is to just be able to get healthcare and not even think about it. If I'm looking to describe socialism to someone in as few words as possible I'm probably gonna say "Imagine if everything worked like going to the doctor"

The difference is stark, for decades now we've had this institution that just provides for us without loving about, there's very little like that in the world today and if you could build something like that, something that actually makes people's lives better then that's a really important part of getting people to believe that organization can achieve things and that society does not have to be just a howling wasteland of individuals looking for an opportunity to murder each other for profit.

V. Illych L.
Apr 11, 2008

ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

we've been over this before owlfancier, the NHS is effectively a socialist endeavour in that it clearly demonstrates the practicality of removing something from the profit motive and the market. it is (or was; this has been chipped away, partially because the Tories recognised the symbol) a truly universal institution which is why it's so beloved; it's a common touchstone that does something unequivocally good, and it does so very well indeed. the NHS can genuinely be seen as a step forwards towards an abolition of capitalism, which is absolutely necessary for all sorts of reasons.

a UBI approach would be to subsidise people's health insurance; you're still using the government to make things better for the recipients, but in the process you're empowering the healthcare market and entrenching those often horrific actors and acknowledging the market and private property as basically the only rational way of doing things. such a subsidy would be a gift to the people involved, sure, but it would mainly be a massive wealth transfer to the owners of the healthcare sector, and more and more of it would be twisted into a pure subsidy because as an investment, subverting welfare benefits have excellent returns if you're a primary provider.

as for general critiques of the welfare state, the basic critique is that it erodes international and national solidarity; that it puts groups at odds with each other (see the "scrounger" narrative in the UK, or the "welfare queen" mythos in the US), and that it in the end doesn't alter the power structure, meaning that it wil be quickly subverted along the lines of private profit as soon as the conservatives can find a division to exploit. you can be completely confident that they'd be able to wreck UBI very quickly simply by introducing a means-test and citing the enormous cost of giving millionaires free money. once it's no longer universal, it just becomes another welfare benefit, and very soon they'll start talking convincingly (to some more people) about the need to make it less than minimum wage, because surely work ought to pay and in the national interest harumph harumph common sense national credit card irresponsible lefties &c

UBI under capitalism is a terrible use of resources for a left campaign. it's a really crude policy which won't get us anywhere

Moridin920
Nov 15, 2007

by FactsAreUseless

V. Illych L. posted:

anyway it's dodging the issue, which is that some degree of consumer choice, be that mtn dew or novels or w/e must reasonably remain, and it makes no sense to allocate one middle-brow novel and four light novels to each individual and so some currency system will emerge whether official or unofficial

Why do you need a currency when people can just order what they want (with reasonable limits) from the internet and production adjusts to meet changing demands? Why would someone allocate 5 books to each individual versus just if demand for books rises past production you just allocate more into book production.

Moridin920 fucked around with this message at 18:08 on May 30, 2019

V. Illych L.
Apr 11, 2008

ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

Moridin920 posted:

Why do you need a currency when people can just order what they want from the internet and production adjusts to meet changing demands?

well we will need something to limit consumption, remember, climate change and everything

plus, have you ever been to an open bar? people are really sloppy about finishing their drinks. after we've killed consumerism, hopefully the need for currency would basically just evaporate, but until then there needs to be limits to consumption

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

And equally we've seen what happens when you try to do healthcare reform without enacting the controls part, you get obamacare.

And the NHS also functions quite heavily as corporate welfare, that's what most of the changes to it over the years have centered around. Still the existence of a free at the point of use system is useful to the left.

UBI is not 100% of the answer but there is no reason why it cannot be part of the road to it.

The reason the NHS is durable is because it's universal, everyone uses it, the notion of "scroungers vs contributors" could apply just as well to it if people used private healthcare more, but they don't in sufficient number. This is also the argument for UBI, that it's something everybody gets and doesn't get taken away. Once that is true everyone comes to rely on it and it becomes a useful policy to rally people around.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:12 on May 30, 2019

Moridin920
Nov 15, 2007

by FactsAreUseless

V. Illych L. posted:

well we will need something to limit consumption, remember, climate change and everything

plus, have you ever been to an open bar? people are really sloppy about finishing their drinks. after we've killed consumerism, hopefully the need for currency would basically just evaporate, but until then there needs to be limits to consumption

Sorry I made an edit but; you can just put a cap on consumption outside of a currency system. Obviously it would be unreasonable for someone to order a new pair of shoes every day so you just can't do that outside of extenuating circumstances. Not a question of you don't have the money for it, society just won't ship you that many new shoes.

