7 ms·

It is interesting to note that a few hundred years ago, people didn't make that big of a difference between chattel slavery and wage slavery (labor). Both were

It is interesting to note that a few hundred years ago, people didn't make that big of a difference between chattel slavery and wage slavery (labor). Both were university acknowledge to be great evils, and it was as dehumanizing to rent a person than it was to own a person. Somehow we've all accepted wage slavery as alright. Good even! If someone doesn't have a job we deride him as a lazy ass for not wanting to sell his labor to a capitalist. A solution: universal basic income. Give everyone fuck you money. Then you'll have a free society.

dracht 11y ago
Where will this basic income money come from? Forced taxation, aka extortion, aka partial slavery. That's not a free society, just a different master.
- littletimmy 11y ago
  Taxation is not partial slavery because the money is not yours to begin with. What you "earn" is partly due to your efforts, and partly due to you utilizing the infrastructure and institutions built by everyone else. So a part of your "earnings" is society's. That part is called taxes: what you owe to those who enable you to earn. We can also put taxes on corporations instead of people. Corporations are not humans, and therefore cannot be made slaves.
  - miscellaneous 11y ago
    >Taxation is not partial slavery because the money is not yours to begin with Ah, we have found the key contention. An interesting thought is to consider a world of fully mobile people - who will move and who will stay in a country with universal basic income and high taxes?
    - littletimmy 11y ago
      There are alternatives to high taxes. We could have a Georgism-inspired economic system in which the land and natural resources are publicly owned and leased from the state, but what you create is yours alone. That way, there are no "high taxes" on what you create. The universal basic income is financed wholly by the wealth from leasing everyone's land and natural resources (which is much more justifiable because land is always appropriated - never created).
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > An interesting thought is to consider a world of fully mobile people - who will move and who will stay in a country with universal basic income and high taxes? The only way you get a world full of "fully mobile people" with no barriers to relocation is if the world is one sovereignty rather than several, in which case if there is a country with UBI and high taxes, its the only one. But lots of people -- including rich ones -- who do have the practical choice to leave or stay (though they aren't fully mobile as borders and immigration policies do erect some costs and barriers to relocation) do stay in countries with relative high, progressive taxes and strong social safety nets today. I don't see why incorporate UBI into those social safety nets would change that. Apparently, civilization -- as opposed to the law of the jungle -- is attractive to people, even many rich people. Who knew?
  - monort 11y ago
    Do you realize that in this framework "wage slavery" doesn't exist too? What you "earn" is partly due to your efforts, and partly due to you utilizing the infrastructure of your employer. So a part of your "earnings" is employer's.
    - littletimmy 11y ago
      Sure. What is meant by "slavery" in this context is not appropriation of a portion of labor value. It is being forced to sell your labor on the market in the first place - a process that necessarily sets up exploitative conditions for those with little market power.
      - monort 11y ago
        I don't think it's a useful slavery definition because the thing forcing you to work is nature. You are being forced to brush teeth by the same entity, that forces you to work, so in this context even teeth brushing becomes "teeth brushing slavery".
