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Sentimentalizing about drinking tea around a candle resting on a table of nice wood is all fine and dandy, but let's put aside the images of upper middle class
by bobthechef 9y ago
Sentimentalizing about drinking tea around a candle resting on a table of nice wood is all fine and dandy, but let's put aside the images of upper middle class comforts and imagine your local butcher embedded in a family and a local community. He's providing a service people need and he's receiving money for his work which he uses to support his family and keep his business running. There is a network of interdependence in communities that also extends into the economic sphere of life. The butcher's trade, craft, and work are meaningful and the meaning exists in that web of relations.
The butcher's motives are complex, but one motive is that his work is also for the sake of supporting himself and his family. His relationship with his family, his wife, his kids, is also complex, but part of it is the (at least partial) reliance on their husband and father in an economic sense.
What does UBI do to the butcher and his relationship to his family and to his community?
- fulafel 9y agoAre you concerned that the butcher will stop butchering, because he doesn't like his job and would rather live frugally on just UBI without additional income from his job? And his partner would leave him, because the relationship was motivated only by financial dependence and also prefers a frugal UBI-only sustenance? After which progressives would cheer for both these developments and also because meat is unethical, and conservatives would have a case how it would destroy economy. I don't know, I'm sure there would be some decrease in economic activity from life changes by people who hate their jobs and have reluctant relationships held together by financial dependencies. But these would be probably be more than compensated by the productive impacts on people's lives.