I saw someone, who is a socialist, ask this before, to those of us who are not socialists. And since I really should have written a post on the economic effects of COVID and how I believe I hold many of the answers to solving many of the problems. The fact is, the reason COVID has not radicalized me, is because I was already radicalized by the 2008 recession to understand the problems with capitalism. And the reason it has not turned me to socialism, is because I believe my own ideology solves those problems better. I find it weird how many people, upon dunking on capitalism, jump right on the socialist bandwagon and be like "we have to throw this whole thing out, and we need to go straight to socialism or some other ideology", when once again, I don't understand how socialism would really solve the problems better than what I have. That said, I want to discuss why I believe my ideology could do just as well, if not better, at combatting the problems of capitalism and COVID.
The gamestop debacle
No, I don't mean the reddit stock thing. I'm talking about something that happened the year before that happened. In the early days of the pandemic, there was a lot of panic about what should be done, and around mid March 2020, everything was shut down. In the days leading up to that, there were a lot of safety concerns regarding how COVID was impacting workers and whether they were at risk. Here in Pennsylvania, no one was scrutinized more closely than gamestop, which was reported to deny workers adequate cleaning supplies, and demanded workers keep demo stations for video games operational, despite them being potentil vectors of disease. Workers were in a hard situation. They couldn't quit, or they wouldn't be paid. And because in capitalism you need to work to get a paycheck to live, workers did not have the right to say no to work. Workers kept working in gamestop until governor Tom Wolf stepped in and ordered stores to shut down. But gamestop defied the governor, and the businesses remained open.This caused Wolf to revoke their business license, and to declare that people who refused to show up to work due to safety concerns could claim unemployment, finally giving employees a right to say no they should have had in the first place.
While Wolf's response was adequate from a mainstream liberal perspective, it had the hallmark delays that a liberal response does. Because liberals, just like the right, require people work to live, workers were at the mercy of the employers until the government, in all of its benevolence and wisdom, decided that the reasons for refusing to work were to be taken seriously enough to allow people to do so. So employees were at risk for a good week or more until the government decided to step in to finally give people the right to say no, in a limited fashion, in this instance.
Honestly, if basic income were a thing, this need for such a delayed response would have been totally unnecessary. Because workers would be able to quit their jobs for any reason, and they would still have a basic income. Perhaps they would still take a hit to their living standard in the form of a loss of income from work, as they should. But, they would retain that lifeline no matter what, and would be able to make the best decision for themselves and their families.
Employers always try to force workers to work through national disasters and emergencies. Having been down south in the summer before, I see cases where employers try to force employees to work through hurricanes and tropical storms, delaying their evacuations to make their owners a little extra profit. If always takes the government to step in and say "Im serious, get out" and offer exemptions before workers are free of their obligations, and that typically only lasts for the duration of the emergency, forcing people to come back to work after the storm as quickly as possible. Governments only grant exceptions to the obligation to work when they are forced to. And they often do so at the last minute, and only for the minimum duration necessary. This is better than nothing, but if workers had the right to say no and a basic income to fall back on, they would be able to make the decisions to quit and leave on their own terms, and come back on their own terms. Liberal capitalism only grants exemptions when the government deems it necessary, with a UBI, people have that right from the get go and it cannot be taken away. And that's the point.
Unemployment overload
So, COVID came, all nonessential businesses were shut down, and millions of people were out of work. What now? Well, now unemployed workers have to go collect unemployment. And now the website, phones, and bureaucracy is overloaded with insane amounts of claims. I know it's taken some people weeks, if not months, to get through. The system was overloaded and couldn't keep up. This is a problem with conditional aid. You gotta go through their bureaucracy to claim it, and it's never a good experience. Long wait times and delays are common. This is a huge reason I dislike NIT style UBIs. Imagine the government needing to calculate everyone's UBI bureaucratically and needing to keep up with all of that paperwork. It's ridiculous. If you have a basic income, all of this is automated. The checks are designed to come in automatically, with the money going out of your paychecks automatically. Basic income automates the process. It doesn't matter how many people are in and out of work, people get the same checks regardless.
