What If We Just Gave Poor People a Basic Income for Life? That’s What We’re About to Test.

[malthaussen]

137. Sure, I'll believe you.

I always follow Rose Macauley on that question. But as far as socialist pablum is concerned, what would you? If we start from a position that capitalism is flawed for any of several reasons, then any argument that is not capitalist runs the risk of sounding like pablum of one sort or another, especially if one thinks the benefits of capitalism outweigh the detriments.

Right now, huge masses of capital are held out of circulation. Do you dispute this? Now, Braudel tells us that wealth comes from circulation. Do you dispute this? One dollar goes from hand to hand, paying for various commodities, and thus wealth is created. But what is that wealth, other than people working to create things? Food, shelter, smartphones: all are created by work. Now, how do we get people to work? Or, to put a finer point on it, how do we get people to work harder than they may want to for their food, shelter, and smartphones? Traditionally, the answer has been by letting them starve if they don't. I'd suggest that there are a few things wrong with that answer, especially as we may well be coming to a point where that answer is no longer viable, due to automation on the one hand, and environmental decay on the other. You know Thomas Malthus? He's the inspiration for my alias. Whatever you might think of Braudel, no one could accuse Malthus of being a socialist, since he died when Marx was only 16. Now, Malthus argued that population would always grow to exceed food supply, and thus periodic famines were Nature's way of putting the brakes on. Then along came tremendous advances in agricultural productivity, and the good doctor was considered to be out of date, that his conclusions were faulty because society would always find the technical answer to the problem. But what if he wasn't wrong, what if a law of diminishing returns applies, what if human society can't evade the strictures of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, that we can only hope to put off the day of reckoning for awhile? If your attitude is something along the lines of "I don't care, so long as it happens after I'm dead," then "Screw everyone else, I got mine" is the way to go. If your attitude is something else, then it might occur that some alternative to the way things have always been done is a good idea, and the sooner the better.

It is possible to think that humanity is headed for a terrible die-off without being a faithful adherent of some economic "ism" that really isn't relevant anyway. Hey, it might even be possible to believe this is the best of all possible worlds without being a faithful adherent of capitalism. But let's assume one believes that certain adjustments are necessary for the most efficient operation of the human social engine, then it becomes a question of when and how much, doesn't it? In that context, the UPI is simply the answer "a whole lot" to the second question. The answer to the first may well be, "If not now, when, if not us, who?" Your answers may vary, but that is why we have horse races after all.

-- Mal