(Heavy satire / sarcasm)
Then when you work it would be because you want to expand beyond that minimum, or because it's a thing that you want to do, for personal reasons, to serve the community, etc.
I totally agree that society should make sure peoples basic needs are met, but don't see a reason why this should not involve trading in some of your time. So yeah, why not having to offer 20h/week to the gov to get all that? This kinda sets a minimum wage while offering everyone a way to fulfill their basic needs. What job/task the gov has/can find for you is another problem, but doesn't seem unsolvable to me.
It's also based in the paradigm of forcing people to do things rather than having faith in their willingness to contribute to the community.
I feel like my parents subscribe to this view, that this willingness comes naturally for us. It did not. Might have been different a few generations ago, but its easier than ever to live with barely any contact to a community to contribute to. So your paradigm would likely have to "drag along" an increasing number of people.
> free up time
I didn't go with 40 for a reason :) This number has to be adjusted depending on societies ability, just like a minimum wage.
> it risks creating a serf underclass
Valid concern, but probably already reality, just harder to classify and right now less done by the gov. UBI/needs provided would kind of do the same, I think. I also don't see keeping some trade aspect making class mobility harder than what we currently have right now.
Where does this minimum level of comfort come from? Somebody has to do that minimal work, and on average everyone should do their share of "paid" work. (By paid I don't strictly mean exchange of currency, but producing value that everyone sees as valuable, i.e. food)
Currently this flow of massive wealth is going into the pockets of people who need it the least and no one is asking where it is coming from.
Where does the food come from? Where does the shelter come from? Where does the heat and the clothes and the medical care come from? They come from other people's labor. Why would other people agree to labor in order to provide these things to you while you provide nothing in return?
You go to college, get a pile of debt, and now you've lost the freedom to do what you like with your time because you have to optimise for income.
Or you don't go to college, don't have debt, but can't afford a reasonable home because the collegiates voted to make it illegal to build new ones, and DEFINITELY don't want any home that isn't gigantic and doesn't have parking. No modest townhouse for you!
You decide to follow your dream and get a part time job so with the rest of your time you do a net good for the world, and you get sick. You lacked insurance. You survive, but have learned your lesson and know not to step out of line, especially since you now have huge debts.
Every aspect of our lives has become an exercising in maximising profit. And yet most don't seem to feel very wealthy. We run ourselves ragged for the sake of others. Taking as path that means earning less money and more time is considered foolish at best, irresponsible at worst.
And we're doing all this to help rip the lungs and heart of our planet apart to help a few lucky psychopaths get a brief hit on the hedonic treadmill before they die, just in time to miss the gen z'ers in a dead world cursing their name.
I think it might be better to start with nothing than with the massive negative equity many young people wind up with when starting life.
Besides for most people to be able to watch Netflix, some people will need to make Netflix. If there aren't enough people to make Netflix, something else will be made but at the end of the day there is no way nobody will do anything - if nothing else, people will be bored and actively want to do something.
I'm emphatically for people having the resources to pursue whatever the heck the want (even if that's sitting around drinking beer) but I think that most of the UBI crowd is out of touch with how the people who will most benefit from UBI will use their newfound freedom. Covering poor people's housing and food expenses isn't going to magically make them want to spend their time acting upper middle class. You give people freedom and they will act how they want, not necessarily how you want. I'd still call that a win but many will not.
You seem to be under the assumption that the majority of "poor people" behave the way they are portrayed in "reality" TV shows or whatever you're consuming that makes you think this way.
In fact most are no different from the "upper middle class", except for the amount of money they can freely spend. Do you honestly believe they're somehow wired differently just because they're poor?
Watch less TV, interact more with actual people.
You seem to be making a lot of assumptions about my life experience and who I don't associate with.
>In fact most are no different from the "upper middle class", except for the amount of money they can freely spend. Do you honestly believe they're somehow wired differently just because they're poor?
Yes, people are very much the same on some level but it's pure lunacy to pretend that one's life experience does not have any effect on shaping a person's standards and preferences. If you give a poor person a good paycheck they will probably pick a few areas to indulge but they will not magically upscale their entire lives. Their standards and tastes will take quite some time (if ever) to adapt to the lack of economic scarcity. (Obviously I'm speaking in generalizations here and my statements are subject individual variance.)
You can leave the trailer park but the trailer park will never leave you.
>Watch less TV, interact more with actual people.
Since we're sinking to this level you should get out of your gated community and internet echo chambers.
I don't doubt there are some people who would stay home and watch Netflix. I just suspect there are more people that are ground down by the daily grind and abandon their dreams.
Even if there are more unmotivated people than demotivated people, unmotivated people are low value anyway. People that lack self-motivation are never gonna be the most productive members of society so designing a system to extract work from them at the cost of wasting the time of more motivated individuals seems... backwards.
Those fortunate ones with enough wealth to have the option to just watch Netflix for a year and don't do much else, don't do that and are happy with it. And neither would the less fortunate once after an initial learning phase. Humans must learn to be free, but they can. We want to take part, show our contribution, feel proud. As soon as we have found a pleasant way to contribute, we do.
Yes, conditionless basic income would change work ethics. People who fill up supermarkets displays or serve food to unfriendly customers at unhealthy hours would maybe just stop going to work. I would be happy for them, and I hope it would happen today.
There is a lot of work that is needlessly tiring, badly paid, and in which you are badly treated, but people just stay in the status quo because they see no way out. Once there is a way out, the jobs will have to change, and that rapidly. That would be progress for society I still hope to see in my lifetime.
But... if you look at the most free animals in nature: cats, after domesticating humans and getting guaranteed safety, shelter and food. They have independently decided to sleep and murder their lives away. Their contributions to the art world via social media (a task they’ve mostly trained their humans to do) is probably the nost significant and vacuous the world has every seen. Their obsession with small mammal terminating is probably better for the biosphere.
Thank capitalism later.
This butterfly is amazing and with good story, crowdfunding should be doable. Also Bay area already spends several billions on environmental protections, why this budget did not cover this project?
Even if 50% of rare butterflies killed and sold would be better for the species than having no butterflies at all, it poses some legal conflicts and dangers for the wild population, would be trading of a rare species. With big butterflies cames a big responsability