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this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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What is the incentive to work if all these things are provided? Btw I want these things so I can quit my job and just wander around
Why is it that work is the only way? Why must we work and have "incentive to work"? Who decided that we must work or be worthless? Why must we be forced to play a game that treats us like shit or be outcast and ostracized?
I don't expect you to have answers, this is just something I've always wondered.
Humans are naturally creative and driven. We like working, building and accomplishing something.
Yet you must be forced to do the work of your employment.
If you had all your necessities met, not for long you would start to work. But you would work on projects you enjoyed. I doubt all those projects would be less useful for society than the average workplace nowadays.
I think must of the UBI experiments that we've done, many of the participants chose to do work in addition to the basic income.
For one, the operational word is "experiments". People on experimental UBI know it's only temporary.
For another, they are never large scale. So you can have success stories about how people given a UBI reprieve were able to take a moment to get things together, get some training, and maybe be selective and find a good job, but it's unfortunately not saying how it would scale. Unfortunately those great opportunities are likely sparse, and if entire cities could take that same benefit, you'd likely see a reset to a similar scenario as before UBI. That said it may be a much better simpler situation than means tested welfare, but the ubi amounts in the experiments are often less than welfare, so you'd not replace the system...
Then there's the debate of how much UBI.
On top of everything else that's been said, most people would want more than just whatever the UBI was even if that was enough to survive on. Most people do not want to just survive. Sure, you might get enough to live a very basic life without any frills if you didn't work, but isn't it better to guarantee those people homes and food rather than just let them die in the street?
Because all the things in that picture are produced by people working. If there are not people working to make clothes, you don't get clothes. If there are not people making and maintaining power plants, there is no electricity. And so on.
It's okay if temporarily non working people, or people that are unable to work, or people that work but are not paid enough gets these things for free (or deeply discounted. But if absolutely everyone gets all of that for free, there won't be enough people working just to sustain the ones who won't.
This isn't really a reasonable conclusion though, why could the people doing that work not be incentivised, by being rewarded in some other way than just a bare minimum livelihood? Why would they abandon their station to just do nothing instead ? Doesn't good protection enable the worker to negotiate their work to be fulfilling, rewarding and well compensated? Are the workers not just cogs in the machine if they don't get that power to actually negotiate? ....
It makes no sense to assume nothing would get done if we just had enough to live no matter what, the argument that we'll make more and better things seems much more likely to me. Both are somewhat unknowable until we just do right by people and see it working.
It's not that "nothing will get done". Sure, some people will work, but much less, if you could get a "fulfilling life" regardless of employment status.
There is already many (quotation needed) people that choose to live off of family members+the state in exchange of some (or a lot) quality of life.
The more you provide for free, the less people will need to work (and some people work only because they need to). This will put more strain on the people that do work, because they are the ones that pay more taxes, which would lead to less luxuries for the people that do actually work.
The higher the production, the higher mean (not median, the rich will always skew the curve a lot) QoL. The idea behind this post aims to increase the median QoL, but I think it'll just bring the mean closer to the median, and shrink the whole thing.
We have value beyond work,, but ultimately theres the practical questions of:
All the "free stuff" needs people to work to make it a reality. It may be that we can "afford" to provide basic needs confidently for free in a way that leaves motivation to do those jobs to get better, but ultimately we need work to be done and some way to motivate that work to be done.
I mean we could go back to being hunter gatherers with no electricity, roads, police, government etc..But in order to have the comforts of life, we need peoples to do stuff and cooperate and coordinate.. think about who runs the cables for your Internet or maintains the cell towers, picks up your trash, grows the avocados for your guacamole, manufactures the medicines..etc etc..If nobody has a job, nothing gets done.. think about living off the grid and the logistics associated with it, that's just a small taste
I unironically believe that these things would get done without the need of coercing people to do them by stripping them of the means of survival. Anthropology backs me up on this one.
Show me some horsey sourcey cuz
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution
Also: The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Basically: anything by Graeber.
Did you just use a book written in 1902 as a source
Is the origin of species out of date, cause it is older?
Also, the bulk of Graeber's work is from the 21st century.
You can just say that you don't want to believe me, you know.
I don't believe you
As I said: if you want contemporary anthropological sources: read basically any book by David Graeber. Mutual Aid is a bit old, but still relevant, too.
Give me some excerpts, quotes or a chapter, using whole books is a little vague and isn't getting your point across. Yeah Darwin's book is still relevant but we have also learned a lot more with his theories as the foundation(comparing biology to anthropology?). Your books are working off of what the primitive societal needs of long ago were, right? Do you really think that those same concepts apply to the society of today?
Look, I'm not ananthropologist and I'm trying to sneak in some lemmy while no one's watching at work, so I'm not going to be able to immediately supply you with concise excerpts of anthropological learnings on human nature.
The gist of Mutual Aid is that cooperation within a species is a vital factor of evolution. That's why I namedropped Darwin. That thesis complements the origin of species.
Still doesn't mean that you can't learn anything from a book published in 1902, or that it's not worth reading anymore.
Why is this controvertial? Aren't humans a biological species? Anthropology and biology are about as connected as physics and math is.
No, they aren't (exclusively). They give testimony of how we got here and that things can be different as they are now.
