this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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EDIT: I'm actually a believer in Basic Income, but this is a silly argument. Bad arguments do a disservice to the idea of Basic Income and make the battle uphill that much harder.
I read this two days ago when it was posted, and it didn't sit well with me because it didn't make sense. I hand to think about it for while about why it didn't make sense, but I have it now.
Lets break this down:
We’re the only species who must pay to existWe're really the only species that uses money regularly. So at first glance the literal statement is true but irrelevant: We're the only species that must pay, because we're the only species that uses money. So the literal definition is that other species don't have to pay. True, but they don't get to use money to store work. Our society has determined that "money" is a method to store "work".
What the author is saying in spirit is: We're the only species who has to work to exist.
If indeed I have the author's meaning right, then this is clearly false. Every other species has to do some level of work to exist. Even parasites will not have a second generation without working to procreate. This brings us to the author's next statement:
In a private property system where all the land was claimed by others before we were born, and everything we need to stay alive costs money....If you're willing to lower yourself to an animal that doesn't use money with all of the freedom and consequences that comes with that, you don't need to spend a time on land, food, shelter or ANYTHING. There are huge swaths of land all over the world where you could live in the wilderness likely your entire life and never see another human being who will bother you. Most of northern Canada and northern Russia and completely unpopulated for hundreds of hectares. Same with lots of the middle part of Australia. If you're willing to live off the land without modern medicine, communication, entertainment, or societal infrastructure then there's no one out there to force you to pay for anything.
The author goes off the rails in suggesting an non-human species, which has no benefits of humanity, has to pay for nothing but lives and dies off the land and at the will of other predators and nature, is equal to the life of a human in modern society with modern medicine, agriculture, law, defense, technology and entertainment.
To the author: If you want to live like a non-human species (an animal) there are plenty of places you can do that. No one will stop you. No one will make you pay anything. Have at it! ~~If you want the benefits of other people's work in a society, then you have to contribute something back to that society that society values.*~~ EDIT: I'm removing the last sentence because it needs more context for a much larger argument. The rest of my post stands.
If you want the benefits of other people’s work in a society, then you have to contribute something back to that society that society values.
Although you have to contribute something that someone else will pay for such as not parenting. Our society disregards parenting even though it gains greatly from its benefit (or in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, suffers greatly when parenting is neglected) While we don't literally toss our children out to the elements, the degree to which children are disregarded is conspicuous.
And for most of us, we are expected to contribute more than we receive, as demonstrated by the plutocrats who gain from and hoard those profits. For the rest of us, we get meager benefits from living as bonded servants in society, but we don't get full benefits of mutuality. And for most of us, our benefits exclude healthcare, nutrition, etc. which should be communal. When we have the capacity to automate a particular duty, it is not the rest of us who gain from that benefit, but the elite who cease paying workers to do it.
We've yet to see a mutualistic community that assures its wealth and privileges are evenly distributed but we certainly see ones more mutualistic than the ones that have to rely on thought-terminating clichés like Living here is better than living in the wild (and yes, I suspect even all of Canada and Siberia is alloted and owned.) Living here might be better than in the wild, but it is still miserable for the most of us. It's still feudalism and slavery only with extra obfuscating steps.
And now our civilization careens towards high existential risk, and we're going to see if it really is easier to imagine the end of humanity or the end of capitalism.
I'm sorry, that's not allowed by the premise of the OP's post. The OP's post is making an attempt to say that only human's have to pay to exist.
Under that narrative, you're welcome to embrace the parenting style of non-human species. I believe that mostly means scattering your reproductive DNA in various ways in a numbers game hoping a small number of your offspring actually make it to adulthood to reproduce on their own while the rest of your offspring die of exposure the elements, predation by other species higher on the food chain, or easily preventable diseases.
OP's post encourages you to embrace the superior lifestyle of non-human species!
The problem here is that you don't have a clue about anything you're saying
That the OP's post is specious? I'm pretty aware of that.