Why Basic Jobs Are Better Than Basic Incomes

This idea is just weird. The author has proposed a list of things he likes (bakeries, breweries, fresh food) and wants to institute some kind of plan to completely decimate the existing small bakeries, breweries and farmers that already exist in smaller communities.

It conveniently ignores the real problem that makes an underclass of the unemployable: automation. You can see this most starkly in small towns across the first world. Once prosperous small communities of 5,000 to 25,000 people used to have masses of low-skilled labour jobs in the post offices, banks and small businesses. All of those paper shuffling jobs disappeared with the computer.

The masses of labourers that used to be required to make roads: gone to heavy equipment.

The masses of labourers that used to be required for farming: gone to heavy equipment.

Small factories and local assembly of equipment: gone to global shipping.

Nobody really mourned those jobs, they were tough, dirty, boring or a combination of all three at the same time. Yet here we are, despite massive advances in education, with a section of the community which is frankly ill-suited to any kind of "knowledge work" or whatever BS we were all sold when the factories disappeared under neo-liberalism and that "new jobs in new industries" would be created. They somehow failed to realise that the ratio would be 1:25 or so of new jobs vs. the old labouring.

Yet we have this strange idealisation of the protestant work ethic that pervades all the levels of those lucky enough to have escaped automation (so far at least). We stupidly work long hours, get subjected to increasingly absurd surveillance by employers and drop to our knees in thanks that we aren't left behind, and foster resentment at the idle poor.

We have had our UBI experiment here in Australia thanks to Covid and it was unreservedly a massive success. It's time to just ignore the noise and clamour of big business trying to keep everybody enslaved and flip the script so that they must treat everybody better to keep them. UBI might not be forever once it's instituted, it might turn out that in particular parts of our history it is the correct thing to do to subsidise the living of ordinary people rather than corporate interests.

edit: One other thing that is decimating communities the world over is the direction of where our money is going. As an example, gaming is a massive industry that simply hoovers money out of communities and returns none. Online shopping does something very similar - it used to be that your local electronics store sold you something at a fat markup, but employed half a dozen people to deliver your expensive TV so more of that money stayed local. I am hoping that the trend to working from home doesn't fizzle out as that is the only way most communities are going to be able to survive the giant international money hoover.