The idea that you absolutely must work hard in exchange for the necessities of your life, is so deeply ingrained in our collective consciousness, like a fundamental law of conservation, that it seems a lot of people cannot conceive otherwise.
I think the real fallacy beneath the surface is that if we do something like this people will just totally stop working.
A few will, but most will use their newfound flexibility to shift what they work on: explore other career options, create art and culture, etc. Overall there will likely be a lot more entrepreneurship, invention, science, art, literature, and music.
It's tied into the far right's religious-based doctrine of original sin view of humanity: we are miserable evil disgusting monsters who must be beaten and cudgeled into exhibiting any form of virtue. If it weren't for life-or-death struggle we would all sit around, drink beer, play video games, and probably screw goats. It's the same mentality behind strict physical discipline of children... if you spare the rod, the kid will grow up to be lazy or a monster.
Besides, the people who would completely stop working are the lazy people nobody would want to hire in the first place. You're not losing much by taking those folks out of the work force.
That's not why communism didn't work. Communism didn't work because they tried to micromanage every aspect of the economy. It was central planning that failed, not guaranteed minimums.
A guaranteed minimum income without economic micromanagement or other central planning is what I'd like to see tried.
I lived in Russia for several years. Communism didn't work because people didn't have a strong incentive to work. They also lost sight of how to efficiently organize resources.
I can't tell you how many times I walked into a store and the clerk was reading a book and when I tried to ask a question they just ignored me or shrugged me off without bothering to even try to help. Sometimes they will flat out lie about whether they have something in stock to get you out of the store.
Another example, I can go to a market and there are 5 old ladies in a row all selling potatoes. I can't find any carrots or onions and so I have to walk another mile to a different market to get them. Instead, one of them could sell carrots at a premium so I don't have to walk so far, and another onions.
>I can't tell you how many times I walked into a store and the clerk was reading a book and when I tried to ask a question they just ignored me or shrugged me off without bothering to even try to help.
>Communism didn't work because they tried to micromanage every aspect of the economy.
No, sorry, you're completely wrong. Communism didn't work because it destroyed every incentive for industrious, honest labour, supplanting healthy competitive free-market economics with a landscape of scheming and parasitism as people scrambled to exploit one another.
Communism failed (and will fail every single time another stupid generation which hasn't even bothered to pay attention to the past implements its ideas again) because, under Communism, there is no economy.
Communism is a terrible, terrible idea. Just like all coercive redistribution, which, proportional to the degree of redistribution, destroys economic growth. It's no accident that, other than a handful of tight-knit low-population nation cum communities with large oil stakes, the number of socialist policies enacted by a legislature correlates directly with poor economic performance.
The tragedy is that populations suffering from the negative effects of these policies delude themselves into thinking that an expansion of the policies will fix their woes, rather than hard work and smart investment. It's a vicious circle.
Great, I look forward to the day when you read The Gulag Archipelago and a first-year economics textbook and realise that you're talking out your ass. Maybe throw in some Hayek while you're at it. Good luck!
This might be true in the US, where both political parties are right-wing and flaunt "socialist" as a curse-word every day.
I think BI is something that cant and shouldnt happen country-wide one day to the other. Cities should start doing it first. Cities like.. SF? which have a ridicolous surplus of money the city squanders, while still having a lower class without medical care.
So you view a program that gives away money to some people and a program that gives away money to all people, as so completely unrelated as to be utterly incomparable?
Not utterly incomparable, but you seemed dismissive of implementing a BI program in SF on the basis of another social program, seemingly without regard to what is different about it.
Cellphones and the Internet were adopted on a person by person basis. It became easy to imagine yourself with them once the neighbour got it.
Basic Income takes much more buy in from more people to get off the ground.
I like the idea of it being attempted on the city level though, I'd never thought of that. It's likely the smallest scale that would work with the least amount of individual buy in required.
I seem to remember that in 1994 most people understood the usefulness of both technologies, especially cell phones. Cost was the real hinderance. Though if we go one more year, by 1995, internet access was starting to become common in the home.
