Clueless democrats poo pooing basic income (7/7/16)

So, my blog is down AGAIN right now (this was written on the 7th), but I wanted to write this while it’s offline. It will appear on my blog when it is back up again. 

I just wanted to comment on the fact that basic income has been in the news lately and some high profile democrats have discussed it. Unfortunately, the coverage has largely been negative and has really done wonders in highlighting the ideological differences between me and the current establishment. Now, I understand my views are outside the mainstream and a lot of people likely think my ideas are off the walls and kooky, but whatever. I believe they are well founded on reason and evidence, so I will support them regardless. 

Anyway, let’s get to it. 

Hillary Clinton 

The first person to comment on it is none other than presumed democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. She was asked about it on a recent interview whose transcripts can be found on LinkedIn. The context of it involved the whole Brexit debate, and then turned into a discussion on the prospect of technological unemployment. 

She isn’t for it, and her reasons come down to ideology. She basically wants to focus on expanding “opportunities”, aka, jobs. She believes that jobs are integral to our experience as humans, and that they’re “in our DNA.” The idea of a jobless future seems to scare her. She mentioned how she was raised by a small business owner and instilled with a strong work ethic and how this influenced her. Quite frankly, I think she’s clueless and out of touch. 

First of all, for most of human society, work has been a necessary evil. We forced people to work because if we didn’t, we literally wouldn’t have enough to go around and people would starve. In most regimes, work was thought of negatively. In the Bible, it was seen as punishment for original sin. The message the Bible tries to give off is that hey, things would be all wonderful and you could just sit around a garden all day doing whatever you want, but because someone ate an apple, you must work. We also see hard labor as a punishment in a lot of societies. Let me ask you this. What was written above the gates at Auschwitz Concentration Camp? I seem to recall it’s the words “Arbeit Macht Frei”, which means “work makes you free.” Before gassing them to death, the Nazis put the Jews and others to work, involuntarily. In North Korea today, what kind of punishment do you get if you’re not executed? Hard labor. Work is often punishment. Even in most societies where work is a necessity, it’s not desired. Does anyone desire the life of a slave on a plantation? No! Of course not! What about the life of a peasant on some noble’s farm? Nope. The noble might do a lot of things with their purpose, but not the little people under them. They toil for someone else’s benefit.

Speaking of which, I’d like to now draw parallels here. Hillary is as noble as they come. She’s rich, she’s made her millions giving speeches to Wall Street, not to mention her political career, and she wants to lecture us little people about what’s in our DNA? About 70% of people either hate their jobs or are disengaged from them. And she wants to focus on more work instead of freeing us as a society? Because that’s really what this is about to me. My anti work rhetoric is about one thing. Freedom. True freedom. Being able to choose to work, or not to work. Being able to do what you want with your life, without being alienated by work. Work can give you purpose if it’s good fulfilling work, but oh so often, work actually alienates people, a lot like, say, Marx would say, if you ask me.

The fact is, our current attitudes about work are really a modern invention, and as I think I’ve said before on here, it’s about making the slave class feel good about their servitude. Capitalism is a hierarchical economic system. You have those who own the means of production, and those who work jobs that make them money that you only see a small portion of. You might say, hey, working is voluntary, but without a basic income, is it? To me, it’s just another iteration of feudalism. You need to eat, you need a roof over your head. And if we are heading toward a world where we can reduce our need for human labor and distribute the profits to citizens, why shouldn’t we? Ideally, basic income would be balanced with our labor needs, and there would be work for those who want it, but it shouldn’t be a required thing any more. I mean, I don’t even think we necessarily need to choose between expanding opportunities and a basic income, honestly. I think the ideal policy direction would do both. Freeing people from having to work, while allowing those who want to to be able to. I have nothing against people choosing to do thing. But it must be a true choice. It must be what you really want to do, without having the resources you need to survive from being held over you.

This is what Clinton doesn’t understand. This is why she’s so clueless. When we talk about job creation as a society, and romanticize work, all I hear is we need more slavery for the enslaved so they don’t live in poverty in this system we made for them that still works on the assumption that everyone NEEDS to work or society would fall apart. I’m not suggesting we do anything that would actually implode our economy or cause society to fall apart. My ideas have limits to what is practical and should only be taken to the extent that they’re doable and sustainable. But honestly, we need to end this love affair with the concept of paid labor. Going back to history, you know Aristotle thought that wage labor rotted the mind and made people stupid and dumbed down? You know in a lot of societies paid labor was regarded the same as slavery? Yeah. Look at the link above on the concept of “wage slavery.” We need to stop romanticizing this concept.

On purpose

Before I move on from Clinton entirely, I want to discuss purpose.