And given how everyone is going on about how everyone should be getting monthly checks, while the government is largely unresponsive on this front outside of a couple rounds of stimulus, gee, what am I advocating for all along? Monthly checks. Speaking of which...
Moratoriums because people can't pay
I get socialists' disdain with mainstream liberalism here. I really do. The capitalist system is fragile, full of coercion and flaws, and liberals are proposing band aids that are the bare minimum, if they do anything at all. For most of the pandemic republicans were in charge, and they barely did anything to help people. And because money is the lifeblood of capitalism, when people lose income, there's a ripple effect through the economy. It isn't the lack of productivity that's the big problem it seems. It's the fact that people lack income. Because people suddenly found themselves with no income, and because the government wasn't particularly helpful, people began to owe rent they couldn't pay. The government established a moratorium on rent payments as a response. But this made the landlords freak out. They have mortgages to pay after all and without rent coming in, they can't. The moratorium on evictions didn't help either. It didnt mean tenants don't owe rent. It means they didn't have to pay it right then. But once the moratorium runs out in the near future, what of people who owe thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars? Oh noes, if only we had a solution for this. Oh wait, we do. Basic income...again. Admittedly, a loss of a job would still mean a loss of income, but it wouldn't be a total loss. I could see households going from $6000 a month in income to $2500-3000. This would soften the blow. It wouldn't fix the problem but it would greatly stabilize the system. And then temporary unemployment assistance on top of that would keep things even more stable.
The unfairness of conditional aid to the deserving poor
Weve talked a lot about unemployment, but let's talk about something else with it. A huge feature of both Trump and Biden's response to the pandemic is to offer expanded unemployment insurance. Trump offered $300 a week on top of what is given, while Biden is offering $600. But this creates an inherent unfairness issue. Not working now pays more than working. And essential workers busting their hump aren't getting any of this and can't quit their jobs without good reason. This creates resentment. Some are being paid excessive amounts of money to sit and not work, and others aren't being paid anything extra and are forced to work in essential jobs they can't quit. Gee, if only there was a solution to this! Do I even need to say it? Yeah, UBI would provide a safety net both to the unemployed, and to those who work. Unemployed people would be more incentivized to work, and employed people can quit bad jobs if they want. And we eliminate resentment!
"No one wants to work any more!"
While I have yet to see any serious evidence suggesting work refusal due to unemployment, to once again make a theoretical argument, if we had a basic income instead of expanded unemployment insurance, people would have more incentive to work as they would be rewarded for work, and not lose their UBI in practice. Easy peasy.
Conclusion
Look, I get socialists' criticisms of capitalism, and mainstream responses to them. They are garbage. However, like always, socialists misdiagnose the problems and propose extreme solutions with no clear solutions. The problem with capitalism is it coerces participation in order to meet basic needs. So people are dependent on jobs to survive, forcing people to work through a pandemic. And they need to rely on a fickle government to take the proper steps at taking care of people, which they don't for political reasons, and because bureaucracy is slow and convoluted. These problems could all be largely solved, with a basic income. With that basic check, people would have the financial stability to quit their jobs and make ends meet in some form, and pick up jobs if they want to later on. When we take making the right choices in this pandemic out of the hands of a fickle government and put it in the hands of the people, because the government takes care of people automatically anyway in this case, people are able to do what is right for them. And they will be taken care of, because we take care of them already.
I quite frankly don't see the need for socialism. Even more so, I could imagine the fact that decisions are left with a collective or with a slow acting government to be bad. I'd prefer to give people the freedom to make their own decisions. That's the great thing about indepentarianism. It maintains the economic stability of the left while giving us the personal freedom of the right. That said, why have I not really radicalized due to this pandemic? Because all this pandemic has done is demonstrate to me that we need a UBI.
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