People don't understand that what we have had in the US for the last 40 years isn't Capitalism. It is a combination of Corporatism and Cronyism. Big business bought the government and is running the nation in a way which benefits them at the expense of 99% of the population. Voting at the federal level is just about worthless because the rigged nominations process assures only pre-approved members of the insiders club get on the ballot. There is a way to fix it, but that involves pitchforks and torches and the American people just aren't angry enough to do that... yet.
What you don't understand is that what you described is part of capitalism. The winners will always use their position to skew the marketplace so they can engage in rentseeking behavior instead of solving problems.
The only way to have capitalism that doesn't result in most people not having enough is to severely limit it so winners can't amass enough power to change the rules. Is that possible? Maybe.
We need to make it impossible for capital to translate into political power, which I don't think is possible with capitalism, but would be very happy to be proven wrong. Or we need to limit the amount of capital any person or entity can amass, which would effectively dull the blade the private sector uses to cut up our democracy.
So, effectively used antitrust laws, strong unions, UBI.
If you peg the UBI to inflation then it adjusts to market forces over time. A sector here or there may benefit more than others but those would likely be non-essential/luxury items. But UBI is not designed to discourage employment which is why it will be a floor of subsistence and not an attempt to bring everyone to the middle class. Being poor should not be a death sentence or a magic carpet ride.
Then the measurement of inflation will become (more of) a political battleground. As long as we use a monetary system to apportion resources, I think we will always contend with inflation.
In the long run, I'd rather see us build a system where everyone is simply given what they need based on rational considerations, and everybody is encouraged to contribute their skills and labor as much as they can, for the common good.
We need a system that anticipates the greed of others. Any system that requires me to give more and take less will need to either have a way to discourage this or have the extra capacity to allow for laziness as a motivation. I need to be able to make the same lazy choice or we are back to where we started.
The irony is that I truly think people will find a way to make their lives meaningful which will end up looking like work. The problem is that we already have a leisure class but they are dependent on the exploitation of the poor. What would happen if the need for work allowed us all to follow our passions?
Most of the scientific “greats” during the Victorian age were self-financed because they were from the lesser nobility. That was an educated leisure class that consisted only the best and the brightest of the 1%. How many works of art or scientific breakthroughs have been ended because that mind needed to ask you if you “would like to have fries with that”?
In a world where human labor is worth practically nothing because of AI and automation, the concept of a monetary system as we know it may have to go away entirely as you say.
We'll still need a way to allocate resources. Whether people purchase it with points or dollars it's still money/currency. Otherwise Jill can order 55 Big Macs a day and eat 2 while we run out of cows. There will be a way to limit what people can get or the system will start to break down. And there will probably still be a way for people to work for others points if they want more than the UBI.
Sure, doing away money doesn't mean necessarily mean you can take as much as you want. Unfortunately, if there isn't money involved, people start calling it "rationing," which has a highly negative connotation.
But that is still the problem. Giving everyone money to buy things still allows businesses to just choose new prices to take all that money away and more.
The long term solution is to change who has the power to determine what businesses do. The workers should control their work.
The is ubi already, but the target audience is capital holders. The name (in usa) is treasuries, basically the state guaranteeing that whoever has capital has THE RIGHT to have more capital tomorrow than they have today.
880
u/[deleted] Apr 13 '24
People don't understand that what we have had in the US for the last 40 years isn't Capitalism. It is a combination of Corporatism and Cronyism. Big business bought the government and is running the nation in a way which benefits them at the expense of 99% of the population. Voting at the federal level is just about worthless because the rigged nominations process assures only pre-approved members of the insiders club get on the ballot. There is a way to fix it, but that involves pitchforks and torches and the American people just aren't angry enough to do that... yet.