This is an absolutely terrific teardown of the problems with “Universal Basic Jobs.” It looks like Basic Jobs will be an issue in the Democratic primaries, so if you’re likely to vote Democrat, this is an important read.<\/p>\n
I grudgingly forgive capitalism the misery it causes, because it\u2019s the engine that lifts countries out of poverty. It\u2019s a precondition for a free and prosperous society; attempts to overthrow it have so consistently led to poverty, tyranny, or genocide that we no longer believe its proponents\u2019 earnest oaths that\u00a0this time<\/i>\u00a0they\u2019ve got it right. For right now, there\u2019s no good alternative.<\/p>\n
But if we have a basic jobs guarantee, it will cause all the same misery, and I won\u2019t forgive it. The flimsy justifications we can think up won\u2019t be up to the task of justifying the vast suffering it will cause. We can\u2019t excuse it as necessary to produce the goods and services we rely on. We can\u2019t excuse it as a necessary condition for political freedom. If a worker asks \u201cwhy?\u201d, our only answer will be \u201cbecause Cory Booker thought a basic jobs guarantee would play better among the electorate than basic income, now get back to packing boxes and collapsing from dehydration\u201d. There\u00a0will<\/i>\u00a0be an alternative: a basic income guarantee. We will have rejected it.<\/p>\n
I feel like as a quasi-libertarian, I sometimes downplay how awful private industry, capitalism, and the modern workplace are. If so, I apologize. The only possible excuse for defending such a flood of misery is what inevitably happens when people meddle with it. But the price of such morally tenuous greater-good style reasoning is that you need to stay hyper-aware of times when you\u00a0don\u2019t<\/i>\u00a0need to defend the system, when there\u00a0is<\/i>\u00a0a chance to do better without destroying everything. I think basic income is such a chance. And I think basic jobs are a tiny modification to the idea, which destroys its potential and perpetuates all the worst parts of the existing system.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Basic Income, Not Basic Jobs: Against Hijacking Utopia<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n