V. Illych L. posted:

plus, have you ever been to an open bar? people are really sloppy about finishing their drinks. after we've killed consumerism, hopefully the need for currency would basically just evaporate, but until then there needs to be limits to consumption

Okay but see? Precisely. The bartender doesn't cut you off because you ran out of money, the bartender cuts you off because you had too much to drink. It's not even a question of currency at all in this instance.

Or do you mean they are wasteful and leave unfinished drinks lying around? Either way I don't disagree with

quote:

until then there needs to be limits to consumption

but I don't see why currency is the best way to do that. It certainly doesn't do much to limit anyone's consumption of lovely fast food that causes diabetes.

Moridin920 fucked around with this message at 18:14 on May 30, 2019

V. Illych L.
Apr 11, 2008

ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

OwlFancier posted:

And equally we've seen what happens when you try to do healthcare reform without enacting the controls part, you get obamacare.

And the NHS also functions quite heavily as corporate welfare, that's what most of the changes to it over the years have centered around. Still the existence of a free at the point of use system is useful to the left.

UBI is not 100% of the answer but there is no reason why it cannot be part of the road to it.

it doesn't take us any closer to the goal. UBI is not going to make people accept the need and feasibility of dismantling capitalism

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

V. Illych L. posted:

it doesn't take us any closer to the goal. UBI is not going to make people accept the need and feasibility of dismantling capitalism

Neither does universal healthcare despite your protestations that one is clearly socialist and good and the other is clearly not. They are both simply universal services that stand to benefit people a lot when correctly implemented and can form useful policies for further organization.

V. Illych L.
Apr 11, 2008

ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

Moridin920 posted:

Sorry I made an edit but; you can just put a cap on consumption outside of a currency system. Obviously it would be unreasonable for someone to order a new pair of shoes every day.


Okay but see? Precisely. The bartender doesn't cut you off because you ran out of money, the bartender cuts you off because you had too much. It's not even a question of currency at all in this instance.

i very much suspect that the "reasonable limits" would signal the emergence of something as a de-facto currency anyway

i'm not principally devoted to the concept of currency, but i think that there's no great need to get rid of it since it'd probably just disappear when no longer needed.

Moridin920
Nov 15, 2007

by FactsAreUseless
UBI smacks to me of kicking the can down the road a bit and doesn't actually fix any underlying contradictions or issues with regards to exploitation buuuut you could also make the argument that it would help to raise class consciousness (as such programs tend to do) and also that even if it is kicking the can down the road you're helping tons of people who need the help now and not in some visionary socialist future.

Really my issue is that "UBI" is so broad that it could really mean almost anything when you get to the implementation level.

V. Illych L. posted:

i very much suspect that the "reasonable limits" would signal the emergence of something as a de-facto currency anyway

i'm not principally devoted to the concept of currency, but i think that there's no great need to get rid of it since it'd probably just disappear when no longer needed.

That's fair.

Moridin920 fucked around with this message at 18:16 on May 30, 2019

V. Illych L.
Apr 11, 2008

ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

OwlFancier posted:

Neither does universal healthcare despite your protestations that one is clearly socialist and good and the other is clearly not. They are both universal services that stand to benefit people a lot when correctly implemented.

dude i just made a post about how the NHS in its specific form is a good argument agaisnt capitalism

you yourself see the NHS as useful for this purpose, according to yourself

OwlFancier posted:

socialism to someone in as few words as possible I'm probably gonna say "Imagine if everything worked like going to the doctor"

UBI would not have this function, at least not in any way that i can see

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

V. Illych L. posted:

UBI would not have this function, at least not in any way that i can see

How is you having your basic needs met with free money not an equivalent to that?

Like an actual social safety net without all the bullshit means testing that normally goes into it? Just you are alive ergo you can get basic food/shelter/whatever.

I mean if you really want to you could start dozens of different programs to run free kitchesn and housing and poo poo but the problem with those is that they are only gonna be used by the desperate, UBI is the best immediate policy which facilitates that level of protection while being something that everyone is gonna come to depend on cos everyone gets it and has use for it.

