So, a fellow UBI supporter named Galen Jones just wrote an article about how he perceives the anti UBI crowd. And given how this has been a topic of interest as of late, I thought I'd try my hand at looking at it and analyzing it. Often times these kinds of articles are snarky, but often have grains of truth. After all, much like the author of this article, I tend to believe a lot of opposition to UBI is based on irrationality and a lot of BS ideas...when the idea if properly understood of course. Of course, given this is "outofplatoscave2012.blogspot.com", I tend to recognize that sometimes people are literally just that ignorant and have a lot of ideological deprogramming to do to be able to get to the truth. With that said, I want to read this article, and react to it as I go.
"Dear UBI proponent:
My deflections, obfuscations, and overall shell-ball-game aren't working, and you've cornered me into what seems like a logically unsupportable position.
So I might as well save us all a lot of time, cut the B.S. and tell you what's going on since you're so pushy and can't take a polite hint:
Now, to be fair, this is kind of a problem with being in plato's cave so to speak. You leave the cave, and you're so used to the dark, it takes a while for your eyes to adjust to the light. And we UBI supporters and human centered capitalists who challenge peoples' entire preconceptions about the world? MAN, we sure dump a lot on them at once. And sometimes the response to that is to double down and dig in and stick to more comfortable ideas, than to admit that ideas like this can work.
Adjusting your conception of reality can take time. No one debate ever completely flipped my ideas ever. I anchored myself to my initial position and only shifted when enough debates, discussion, and evidence has been gathered that I finally feel comfortable shedding back ideas. It can be a slow process, and it takes a bit of time. The idea of utopianism being bad and the failures of the likes of communism are so ingrained into our culture many people have a worldview where they literally don't believe that utopia is possible, and that we shouldn't even try. I understand that apprehension to some degree, but that's also why I've dedicated so much time to discussing the policy details associated with my ideas. If we want to convince people that these ideas can work, the burden of proof is on us to demonstrate them.
Of course, after that, people sometimes start falling back into their old worldviews and start relying on other, more subjective ideas. Which is where it becomes frustrating, and that's where I think this author is coming from. SOmetimes, after demolishing one's entire conception of reality and demonstrating that the idea can work on a practical level, people just reject it for more subjective reasons. Sometimes these are just ideological, and based on these old outdated worldviews, and this is the most frustrating part of discussing UBI. I'm not saying there aren't valid arguments against it. But many of them ultimately are based in some other worldview or theory of justice with principles much different from our own. And it is these that people often rely on to make their arguments at this stage of the discussion.
I fully admit that humankind is now past the point when someone's success requires another's suffering.
And yet, I still like knowing that others suffer, have lost, and will continue to lose, and indeed, in many cases, have no prayer of winning – and through no fault of their own.
Yeah this is kind of the scary thing I've realized. A lot of people, especially the right, which I admit I dont talk about enough on this blog sometimes, but see no reason to because their ideas are so terrible they often don't merit discussion, tend to be so lost that they literally dont believe that the goal of morality is to reduce suffering. I just brushed up on the christian worldview from David Noebel's book, as I am using it to outline my own ideological journey and how I got to UBI and human centered capitalism over time, and yeah, the Christian worldview outright isn't about reducing or eliminating suffering. They just start with this idea that the world is "fallen", that we are sinful and evil, that nothing will ever improve, and we shouldn't even try to make things better. Given my current moral compass, I'd go so far to say that this worldview is screwed up and evil. Yet, the conservative point of view in America at large is based on this general ideology. I've had discussions with conservatives online and many of them LITERALLY do not seem to believe in eliminating suffering, believing things that suffering builds character and that the goal of morality isn't to reduce suffering, but to build up one's character through some nonsense sense of virtue ethics or something. It's extremely screwed up. To me, these people are just so lost, I struggle to even discuss stuff with them. Because even when I largely had the Christian worldview, I still, in some form, believed in reducing suffering to some degree. Even if my worldview was based on some divine code, I ultimately believed that the creator of that code was wiser than I and that they were playing some 9D chess to reach the right result somehow. Of course, that's also why it was so easy for me to leave. After I started realizing that this worldview had some unrepentant cruel elements in it and that they literally didn't care if their ideas were in touch with reality, I ended up just...rejecting their morality outright. When it came down to "Jesus said to love God and to love one another and that's all the commandments came down to", and then I saw people not acting like that in his name, it was like....wtf, no, I'm done. And now I just view these guys' morality as pure evil.
