memes

I'm not sure what your meme is saying. Is the implication that if there is UBI, then nobody will work anymore? I might be misunderstanding

I said in a comment "hey why not universal healthcare and also ubi" and this nutcase yelled at me for over a week about it. I wasn't going to bother with defending the idea since I was just asking "why not" and they were calling me lazy, entitled, and stupid.

I think The Expanse had a decent “UBI” model, Basic

It covers just enough food-like substance with the correct macros for a human, everyone had an apartment and access to the internet and tv channels. I think healthcare was included to a point. That’s it. You could survive on it without much suffering.

If you wanted more, you had to go to school and work.

Funny how UBI is typically considered a left-wing policy in the US, yet the only place in the country that actually has a UBI is traditionally considered pretty conservative.

Alaska has a thing called the Alaska Permanent Fund which was funded with an initial investment of oil and mining revenue. It pays out around $100 a month which is not really something to live on but definitely helps for struggling Alaskans.

I think a viable model for UBIs on a national scale would probably involve something similar. Perhaps a one-shot tax on the mega-rich to get the initial funding and then it's used to run a state-owned investment portfolio which invests in various sectors of the economy and then pays out the profits to the citizens.

Broadly speaking, UBI is a good idea for a bad system.

Public housing, public health care, public grocery stores, public transit, and public education are a good idea for a better system.

The government giving you a fixed stipend to play your hand at the free market carries a whole host of secondary challenges, particularly as we enter a 70s-era inflationary spiral. The private sector having an incentive to create tiered levels of service to capture UBI money while delivering the smallest possible economic benefit to the consumer is a huge problem in the existing market.

The fundamental problem with UBI is that landlords will still evict your ass as soon as they find a way to squeeze more rent out of a unit. You have money, but you don't have any kind of civil right to housing.

As an initial stopgap on the way to a socialist economic model, its got merit. But as a panacea, it - much like minimum wage and child tax credits and other forms of government mandated economic floors - falls depressingly short of the end goal.

people see newer posts in their feeds so they get more attention. Has nothing to do with reluctance

There are some legit criticisms from the left on UBI, it's myopic focus on consumption, the possibility of it being eaten away due to inflation it causes and becoming a gift to landlords etc. I don't think "the government will use it to control us" is a good one as that can be said about any social service the government provides. Should we not have universal Healthcare because if a fascist takes over he can kick you off the roles and you'll die from a preventable disease?

Filling everyone's basic needs will be a vast social undertaking that will require a lot of organization, just because someone might take over that organization and wield it for power doesn't mean we shouldn't make it, it just means we have to keep careful watch over it when we do.

By the way, what is this phenomenon on Lemmy? Let’s say people are reluctant to read and comment on old posts published just a couple of days or a week ago, but with new ones, it’s a completely different story. What kind of psychology is this? Or it seemed to me?

In the default lemmy feed (in browser view at least), posts only show if they're younger than 3 days (72 hours). So older posts typically get ignored, so nobody wants to comment there because nobody will read these comments anyways.

What you described in your other post is slavery masked as UBI. It's like how Trump's right wing talk about "freedom" when what they actually mean is nothing like the freedom people actually want or imagine.

Salaried work is effectively gilded slavery. Unless you've got ahitloads of capital, money is basically already limiting you to a certain bracket of "freedom" that we call your "means", and it's under the duress of poverty and death. The rules, particularly laws, apply a lot more strongly to those who are poor than who are rich. Interest punishes poorer borrowers and rewards those who can barrow with impunity by giving them access to endless credit.

A true UBI is essentially unconditional access to the bare necessities of life. Food, shelter, healthcare, security, and public utilities. Doesn't matter if you never work a day in your life - you are valued because you exist. It should grant those who do not want to work a means to live with dignity, and those who do want to work a secure launch pad for finding a vocation that is right for them.

The claims this would lead to lack of incentives to work is misleading. The psychological reality is well l-raised mentally healthy people who are valued as members of a community wish to serve that community however they can, and don't want to feel like "free loaders". They want to be seen to be contributing and making a difference. Not to be thought of as lazy or useless. We're social creatures and we have an instinct for living in a society. It's why we're here now after hundreds of thousands of years.

But, would we want to do dangerous, dirty, unfulfilling and undignified work, for shitty pay? Who will sign up to clean toilets, sweep roads, carry worksite debris to the skip, stand behind the till at the gas station or convenience store 8+ hours a day, answer hundreds of phone calls a day just to give people information they can find online? Obviously, where we can't automate, or otherwise relieve people of the need to do this kind of work, and many hands will not make light work of the situation (e.g. instead of having janitors let's some percentage of the office staff clean up during the last hour of the day, like how we take turns doing the dishes at home), and we actually need sufficient people doing this kind of work full tim, then clearly these jobs need to have rewards sufficient to have people sign up to them. There won't be a need for as many as their are nowz and those who do sign up will be more efficient for the fact they're there of their own Accord and can quit any time they want.

It will be a real challenge to transition to this kind of incentive structure under the current incentives of capitalism (not to many how fucked up it makes people's mental health and moral sentiment towards "the other" as competitors rather than collaborators), and ultimately monetary economics will probably need a significant overhaul and it may not even necessary in the long run. There may be better ways to distribute resources that still has mechanisms for rewarding hard work and determination, unique talent or passion, risk taking, etc. to a degree that nobody will resent such people for their success.

But the way I see it, this is what progress looks like. It's working toward this kind of world that should drive our social and political engagements. I want you to be free - truly free - to life your best life. And not so that your doing means others have to be enslaved. That should make you miserable at every moment.