Personally, I can't begin to theorise what the best way forward is. A Universal Basic Income system always sounds great, but where the funding comes from and what effect it's implementation would have, what effect it would have on peoples aspirations, I can't begin to piece it all together.
You always hear people in work say that if they didn't have to work so much, they would do x, be y, practice more z. However various events (notably for me, Coronavirus furlough beyond the initial lockdowns in the UK) show that this rarely materialises. There is simply too many distractions in most peoples lives (many being products of capitalism, like our beloved tech industry which is 90% distraction economy).
On the other hand, our current system is one in which many people who don't really want to work are made to work, or people have to work in jobs they don't like and they do the least required. I've worked alongside terrible colleagues. Something like UBI would at least get people like this to piss off out of the workforce and make space for somebody who actually somewhat cared about the job. I get the "minimum wage, minimum effort" phrase, but these people aren't holding minimum wage jobs. The national productivity (notoriously bad in the UK) would be much better if those who wanted to work did so, and those who didn't want to could just live off of a UBI.
On the other hand, maybe I'm becoming more pessimistic, but I think we just have tons of companies offering redundant products and services, whose existence only really serves to worsen the environment, individual health and the health of society. I understand that under full capitalism all of these things are viable product and they serve to offer choice and competition, but a supermarket is now roughly 50-50 real food and junk (plus variations of junk). We're dealing with high levels of food and substance abuse, high levels of media and technology overuse. As a programmer, whenever I see a new app or website become popular, a lot of the time the first thing I think is "why".
I feel personally, and I may be wrong, the only way to fix any of this is to dial it back (degrowth), implement a UBI and to change a huge amount of people's standards and expectations, which I know probably sounds radical.
The way we live right now, largely as a result of the products of capitalism, is not right. It's not right to chug Coca Cola as if it is water, it's not right to spend hours every day staring at pointless content on glowing rectangles, and it's not right that we all eat and consume as much resources as possible while exercising and outputting as little as possible. Our sources of entertainment are superficial and the long term victim of all of it is, is our physical and mental health, as well as our time and the quality of the environment we live in.
Aren't those that want to work, already working? And those that don't want to work but are doing the bare minimum to keep their job are still accomplishing something.
So only keeping the motivated people would make net production go down, I'd think.
Personally, I can't begin to theorise what the best way forward is. A Universal Basic Income system always sounds great, but where the funding comes from and what effect it's implementation would have, what effect it would have on peoples aspirations, I can't begin to piece it all together.
You always hear people in work say that if they didn't have to work so much, they would do x, be y, practice more z. However various events (notably for me, Coronavirus furlough beyond the initial lockdowns in the UK) show that this rarely materialises. There is simply too many distractions in most peoples lives (many being products of capitalism, like our beloved tech industry which is 90% distraction economy).
On the other hand, our current system is one in which many people who don't really want to work are made to work, or people have to work in jobs they don't like and they do the least required. I've worked alongside terrible colleagues. Something like UBI would at least get people like this to piss off out of the workforce and make space for somebody who actually somewhat cared about the job. I get the "minimum wage, minimum effort" phrase, but these people aren't holding minimum wage jobs. The national productivity (notoriously bad in the UK) would be much better if those who wanted to work did so, and those who didn't want to could just live off of a UBI.
On the other hand, maybe I'm becoming more pessimistic, but I think we just have tons of companies offering redundant products and services, whose existence only really serves to worsen the environment, individual health and the health of society. I understand that under full capitalism all of these things are viable product and they serve to offer choice and competition, but a supermarket is now roughly 50-50 real food and junk (plus variations of junk). We're dealing with high levels of food and substance abuse, high levels of media and technology overuse. As a programmer, whenever I see a new app or website become popular, a lot of the time the first thing I think is "why".
I feel personally, and I may be wrong, the only way to fix any of this is to dial it back (degrowth), implement a UBI and to change a huge amount of people's standards and expectations, which I know probably sounds radical.
The way we live right now, largely as a result of the products of capitalism, is not right. It's not right to chug Coca Cola as if it is water, it's not right to spend hours every day staring at pointless content on glowing rectangles, and it's not right that we all eat and consume as much resources as possible while exercising and outputting as little as possible. Our sources of entertainment are superficial and the long term victim of all of it is, is our physical and mental health, as well as our time and the quality of the environment we live in.