With automation we're going to be forced to go beyond capitalism, otherwise we're going to have some serious fucking issues on our hands
This was actually a pretty good video but for some reason it decided to be one big comedic skit. I kept thinking he was going to drop the goofy act but it just... never ended
The only people UBI is terrifying for are the ultra-wealthy and those who still haven't grapsed the consequences of widespread automation. UBI is going to make an appearance in some form or another
Did you watch the video? The entire point is that UBI has the concerning potential to consolidate more wealth towards the elite and solidify their positions further.
Let's say you're allotted 12 thousand USD every year. Where is that money going to go? It's probably going to go towards making payments on your shelter, which is owned by capitalists, your technology, which is owned be capitalists, and your sustenance, which is owned by capitalists. Considering that UBI would likely be paid for with taxes collected from *all* citizens in a municipality, this dynamic would largely funnel money from the masses towards the top 1% of society.
It doesn't matter where the money comes from. As corporations grow larger and more prolific, and acquire more and more diverse portfolios of other corporations to integrate into their collective (see: Amazon, Google), you will be more and more forced into giving them that money to survive. In capitalism, the only place for money to go is up as the Elite gets their money from you and you get your money (in lesser quantities) from the Elite in the form of wages, which have stagnated for decades.
With automation what little social mobility we had might become obsolete as millions lose employability. What hope of wage growth does the collective of society have if their primary source of income in the future is a flat payment of only whats necessary to survive?
Love how this intelligently disputes points made throughout the video.
Not all opinions necessitate long explanations right out the gate. He has an opinion about this video, he didn't pretend that he was making an argument, not does he have to.
Sadly people dumb first and ask questions later. Always how it's been with Facepunch
This video makes a decent point. UBI may end up making it even harder to dislodge our corporate overlords and giving us an upper class of super wealthy and an underclass of people with only their basic needs met.
The thing to remember though is that right now there are plenty of people without their basic needs met.
I mean there are lots of variations of UBI. You could for example, include a heavy tax on the wealthiest for UBI finding, helping distribute wealth better
Here's the fundamental principle that people need to understand about Capitalist wealth exchange and power dynamics. In a Capitalist society, you have those who own the means of production and the working class. To simplify, you can just call these two groups producers and consumers of products and services. Or the bourgeois and proletariat, or whatever.
The Bourgeois get their money from the proletariat in the form of revenue from sales on the products and services they sell. The proletariat gets their money from wages given to them by the bourgeois. Where does this money come from? It comes... from the revenue made by the sales. So basically, what we have in terms of wealth transfer is proletariat -> bourgeois and bourgeois -> proletariat. Seems reasonable, right?
The core issue is that the bourgeois have control over BOTH wealth transfers. They decide how much to charge for the products they sell, AND they determine what their workers wages are. This fundamentally means that, in the interests of PROFIT, they will want to MAXIMIZE revenue and MINIMIZE expenses. That is economics 101. What do they GET from you? They get revenue. What do you mean to them? You're an EXPENSE. They want to maximize what they get from you and minimize what they give you in return. Wealth inequality is logically DESTINED to continue growing more and more because that's just how the system works. Expecting anything different is madness.
Right, I'm not saying "there's no way UBI works," in general I'm in favor of it, just that we have to look out for the ways it can be used to solidify wealth inequality and that's it's not a panacea.
Because using a persons political label somehow discredits all their points. Give me a fucking break. His opinion boils down to "I have identified a caricature of this persons political identity haha give me agree ratings"
I'll be entirely honest, I didn't watch the video and based my comment on the replies and ratings contained within the thread. My apologies.
Well that's kinda the crux of the matter. We essentially have to put our faith in the state to regulate the relationship between the bourgeois and the proletariat, and as we've seen throughout time, the state is very vulnerable to influence by powerful actors. It's hard to be too optimistic about the state when we've seen just how good corporate interests are at using it as a tool for their goals.
But, less pessimistically speaking, something like that could work, maybe. I don't really know enough about the complicated economics behind what would be an effective tax structure to make UBI actually work. What would your endgoal be? What sort of tax would be used to accomplish that goal? A land value tax? An income tax? Considering that there are a pretty significant amount of people against taxation outright I'm not sure if structuring our entire society on a lot of it is practical.
