South Korea’s dystopian nightmare
medium.com
medium.com
> Universal Basic Income (UBI) is one policy proposal that would eliminate the dependence of people on jobs...
...and replace it with a dependence on the government.
Rather than receiving an education for "a humiliating life of poverty, unrespected work, parental dependence, and limited dating options," one could receive a UBI check for a humiliating life of poverty, no work, parental dependence, and limited dating options.
> Rather than an outdated industrial-education complex that breeds overly passive and obedient workers...
...Korea would have an outdated industrial-political complex that breeds overly passive and obedient workers.
> All the time wasted showing facetime for one’s boss and all the commoditized companies endlessly competing against each other in zero-sum games could become...
...time wasted showing facetime for one's party bosses and state-capitalized companies endlessly competing against each other in zero-sum games for government favor.
UBI might be "socialist" in the sense that it is a redistribution of wealth, but it would still be within a capitalist system. Free markets, private property ownership, and employment would still exist. The difference now would be that working for an employer and being a wage slave would become an option, rather than something you need to do to not be in poverty.
Dependence on government is not ideal, but neither is their system. Most critics of UBI fail to offer superior alternatives.
Does GP know that under UBI, there is still ownership of private property, there is still primacy of wage labour (and therefore what Marx terms 'exploitation'), there is still no democratic communal control over the social means of production, there is still a class society, there is still a state. A society which has adopted UBI satisfies all the necessary requisites for a capitalist mode of production - and most importantly requires a state.
So I wonder - have the Communists miscommunicated their aims and goals and theory so as to lead people to be so misinformed, or are people ignorant (I don't use this word in a disparaging way, I am ignorant about glassmaking for example) for some other reason? More importantly, have authoritarian governments of the 20th century permanently misled people to think that Communism means "strong government"? Rather than "the withering away of the state due to the changing societal base"?
To understand the social anarchist or Communist position, someone popular in the left wing Youtube scene has made a well-edited and cogent leftist critique of UBI that came out yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J10jKdPRN9A
It is still a great shame to see comments so misinformed, such that all I must say is: read books! The anarchists, Proudhon and Bakunin and Kropotkin, the Communists, Marx and Engels, the democratic Socialists, Oscar Wilde, George Orwell and the Georgists, including Leo Tolstoy and Albert Einstein. It would do one wonders to become informed on these political philosophies.
> Communism = Soviet style fascism
In liberal capitalist societies hijacking of the state is prevented (albeit imperfectly) by competing centers of power. For example, the capitalist class vs the political class. Or the jurist class vs the legislative class. Democracy alone is insufficient because once you unify these centers of power, authoritarianism is inevitable as the population as a whole is not nimble or cohesive enough to respond to usurpation of total power.
The lower classes get screwed either way, but at least in a capitalist democracy they evidently (given the past 200+ years of political history) are more capable of extracting concessions through shifting alliances.
Seems to me you either need to nurture this power struggle, or you need to dismantle the state altogether--anarchism.
Regarding socialism, is there any correct definition? Like the term democracy, I think it's fairly fluid as practical matter. But "capitalism with a strong government and nanny state" is one, fair description. I mean, doesn't that basically describe Fabian Socialism? Indeed, hasn't almost every self-described socialist government in the world almost entirely divested itself of legal ownership of the means of production over the past 40 years? I don't think it's unfair to conceive of modern socialism as a method of wealth redistribution via taxation and regulation of the capitalist economy, though that's probably over inclusive.
At some point you have to stop discussing these forms of governments as platonic ideals and focus on their actual manifestations. Their actual manifestations provide evidence about the soundness of presumptions and the viability of structural constraints.
Kerala in India, 33 million people.
In any case, I think you're confusing correlation with causation. Violent revolutions usually result in authoritarian states whether they be far left, far right or anywhere in between. Nearly all communist governments have come about from violent revolutions.
I'm usually hesitant to back up historical instances, and I'd rather be pushing for new investigation into to methods that 21st century Marxists and Communists and anarchists in general can use to advance their cause. Of particular interest is Bookchin's "Communalism" and the writing of Slavoj Zizek, further Paul W. Cockshott's ideas of computerised central economic planning.
Orwell wrote fondly of revolutionary Catalonia.
>When you keep the centralized structure of the state, you're perpetually at risk of groups hijacking it.
This is unfortunately true. Back in Marx's time, there was some debate between the Marxists and the anarchists at the International Workingmens congresses. The anarchists wanted to do away with the state immediately, but Marx and Engels posited that this would be actively harmful - because once the workers seize control, they must secure their newfound power to suppress counterrevolutionary activities by the powers of old - the bourgeoisie.
>The lower classes get screwed either way, but at least in a capitalist democracy they evidently (given the past 200+ years of political history) are more capable of extracting concessions through shifting alliances.
The capitalist democracy has done little to reverse the enclosure of the commons in Western Europe, rights such as shorter working days, the end of child labour etc. had to be fought for by Socialist parties of the day. Although I disagree with the premise that capitalist democracy is a good way of acheiving the aims of the Socialists, some would disagree with me - Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw are examples. My core reason for distrust of the bourgeois democracy is that I view its purpose as protecting the flow of capital, the people in power are rather powerless when capital rules.
>Regarding socialism, is there any correct definition?
