Let’s do universal basic income, make the essentials free, and let people live life.
What you are proposing is wildly unrealistic and not even Communism espouses the idea.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” - Karl Marx / Étienne-Gabriel Morelly / whoever else.
It doesn’t say “From each according to their desire, to each according to their want.” and that’s because no society that hasn’t reached Star Trek replicator levels of post-scarcity could survive such a plan.
As Frederick Hicks noted "There are no issues with this principle as long as there is enough of everything for everybody. But this is not the case and probably never will be, because “man’s wants tend always to outstrip his ability to supply them… [Therefore] it will be necessary to have an agency for determining relative amounts of men’s needs.”
In most societies today the determining Agency is the Free Market via the value of your labor. In a Communist (Marxist?) society that Agency would be a Committee of Workers but in either case there exists, and must exist, a mechanism to stop the free loaders and abusers.
This isn’t a defense of today’s hyper-capitalist societies either, we need to be doing far better at reigning that shit in and taking care of people. It is however a push-back against the idea that existence should be without cost and that anything requiring effort needs to be enjoyable.
I think that UBI and capitalism are helpful, BUT the latter should solely be for luxuries, such as McMansions, vacations, gardening, media, or Ford-2500 mega trucks. Capitalism is horrible at caring for society, but is excellent for fostering individuality. Problem is, our overlords conflate society and individuality as being the same.
What we need is to prevent necessity and luxury from mixing. Money should be purely for upgrading lifestyle, not a determination of whether you get to eat, rest, have family, or receive healthcare.
There’s a big gap between “Food, housing, and health care is provided to all” and “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
The former is free existence, the latter demands work as the price for societal support.
What you are wishing for is basically fully automated luxury gay space communism and that cannot exist outside of a true post scarcity world. We do not live in that world.
What’s being proposed here is free existence until someone decides that they’ve found a job that they like. That’s why Marx, et. all said it the way that they did.
There has never in human history existed a society, government, or economic system built around the idea of “We’ll cover all your life expenses so feel free to do as much or as little as you want!”
It cannot work unless we have literal Star Trek Replicator technology so that material things have no real cost or value.
What you are proposing is wildly unrealistic and not even Communism espouses the idea.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” - Karl Marx / Étienne-Gabriel Morelly / whoever else.
It doesn’t say “From each according to their desire, to each according to their want.” and that’s because no society that hasn’t reached Star Trek replicator levels of post-scarcity could survive such a plan.
As Frederick Hicks noted "There are no issues with this principle as long as there is enough of everything for everybody. But this is not the case and probably never will be, because “man’s wants tend always to outstrip his ability to supply them… [Therefore] it will be necessary to have an agency for determining relative amounts of men’s needs.”
In most societies today the determining Agency is the Free Market via the value of your labor. In a Communist (Marxist?) society that Agency would be a Committee of Workers but in either case there exists, and must exist, a mechanism to stop the free loaders and abusers.
This isn’t a defense of today’s hyper-capitalist societies either, we need to be doing far better at reigning that shit in and taking care of people. It is however a push-back against the idea that existence should be without cost and that anything requiring effort needs to be enjoyable.
There’s a big gap between “Food, housing, and health care is provided to all” and “take whatever you want, man”.
I think that UBI and capitalism are helpful, BUT the latter should solely be for luxuries, such as McMansions, vacations, gardening, media, or Ford-2500 mega trucks. Capitalism is horrible at caring for society, but is excellent for fostering individuality. Problem is, our overlords conflate society and individuality as being the same.
What we need is to prevent necessity and luxury from mixing. Money should be purely for upgrading lifestyle, not a determination of whether you get to eat, rest, have family, or receive healthcare.
There’s a big gap between “Food, housing, and health care is provided to all” and “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
The former is free existence, the latter demands work as the price for societal support.
What you are wishing for is basically fully automated luxury gay space communism and that cannot exist outside of a true post scarcity world. We do not live in that world.
What part of “basic” do you not understand?
None.
What’s being proposed here is free existence until someone decides that they’ve found a job that they like. That’s why Marx, et. all said it the way that they did.
There has never in human history existed a society, government, or economic system built around the idea of “We’ll cover all your life expenses so feel free to do as much or as little as you want!”
It cannot work unless we have literal Star Trek Replicator technology so that material things have no real cost or value.