[pp.int.general] Basic income - how does that fit into the pirate ideology?

[Antonio Garcia]

Inconditional basic income is the prima facie simplistic solution to make everybody equal without too much effort, a way highly appreciated by way too many. It is easy to be in favour of the pretended results of IBI, if one does not bother to do the math and social engineering. Anyone a little more preoccupied by the mere logic and really thinking about the benefit for the whole of humanity should be way more reserved about it.

Otherwise, one should start thinking a little bit more when one finds himself with some strange bedfellows when campaigning for that idea.

IBI is like the banking bailout... it creates an unavoidable obligation for the nation to cough up cash... without too much of an idea about how it is going to pay for it. Most people suggest the same money that is used to provide social welfare now be used for it, without checking if that same money would eventually keep being available for social welfare in the near future.

A scheme that would pay unconditionally will end up paying more in total than present social welfare, and if income for the state diminishes, its debt will skyrocket even more.

The strangest bedfellow IBI may find are corporations.

Why? Because easy get, easy go... people would spend way less responsibly, and specific businesses would tap the constant flood of unconditional money providing psychologically attractive rubbish with the highest possible benefit margin. Say hi to homo ludicus. Remember what the best example of a possible outcome would be... The battery cocoons of Matrix? Full of sensation junkies?

Nations lacking income to pay decent amounts will be paying less and less, while corporations providing emotional junk to fill peoples dead time will mercilessly fight the competition... piracy :( to cope all the market for bored time paid for by the unconditional income while it lasts. Corporations wont pay when they take over governing from the state, they will only cash in.

Who will end up playing animated furniture for a living in the Soylent Green we will all have been begging for?

Fools.

There is no simple alternative for the compensation for effort scheme. If nobody makes an effort, nobody gets compensation. If only some make an effort, there is not enough to compensate all.

If the problem is way too uneven distribution, the solution is not to simply mandate even distribution... the effort has to be done to analyse why some insist in accumulating way beyond what at first sight should constitute a fair share. Try to look at it some other way, and those will go on accumulating under whatever new circumstances you create, even thanking you for making it way easier for them to have a guaranteed stream of steady income. 

What links way too many of those subjects is that the deep thinking about them that we do nears ZERO, as always the easy way to think about things.

Too much of what we want or try is too simplistic and too effortless... it may be fun to want it, but it is hardly realistic to believe you are going to get it... unless it benefits somebody else who will be doing efforts to get it behind the scene. 

Useful idiots anyone?

Yes, too many :( .


Antonio.



> Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:56:43 +0200
> From: zzbbyy at gmail.com
> To: pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> Subject: Re: [pp.int.general] Basic income - how does that fit into the	pirate ideology?
> 
> Most of the voices here were in favour of Basic Income.  The general
> public is probably much more reserved about it.
> 
> We are a group selected for our attitude towards copyright, patents
> and privacy reforms - now we see that we share more than that.  Why is
> that?  What is the thing that links these subjects?
> 
> Z.
> ____________________________________________________
> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
> pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
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