Pinky
Anon OpinAs yet another UBI trial rolls past showing that it works really well, it's hard not to conclude that the main reason nobody adopts it is because bad employers don't want to give up their leverage over the desperate and poor to work in shit conditions for pittance.
DressToKILT@anon_opin You don't have to clarify "bad."
Mike Taylor ๐ฆ@anon_opin I don't think it's that. I think it's just so counter-intuitive that it would work, that people find it hard to believe all the accumulating evidence.
ๅปๅข็ซ ๐๐๐โโฌ๐๐โโฌ๐โโฌ@mike @anon_opin I think it's definitely that. Notice that companies are excited about AI taking over people's jobs, but not suggesting giving everyone UBI because they won't need to work? Because the whole point is to force poor people into more and more desperate situations.
@Haikyoneko @anon_opin I prefer to follow Hanlon's razor.
@mike @anon_opin I honestly hope you're right.
Proto Himbo European@mike @Haikyoneko @anon_opin For most people, maybe this applies. For the people with the means to make UBI happen, who actively prevent it, I think we have several decades of evidence adding up to malice.
@guyjantic @Haikyoneko @anon_opin I don't think so. I think any politician in power would find it hard to remain in power while advocating a policy that most voters think (even if quite wrongly) can't possibly work. It will take a long, hard road of education to get past this. I don't think "just have a non-evil prime minister" is a functioning shortcut.
@mike @Haikyoneko @anon_opin You will notice I did not say anything that reasonably reduces to "the problem is an evil prime minster."
I'm not just talking about government leaders. I'm talking about the hundreds of CEOs of large health insurance companies, the many CEOs and upper management of large companies (hundreds of thousands? IDK) whose employee turnover contingencies would change with UBI, reducing their ability to set working conditions. The amount of money paid to lobbyists every year to avoid single-payer healthcare (in the USA) is pretty good evidence that, as an overall group, these folks are consciously, knowingly fighting social safety nets that could reduce their profits.
The Uruk-Hai are often motivated by different things than those of us down in the trenches.
"Malice versus incompetence" isn't binary, really. There's a continuum (at least one):
From: Incapable of reasoning beyond my puritanical upbringing plus all my friends think this way plus I lack any challenging information in my mediasphere
To: Machiavellian manipulation for fun and profit
Big-name conservative influencers and many politicians are probably closer to endpoint 1, above. Many religious leaders are somewhere in the middle. Most people are closer to endpoint 2.
Your straw man gave me a chance to type out a more full response.
@mike @anon_opin "Give people who need money the money they need instead of trapping them in a system that guarantees they will remain poor and possibly die from medical debt if they dare quit their jobs" is only counter-intuitive to people who have been acculturated with a particular worldview, reinforced by other people like them.
"Counter-intuitive" is culture.
@guyjantic @anon_opin I don't think that's true. Most people, however fair-minded and generously inclined, when they first hear the idea "Let's have the state give absolutely everyone a fixed monthly payment that is enough to live on", will immediately think "Nice idea, but it would never work".
botvolution@mike @guyjantic @anon_opin
Mike, it's dreary cunts like you banging on about how it can't happen that guarantees it can't happen.
Mike, it's dreary cunts like you banging on about how it can't happen that guarantees it can't happen.
@botvolution It's been nice knowing you.
@mike @anon_opin That's why we keep talking and keep publicizing the research that shows it has a pretty high likelihood of working1
1 "Working" is also not a binary concept, but it's faster to say that than to say "high likelihood that the resulting sociopolitical-economic situation would in result in significant reduction in suffering and increases in many important outcomes, including economic ones, in the short and medium terms, and would likely have synergistic effects in the long term, though of course it would require oversight and a willingness to change tracks if this stopped being true, which incidentally are features of the current system that seem to be lacking."
@guyjantic @anon_opin Yes, and rightly! I love seeing these studies turn on on Mastodon; I will love it even more when I start seeing them in the Guardian and maybe one day the Telegraph or even the Mail. That's when we'll get the political will that we need.
(Agreed on the summary "working"! ๐)
Tubemeister@anon_opin It's kind of hard to not think a lot of the resistance is rooted in the idea of having to pay the cleaner enough to make them *want* to do the job when the whole "or starve" thing has been fixed.
foundseed@anon_opin the class mechanism that capitalism employs requires a perpetually hungry underclass. Without a class of people under threat of starvation, most jobs wouldn't have workers. If there was no socio-economic punishment for being poor, people wouldn't reach for soul grinding jobs. And those are the ones capitalists need most. Class being fluid under capitalism is a threat presented as an opportunity.
๐ฎ๐จ๐๐ฆ๐๐ฉ ยท๐ฆ๐๐๐ก๐ฑ@anon_opin these kinds of policies are possible if you have a strong and independent labor movement, strong unions, the ability to call a general strike, and a disciplined socialist party leading the charge.
Without these, we have little hope of holding the rich in check. Progressive liberals don't have the institutional support to pass UBI programs with all the attendant checks on the rich to prevent them from sabotaging the economy to "prove" that "UBI doesn't work".
These are all things we can start building today.
Possumantha@anon_opin ok so what if we all get to try on UBI, as a treat, permanently?
ipod squirrel ๐ง๐ฟ๏ธ@anon_opin and that, readers, is what we call reserve army of labour