So, a book that's been on my back burner for a while is "The Future of Work, Technology, and Basic income" by Michael Cholbi and Michael Weber. This book is, essentially a collection of essays by various writers about basic income and its relationship to work. I'm not sure if I'm going to respond to every essay, but I feel like this might be good for me to respond to too, if only to organize my thoughts.
The first essay in by Matt Zwolinski's "A Hayekian Case for Free Markets and a Basic Income." He argues, using Hayekian principles, for a UBI, but acknowledging that Hayek never once explicitly endorsed a UBI. I find this interesting, given my own independentarian perspective. Like many philosophers, I feel like Hayek here kinda danced around taking on the idea of a requirement to work dead on. I notice this with a lot of philosophers. I know that Van Parijs and Karl Widerquist based their push for UBI somewhat on John Rawl's "veil of ignorance" arguing the principles of the idea, but Rawls himself...came out fully against it.
It's weird, it's like the religion of work in society is strong enough that when it's pointed out that the core ideas philosophers have seem to imply that there should not be a requirement to work, they're like "nope, there totally should be a requirement to work." Hayek was like that here. Hayek did have a nuanced idea of freedom and seemed to acknowledge that if someone owns all of the resources, it's possible for them to threaten people by denying them access to those resources, and that that is, essentially coercive. But....at the same time, he didn't want to say there shouldn't be a requirement to work. This dance seems to be the dance that makes all of our philosophies, left, right, and center unhealthy. Marxists, for example, believe that capitalism coerces people into wage slavery, but then they just wanna reform labor where the workers own the means of production and blah blah blah. Rather than admit that the problem is work itself, they're just like, nah, the problem is that the evil capitalists own the means of production, we wanna make sure the workers get the value of their labor and blah blah blah....so at the end of the day they forced people into working as well, and it ended up being more horrifying than capitalism.
But that seems to be what Zwolinski points out here, going through the mechanisms of requiring people to work. Like most liberals, Hayek seemed to make a distinction between the deserving poor and the undeserving poor, and then, like I would, or Karl Widerquist would do, went through the kinds of bureaucracy and amount of knowledge, both practical and philosophical, that would be needed to come up with a perfect theory of justice in which we can properly distinguish between the deserving and the undeserving. Then Zwolinski points out that it's likely better to make type 2 errors in which we give someone benefits that do not deserve to them, than it is to deny someone benefits who does deserve them. This is a lot like what Widerquist was getting at in his big casino essay, where he basically said that this perfect theory of justice requiring some level of forced participation doesnt exist, and thus, it's better to respect peoples' rights to not participate than it is to force them under terms of blurred moral rightness.
Heck, to go a step further, I'm going to be honest, I FULL ON REJECT the reciprocity principle here and the idea that we have a duty to work. I didn't ask to be born here, at least not to my explicit memory and knowledge (we can discuss my philosophical beliefs regarding reincarnation, but shaky spiritual beliefs should not mix with political philosophy and my political principles are intended to be based on secular humanism). I didn't agree to a social contract, and any agreement I had in the past was done mainly out of ignorance and is about as valid as a 14 year old's "confirmation" into a church. We arent knowledgeable enough at a young age to know what we do and don't agree to? We were socialized into it, told this was the only way, and had it instilled in us that any other way was bad. Such acceptance is kind of skewed against us. Ya know? The fact is, most of us are born into this system, we're given no perfect knowledge of all possible systems, and we just end up supporting what we are born into, because it's all we know. And in my view, we're all a bunch of slaves. Willing slaves, brainwashed into slavery. We talk about how central work is, and how work isnt just a paycheck, it's dignity and acceptance and blah blah blah, but honestly, this is just societal gaslighting. And this is why so many peoples' mental health falls apart without work. it's not that we actually wanna work. A lot of us dont wanna work. But we're stuck in an unhealthy society in which that isn't really a valid answer to give, so we do this societal shuffle around how we can't find work, or we are too disabled to work, and blah blah blah. We see it in the war on normal people when people apply for disability. We see it in this essay when Zwolinski talks about how the actual layabouts will try to fit in with those deserving of aid in order to get out of their societal duty.