Then there's government policies and worker unions and whatnot acting against this tendency. Things only get tipped in the capitalist's favor if the balancing mechanisms fail to act.
Honestly, Ancoms are even more hilariously dumb than Ancaps. At least anarchistic capitalism, as bad as it is, could actually exist.
Literally read any text on the Spanish civil war or the conquest of bread to see how ancom could work. I am not an anarchist in any sense but that claim is ludicrous. It would be based on mutal aid and congresses of communes. Hell this guy made good videos on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzEl5RIMp7M
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conquest_of_Bread
Throughout the first three chapters, Kropotkin constructs an argument for the common ownership of all intellectual and useful property due to the collective work that went into creating it. Kropotkin does not argue that the product of a worker's labor should belong to the worker. Instead, Kropotkin asserts that every individual product is essentially the work of everyone since every individual relies on the intellectual and physical labor of those who came before them as well as those who built the world around them. Because of this, Kropotkin proclaims that every human deserves an essential right to well-being because every human contributes to the collective social product:[3]
No more of such vague formulae as "The right to work", or "To each the whole result of his labour." What we proclaim is the Right to Well-Being; Well-Being for All!
Kropotkin goes on to say that the central obstacle preventing humanity from claiming this right is the state's violent protection of private property. Kropotkin compares this relationship to feudalism, saying that even if the forms have changed, the essential relationship between the propertied and the landless is the same as the relationship between a feudal lord and their serfs. Kropotkin calls for the destruction of the state and the expropriation of all property into the commons, where the right to well-being can be achieved for all people.[3]
So everybody owns everything and everyone gets a good quality of living. Sounds good, but how do we decide how to divide up the resources so that everybody gets a good quality of life? How do we define 'well-being' on an individual basis?
Throughout the middle of the book, Kropotkin sketches a picture of what he feels an anarcho-communist society could look like. He points to the huge levels of production that modern industrial society achieved in terms of food production, clothing production and housing production; and he uses this as evidence of the feasibility of an anarcho-communist society. More than enough of the essentials are produced for all people, Kropotkin argues; and if they were only distributed properly, nobody would have any unmet needs. Kropotkin further argues that with the level of production output being so high people should not have to work more than five hours a day and they should be able to reduce that as much as possible, giving them free time to work on innovations that would reduce their labor.[3]
So we've got enough food, clothes and housing for everyone to live comfortably if these resources are distributed properly. We already produce more than we need so we could produce less stuff and just have people working less, it's a bit presumptuous that any large number of people would be inventing things to reduce labor just because they have more free time. Most people would probably just play video games, watch movies, read, or do hobbies rather than inventing stuff, but no matter. The bigger issue is still the question "How do we distribute resources properly/who gets to decide?"
Near the end of this section, Kropotkin discusses luxury items, recognizing that they are a necessity for a good life and affirming that luxury items would still be produced, even if production was taken under the purview of common need. Kropotkin claims that luxury items would be produced on a collective basis by those most interested in their production. He uses an example of a group of pianists dedicating time to building luxury pianos with the help of a group of collective carpenters who are interested in carpentry. Kropotkin argues that this system of collective production could produce necessary luxury items—on top of the production of the necessities—for everybody to live a fulfilling life.[3]
So if there's a demand for luxury goods, such as pianos, then certain people with the prerequisite expertise to make said goods will supply that demand through producing them. Presumably those people with prerequisite management experience will then need to create more efficient ways of making those goods, such as something we might call a factory. They would then need to convince other people with prerequisite skills in say, carpentry, but not management expertise, to assist them in these factories. These people would need to be compensated somehow? How would we do that?
Also, who's in charge of these collectives? Do all of the carpenters elect a head carpenter who decides what deals they take? Is it individuals choosing for themselves? How do we stop people being taken advantage of? If one of the parties involved in a production feels like they aren't getting what they want out of it, who do they complain to? What's stopping a collective from denying access to someone they don't like for whatever reason?