I am well off, a winner in the game of capitalism. Yet knowing that others have lost and are suffering brings me joy in many facets of life, not least of all, the games of mating and status.
I want to keep it this way, not because society must, but because, well, it feels good.
Let me further admit that obviously I do not value ALL human life intrinsically, and also, that the suffering of certain people simply does not bother me.
Why should I have to relinquish the joy of being one of the relatively lucky ones? Why would I want a world full of happy self-actualized people who can claim to be as comfortable and fulfilled as me? What's in that for me?
This is a part of it too. Some of these people are just comfortable, and if suffering isn't happening to them, why should they care? This is actually what caused me to shift, admittedly. Once I realized that yes it can happen to me, and I obviously didn't want that, obviously, I wanted society to change, and I changed my ethics to be more compatible with my new stance on life. And then I went further left of the liberals and devised an entirely new approach to capitalism that they largely left unconsidered. And then they rejected it too, because liberals are kind of stuck in old ideas, and lets face it, the centrists sound...exactly like the above. I've had discussions with these people do. Honestly, those white collar suburbanites aren't our friends. A lot of them are happy and satisfied with their position, they dont want it to change, and they love to lord it over people. Being the pro UBI anti work guy, I've had these kinds of jerks rub it in my face, go on about how little they work, how much status they have, how much money they make, and how much better off they have it than me. And these are LIBERALS.
Really, I like to say it. A lot of liberals are just economic conservatives who are okay with gay people. They'll go along with all the woke crap because it doesnt affect them and lets them virtue signal, but on economics they believe in all the same BS that the right does. And the right, well, a lot of them are comfortable and love lording their status over others.
All our democracy is, is enough people just kept comfortable enough that they dont want to rock the boat, with the people unhappy kept in the minority enough, and split up in various factions and "caves" so to speak where they can't organize into a viable political coalition. And crap just remains the same, and nothing ever gets better.
These people need to read Rawls. Of course, as we know from Van Parijs...not even Rawls is truly on board with UBI since even he can't get around the reciprocity objection in his worldview. But many social libertarian thinkers like Van Parijs and Widerquist often used Rawls and expand on his ideas like the veil of ignorance, to push for UBI. But many people, including pretty much the entire right, as well as the bourgeois left, literally dont care. They're apathetic enough and comfortable enough they dont wanna rock the boat. And if others suffer, well tough crap, at least it aint me, seems to be their attitude.
Nothing but a lack of the relative dominance that I currently enjoy. Nothing but more competition for mates. Nothing but more people with more free time, working on things they love, living up to their full potential, and making me feel smaller. Why would I want that?
I’d rather keep most people desperate long after we need to. That's why I'm not too fond of your UBI idea. It's not because we can't afford it. You've proven we can.
Yeah I think that a lot of people really dont wanna give up their positions. Remember Van Parijs and his "lazies vs crazies?" Crazies run society, they're happy with it the way it is,a nd they keep the rest of us subjected to it because it gives them the benefit of being superior somehow. I noticed it during covid. All of these middle class jerks going around screaming no one wants to work any more because people werent literally doing menial minimum wage work SERVING THEM. Seriously. That's what much of the luxury economy is these days. A bunch of powerless minimum wage workers being forced to serve a bunch of karens. And the karens so to speak run the world.
It's not even that we can't make the world revolve around different principles. We can. But these pampered people love the fact that other people serve them and they must look down their noses at them.
It's not because it'll make people lazy and thwart innovation. On the contrary, you've proven it won't.
It's not because businesses will raise prices, making UBI a wash. On the contrary, you've proven the opposite will happen.
To be fair, I think the laziness and inflation objections are deeply rooted in our psyche. A lot of people just have this idea that it will happen, and even if you convince them they wont, they'll just ignore them and keep pushing fallacious ideas because it contradicts their ideology and causes cognitive dissonance.
To be fair I acknowledge UBI might cause SOME work disincentive and inflation, but it's really all relative and whether it's "too much" for society to bear without negative consequences.
It's not because it will trap people in the lower class. On the contrary, you've proven it's far superior to the current system concerning motivation, goal attainment and upward mobility.
