So, the next chapter of the book seems to be about political viability. He kind of took a similar stance with me, in that we should not necessarily cede ground in the face of a hostile political environment. if anything it is up to us to shape the environment ourselves to make things more viable. Nothing kills ideas faster than the self defeating idea that this isn't practical and shouldnt be tried. I admit I do make SOME compromises SOMETIMES, but generally speaking, one issue I have is I am normally very UNcompromising, and that's to a fault. And that's one different I had with Van parijs in this chapter. Van Parijs seemed a lot more willing to try to sell UBI to people of other political ideologies by arguing within their ideology to shift them. Sometimes even offering trojan horse compromises like a "participation income", in which we have a conditional UBI based on participating in some form of work or labor, even if it is charity, and then dropping it later on due to the fact that such an idea will require insane amounts of enforcement to accomplish.
Of course, I would argue we're already there with the dysfunction in our current system already, and I actually do plan to make a lot of points clear, if I do write a book of my own, for example, for why our system already is broken and how this expectation that we all work is stupid, irrational, and actually makes us all miserable. Seriously, I look at life in the US and other western countries, and as I see it, we're so close to utopia already, with our democratic country (or at least the pretense of stuff), lots of civil liberties, a thriving GDP, a culture surrounding freedom, that if we just take this a step further and give people a UBI, universal healthcare, and maybe a couple things, we will likely be as close to heaven on earth as we can realistically get for the foreseeable future. But, this idea is what's holding us back. We expect people to work, don't have enough jobs available, don't pay people for the jobs that we do, and are so fixated on this principle that we must all work for our bread that as a result, we worry about fear of tomorrow and want and put up with oppressive relationships, all because we can't get away from this idea of work. Rather than pursuing a world where we all work less, we pursue the insanity that is fully employing as much of the population in general and that the American ideal is every single able bodied person working 40+ hours a week to provide for themselves. You know? As I see it, if we had a participation income, people would cling to it being participatory. People already cling to outdated ideals that don't work very well and cause a lot of harm in my opinion because they can't grasp the idea that this stuff should be voluntary.
And that's kind of the problem I have with trying to work within other peoples' value systems. Worldviews matter. And I kind of believe UBI activists need to construct a new world view, and a new philosophy, from an entirely new set of assumptions, from the ground up, in order to promote UBI and the freedom it provides. As long as we insist on trying to compromise with "jobist" frameworks, we're not really making progress. Because our ideas will be taken and perverted and watered down to fit their belief systems, leaving us barely better off than we were before. And I'm really getting to the point in terms of nihilism that in a lot of ways, the right, the left, the center, they're all the same, and like Bob Black would point out, they all argue over the conditions of work and who makes the decisions and who gets what, but none of them challenge work itself. This is not to say that they're all equally bad. I would say that between the three major factions, the laissez faire capitalists of the right, the socialists of the left, and the liberals and social democrats of the center, I have a significant preference for the liberals and social democrats. Especially the more left side of that part of the spectrum. I think that the solution to our problems does involve keeping capitalism around in some form, but heavily reforming it to meet our needs. I just disagree with the social democrats and the liberals on how much and what kinds of changes need to be made. But I also recognize that even in that center there are going to be a lot of movements that oppose what I'm about.
Van Parijs is a bit more conciliatory than I am. He points out the various factions, but tries to tailor arguments to fit their worldviews. I kind of understand that their worldviews are flaws and even if there are sub factions within these worldviews that can go along with my ideas, many of them never fully will. Because their worldviews are based on ideological principles that go against mine. For a union supporter, they may not be able to get around the idea that the goal of unions is to raise wages and improve working conditions for workers, and understand that they are the ones who should do it. UBI threatens their cultural power and relevance by diminishing the relative value of jobs, and their role in improving peoples' income. Some christians such as catholics, may be more amenable to UBI, but you will always have those biblical literalists and the "those who don't work don't eat" crowd. Some socialists might see it as a "capitalist road to socialism", but as Van Parijs himself pointed out, socialists literally struggle to distance themselves from the centrality of labor in our lives. The point is, all of these groups are finnicky allies at best, and often our political foes. And it's because, again, worldview matters. WORLDVIEW MATTERS. The underlying assumptions behind your worldview matter and for better or for worse, dictate how you view every other issue in your lives. And that's kind of why I think it's important for UBI advocates to create our own political ideology, and our own political traditions. Van Parijs has attempted to do this to some extent with his 'real libertarianism" argument. And Karl Widerquist has attempted to do so with his "indepentarianism" argument. And I really think it's important to try to preserve and build upon these traditions, than to cede ideological ground to our opponents. That's what escaping Plato's Cave is about. Not compromising with the cave so to speak, but showing its falsehoods. And showing people how to think instead. Making them question their own assumptions, and hopefully, to come to accept ours instead.
If I write a book of my own, this will likely be a major focus of it. Because that's what my unique contribution to the subject. Bog standard UBI books have been done to death. We know the idea works, or at least has a very good chance of working. We know that it would probably make peoples' lives are better. But our biggest opposition to getting it done is the underlying ideology and worldview that undergirds most of our social traditions. And I am going to have to deconstruct that worldview and explain the problems with it, while promoting something in its place.
Even if I don't do a book, as, by the way, Im not sure it would make a good book and I'm not sure I would be a good author, it's still something I have tried to do with this blog from day 1. And I have written many articles on my views where you probably know what I mean by deconstructing worldviews and building our own in their place.
No comments:
Post a Comment