So p-much everybody here knows UBI is bad, since it doesn't get rid of capitalism, and in fact, the phrase neo-feudalism is sometimes used to describe what a capitalist system with UBI would look like.
It seems like a lot of succdems and the center left are convinced that when the poor have a UBI, it will be more than just barely enough to live off of. Arguments include:
This is not necessarily false, and there's probably a kernel of truth somewhere in those arguments, but it also cements the bourgeoisie in power, and they are naturally incentivized to get cripple or destroy any system which is taking their wealth.
How do we explain this to regular people without sounding like crazy conspiracy theorists?
UBI is pretty much the closest thing to "socialism" that they can imagine. Sad thing is so many people are so bad off these days that neo-feudalism is an improvement. At least slave owners have SOME interest in the well being of their slaves/indentured servants. Porky couldnt care less if we all were starving in a ditch. Sadly I could see normal people go for this way before trying revolution. It could duct tape the shitty capitalist system together for another century at least.
Justin Carter
neo feudalism probably wouldn't be as bad as it used to be since it would only ever occur in a time where automation made capitalism unsustainable so most hard labor wouldn't be done by neo serfs.
Isaiah White
Can you elaborate how UBI is going to turn capitalism to neo-feudalism? Capitalism is going in this way with or without UBI imo.
Anthony Ortiz
As with every single thing the capitalist States have "given" workers since the early days of 14-hour, 6-day workweeks without safety, it's just an extra pile of crumbs they throw you to dissuade you from taking your deserved seat at the table, which is currently being used to more comfortably accomodate the meridional half of Porky's right asscheek.
Jeremiah Martin
Full automation by itself is anathema to capitalism, as it implies post-scarcity. After all, there is no more labor to be exploited. UBI is essentially a mechanism to let Porky still artificially make goods scarce and labor irrelevant, thus keeping capitalism going on even further past its expiration date.
Gavin Diaz
But what guarantee that capitalists (without UBI and with high automation) would let useless proles take them over instead of implementing some kind of FALC but exclusively for bourgeois and let the useless proles starving to death? UBI artificially keep the statut-quo but could be a safe-guard for proles.
Lucas Gray
I don't get it. I can't imagine a society in which you would receive UBI and be able to work. So if you don't like or don't want UBI…then well go to work I guess.
Matthew Wood
UBI is a base, if you work you would receive the UBI+your wage (or another income).
Asher Ward
Saying we should argue against UBI because it isn't real socialism is like saying we should argue against universal healthcare because it isn't real socialism.
Absolutely inane. We should argue why UBI isn't ENOUGH, but it is objectively a good development.
Jonathan Young
this
Gabriel Morales
I'm going to this this.
Noah Williams
Just point out that no matter what UBI's proponents claim it will be like, at the end of the day the government has to implement it. The same government that's fine with people dying in the streets while it wages endless war on the entire planet. Why should we trust them with UBI?
Camden Wilson
this. plus, if it works, it will accelerate us to a socialist future. UBI if done right will cause an explosion in innovation and scientific advancement (and in the arts and philosophy).
Julian Clark
...
Wyatt Anderson
Where's the lie? Living standards in America are maintained by imperial plunder. There's a reason succdems are called social fascists.
Eli Baker
...
Liam Reyes
Even better. And this big time
Wyatt Wright
full automation is a meme. a post scarcity society was technically possible 50 years ago. Modern capitalism runs on consumerism and immaterial labor, inequality has to be enforced. In the worst case scenario, automation memeing can lead to a sterile world of total surveillance controlled by capitalists. Besides replacing everyone with 'robots' would require tremendous amounts of contested natural resources, global warming and world war will kill us all before capitalism achieves a post scarcity society by itself. Instead of fetishising technological solutions, we should remember every economy is essentially a human economy: under capitalism technology is an extension of social relations.
Nicholas Torres
...
Isaiah Anderson
the problem is the powers that be are working to ensure it isn't 'done right' if it is even done at all.
Ian Johnson
The difference is that countries with a unified healthcare insurance system have existed for decades, and anybody who bothers to look at the real-world data of these countries can see that they do it cheaper compared to muh-free-market insurance competition because all the overhead that different insurance companies have with advertising and gauging the risks a new customer brings and also the weaker leverage when negotiating with pharma companies. The "controversy" and opposition to it only exist because of vested interests with lots of money.
With UBI on the other hand, it isn't clear at all how it could possibly work. The calculations I've seen by UBI shills all involve taking the current set of prices for granted and fixed, no matter how much the income structure changes, which strikes me as pretty absurd, especially considering rent. I'm not sure it could even work with a thorough system of rent and price controls*, but it certainly won't work without, and I've heard this UBI shit for over twenty years now and I've literally not once seen a pro-UBI writer actually address this issue. A job guarantee makes more sense.