It's not because the payout is too small to make a difference. On the contrary, you've proven it's enough to open up a world of opportunities for millions of marginalized wage-slaves.
Honestly, I dont think a lot of critics of UBI give a crap about this. Or if they do they oppose it because the protestant work ethic or labor theory of value is so deeply ingrained in their thinking that the idea of doing away with work just breaks their brain. These people have developed stockholm syndrome of the system over time.
It's not because I want a small government and the protection of my freedoms. On the contrary, you've proven that UBI makes government smaller by removing the gigantic welfare infrastructure. Plus, you’ve amply proven that I'd probably not only be poor but dead if the government didn't step up to promote the general welfare in all the ways that laissez-faire fails, and that inequality, market instability, and environmental damage do indeed run amok without a democratic constitutional republic stepping in to stop the powerful from committing unconstitutional human rights abuses.
It makes it bigger in terms of dollars but reduces the bureaucracy and overreach,. Still, most interested in small government are just entrenched into the idea that property is sacred, taxation is theft, and state mandated redistribution is WRONG. Like, a lot of people in America are just morally opposed to the idea of UBI on that alone. THere is a lot of propaganda against the idea of redistribution in our society, and as eloquent as our ideas are, people just won't accept them because they are entrenched in competing belief systems. This is why, in my early idea of where I want to go in a book if I write a book, I'm spending a lot of time trying to tackle the worldview problem. Because in order to truly destroy these ideas in peoples' minds, you need to dig deeper and dig into their underlying worldviews and ideologies. You need to break down their existing belief systems and the principles in them before building up a new one in its place.
That is, by the way, why I was able to support UBI. Deconverting from christianity broke my existing worldview so bad it forced me to rewrite my entire system of ethics from scratch. And that's actually why I became receptive toward UBI. That is also why for years after deconverting from Christianity I was a die hard anti theist, and even though I'm spiritual now, I still hate organized religion. Because these old belief systems distort reality and make it hard to push for UBI. We literally might as well be speaking different languages.THe problem with ideas is behind them there are often a lot of underlying ideas that define their overall worldview. Mine is currently based on humanism. The idea of having human centered ethics with the idea of alleviating suffering. But a lot of people end up stuck with a christian worldview that tends to have suffering and the idea of a fallen world baked right into it. And a lot on the left have ideas based strongly on marxism that cause them to see class relations in a very specific way where the narrative of exploitation and the labor theory of value and class conflict defines their worldview on things. And they end up viewing things explicitly through that lens.
Speaking of which, I was considering writing an article on the anti work community as of late, but having talked to a lot of people in it more recently, I notice a lot of these guys dont even give a crap about being anti work any more. Why? Because their entire underlying view is steeped in marxism to the point that the second you start automating jobs they start going on about how it hurts the workers and how we should resist such business models as such. This is luddite nonsense. Being so obsessed with "the workers" in that way is missing the mark of what anti work is all about, it's about being against work. We should celebrate automation. We should want to work less. And before you ask "well what about the workers"...uh...duh. I'm literally the UBI guy. I'm the healthcare for all guy. I want to build a system that allows people to survive without work. But something I've noticed is...a lot people don't. A lot of anti work people would just rather circlejerk about marxism all day than actually fix the problem, of work. It's like they missed the point and got coopted into "leftism" as a whole. I've seen this coming for a while now actually. I mean look at how they treated Doreen Ford. "Oh noes, someone who actually is anti work and wants to work less than 20 hours a week? The horror. I just wanted to post memes about how much i hate my boss, im not really anti work...."
It's not because I believe in economic freedom, as I recognize that people in poverty suffer not due to bad choices but due to systemic inequalities and the stress of survival.
Just a reminder, another issue of the christian worldview, sociology literally doesn't real for them.
And as for the left. They'd rather fix problems...by giving people more work.
I hate politics these days...
It's not because UBI won't work. You've shown me the studies: Every basic-income pilot or program has worked with flying colors. It didn't cause people to sit home stoned watching Netflix. It instead led to increased employment, health, and well-being, across the board, with absolutely zero downsides to the rest of the community.
"Well we dont know if it will actually work because it hasn't actually been tried".
Fair, but all evidence we have so far suggests it would, and you're just arguing under the assumption that your worldview is right until proven otherwise 100%.
