Chicago creates one of the nation’s largest ‘guaranteed basic income’ programs

Just as a matter of principle, was it more moral to depose Saddam Hussein and give Iraqis their "freedom" even though it resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and untold atrocities, including inducing the Syrian civil war and the rise of ISIS? Was it possible to have deposed Saddam by force while giving Iraq and the surrounding region a soft landing? (I tend to think anything is possible, so the better question is how likely was it that anybody could have threaded that needle?)

The point I'm trying to make here is that "nation building" isn't a straightforward endeavor. Domestic social welfare policies are fundamentally that--nation building. Advocates on both the left and right even use the same lexicon--oppression, freedom, etc. Most people who have lived through the past 20 years understand that in the context of foreign policy the line from A (worse social situation) to B (better social situation) is most definitely not a straight line, it can't be decreed even if you throw money at it, and things can easily go sideways. Yet for domestic policies that hard earned lesson (which sadly had to be re-learned in the foreign policy context with blood for the umpteenth time) is completely ignored.

Cultures aren't static things. Therein lie numerous dilemmas and paradoxes. It's sort of like voting--why vote when your individual vote doesn't count? The answer is that your vote counts if you (and enough people in your community) believe it counts. Social change doesn't proceed in a linear, mechanical fashion, to say the least. Rather, the most important buttons that need to be pressed are often the ones that seem the least relevant or obvious--sometimes the consequence you're attempting to achieve (e.g. some deep sense of social equity) is actually a necessary prerequisite for the change you're attempting to enact (e.g. massive transfers of wealth, a lower GINI coefficient).

I don't see basic income programs being nearly as effective as people expect them to be unless they're preceded by or simultaneous with other, deeper changes in social expectations and national identity. I mean, we have several examples of countries with far more comprehensive programs. Iran had a basic income. Several extraordinarily rich Middle Eastern countries basically throw money at their citizenry to quell political discontent, and do so as regular stipends or pensions that people very much come to rely upon. Indeed, throwing money at people regardless of need has historically been the preserve of authoritarian regimes. Do we really think these polities are stronger for having these programs? If they're not stronger, what liberties did those payments actually buy those people that directly providing basic necessities according to need couldn't have provided, except perhaps a moderately more efficient program (ignoring fraud, even though fraud tends to be a function of pre-existing social cohesiveness).

Japan achieved a degree of social cohesiveness and professed life happiness that was the envy of the world. In many ways it still is the envy of the world even in its degraded state. And it was entirely based on guaranteed employment, not guaranteed payments. As guaranteed employment disappears, they're learning that it's very difficult to buy their way back to that situation. Is the loss of employment cause or consequence of the malaise? IMO, what Japan enjoyed had little to do with employment or income, per se, but with how people related to the society--not just what they received, but their ability to fulfill their well-defined social obligations. And that sense of purpose preceded the social contract of employment. Note that until recently Japan didn't have a large class of exorbitantly wealthy people; people in that position willingly forewent larger salaries for several generations.

Today we like to look at Scandinavian countries for models of social development. But arguably the fundamental dynamics behind their success are similar to those in Japan. Compare the Law of Jante with it's counterpart(s) in Japan, which we like to cynically express in the proverb. "the nail that sticks up gets hammered." Notice how these basic principles of civic life have nothing to do with one's freedom to disengage from society and pursue your own personal interests, yet by everybody adopting them those freedoms may be more fully realized than in societies who profess them as their primary goal.

At heart I'm still an anarchist. I have faith that humanity can boundlessly increase wealth and equity while also deconstructing systems of violence. It's just a very long, arduous process which will require alot of non-obvious twists and turns. And I suspect that what replaces external violence may very well be some of the seemingly "oppressive" norms for which modern (especially Anglo-American) cultures often criticize Japan and some other countries. Even modern American culture tends to see 1950s-era American culture as hopelessly oppressive, even when stripped of caricatured prejudice--actual racial and class oppression was much worse than the popular narratives describe, partly because people today can't even fathom it--without appreciating that that unity of purpose (however "unfair") is what made possible the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s wherein privileged classes relinquished much of their privilege in a manner we haven't seen since.