*(these fixed values can be just preliminary, allowing fluctuation via a price-change right trading system while only the aggregates are really fixed)
Asher Cooper
Why? Not everything multimillionaries do is part of a jewish scheme to trick the worker class.
Aiden Sanchez
How do you ubi with "moral" capitlism when all your goods are produced and made in sweatshops by poor Asians with minerals dug by African child slaves and with energy plundered from the middle-East. Capitlism wouldn't work without all of that for the comfy life socdems want 1st world to be so they either live like shit working for pennies or continue on with neo-colonisation while feeling great they get a free iphone causr free money.
Justin Wilson
It's the same old contradiction between realisation and production Marx outline in Capital Volume 2.
Jaxon Sanders
Tell your friend to real Capital Vol. 1&2 in sequence; the first dealing with production, the other realisation. Upon reflection the immanent and irreconcilable dialectical contradiction becomes abundantly clear, and it is further tied up in and dependent upon the other foundational contradictions of Capital.
If UBI consisted of provision of use-values instead of exchange-value (in the form of money) I would support it. As it stands, it's just a means for the realisation of value in this age of induced unemployment.
Henry Brooks
This
Grayson Ross
Well I think the best thing is to just work through it.
Look at who controls political power today, and what it takes to gain and keep political power: it's basically money. You use money to on the one hand maintain a group of representatives and political activists, and on the other hand to buy media access and time. And the owners of capital will always have more - much more - of money to do these things. In a UBI situation, you would need to pool contributions of a huge amount of lumpens to match what even one porky could do. And likely, the lumpens will not have all that much of their UBI left over after paying for their living expenses. Not to mention that if That is again less money left over to maintain a political machine. Therefore it is clearly not politically empowering.
And guess who determines the height of UBI, the who determines the actual kind of life it will afford you: it's the political elite. You will end up having porky once again deciding what you have coming to you. And they will give you just as much as they need to for their own benefit.
Even worse, as we can all observe how the existing security state and propaganda machine can be turned by those with political power towards subverting political organizing of the proles. They will know who is contributing, and who is running for office and so on. Now imagine what they could do with something simple as taking away the UBI of people deemed to be dangerous subversives - support a prohibited party? Poof, all of you meager income disappears! Here the actually politically disempowering aspect comes in. Don't dare bite the hand that feeds you!
Brandon Davis
Can't believe I'm agreeing with a trot
Jeremiah Flores
"Why not just skip the middleman and start making things for free?"
Zachary Ramirez
It will and has wherever implemented only been driving up inflation, temporarily fastened replacement of the larger amount of low skilled workers with machines created by a small amount of highly skilled workers producing the machines, faciliate braindrains to countries where skilled workers will not feel unfairly robbed and will inevitably end up in am endless spiral of ever inflalting basic income once tasted to compensate for its own effects and in some cases already is already sliding it down, driving up demand for stable alternative currencies and inefficient barter deals from those with the ability to provide and produce literally regressing civilization until either worker chímp out either way before or after the farce collapses and create just their own rationally and not "emotionally" fair system again.
Jace Cox
Interloper here. Commiepill me on UBI, I thought you guys were all for it.
I'm not a leftypol native, but I came her to discuss UBI since I thought you guys would absolutely love it. Mind you, I don't like the idea either, but just to play the devil's advocate: wouldn't it be better to provide people with housing, food and other basic necessities for work instead of money?
If the idea is that people impoverish themselves by being unable to manage their money, then isn't the solution just cutting money for basic needs and only using it for "luxury" products and services like entertainment? Mind you, the efficiency or inefficiency of a central government organizing the provision of these basic needs is an entirely different topic in it's own right, but still I'd like to hear Holla Forums's opinion on this.
Anthony Perry
The whole point of UBI is because of unemployment getting bigger and bigger due to automation. How are gonna provide work for everyone without abolishing capitalism?
Jace Cruz
Wow this board is full of liberal.
Nathan Moore
Not a Jewish scheme, but a scheme nonetheless.
Hunter Hernandez
Really hope that comic isn't implying that slaves built the pyramids.
Hunter Jenkins
some normies unironically believe that multimillionaires can have good intentions toward people other than themselves.
This would immediately destroy capitalism (due to it's reliance on a reserve army of labor to lower wages and thus drive the rate of profit up), and was in fact briefly instituted in the USSR during the Stalin era.
and who the fuck did? aliens?
Henry Lopez
more likely they'll all head down to the connivence store and blow it on scratch off tickets
Juan Thompson
It isn't inherantly bad. It's just bad if it replaces other forms of aid and if it is done without price limits centrally set by the gov so the corporations cant drive up cost on vital things.
