So, I don't want to go into great detail about this chapter given I've actually written a quite lengthy post about his framing of this stuff that aged a lot better than I initially thought I did, although i do want to revisit this stuff and make some mild corrections.
Basically I mostly want to address the common objections to UBI on my own grounds.
First of all, I want to point out the two major objections to UBI and the lack of work requirement surrounding it. The first points to work as leading to some sort of "good life", and the second is more based on fairness. I have arguably addressed both of these points in the past, but I will do so again now.
On the idea that work is some conception of a good life, I'm going to go back to my worldview. I come from a perspective of secular humanism and there being no real objective morality. Life if what we make it, and we do with it what we will. Under this perspective, the idea of work being part of a "good life" makes no sense to me. I mean, the logic comes down to "work is so great, we need to force you to do it." What kind of authoritarian nonsense is that? I mean, these concepts are foreign to me in my own personal ideology. And while, as Van Parijs points out, while it's fine to accept strange dogmas and live according to them in your own personal life, the state is supposed to be secular and preserve peoples' freedoms as much as possible. The government should not be forcing people to accept what their idea of a good life is,but rather just solve disputes in which people in fringe on each others' freedom or well being, while largely leaving them alone to live as they want. If you want to work and live that "good life", that's fine. But you do not have a right to force ME to do so. Heck in the context of work, the idea that work is part of a good life comes off to me as some weird nazi-esque crap. Anyone remember what phrase the nazis had above the concentration camps? "Work Makes You Free?" I hate to pull the godwin's law card here, but yeah, they literally had that phrase above their camps entrances. It didn't even originate from the nazis even, but some weimar era work program. But yeah, it was creepy crap.
Generally speaking there are two major conceptions of this idea. First, there's the more right wing version of this that literally comes down to the protestant work ethic. Basically, that God proscribed that we work as a punishment, and that work saves us from our sinful nature, gives structure and meaning to our lives, and that without it we would devolve to "degeneracy", or some nebulous state of sinful behavior in which we're unhappy, doing bad things, or simply not doing anything at all. Hard work and industriousness is a matter of character for these people, and people need work ethic instilled in them to save them from their otherwise sinful nature. These guys can screw off with this crap, as it literally is the same form of religious authoritarianism that I've opposed since I left the Christian faith. Christians and christian adjacent paternalists need to stop trying to impose their morals on everyone else's lives. Again, if you want to pursue that stuff yourself, that's fine, but you don't have a right to impose it on me.
The second conception of this idea that I know of largely comes from the left, and seems common in "dignity of work" sentiments, in which work is a hallmark of being a good member of the community, and that it's not fair to those that do work that others live off of their labor. It's hard to develop a proper counter to this one given the hegemony of the belief system on both the left and the right regarding work, but I have encountered to do so in the past.
First of all, let's remember that if all human social structures are subjective, and morality is subjective, then this statement is subjective. We can, in theory, divide up labor and property in any way we see fit, and what we consider fair is just a matter of what is considered socially acceptable. We could decide, for example, that the fairness principle here is overrided by another principle that is more important. In my case it's freedom. I believe that the freedom to be able to say no to forced labor is more important than the right of laborers to the "whole product" of their labor. I would argue that the only truly NECESSARY reason to have a system in which people are entitled to the product of their labor is....the necessity of such a system to promote incentives to work in the first place. Remember the common criticism from the right of "communism". A state in which people are not rewarded for work, and that people have no incentive to work because everyone is rewarded equally regardless. Why try to get an A if you get a C along with everyone else anyway? So work incentives are necessary. but that doesn't as van parijs has pointed out, mean that people are entitled to the full product of their labor. It could be argued, under an indepentarian, for example, framework of justice, that people shouldn't be forced to participate in the system at all, and that doing so is unjust. In a sense, UBI is compensation for an otherwise coercive social system that exists in the first place.
Other things to take note of are ideas like, the fact that under my own system of social justice, that everyone would have the same option to not work, and while it is unjust to take from someone coerced to work and give to another, it is not unjust if everyone gets the same amount of UBI and everyone is free to make the same decisions. That's just another theory of justice you may or may not agree with.