Yes, at least partly. The human brain has had the same biology for the last 100.000 years. You can learn things about human nature from this massive time scale. The basic gist of basically everything Graeber wrote is that societies are formable things. The societies we form will in turn change the way humans interact with each other (changing "human nature"). This in turn means that the whole notion of "progress" being a linear thing, only going into one, unchangeable direction is wrong.
I think you are confused about what you believe in. It's ok, we have all been there bud
I think you are quite an arrogant prick.
That sure is one way to not have to engage and still feel superior, huh? /s
I lik u. Wil u b frend?
There's a qualitative question in what the "free" tier entails. If it's basic survival, then that might be "affordable" with room to motivate. If the adequate food was "bachelor chow and water", ok. If the "home" is a basic bed with a lockable door in a walkin closet sized room, ok.
If we say everyone should get all you can eat buffet with quality apartments, then you start eroding the mechanism to motivate people to do work that needs to be done.
I'd like to distance myself from the individualistic, service-oriented notion that an allayou-can-eat-buffet entails.
Give people free homes and a community and they'll sooner or later create an all you can eat potluck.
Imagine if we had a universal basic income and people got paid more than that if they had a job?
Oh wait, that's the whole fucking idea.
You are soo cute, do u have pp
Not everyone HAS to work. There are plenty of homeless people now who don't work. People can choose to work to increase their pay and quality of life. Even if all my needs were met, I'd still like to buy things, travel, etc. The people making the most money in this world right now are definitely not the people who are working the hardest, nor are they cooperating and coordinating for everyone's best interest.
With these things you get to work at what you want. For instance, I’ve travelled extensively where the items in the meme are mostly available, and you get cottage or small businesses that are really good at what they do but make too little money to actually be a “real job”.
So you get things like someone making the finest handmade tile, the best bread, an artist gets to make his/her art, you get to run your own private consulting business, etc. You have a shot at doing what you want, not some shitty grind you’re forced to do to hope you get healthcare, kids college money and a retirement. Of course these jobs don’t make a lot of money, but you can certainly look for employment that does offer better compensation.
Point being you have a choice.
And it’s funny, even in places where these services are available the vast majority don’t sit on their asses avoiding work. They understand they want more for themselves and maybe even the community they live in, so they choose more gainful employment.
Also, just because you get those meme things doesn’t mean you get everything else too. These are just basics, not a lifestyle that gets you much more than social housing and the ability to visit cheap destinations on your guaranteed vacation via public transportation. Maybe that’s all some people want, and that’s fine. YMMV.
All of you guys have great ideas, have you ever thought about running for political office?
I don't see a panel for European vacations, video games, fancy dinners, nice cars, concert tickets, iPhones, trips to SeaWorld, a six pack of beer, or a Netflix subscription. If you want an empty, boring-ass life then it's yours for free. I would like to see a panel for free birth control as well. I don't think a system like this can stand for long if every non-working person has 6 kids.
What you mean to say is "what is the incentive to work in a mind-numbing, soul-crushing, mental and physical health-risking job?"
The answer is there aren't any and no one should be forced to work those jobs even if it benefits others.
And if a job is both necessary and unpleasant, you get people into it by offering them high pay above their universal basic income.
UBI is not communism. It's an end to poverty, not an end to wealth.
Isn't the whole point of UBI that everyone gets it without questions or restrictions. This way you can get some extra bucks even from a low paying job, when you're not actually relying on that job but it gets you extra
At least that's how it has been discussed in Finland, and it has support on both sides of the political spectrum
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
Ah cool, I just misunderstood your msg
You might, but most don't. Most people love working as long as they are passionate about what they are doing. You might find that you wander for a while, but eventually take that time to develop a skill or lean into researching something that benefits, not only you, but society as a whole.
The issue being "as long as they are passionate about what they are doing". Unfortunately, there's a lot of jobs where there's no where near enough people with passion for the job. You know anyone signing up to drive a garbage truck around all day long? Anyone excited at the prospect of volunteering at the sewage treatment plant? You might have some volunteers to help dementia patients, but not nearly enough and most would quite very soon after realuzing how hellish it can be.
We need more than passion to motivate. That's not too say it's impossible to get to a guaranteed basic level of living for people to feel more safe and secure about how bad it could get, but there needs to be some room to motivate beyond intrinsic passion for the work.
No one is suggesting volunteers. What's being proposed is that a baseline of security is provided. A roof over your head, food, access to education ,and just enough money to survive. With those things guaranteed, now people are freed to pursue careers like those you have suggested. When people no longer have to worry about survival, the vast majority will spend their time on pursuing a better life for themselves. That in turn leads to a stronger and more profitable society.
That description may be fine, but you had stated "so long as they are passionate about it", and that is unfortunately omitting a great deal of work we, as yet, still need humans doing yet no one or not enough people will possibly be passionate about it.
The "we might be able to afford a base level of viable living so no one has to have a crisis but still people will want to buy stuff and this they still will pursue income" I can agree with, but there will still be crap jobs and some folks will have to do them.
In terms of "no one is suggesting", there are sincere "anti work" people who claim no one should ever need to do any work they wouldn't want to do for free". In this example, there's a lot of room for ambiguity about what they are describing, basic viable living versus pretty comfortable living.
I'm my mind, there needs to be some heavier incentive towards paying more for robots for dangerous work, and more time to share responsibility for crap work. Like instead of a system where one guy gets stuck every day going to the sewage plant, you somehow have people with multiple jobs such that they only do sewage treatment like twice a month and you have 15 people with that arrangement rather than a full time guy.