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  The 'taxation' straw man is the first thing folks think of, when encountering BI for the first time. There are alternatives. Like printing the money, which is nowhere near the issue you might think it is. The 1% own 99% of it, the rest have 1%; e.g. doubling what the rest of us have devalues it by 1%, leaving us all with plenty of wealth while eroding the fraction owned by the 1%. Its not a bad option in the current economic situation.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    Monetization is a huge deal, because once you start monetizing spending as regular policy, you undermine both confidence in the currency and confidence in the government debt; one of the whole reasons that governments have made monetary policy separate from fiscal policy through central banking is precisely to preserve that trust. While UBI itself can be managed so as not result in runaway inflation (and, unless you deliberately build a positive feedback loop into the level setting, should be self-limiting to avoid that in the long term, though the wrong initial setting could have high short-term inflation), monetizing the UBI, like monetizing government debt, is a great way to produce high average inflation, destroy government creditworthiness, and increase volatility in the currency. If you want to redistribute downward, taxing the wealthy directly is a lot more sensible than monetizing spending. And, in any case, none of the people that are opposed to taxing the rich are going to support monetization, and plenty of people that do support taxing the rich are going to oppose monetization, so it doesn't even make sense as a way of getting around the political difficulties of tax-supported UBI.
- vlehto 11y ago
  Increasing income increases freedom. But you get diminishing returns the more you increase income of a person. Here 500e/month is effectively "yeah, I can choose what I do with my life". 5000e/month is still not enough for "yeah, I fly whenever I want and where ever I want." Also monetary freedom is only one subset of freedom. Being able to pick where and how much you work are valuable too. If we assume that due to taxation we play monetary zero sum game, giving more people choice on what they work increases total freedom.
ars 11y ago
> Give everyone fuck you money. Um, if everyone has that much money, then it's not really a dramatic amount of money is it? Having enough universal basic income to live on meagerly is one thing, but it's mathematically impossible to give everyone enough for everyone to be rich.
- littletimmy 11y ago
  By fuck you money I mean enough that they have food, rent, healthcare etc guaranteed - so they can say fuck you if someone wants to exploit them. This will be roughly the amount of a PhD stipend - like $30,000 a year.
  - ars 11y ago
    That's not at all how most people use that term.
    - aaron695 11y ago
      $30,000 a year is owning ~$800,000 right now, free and clear. I have always considered this 'fuck you' money, but Googleing it seems not. I find that a little sad. If everyone else had it though it's no longer 'fuck you' money. People don't work this way.
    - logfromblammo 11y ago
      I define "fuck you money" as having sufficient income that you don't need to work any particular job to pay all your expenses, or even be careful about not burning bridges. If you have "fuck you money", when you get the memo about the new TPS report cover sheets for the 5th time, you can literally say, "Fuck you: I quit," and walk away. The exact amount required depends largely upon your expenses and lifestyle. If you are fine with living in a van down by the river, it might be only $100k. If you like things like showers and flush toilets, you may need $1M. Think of it like a suspended early retirement. If you are working, it is because you want to, not because you need to.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
robodale 11y ago
Yea, but who's going to fix the sewer lines when they break? Not me, I gots my basic income.
- mlrtime 11y ago
  The guy who gets basic income x 3?