I understand that someone who holds the system as it is dear is going to continue to reject this and not be convinced by it. They value work so much and people being entitled to their labor that they just can't be convinced otherwise. And at this point, I lack a desire to continue to waste breath arguing with such people. Just know this. A system in which everyone has to work for their sustenance is a system that will never get away from labor. It is a system where no matter how prosperous society is, and no matter how unnecessary the suffering may be, people will continue to work for a living. I really do believe we have a stockholm syndrome problem with work in our society. I dont think that we are born wanting to work within a capitalist society like we do, but that society imposes this value system and expectations on people from a young age, and that people have come to fall in love with their captors, thus perpetrating the system. Many people who hate work themselves might reinforce this system because it just seems unfair to them and the amount of work and suffering they've put into life that others are free from such obligation. Such a mentality is crab mentality and keeps us all trapped.
We can free ourselves from this simply by changing our values. If you choose not to do that, well, that's up to you. Just don't be surprised when you drag everyone down into the same crap you are in. Well, at least you have company, and misery loves company, doesn't it?
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The second topic I want to discuss in this post, is going back to the lazies vs crazies thing, since it was discussed in a previous post and I want to make some corrections on this.
I know I shared this post with someone only for them to look down on me like I'm an idiot for how I framed the argument. Basically, I argue against philosophy and that it is a waste of time. I don't believe my core point here is invalid, but I do want to slightly refocus it. It's not so much that philosophy is a waste of time. It's the fact that I really don't see why van parijs spends so much time trying to justify not working within other peoples' value systems, rather than focusing more on making his own. One thing I notice, if I am to eventually write a book, is that in order to make it work, I need to lay down a lot of groundwork for how to make it work. I literally do need to go back to the christian worldview, and the garden of eden, and understanding of the times, my shift toward secular humanism, and rebuilding my worldview and going from there. it's like avatar, you can't really approach this stuff with a full mind, you need to empty it and then rebuild from the ground up. And that's why I tend to view a lot of mainstream philosophy as a waste. It's not that philosophy, specifically with ethics, is a waste of time, it's that people should not waste their time arguing within a moral system that is predisposed to be against their points. You can't adequately justify moving away from a system of forced labor if people accept the inherent rightness of people being forced to labor. Rather than trying to work with the assumptions of other people, and trying to contort myself trying to meet them where they are in their crappy little value systems I'd rather just throw out the window....I'd rather just throw them out the window. It's like what I said the other day with the reciprocity objection. I'd rather not fight the objection head on, but instead invalidate the entire underlying belief system that the objection lies on, and just start over. After all, my views are closer to say, Camus' absurdism, where I just view the world from a perspective of complete and utter purposelessness, and I have come to embrace it. I dont need the paternalists' ideas of what my "good life" should be to be happy. I'd rather be left alone to live within my own value system. I view being forced to work in their system as the equivalent of sisyphus being forced to roll the rock up the hill for all eternity. Why are we rolling rocks up a hill? Why can't be we do something else. For as much as I give the christians crap, at least they rightly recognize work as a punishment for sin, rather than it being valid in some perfect world. They accept work because they view this world as fallen, and humans as sinful, and that's just how the world works. I might disagree with their larger worldview, but at least they do recognize the inherent unpleasantness of the topic. The point is if this world isn't fallen, and there isn't an inherent purpose to it all, then maybe we shouldn't be forced to live like this, and maybe a worldview based on freedom is a better and more ethical route to take.
Now, onto the lazies vs crazies. There are a couple things I want to add onto my previous post. I do want to address the issue of compromise and the two factions wanting to force their worldview on the other. As a "lazy", I view the crazies of wanting to force their work happy culture on me against my will, forcing me to live according to their principles. And I have noticed, in the past year or two, as I evolve my philosophy into the covid and post covid eras, that a lot of people are crazies. People SCREAMED at the idea of not being able to work for the purpose of saving people from a deadly disease, and screamed to open up the economy, even if it means grandma dies. In the post covid economy, these guys come off as entitled jerks screaming about how people should be forced to work to serve them middle class luxuries they're tired of going without. As you can tell, I don't view crazies very favorably. They are a bunch of self entitled jerks who literally do act entitled to the labor of another. Even if they pay for said labor via capitalism, they still believe in coercing people to work in the first place. And I view that as unjust. While I will cede the work issue in the face of practicality and needing some people to work for society to function at all, we DID have a functioning society during covid. We separated labor into "essential" and "nonessential", with most of the stuff not being done being nonessential. You dont need movie theaters and amusement parks and sunday brunches at IHOP and nail salons to survive. Those are just nice to haves. But the crazies do see fit to force their views on others, forcing them to serve them goods and services against their will for sub par wages. I view that as inherently unjust.