That's why my refusal to support UBI is not for any of those reasons you so willingly, thoroughly, and annoyingly disputed for the past several years.
IT'S BECAUSE OF THIS:
I want most people to suffer in meaningless jobs so that I can look and feel regal or godlike in comparison. I want to feel virtuous, and I want to see them as lacking in character. I want to believe in free will instead of causality and circumstance. I want to take credit for my good luck, and I want others to take the blame for their bad luck.
I want to feel unearned hubris. And I want others to feel unjustified shame.
Yep. Keep in mind what I said about the upper class suburbanites and how our society is run by Karens. Those with the most power and prestege are happy with it and dont want to change society in such a way that takes it away from them. So they keep the meritocracy, not for the structurally functional reasons i do, but because they're the inherent winners of it, and it makes them feel good. It's some major oligarchy crap going on.
Of course, I know my privilege came from luck, but I don't care. If my success is not a result of a silver spoon, it's from my genetics colliding with circumstances, neither of which I chose.
I don't care that much about human life as it pertains to certain people. So let them suffer needlessly; let them claw, scrape, and climb all over each other in what amounts mostly to futility and waste, with one or two occasional lucky winners.
Yeah, literally this for a good chunk of people.
Then, let those winners be fruitful and multiply to fill the world with schemers, backstabbers, and hoarders. More people like me. Because you never see a winner who, upon winning, wants to share. The only proponents of UBI are poor and lazy people. Rich people hate it, and we hate you. Die for all I care, but only after you clean my toilet. It makes me happier to know your life is a pale shadow of what it could have been and that mine is an embarrassment of riches I don't even know how to begin to deploy because nothing fills the gaping hole in my heart. You can tell people I said all this, but I'll deny, deny, deny."
Yeah sadly this mentality is very common.
Of course, i didnt spend so much time focusing on ideology for nothing. A lot of people simply oppose UBI because of their worldviews. Right wingers have worldviews much like the fundie christians in which they literally dont care about suffering and deny any of the social hierarchies above. The left is blinded by marxism and the labor theory of value type crap, or alternative the work has dignity crap. And of course, THEN you got the crap for brains in the center in the liberal camp who are literally this. Really, this is why i cant stand how cozy the suburbanite upper class is with the democrats. As long as those guys are the leading faction of the democrats, UBI and other nice things will never come to pass. Because they're the big losers.
Theres a reason I was willing to push them to the GOP while trying to deconvert right wingers out of their fundamentalist christian cult and into the world of working class politics. It's because it would work at actually pushing the world in the direction we wanted it. Instead we got wokeism and pink capitalism, yay...
Still, is this a good article? You bet it is. It does capture a common American attitude that needs to be addressed, and that's one of them just flat out not giving a crap about suffering, being satisfied about their specific place on the social hierarchy, and basically saying screw those lower than me. We could make a better world where people dont have to suffer but the winners of the current social hierarchy largely dont want that because it means they won't have someone to look down their nose at and feel superior to.
And this is why in the context of Van Parijs' "lazies vs crazies", sometimes I just wanna say, screw the crazies. They impose their little social hierarchy on us, they like it, and they wanna feel superior, so why should I care about them? It's also why I look down on those guys with disdain that the modern american left only seems to reserve for people who challenge woke ideology. Because for me, the #1 issue with society, if we wanna make a villain out of someone, is these kinds of people. They're the ones making life a living hell for the rest of us, and they're the ones we should have disdain for. Yes, this mentality is largely associated with the whole workers vs capital divide, but it runs deeper than that. It's not just about workers vs those who own the means of production. It's about those who win in the system in general and then look down their noses at others. That includes much of the middle class, and especially the so called "upper middle class", who often times arent very middle at all (seriously, if you're in the top quintile of income earners, you're not "middle" by any conventional definition of the word, sorry, and yes, you should pay more taxes to subsidize everyone else).
We could have a society where we're all free and pretty well off. But some people enjoy their status so much they'd rather have someone beneath them than to fix the concept of social hierarchy. This isn't just about apathy either, but more active acceptance of injustice in this sense. I'm not gonna pull the whole "you're racist unless youre actively anti racist" crap. That just alienates people. My goal isn't those who are neutral and/or ignorant or tuned out or whatever. It's those who actively seek to preserve the status quo because they dont want the world to be a better place.
No comments:
Post a Comment