Slavery Lite: The Hidden Costs of Universal Basic Income

In this episode of Fascinating!, Rik from Planet Vulcan, along with guest editor Otto Didact, flips the Necker Cube on the debate around Universal Basic Income (UBI). While many noble minds perched on high proclaim UBI as the solution to end scarcity and reduce societal stress, Rik and Otto ask a fundamental question: Is UBI just a softer, friendlier version of slavery? Or as Otto calls it—Slavery Lite?

With dry wit and sharp analysis, the episode dissects the flawed assumption that the necessity of productive work is merely an outdated cultural norm. Instead, Rik and Otto argue that the expectation of contributing to one’s own consumption is rooted in fairness and justice. Rik takes us on a journey, questioning whether UBI really frees people or just redistributes the burden of production to those left doing the work. Tune in to this thought-provoking episode as we explore the deeper implications of UBI and challenge the moral foundations behind modern economic interventions.

Transcript

Good day to you, and welcome to Fascinating!  I am your host Rik, from Planet Vulcan.  

My continuing mission on Planet Earth:  to search for signs of intelligence and to encourage its spread; and to discourage the spread of ecnarongi (which is ignorance spelt backwards, i.e., “knowing” that which is not so).

Contributing editor Otto Didact, after listening to a recent podcast whose host shall not be named, has penned an essay in which he flips the Necker Cube, as it relates to the idea behind what is euphemistically referred to as income “redistribution” proposals such as Universal Basic Income, from the way of viewing you frequently encounter from those whose thinking parallels that of this podcast host. 

Otto writes:

Some of the noble beings who survey us just plain folks from their lofty perch - and who believe in the deus ex machina theory of government with themselves as deus - are beginning to claim, with their usual all-but-absolute certainty, that humanity is headed for a future in which scarcity will no longer exist, in large part because of the salutary effects of Machine Intelligence technology on our ability to create value.

Never mind that the same people who are confidently predicting the end of scarcity are on alternate days predicting the emergence of conscious super-intelligent robots, who are either intentionally or inadvertently going to cause humans to go extinct.

From the perspective of these inheritors of the aristocratic legacy, imagining themselves on a lofty perch: people who see themselves not just with the standing to intervene when things do not suit them, but also, incredibly, with the wisdom to bring the interventions off successfully, they now see fit to intervene to deal with the consequences of the end of scarcity, which they are convinced are foreseeable to them.

And never mind for the moment that, to the contrary, it is far more likely that scarcity will continue to be the permanent condition of humankind.  Scarcity just means that if you add up all the stuff people want, it is more than the amount of stuff that there is.  Just increasing the amount of stuff that there is will not do anything the extent of the list of stuff people want, and there is no good reason to believe that this list will not keep on expanding indefinitely.

And these exalted personages are telling us that, since scarcity will soon be a thing of the past, it is time already, in anticipation of this development, for them to begin intervening and make sure everything turns out all right.  Society will certainly go off the rails and doom will ensue, we are told, without their wise guidance.

And where better to start than with a universal basic income?

To support their proposal, they argue that the tremendous benefits of such a program ought to be obvious to anyone, if only because it will lessen the stress and anxiety that so many people are feeling.  And wait, there’s more!  Benefits of this program will multiply, and there’s no downside.

They are lamenting the fact that some people are nevertheless opposed to this scheme, and they cannot imagine why any sane and moral person would do so.  And they have a list of straw man arguments to show why those who oppose the scheme are wrong.

Here are a few of the things that the straw men are supposedly saying:  

1) people would become suicidally depressed if they did not have to work for a living;  

2)  people would become malevolent if they have all this time on their hands;  

3)  people will become drug addicts and spend all of their waking hours getting stoned and watching TV; 

Et cetera.

So after kicking the stuffing out of that group of straw men, they go for the big guns, and advance the argument that just plain folks don’t have near the intelligence necessary to make good decisions about such esoteric ideas, so decisions must be made on their behalf, by people who will make the decisions God would make, if only God were as well-informed as they are (thanks again to economist Thomas Sowell for this turn of phrase).

To this reporter the most interesting argument our betters are making is the one that people will object to a UBI program because of the belief that it is only through productive work that people “deserve” to receive income.   

They say that this belief is merely an archaic and arbitrary cultural norm people have been conditioned to believe, namely that every mature adult’s claim on existence must be anchored to productive work.  Such norms are all that stand in the way of instituting UBI, they say, so all we have to do is to change the cultural norms by proper conditioning, or if that fails to get people to behave properly voluntarily, employ the final argument of coercion.

Now let us flip the Necker Cube from the perspective of the nobility to the perspective of just plain folks.

As your typical just plain folks adolescent moves out of their parents’ house and transitions into adulthood, what usually dawns on them is the realization that whatever one consumes must first be produced by someone.

It then follows that if one is getting something for nothing, then there must be someone somewhere who is getting nothing for something.  

And for any newly minted adult with a functioning brain and a good heart, someone who believes we are all equal, it becomes clear that such a condition is unfair to the one doing the producing.  Being legally required to produce for the sole benefit of someone else, if such a thing were full-time, we would call slavery, and in the modern world we mostly agree that slavery is abhorrent.

But the general consensus of opinion is that if the servitude is only part-time, it does not deserve our abhorrence.  This stance is puzzling:  on what moral grounds can you possibly condemn full-time slavery if you do not also condemn part-time slavery?

Let’s call it Slavery Lite.

So our newly minted adult will conclude on the basis that it is unfair to put someone in the position of getting nothing for something, that they do in fact need to produce at least enough to support their own consumption, provided fairness matters to them.

So from this perspective, it is not an arbitrary cultural norm that we have merely been conditioned to accept, that says we must be productive to be full-fledged adults; it is instead the inescapable conclusion of a rational argument based on a commitment to liberty and justice for all.

Please understand:  no one expects that human society will ever be entirely rid of predators and parasites.

Predation and parasitism are part of the natural order, and there will always be analogs of predators and parasites in human society.  

But please, stop trying to tell us that the apotheosis of moral action is to offer ourselves up as victims.

Thanks to Otto for providing this alternate perspective.  We Vulcans continue to be surprised and amazed at the capacity for double-think we observe among Earthlings.

I invite you to have a listen to the next installment of Fascinating!.

If you find the lessons from nature in these podcasts personally valuable, please recommend it to your friends.  See also our YouTube Channel, Fascinating@pregodenada.

Theme music:  Helium, with thanks to TrackTribe.

Live long and prosper.  Savor your experiences.  Treasure your memories.  Anticipate a happy and rewarding future.

And respect nature’s wisdom.