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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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UBI. Not only is it viable but it works in improving everyone's lives, not just the people receiving it.
Sure, but have you considered that this would loosen the hold capitalism has on the wage slaves? Won't someone think of the shareholders‽
At best it would prop up capitalism until we can replace it with something better.
It's literally just giving people more money to shove into the capitalist system. You don't change a system by feeding it.
I won't say it's a bad thing... but it's not a solution. It's a stop gap.
UBI will be necessary when the combination of AI and robotics creates a permanent 35+% unemployment rate. We will have to institute UBI, or reduce the population by that much. Which objective will each party choose to support, and how will they accomplish it?
One leading party often seems willing to accept war as a means to ends they care about.
In a total lack of contrast, the other leading party seems roughly equally willing to accept war as a means to ends they care about.
The bigger question that bothers me is how much war exactly will they feel is needed for any population reduction they feel is necessary?
And will it be more war than the amount of war I would have otherwise participated in, in my lifetime?
War is a useful tool to reduce populations, but fairly inefficient until they start throwing bombs around. It can't be the only strategy.
Another good strategy is to restrict access to medical care. Make it incredibly expensive, so costly that many people will choose to die, rather then burden their families with the cost.
Another good one is to end childhood vaccines. A good pandemic can wipe out millions. Of course, this is only happening in America, so the wealthy will be able to afford vaccines from foreign countries, and survive any strategic pandemics. I wouldn't be surprised if Stephen "PeeWee Himmler" Miller released a deadly virus on purpose, something like Ebola, just to speed the process along.
Then there is Climate Change, which is wreaking havoc on our environment, and causing far worst storms and floods. Restrict or even end FEMA, and our annual natural disasters can claim victims with much more efficiency.
Criminalize EVERYTHING, and throw more people in prison, where the mortality rate is much higher. Allow the military/ law enforcement to fire on protesters. Allow police to kill without consequences.
Prohibit Birthright Citizenship, allowing the deportation of millions of American citizens. Don Jr, Ivanka, and Eric are all Birthright Citizens, so they should be deported as well, but we all know that Aristocrats won't be included.
And if doing all this, and more, doesn't reduce the population fast enough, we can always go down the proven path of Death Camps.
It's probably a necessary step towards dismantling the monetary system entirely, though.
In the Star Trek future, they couldn't accomplish that until they perfected Replicator technology.
Is there a specific mention of that, or just something people assume? I googled a single reddit thread, which clearly makes me an expert (/s), and it seemed as though money was really just kind of a fuzzy concept up until they declared they didn't use money sometime around Star Trek 4.
I do remember them specifically saying that their economic system was completely changed by Replicator technology, although I don't remember who said it, or in what context. I don't even remember which show. I'm pretty sure I heard it correctly, because I remember it being a massive revelation to me. That was the single event that completely shifted all humanity away from a capitalist society.
There were no replicators in TOS
TOS was just the dress rehearsal for the real Star Trek universe.
Why not just distribute the resources themselves, rather than tokens to exchange for resources? If we have post scarcity, we won't need money
Because distributing resources equally is a bad idea since people are individuals. You're giving 1 chicken to the guy that loves chicken and the same amount to the vegetarian. If instead you give h both the money for 1 chicken they can decide whether they want the chicken or something else.
Yes, but if you do it in the form of currency without changing the system in which the currency is used, it's just feeding that system. Are capitalists suddenly going to be less greedy, and more likely to care about their compatriots instead of eager to exploit them because we give them more power and more money?
No. They won't. They'll just find better ways to exploit this sudden surge of basically free money.
Sure, other stuff needs to change as well, but using currency for an UBI is the easiest and fastest way to implement it.
I mean... yeah... that's what UBI is.
I was criticizing UBI as a concept, not how it's implemented.
I find it funny who ubi proponents say we need UBI because capitalism failed to have wages match cost of living and simultaneously say UBI will fix it with capitalism.
Housing is expensive because there isn't enough. If capitalism could fix it, then housing would have at a minimum matched inflation and should have decreased in price because of technology improvements. So giving people more money absolutely cannot fix the housing crisis. UBI would be a handout for landlords.
When demand is the problem in a supply/demand economy, you can't fix it with more demand (cash).
Capitalism means that they stop building before the price dips below wildly profitable, because capital is risk adverse. Capitalism won't, not can't, fix these problems.
Given that capitalism is a system, not an individual with intention, "won't" is the wrong word.
Along with UBI, there also needs to be UBH, and other basic needs.
You don't need currency for that. You just need a request system. And ideally some form of moral rejection mechanism that refuses to distribute sentient beings as resources. I didn't say it had to be distributed equally just because there's no money.
Chicken and vegetarian was just an example, also the chicken was implicitly dead in my example so it was no longer sentient, also also there might be non moral reasons, which paint color do we give people for their walls? How often? Etc etc etc.
In the request system you propose there needs to be some sort of pointing or valuation, requesting a car should not be equivalent to requesting an apple. Whatever form of valuation you use for that, there's your currency. Not to mention that for the requesting system to be able to work the government would need to own all products so it can redistribute them according to requests, and what would it do if 100 people requested something that only 50 were made? It's a nice idea but it becomes very complicated very fast, whereas using currency takes away all of that complication and gives you something tangible that could be implemented tomorrow instead of in 20 years being very generous.
Just because something is easier to implement doesn't mean it will work better.
Honestly, that's the biggest hurdle our current economic systems are facing. People go for the easy option that seems like it should work instead of the longer term plan that has more flexibility and chance for success.
The problem with your suggestion is that it still hinges on the capitalist system to provide for people. And thus is far easier to exploit.
Yeah sure, but you have got to be realistic, you're talking about a 20/50 year plan even if you get everyone to agree with it. Yes, Capitalism is bad, yes there are problems with UBI, but the thing you're proposing is impossible, whereas UBI is something that could be implemented tomorrow, and would set a good foundation to move things in the right direction. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good.
Oh, is that all
There's a few reasons. Firstly greed is a motivator, and people work hard if they believe they'll receive more for more effort. This gets people to go out and generate the resources that need to be distributed. Second, fungible tokens allow people to trade on the open market instead of having to find a particular person who is willing to trade say, a worm gear for a bale or two of cotton. The token is the middle man that allows someone trying to sell something sell to someone who doesn't have what the seller plans to finally trade for. That's why money started to exist in the first place.
Even in a communist system, there needs to be a way to transfer the results of labor into the things a person needs. Money is that way. Even if it means everyone gets the same amount of money to buy what they need. Everyone's resource needs are different. You can't just say everyone gets the exact same everything.
Finally, we're not post-scarcity. Not really. Until resource manufacture is so automated that it doesn't require people to do labor to acquire it, we either pay people to do the labor or we force them to via slavery. For that reason alone, we need money.
As I said to the other person, there can be a donation and request system to make sure everyone gets what they need, without tying money into it and having this weird limit of the amount of stuff people can get, and tying the idea of value to it all.
UBI would be amazing for the economy. It's basically Trickle UP economics. The money will still eventually end up in the pocket of some rich guy, but at least it will grease the gears of the economy on the way up.