In the final chapters, Kropotkin lays out what he feels will be prominent objections to his theory as well as his response to them. He figures that many critics will claim that people are lazy and they would not work willingly, even if it is only for five hours for the necessities. Kropotkin counters by saying that people are willing to work in jobs they enjoy and given the necessary free time to work on their own, with the guarantee of material stability, people will work willingly on collective gardens or in collective garment factories.[3]
There have been studies testing things like Universal Basic Income which indicate people will still work even if their needs are met. So this seems alright.
Near the end of the work, Kropotkin cautions against the state centralization of industry, warning people against more authoritarian strands of socialism and claiming that any revolution must guarantee bread and freedom to the workers and revolutionaries. He ends with a long chapter on agriculture, marveling at the many ways in which humans have cultivated and advanced agricultural production, dreaming about the ways that it could be used to feed everybody and guarantee a healthy and happy life for all people.[3]
Kropotkin basically predicted that highly centralized socialist states, such as the later Soviet Union, would become totalitarian.
He is great for a start and provides a foundation of anarchist thought but he is not the answer to every question and many have built more tangible theories off of him as discussed in the video above (part of a series)
Honestly this. UBI is just yet another bandaid fix to try to force a broken system not to collapse. UBI won't fix anything so long as the fundamental problems with how our society distributes wealth go unaddressed.
Uh, have you never heard of progressive taxation? Your line of reasoning would only function if UBI was funded by a flat tax, which would be immensely retarded. Nobody who supports UBI is in favour of a flat tax.
That makes sense. My bad.
Ancap couldn't exist either. Capitalism only works because the state allows it. Govts provide the money, set the rules, and enforce them.
If you got rid of the govts and somehow privatized the money, the rules, and the means of enforcing them... Those private actors would become the de-facto government, and you'd be back at square one.
Reminds me very much of Manna, Two Views of Humanity's Future, by Marshall Brain
Basically you end up with neo-feudalism
I wonder why it is that in every video or piece of literature I seem to see on the subject (obv not an exhaustive list), none actually explain how the system would work? Lots of nice buzzwords get throw around all the time but are there any calculations? Any example studies on how this would work on any significant scale?
I've been reading Kropotkin recently (yay for scribd subscription) and it's all "capitalism is bad, it's unjust, it doesn't provide equality, it's a mess". But here's the thing, I agree with all of that. Capitalism IS bad, but why isn't there a piece of literature which says how a true communist society would actually work instead of driving your emotions wild with hatred against capitalism, hoping you don't actually think of how such a thing would work. As an example - I want to know how in a communist world, the trillion different industries are going to work together for me to be able to build a computer, download the software necessary to make a 3D model over global infrastructure, which I can then provide to a company to make a piece of entertainment.
The communist years of Catalonia had severe problems. Does accepting that way of life mean accepting vigilantism and faux courts run on emotions instead of concrete standards?
And Bread is the same shit. Even the chapters which should in theory explain in a sequence how housing, food and clothing would end up in people's hands don't delve into any detail on how the interconnected world would produce anything.
People are biologically unready to work even at the current social development, not to mention beyond
Yeah its a flaw in a lot of leftist works that needs addressing because it gives off the wrong idea. The truth is there are legitimate theories out there on how to practically and ethically run a communist government, its just that they are drowned out by the historical tendices to just criticize capitalism.
Some examples would be syndicalism, which simply believes in replacing the private sector with trade unions in a very cut and dry manner, then there is Rosa Luxembourgs "left communism" which advocates a system similar to the soviet union but without a vanguard party post revolution and giving more power to the soviets themselves, or even as the video I posted above described Small Communes which in turn make up wards which in turn form a representative congress. This stuff exists but a lot of leftists are really just anti capitalist and dont consider any practical replacement I will admit.
An issue that could also come from UBI is that having more money doesn't necessarily mean you can buy more stuff. Because corporations don't really price items based on what they're worth, they base them on how much people are willing to pay for them. If people have on average more money to spend, things will then get more expensive to make up for it. In the long run, UBI only benefits corporations.
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