At the same time, crazies view being taxed to provide for the lazies to be lazy is unjust. Again, crazies gonna crazy, but honestly, isn't a UBI, if anything, the compromise? The equivalent of the true "lazy" world would be the strawman of communism the right throws around. No one has to work, there's no incentive to working, and no one works. And people are denied the opportunity to work altogether. While I do view a future laborless society as utopia if we can figure out the mechanics of such a thing, I understand that this is not going to be acceptable. I really don't, barring a life threatening pandemic, want to deny people the opportunity to work, or force people to work. I still view a lot of labor as socially useful, and that it's good for people to do it. I just don't want them to be FORCED to do it, if it's not itself needed for a functioning society. You know? In a sense, the compromise IS UBI. You can work, and it's socially accepted and even incentivized that you can, but you don't HAVE to. UBI is, in the more indepentarian framework at least, intended just to be a bottom, it's not intended to replace all incentive to work. After all, we still work and we still need labor.
This idea actually goes against what a lot of what even more anti UBI advocates support. Van Parijs in his views supported, in the chapter I just read, a UBI funded with taxation at literal laffer curve level. He supports a UBI as high as can be sustained. I understand that incentives are a bit more subjective and I'm willing just to get the foot in the door at subsistence level for now. I'm not opposed to larger UBIs down the road, but understanding the fact that many people still adopt the religion of work in our society, I do understand a need to compromise.
I also had a debate with UBI activist Alex Howlett on reddit earlier this year in which we had a discussion that largely came down to this. He seemed to actively want to suppress work incentive as much as possible by providing a UBI so high that most people wouldnt want to work, thus destroying the need for labor that way. He also seemed to write off a lot of labor not only as nonessential, but not useful, although I did notice that in the debate, he seemed to define not necessary work as work not contributing to GDP. A lot of work does do useful things and does contribute to GDP even if not necessary, so I disagreed with him there. I do not agree with the idea of actively suppressing the work ethic and going so far in the "lazy" direction that it leads to stagnating or even negative growth. Rather, I seek a balance. While as a "lazy" myself, I do sympathize with the likes of Howlett and Van Parijs in trying to make UBI as high as possible and reduce work's influence on our lives as much as possible, I understand, given the realities of the political situation in the US, that that's going to be a goal better left to the future. If we tried to force that now, the right would scream we're trying to force our way of life on people, and they would probably win that argument. Pushing too hard could actually undermine our goals. I mean, if politics is like a pendulum, pushing too hard one way can lead to a backlash the other way. I recognize there are practical limits to what can be done in the current environment and UBI is already enough of a hard sell. While this is a topic I would like to see actively discussed and debated in the future, and I would ideally say that I would like to see people abandon work altogether, I understand it's going to take some level of societal deprogramming first before we can actually push for that. While I am doing my part with advocating for my ideals here and in whatever future book I write, if I go in that direction, I do understand at some point compromise may be necessary, and I would say this is where I call it. So for now, I will push only for a subsistence level UBI while keeping capitalism's incentive structure and work ethic largely intact, opening the door for further progress to be made in this direction, but not forcing it. Future generations, if you want to do away with work altogether, go ahead and do so if it's feasible, anything I propose now in 2022 is not necessarily going to be valid 50-100 years or now or further in the future. I'm just trying to move society in the direction I can from where it's at here in the early 21st century.
With that said, some of what I wrote is potentially redundant given my past article, but I did thing that many of the corrections/additions I made here are valuable discussions to have.
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