Psh, societal duty, give me a break. I mean, if work is so great, why do they gotta force us to do it? I'll tell you why. Because if some people don't, then those who are gaslit into this system, and harbor their true emotions, but outwardly accept the dogmas thrust on them, will say that it isn't fair that they have to work and those getting aid don't. That's kind of a mask off moment. We love to talk oh so much about how we WANT to work, and how dignified work is, and how great it is, but let's face it, we're all lying to ourselves and each other. Many of us actually HATE our jobs. But we're trapped into this system, and we develop this crab mentality in which we don't want to admit it outright, so we end up laying on the BS about how we're "living the dream" and upholding the societal values, which is why the second someone explicitly flies in the face of them, it sends those who feel forced to work into a tizzy. I get it in a way. I even held such attitudes when I was young. "Why do I have to work when someone else gets stuff for free from my tax dollars?" I said. I mean, you hear that on the right a lot among conservative working class types. To which I answer, you shouldnt have to work. I shouldnt have to work, the purpose of UBI is to make it fair. By giving everyone money, we free everyone from the coercion to work.
But, you may ask, if we just gave everyone money, then no one would work? Well, the data shows differently. As we know from UBI studies, actual work disincentive is only in the ballpark of 13%, mostly concentrated among secondary earners like housewives and teens/young adults in school. People who we probably don't want to work (remember the good old days when one breadwinner fed an entire household? Just strip the gendered dynamics from that and we're good). And while some would see any reduction in work ethic as evil, uh....I just care about the sausage getting made. Do we have enough doctors? Do we have enough repairpeople? It society going to collapse if we dont all work? No, it won't. Heck, if we actually follow free market principles to the letter, I would argue the right to refuse work should be explicit within those bounds. After all, if the economy really is a matter of voluntary buyers and sellers, and people withdraw from the labor force, then isn't that their decision? isnt that freedom? We talk freedom this freedom that, but I would argue this forced work requirement runs flat in the face of capitalist, free market values. Heck, I would argue the reason capitalist free market values dont work is because of this dichotomy.
Like, as I've said before, virtually all left wing thought is based on some form of reforming work. Socialists think we need to sieze the means of production. Liberals talk about minimum wages and hours and working conditions, but no one really wants to say no to work itself.
Well, that's where I'm different. I do think, if we truly seek a libertarian solution to the problems with the free market, we should have a UBI and freedom to work. And as Zwolinski pointed out a few times, I think it's fine to justify some coercion in the form of taxation and redistribution to give people greater freedom than they'd otherwise have within the market system. We need people to be fully free to pursue their interests and minimize any both explicit and implicit coercion, if we truly wish to call ourselves libertarians.
That said, any ideology that tried to dance around reciprocity without addressing it head on and rejecting it at face value will never solve what truly ails the economy. They'll just be more reformist trash, leading to the same flawed solutions that we've always had.
Honestly, I don't think it's hard to reject reciprocity either. A lot of philosophers love to dance around it, but in doing so, they just tend to cede a lot of unspoken assumptions to the other side. We need a philosophy that explicitly just goes balls to the wall and says no, we're going to reject that. Wanna know how I do that?
It's easy. As a humanist, I recognize all social conventions are subjective. We made them. They dont exist in nature. A lot of this dancing around these ideas comes from a lockean understanding of property rights, which deems property to be both natural and believes in it with a level of moral absolutism, as if it was built into the world, and put there by decree of god. Hell, the founders called natural rights "god given", so yeah, it literally is based on like a weird implicit version of divine command theory. But I reject such theories at face value. Again, humanism is the basis for my ideas. All ideas regarding the economy and social conventions come from people, and they're there to serve people. Does this idea really serve us? or do we serve it? Remember how human centered capitalism, a Yang term associated with the UBI movement, IMO, comes from humanism. The economy exists for us, we don't exist for the economy. And work is a means to an end, not an end in itself. There is no value in forcing people to work for work's own sake. These philosophical ideas are harmful and unhealthy, and thus, we should reject them.
