So, as you can tell a lot of these reactions aren't so much me reacting specifically to the points raised by the authors, but to some extent, me giving my opinion on the topics at hand. This article is a lot like that.
Quite frankly, i found it boring. It was overly dense and philosophical, and honestly, it could have been much simpler. He was debating with himself over whether UBI or in kind aid is less paternalistic than the other. And for me, I'd much rather just give my established opinion here rather than rip this mess apart.
As you guys know, I'm supportive of UBI. UBI gives far more freedom than in kind aid does, and while Cholbi is right in saying unconditional in kind aid is better than the conditional safety net, in kind aid is more "paternalistic."
The thing is, when you give in kind aid, you're taking away agency and freedom from the individual in question, and imposing on people a certain way of living. Instead of $300, we give $300 in "food stamps" to buy on food. And then we only allow them to spend it on certain kinds of food, often as a way to punish them. And then some might want to not even give food stamps, but give in kind food, where if you want potatoes and you get carrots, tough crap.
In kind aid is, for me, worse than basic income. it takes away peoples' agency, and tells them what's good for them, rather than letting them decide what's good for them. There are two kinds of paternalists. One seems interested in protecting people from others, the other seems interested in "protecting" people from themselves. The former I am somewhat sympathetic with and merely have significant ideological differences, while the latter I just full on disapprove of and am fundamentally against their authoritarian moral philosophy.
A lot of leftists are the former. The thing is, they are anti market, in the way the right is anti government. You know, against it in a categorical, ideological way, in which they simply believe markets dont work and governments do better job allocating resources than money in a market would. Sometimes they're right. I would, for example, that universal healthcare is better than just giving people money to buy healthcare. Same with education. But generally speaking for me to be sympathetic, there need to be a significant market failure that can be directly solved by government action here. Basically, you need to prove the government does a better job than markets here. Again, with healthcare this is pretty undisputable for me. The profit motive is what is driving the costs through the roof and the only way to fix it is for the government to step in and control the industry themselves either directly or indirectly, or at least provide a robust "public option." Education, I think that there's a market failure there too and a government option would be a possible solution. Housing, theres a market failure there, but I dont believe the solution is just government controlling the housing market, but rather them just adding additional housing to the market and trying to fix the market forces there. After all, we had government controlled housing in the USSR and it quite frankly was a crapshow. Governments arent good at allocating needs directly in a lot of cases. That's one of the failures of communism. They often forced people to live in communal housing early on, then shifted to slapshod apartments, and often controlled peoples' freedom of movement to stop people from flooding the cities and creating a housing crisis. It was authoritarian, it was so par, it didnt work very well. Markets are better, we just need to control the bad actors and manipulate the market forces to ensure it works in favor of the buyers.
With other stuff, imposing government provided resources just seems to be a massive infringement on freedom. I would default to the position that markets work best for most things, individuals deciding what they want can do a better job figuring it out for themselves than the government, and while I believe in interventionism into markets to ensure positive outcomes, I don't support the government just controlling the industries or providing goods and services directly. Again, seems a bit too soviet for me.
I believe these leftists mean well, but many of them are just too wrapped up in their "theory" to understand that their ideas have been disproven time and time again, and that no it isn't that "real communism hasn't been tried", it's that real communism can't and doesn't work, and we need to live in reality in which we have a system that actually works for people.
Which brings me to the latter. Those who seem to be interested in "protecting" people from themselves. Let's face it. A lot of people love to infantilize the poor. They love to act like poor people are too stupid to make their own decisions and that's why they're poor. They think if you give them cash, they'll just blow it all on drugs and not buy anything useful. This mindset has largely been disproven by the body of evidence on basic income, but people insist on it anyway.
But it goes even deeper, look at republican attempts to control what people can buy on food stamps, this isn't a matter of trying to even protect people from themselves, it's about PUNISHING THEM. And that's the huge issue I have with in kind aid over money. Money maintains their freedom, adulthood, and independence. It lets them make big boy decisions about their own life. What food they want to eat, where they want to live, etc. Whereas in kind aid can be used to control them. it's treating them as children intentionally. "okay, you're in this situation because you're too stupid to make your own decisions, so we're going to run your life for you like a parent would, and if you dont like it and want your freedom you can go out and get a job."
And that's where the mask comes off with this stuff. It's really about punishing poor people to not want to be on welfare so they are forced to work. Basically, they wanna force people to work. So they make peoples' lives miserable while on this in kind aid, so that they are incentivized, through their own misery, to work. It's about control. And even if many people mean well with this stuff, I dont trust government enough to implement this stuff well. Rather, this is about giving people the bare minimum in kind aid, forcing them to live a certain way, and creating a two tiered society between the employed and unemployed, where the employed treat the unemployed like crap and try to force them to get jobs. Again, when you control the details of the means of subsistence, the food you give people, the housing you provide people, you can intentionally provide people inferior goods and services intentionally to make them miserable, with the incentive of trying to get them to work. And I do believe that many would use such goods and services to accomplish such a goal.
Whereas UBI gives people freedom. It gives people money to figure out what they wanna buy, and lets them live well as a result, and as long as the amount is sufficient, it treats them like adults. Our best, and most respected social programs like social security and unemployment are cash. Because they're seen as entitlements. You worked for this, you paid into this, you're responsible, we're letting you figure it out for yourself. Whereas welfare comes with more denigration of the people subject to it. Oh, you're lazy, you're irresponsible, we can't trust you, so instead of giving you cash, we're giving you in kind services and forcing you to look for a job.
Again, not saying there arent areas where in kind services aren't better. I already discussed healthcare and education. But in areas where there arent explicitly market failures that can be demonstrably addressed better by governments, yeah, I'd rather just give people cash. Cash treats people like adults, it allows them to buy what they want, and it gives people more freedom.
Also, I think the economic incentives are ironically better with cash. With in kind aid, trying to get out of poverty is harder. Say you want to trade your government provided house for private housing? You'd need to earn tons of money that would make it possible not just to give up the government home, but also to buy or rent your own. That comes with a massive welfare trap that screws over those on the lowest rungs of employment and income generation. In kind aid creates welfare traps. UBI gives people the freedom and choice to make their own decisions, and sometimes that just leads to better results.
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