Again the reason the NHS is durable is because everyone uses it. UBI offers the same thing, you can't just inject thousands of dollars into everyone's budget and expect the majority of people not to become dependent on it. You want that precisely because that's what keeps the program secure. That's your defence against the predations of those who would look to dismantle it. And that's also the standard you rally around when it comes time to push further.

And yeah you need rent controls and poo poo, you need rent controls and poo poo anyway. This is entirely secondary to the issue of UBI. UBI levels the playing field a bit, because of that marginal utility poo poo. And a genuine universal policy is a powerful thing for someone looking to argue why we should have more universal policies, and rights, and our field should be even more level.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:26 on May 30, 2019

Moridin920
Nov 15, 2007

by FactsAreUseless

V. Illych L. posted:

UBI would not have this function, at least not in any way that i can see

I think you could make the argument that it would erode the "meritocracy" and "government can't do anything right" mentalities that the right likes to propagate. It's hard to say the government is bad and everything it does is bad when you're getting your basic needs taken care of by virtue of a government stipend.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Moridin920 posted:

I think you could make the argument that it would erode the "meritocracy" and "government can't do anything right" mentalities that the right likes to propagate. It's hard to say the government is bad and everything it does is bad when you're getting your basic needs taken care of by virtue of a government stipend.

This too, the US has an abysmal lack of belief in the entire concept of government action, and not unreasonable either because apparently everything it does is deliberatley the most lovely implementation that makes your life miserable, like the current UK government is trying to do with welfare. You can't get people on board with the concept of "we can organize to use the government to do good things" unless the government has done good things ever.

V. Illych L.
Apr 11, 2008

ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

OwlFancier posted:

How is you having your basic needs met with free money not an equivalent to that?

Like an actual social safety net without all the bullshit means testing that normally goes into it? Just you are alive ergo you can get basic food/shelter/whatever.

there would be proposals for means testing introduced the moment the ink was dry on the legislation; while it existed, it would be used by our enemies as an excuse to cut other programmes and then you're suddenly left with Universal Credit or whatnot

there are very good reasons that UBI has never been seriously pushed for by any reformist-socialist party ever. for the political effort you'd expend on implementing and protecting UBI, you could just build a proper welfare state with working institutions separate from the market which are more difficult to subvert and which actually provide an object lesson in how things could be all around

plus, you're not showing the way forward by just handing people money; work ethic still poisons us and it's very easy to rationalise UBI as a "hand-out", "lazy kids subsisting of their UBI and the occasional crime" etc etc. it would be an absolutely enormous part of government spending to make it work. one does not beat the bourgeoisie by doing nothing to undercut their power

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

V. Illych L. posted:

there would be proposals for means testing introduced the moment the ink was dry on the legislation; while it existed, it would be used by our enemies as an excuse to cut other programmes and then you're suddenly left with Universal Credit or whatnot

there are very good reasons that UBI has never been seriously pushed for by any reformist-socialist party ever. for the political effort you'd expend on implementing and protecting UBI, you could just build a proper welfare state with working institutions separate from the market which are more difficult to subvert and which actually provide an object lesson in how things could be all around

plus, you're not showing the way forward by just handing people money; work ethic still poisons us and it's very easy to rationalise UBI as a "hand-out", "lazy kids subsisting of their UBI and the occasional crime" etc etc. it would be an absolutely enormous part of government spending to make it work. one does not beat the bourgeoisie by doing nothing to undercut their power

Again literally all of this can be and is levelled against universal healthcare by the right. The thing is that none of it sticks once you get the universal policy in place because it doesn't fetch up against the material reality that we all use and need it. And yes, that takes effort. And yes, it builds reliance on some elements of the existing power structure, tough tit, because unless you're proposing armed uprising you're going to be working with that power structure.

How on earth can you say UBI is a waste of time and in the same breath propose a welfare state literally only for those in need? Have you paid any attention to the UK in the last decade to know how easily that is undermined?

wateroverfire
Jul 3, 2010

V. Illych L. posted:

there would be proposals for means testing introduced the moment the ink was dry on the legislation; while it existed, it would be used by our enemies as an excuse to cut other programmes and then you're suddenly left with Universal Credit or whatnot

there are very good reasons that UBI has never been seriously pushed for by any reformist-socialist party ever. for the political effort you'd expend on implementing and protecting UBI, you could just build a proper welfare state with working institutions separate from the market which are more difficult to subvert and which actually provide an object lesson in how things could be all around

plus, you're not showing the way forward by just handing people money; work ethic still poisons us and it's very easy to rationalise UBI as a "hand-out", "lazy kids subsisting of their UBI and the occasional crime" etc etc. it would be an absolutely enormous part of government spending to make it work. one does not beat the bourgeoisie by doing nothing to undercut their power

The point of UBI is that as a universal benefit, everyone gets it. It's not a hand-out to "those people" (however you define "those people").

wateroverfire
Jul 3, 2010

V. Illych L. posted:

i very much suspect that the "reasonable limits" would signal the emergence of something as a de-facto currency anyway

i'm not principally devoted to the concept of currency, but i think that there's no great need to get rid of it since it'd probably just disappear when no longer needed.