But, you may ask, again, we need people to work, if no one worked, then nothing would get done and we all should die. Yes, if NO ONE WORKED, we all would die. But...thats the wonderful thing about freedom. people have different proclivities. Some like to work, some don't. Some actually are bored if they dont have to work. And while I can say these guys are brainwashed all day, it doesnt take away from their nature. SOme people are more go getters, and some people aren't. I say, if society works with everyone pursuing their own ends, then so be it. If some choose to work and some choose not to work, then let people choose to work or not work. And let the dominoes fall where they may.
Heck, if we really need to incentivize a certain amount of work, we can do it through the UBI amount. I assume the following two things are true: the higher the UBI is, the less work incentive there is, and the higher the marginal tax rate is, the less work incentive there is. THe inverse is also true. The lower the UBI is, the more work incentive there is, and the lower the marginal taxes are, the more work incentive there is.
All we really need to do is find the level of basic income that best balances peoples' freedom and our actual societal needs. And then we let each and every person choose from there. If some work and some don't, then that's up to them, and no one should be injured by the decision of another. After all, we all got the same UBI and the same tax rate, if we make different decisions, that's our choice. This isn't the same as "I work so hard why do you get stuff for free?" We all have the same UBI and the same choices to work, if you feel so injured by my laying about, you can quit your job and join me. if you dont feel like the sacrifices are worth it, then you can shut up about it. That's my honest thoughts.
I mean, imagine this. We current have 60% of people working and no basic income. We have shown that we can do away with large numbers of jobs vs COVID. I think we laid off like a third of our work force or something? And had a GDP contraction of 33%? No one died. At least not from the economics here. People died from COVID, but that was the point of the shut downs.
Honestly, whatever shocks we would get from UBI would be far less than what we saw from 2020-2021 where we rubber banded the economy both ways. Work reductions would be less than the peak unemployment rate of 14% we had during covid. And if we implemented UBI slowly, those shocks could be much more easily absorbed to the point we wouldn't notice them.
The fact is, we COULD move toward a more voluntary participation society. The big obstacle is this religion of jobs, the idea of reciprocity, and harmful ideas ranging from the obnoxious gaslighting of "work is good for you" to the crab mentality of "it's not fair, if i have to work, everyone should have to work". But the positive spin on work is often based on lies and gaslighting people into it, and once the mask slips, we see it for what it is, a bunch of bitter people unhappy with their lives who want everyone else to be equally bitter and unhappy because at least that way it's fair to them.
And yeah, that's why I think we should just....abandon the reciprocity objection outright. Unlike what natural rights theorists and the unenlightened still in the cave think about morality on this subject, this stuff isn't objective, it isn't etched in stone, we can change it at any time, we just have to make the collective choice to stop living this way and choose another way to live.
Honestly, I think Hayek kinda was onto something, even if his own biases blinded him to the truth here. ANd these are thoughts that have been expanded on by other philosophers since like Van Parijs and Karl Widerquist. I am probably closest to widerquist as he explicitly points out the problems with the reciprocity objection and trying to enforce it in his works, and points out there isnt a just way to really do so. I tend to take this a step further and consider a right to say no to work as an ESSENTIAL FREEDOM in society. What's wrong with every other ideology, from the left to the right, and everything in between, is they all boil around the same thing. Work good, we just disagree on the details. Really, Bob Black is right on that. They might all disagree with how to organize it, and who should be in charge, and what rights people should have, but few are willing to just go full on "gee, maybe work isn't that great". It's almost as if that option generally isnt allowed by our society, and the second anyone dares suggest it they get dogpiled on, so we all dance around this implicit assumption, and philosophers spend hours dancing their way around it. But few are willing to just dispense with it altogether. That's why I respect people like Widerquist, and Van parijs, and build on their work on the subject. If ive learned anything in life, it's that no one should have to work, that forcing people to work is wrong, and that that's the core problem at the center of virtually every philosophy.
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