You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: Anything the State can do, we can do better... And just because statists want it, doesn't mean anarchists don't want it
There are other reasons that I have a problem with UBI besides state violence, but I agree that if experiments are being done via voluntary means, there is no moral injection to it, just a utilitarian one.
Would you mind discussing what your other problems with the concept are?
Sorry for the delayed response. My problem with it is that I think it's a waste of money. I don't think it will be necessary as automation accelerates and I don't think it would be effective .
I theorize that as automation increases, the need for people to work (in the sense that we understand it today) will decrease. This does not necessarily mean that they will lose any means for income. There will always be things that we can do for each other that will warrant an exchange of some sort of money to provide income. What that will look like when nobody has what we currently think of as jobs, I'm not sure, but I am pretty sure that people won't suddenly be worse off when they don't have them. The opposite has always been true historically, and I think it will continue to be so.
The other part of why I'm opposed to UBI is that I don't think it will work even if we were to need it. I think that once UBI proceeds on for some time, the specific amount of money everyone is receiving will become comparably worthless due to rising prices driven by people who are willing to work over people who are willing to just subsist off of the UBI; and that in order for it to keep working, massive monetary inflation will have to occur to support cost of living increases, or that money will need to be taken from the hides of the productive workers directly like is done now. In essence, the same problems we have with the current welfare state (minus some of the inefficiencies of bureaucracy of course).