There are a variety, though I tend to side with what the "Socialist" philosophers and political economists of the 19th and 20th centuries have written in favour of, generally, the democratic ownership of the means of production, in tandem with the abolition of private property and the class system. We must remember Marx here:
"Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence."
>Indeed, hasn't almost every self-described socialist government in the world almost entirely divested itself of legal ownership of the means of production over the past 40 years?
Here's the thing - the abolition of private property and its functions is about no ownership, not everyone owns.
I must say I disagree with your point that we need to move beoynd ideals and into manifestations. Marx said that the job of philosophers hitherto him has been to describe the world, and that the point is to change it. To be reducing the goals which have been clear to those goals which are more severely restricted I think is a bad decision. To redefine Socialism as a policy which fits within capitalism is to miss what Socialism has been about since its very foundation - radical change and the removal of class systems. If Socialism were to change its meaning, what word would we have left? Communism? In Marx's day, these were synonymous to my knowledge. In Lenin's time, they had changed. Do they need further changing? Other than to appropriate the word to turn it into something it is not, perhaps even with nefarious intentions of luring over dissatisfied people and saying to them "This is the Socialism your friends have talked about" so as to trick them, I think not.
I insist on stopping the changing definitions, the sly replacements - for when concepts are removed from the lexicon, there's little elsewhere for them to go. Gone will be the Socialism Orwell talked about, and replaced with it will be the one Keynes never called as such!
Try replacing UBI with any of these words below and see how comical this sounds.
- Price control
- Welfare state
- High taxation
- Nationalization of private industries
- Forfeiture of property
Unless you were saying something else which I have failed to understand. But UBI most certainly is not part of Socialist policy. It is social democratic policy (and this is not to be confused with democratic Socialist policy!)
Moreover, socialism itself is not evil or fundamentally wrong just like neither is capitalism fundamentally wrong, this depends on the government. Many nordic countries have quite often skirted the thin barrier between welfare capitalism and socialism and have not combusted or achieved what you said above.
Instead UBI is championed more as a continuation of the welfare system already in many countries (read the articles defining UBI). The idea of welfare itself is a capitalist notion and UBI should not be identified with the ideas of socialism or capitalism. UBI is not an extremist idea and should be treated along the lines of a more aggressive pension/welfare policy.
After visiting Samsung HQ for work back in 2009, I usually describe Korea as the worst aspects of Confucianism and capitalism combined.
The fact is South Korea is stronger, richer, more humane than it has ever been in its long history, and we know why this happened. Don't ruin this with UBI.
Your comment almost reads like satire. The whole point of the article was to show the dystopian insanity of what a society hell-bent on competition at all costs looks like. High school kids in school 14 hours/day competing against each other for limited slots at top schools, and then competing against each other for limited slots at companies where they work 14 hours/day for low wages. Life satisfaction ranked among the worst and suicide rates the highest in the world. Blatant discrimination on physical attractiveness (hence highest rates of plastic surgery) and parental occupations is icing on the cake.
And you're concerned that addressing these issues might make the economy less competitive? That mindset is exactly the problem this article is trying to highlight.
We completely neglect happiness, and maybe we're all competing for the wrong things.
Open to alternative solutions than UBI, but I don't see anything else that's going to have a significant impact on fixing South Korea's situation.
Not sure if your background is Korean or not, but Koreans don't need to look very far to see how amazing things have gotten in South Korea. People used to literally starve to death in South Korea in less than a couple of decades ago. There was a time, when North Korea was the wealthier part of Korea and North Korea was always doing terribly. I pray that Koreans never become amnesiac to his history and never give into temptations of UBI.
You're right, people aren't starving to death. But suicide is a form of desperation that's on par with starving to death, if not worse. I pray that South Koreans realize they don't have to go along with what's expected of them.
This has to be the weakest and most ridiculous argument commonly used to justify the status quo. Are you implying that all of the suffering outlined in this article is necessary in order for citizens to not be starving and society to advance?
Same logic could be applied to 17th century conquistadors exterminating Native American populations and American plantation owners whipping their slaves. Sure there are some downsides like the whole human rights issue of genocide and slavery, but things are so much better now than they were hundreds of years ago!
People are clearly suffering in Korea and I think that mean certain things need to change, especially with major chaebols affecting politics, corruption and constraining people. Stronger and richer does not equate to happiness.
The problem probably is a lack of good job positions and a surplus of working force.
Today's problem in Korea isn't about the kind of poverty that older Koreans lived through after the Korean civil war (1960's-1970's) -- the country is way beyond that point now. Those who study 14-16 hrs day to get into top universities aren't looking for minimum wage jobs at fast food chains.
Well obviously. They study 14-16 hours/day so that they don't have to be minimum wage workers at fast food chains, because that's the only option they'll have if they go to a "shit" school.
With a UBI, the bottom rung will no longer have to work those humiliating minimum wage jobs. They'll have the freedom to pursue their own interests, whether that be entrepreneurship, the arts, etc. Those corporate wage slaves working 14 hours/day will probably work less, maybe even only part-time. Even if nothing changes, at least the option to walk away without having to stress about money will be there.
That being said, UBI isn't the solution to all of society's problems. I just think its the most urgent policy decision that needs to be implemented due to its simplicity and massive implications.