dracht 11y ago

Where will this basic income money come from? Forced taxation, aka extortion, aka partial slavery. That's not a free society, just a different master.

littletimmy 11y ago
Taxation is not partial slavery because the money is not yours to begin with. What you "earn" is partly due to your efforts, and partly due to you utilizing the infrastructure and institutions built by everyone else. So a part of your "earnings" is society's. That part is called taxes: what you owe to those who enable you to earn. We can also put taxes on corporations instead of people. Corporations are not humans, and therefore cannot be made slaves.
- miscellaneous 11y ago
  >Taxation is not partial slavery because the money is not yours to begin with Ah, we have found the key contention. An interesting thought is to consider a world of fully mobile people - who will move and who will stay in a country with universal basic income and high taxes?
  - littletimmy 11y ago
    There are alternatives to high taxes. We could have a Georgism-inspired economic system in which the land and natural resources are publicly owned and leased from the state, but what you create is yours alone. That way, there are no "high taxes" on what you create. The universal basic income is financed wholly by the wealth from leasing everyone's land and natural resources (which is much more justifiable because land is always appropriated - never created).
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > An interesting thought is to consider a world of fully mobile people - who will move and who will stay in a country with universal basic income and high taxes? The only way you get a world full of "fully mobile people" with no barriers to relocation is if the world is one sovereignty rather than several, in which case if there is a country with UBI and high taxes, its the only one. But lots of people -- including rich ones -- who do have the practical choice to leave or stay (though they aren't fully mobile as borders and immigration policies do erect some costs and barriers to relocation) do stay in countries with relative high, progressive taxes and strong social safety nets today. I don't see why incorporate UBI into those social safety nets would change that. Apparently, civilization -- as opposed to the law of the jungle -- is attractive to people, even many rich people. Who knew?
- monort 11y ago
  Do you realize that in this framework "wage slavery" doesn't exist too? What you "earn" is partly due to your efforts, and partly due to you utilizing the infrastructure of your employer. So a part of your "earnings" is employer's.
  - littletimmy 11y ago
    Sure. What is meant by "slavery" in this context is not appropriation of a portion of labor value. It is being forced to sell your labor on the market in the first place - a process that necessarily sets up exploitative conditions for those with little market power.
    - monort 11y ago
      I don't think it's a useful slavery definition because the thing forcing you to work is nature. You are being forced to brush teeth by the same entity, that forces you to work, so in this context even teeth brushing becomes "teeth brushing slavery".
JoeAltmaier 11y ago
The 'taxation' straw man is the first thing folks think of, when encountering BI for the first time. There are alternatives. Like printing the money, which is nowhere near the issue you might think it is. The 1% own 99% of it, the rest have 1%; e.g. doubling what the rest of us have devalues it by 1%, leaving us all with plenty of wealth while eroding the fraction owned by the 1%. Its not a bad option in the current economic situation.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  Monetization is a huge deal, because once you start monetizing spending as regular policy, you undermine both confidence in the currency and confidence in the government debt; one of the whole reasons that governments have made monetary policy separate from fiscal policy through central banking is precisely to preserve that trust. While UBI itself can be managed so as not result in runaway inflation (and, unless you deliberately build a positive feedback loop into the level setting, should be self-limiting to avoid that in the long term, though the wrong initial setting could have high short-term inflation), monetizing the UBI, like monetizing government debt, is a great way to produce high average inflation, destroy government creditworthiness, and increase volatility in the currency. If you want to redistribute downward, taxing the wealthy directly is a lot more sensible than monetizing spending. And, in any case, none of the people that are opposed to taxing the rich are going to support monetization, and plenty of people that do support taxing the rich are going to oppose monetization, so it doesn't even make sense as a way of getting around the political difficulties of tax-supported UBI.
vlehto 11y ago
Increasing income increases freedom. But you get diminishing returns the more you increase income of a person. Here 500e/month is effectively "yeah, I can choose what I do with my life". 5000e/month is still not enough for "yeah, I fly whenever I want and where ever I want." Also monetary freedom is only one subset of freedom. Being able to pick where and how much you work are valuable too. If we assume that due to taxation we play monetary zero sum game, giving more people choice on what they work increases total freedom.

ars 11y ago

> Give everyone fuck you money. Um, if everyone has that much money, then it's not really a dramatic amount of money is it? Having enough universal basic income to live on meagerly is one thing, but it's mathematically impossible to give everyone enough for everyone to be rich.

littletimmy 11y ago
By fuck you money I mean enough that they have food, rent, healthcare etc guaranteed - so they can say fuck you if someone wants to exploit them. This will be roughly the amount of a PhD stipend - like $30,000 a year.
- ars 11y ago
  That's not at all how most people use that term.
  - aaron695 11y ago
    $30,000 a year is owning ~$800,000 right now, free and clear. I have always considered this 'fuck you' money, but Googleing it seems not. I find that a little sad. If everyone else had it though it's no longer 'fuck you' money. People don't work this way.
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    I define "fuck you money" as having sufficient income that you don't need to work any particular job to pay all your expenses, or even be careful about not burning bridges. If you have "fuck you money", when you get the memo about the new TPS report cover sheets for the 5th time, you can literally say, "Fuck you: I quit," and walk away. The exact amount required depends largely upon your expenses and lifestyle. If you are fine with living in a van down by the river, it might be only $100k. If you like things like showers and flush toilets, you may need $1M. Think of it like a suspended early retirement. If you are working, it is because you want to, not because you need to.
JoeAltmaier 11y ago

robodale 11y ago

Yea, but who's going to fix the sewer lines when they break? Not me, I gots my basic income.

mlrtime 11y ago
The guy who gets basic income x 3?