Any kind of scarcity will tend to create a market.

Even if there is no money and people can order whatever they want up from government Amazon up to their monthly alotment, you are going to have some people who want more Mt. Dew than the max alotment and other people who want an extra pair of jeans or whatever and those people will figure out how to trade.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

wateroverfire posted:

The point of UBI is that as a universal benefit, everyone gets it. It's not a hand-out to "those people" (however you define "those people").

I can't believe I'm agreeing with you but yes, this is the point. It makes no sense to complain that UBI will be "means tested" while suggesting as an alternative a welfare system that is inherently means tested by being something that people only use when they don't have any alternative.

This is why such welfare systems are hard to keep going, because the people who want them, the people who benefit from them, are the least politically powerful. Everyone else only sees them as a drain on their taxes. What they are is state facilitated charity, and people in capitalism are not charitable enough to sustain them.

The entire point of UBI is to make it universal such that everybody buys into it. Thus making it something that has far more buy in than means tested welfare.

And maybe it can't completely replace means tested welfare, but it'd be something, something that can't be taken away from you on a whim, something that can't be procedured into inaccessibility. And something that would by the nature of marginal utility, benefit the most in need the greatest.

V. Illych L.
Apr 11, 2008

ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

however, not everyone is going to buy into it; the inevitable cost to the rich from a well-functioning UBI would see them find ways to undermine it, and they would start with some reasonable-sounding exceptions at the first sign of adversity (inflation is too high, so we must cut spending; surely the very rich can spare their UBI payments in the name of solidarity with the paups, and there you go!)

or else, they'd make a fight over every inflation adjustment - much like how they're defunding the NHS

most likely, though, prices would just increase to match the additional funds making it into the economy

UBI and NHS have some similarities, it is true; the difference is that one is an unequivocally good, socialist programme and the other is a kind of 'meh', very brittle and ideologically neoliberal effort

this, mind, is not even getting into the need for reducing consumption rather than just reallocating it

UBI would be decent redistribution; what we need is reorganisation

Helsing
Aug 23, 2003

DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU :love::love::love: JOE BIDEN

OwlFancier posted:

Again literally all of this can be and is levelled against universal healthcare by the right. The thing is that none of it sticks once you get the universal policy in place because it doesn't fetch up against the material reality that we all use and need it. And yes, that takes effort. And yes, it builds reliance on some elements of the existing power structure, tough tit, because unless you're proposing armed uprising you're going to be working with that power structure.

How on earth can you say UBI is a waste of time and in the same breath propose a welfare state literally only for those in need? Have you paid any attention to the UK in the last decade to know how easily that is undermined?

Universal healthcare involves government planning and regulation and negotiation between key interest groups. It's really not comparable to a UBI which is a favourite policy of neoliberals and would absolutely be used as the wedge for cutting the rest of the safety net.

Most serious proposals for a UBI by people in power have involved both means testing and in many cases some reduction or removal of other programs. These policies are also have no mechanism for preventing landlords, shopkeepers and employers from simply eating up all the gains. And this program would be massively expensive and necessarily come at the cost of other programs.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Have you tried not going with the neolib version of either universal healthcare or UBI? That might help.

The entire nature of means tested welfare is a wedge to dismantle it, you really don't need UBI to do that. Complaining about that is a bit rich when it has yet to be demonstrated that means tested welfare is defensible to begin with.

Like look at any sort of welfare, what are the ones that are the most durable? State pension, universal healthcare/medicare, things that everyone gets even if only at some point.

Seems real weird to suggest that if you expand that to literally everyone it's magically gonna be terrible.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 19:31 on May 30, 2019

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V. Illych L.
Apr 11, 2008

ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

non-neoliberal UBI would take a revolution or something, and stopping at UBI seems kind of unambitious in that case

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