Clinton believes human beings need purpose. Maybe she’s right, but maybe she’s wrong. I really don’t know. I know when I was a Christian, I believed in purpose, and I organized my life around it. I made some pretty bad decisions in doing so, which is a huge reason I’m now an atheist. As an atheist, I’ve struggled with the concept of purpose a lot. Ultimately, this world….it’s nihilistic. There are no purposes, no grand design. Just us. This is scary, but it’s also liberating. Clinton is, I want to remind you, a Christian. I believe a lot of her ideas are based on religion here. She talks a lot about “God given potential” on the campaign trail, and every time she does, I roll my eyes.

This is why I’m not a fan of religion. It makes people out of touch with reality sometimes. It affects how people see the world, and honestly, it makes people see things that aren’t there. I feel like, I can see stuff clearly, and I can understand things that many, many, many people gloss over. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that I reject Christian epistemology. I see the world as it is. Some might see me as arrogant for talking this way. I don’t care. To me, becoming an atheist was like swallowing the “red pill” to make a Matrix reference, or like leaving Plato’s cave. Most people see a fake world. They see a life script. They accept these things as truth. They don’t realize it’s just a huge social construct that exists within certain ideologies. I do not share these ideologies. While certain jobs, say, running for president, or curing cancer, or making the newest tech device that takes the world by storm, may provide people with a sense of purpose, all I see from most jobs available to me in capitalism is soul crushing alienation, to once again use a Marxian word. I see slavery. I just do. I don’t see any noble purpose in any of it. And I see these exhortations to how wonderful work is to be reminiscent of the dystopian slogans preached over the microphone in the game Bioshock Infinite. “Be the bee!”, blah blah blah.

Work exists to enhance our lives. We do not live to work. It is not our purpose. It’s not ingrained in our DNA. It’s a product of a modern ideology that dominates our society. It’s based in religion, and it’s used to motivate the peasant/slave classes in our society to see work as a good thing, rather than as drudgery. That’s the truth behind work. That’s the truth behind “purpose.” That’s the truth behind the American dream, and “opportunity”, and “job creation.” It’s this huge dystopian nightmare that just won’t end, because we’ve hazed ourselves into not wanting it to end, and the most privileged in society thinks it’s good for us. Perhaps before we can throw off our actual shackles, we need to throw off our mental ones first. Clinton isn’t helping. She’s expanding this mess. Maybe it was valuable at one point in society, but we’re gradually shedding our need for it, and to see people like Clinton talk about trying to expand jobs in an age of technological progress, is very disheartening.

Jason Furman

Jason Furman is a leading White House economist who discussed basic income. He mentioned it would increase income inequality and that we should focus on employment. Now, his idea is that we don’t have any jobs at all and we just give everyone a UBI. While this could be an eventual future possibility, as I said, I think ideally we would have a basic income while simultaneously providing jobs to anyone who wants one. It’s good to have a minimum and to free people from forced labor. But on top of that, there is a little truth to the whole “opportunity” thing and having the ability to take a job if you wanted one to expand your income is a good possibility. As such, I don’t know why we can’t do both. And no, basic income would greatly reduce income inequality. Scott Santens, a blogger I’ve discussed the concept with on Reddit before, has tackled this issue directly, and here’s his blog post on it. It should be mentioned that my basic income ideas are very similar to what he proposes here, and yeah, it does a lot to reduce income inequality. It brings us more in line with Nordic nations than anything. Of course, this assumes we maintain an economy with enough jobs for anyone who wants one. Again, not totally against the idea of work, I just believe it should be voluntary and not forced on us.

Honestly, I don’t think that Furman put enough thought into the idea to really discuss it in detail. I notice a lot of people don’t. They look at the idea on a surface level, and because it is so counter to our current culture, it causes them to have a million and one reasons to oppose it, most of which are totally bogus. I’m not saying there aren’t hurdles with the idea. However, most hurdles have more to do with the implementation of the idea and things like funding, clawback structures, what to do with the system in place etc., and not the idea itself. Opposing the idea itself is generally based on an ideological rejection of it. And if you oppose a policy that would reduce or eliminate poverty, fix some severe fundamental flaws with our economic system, reduce income inequality, and give workers more freedom and flexibility, then I’ll happily oppose you on it.

Conclusion 

 

It is disheartening to see the democrats turn a blind eye to this idea. Jill Stein was asked about the idea on Reddit’s AMA not long ago and she seemed open to it. She also added it to her website platform. But honestly, the democrats seem to have an ideological love affair with the idea that people should be forced to work jobs they hate for the sense of purpose, even though this seems horribly out of touch with my ideal of reality. Or maybe they’re just afraid of change. I don’t know. I have to say, given the democrats’ unwillingness to support truly progressive ideas this election cycle, I’m not surprised by these developments, but it is really disheartening to see. This is really just strengthening my resolve to vote third party.