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

[hunter]

268. I do not consider most employment "productive."

Extracting and refining fossil fuels, for example, is destroying the natural environment that supports all human beings. Sure, this work pays well, but it is ultimately destructive, not "productive." Fossil fuels are killing and crippling people now, today. Eventually they are likely to kill off a large fraction of the human population by the mechanism of global warming which will cause destructive climate changes and rising sea levels.

Likewise, building war machines to protect the strong relationship between oil "production" and the U.S. dollar is not actually productive work, nor are any wars.

Paying people to live low energy, low resource intensive lifestyles is better than paying them to live high energy very resource intensive lifestyles.

I don't believe people need cars or highways or parking lots or big-box stores to be happy. They simply need safe comfortable housing, a nice pedestrian friendly community, healthy food and water, educational opportunities, and appropriate health care. Assured of these necessities most people will find innovative, truly productive things to do, and those few who can't will be less likely to get into trouble.

Punishing the unemployed and the unemployable with deprivation and socially sanctioned violence (violence by rotten police especially) does not make our world a better place.