Is avoiding work immoral? This is about UBI
My interest in UBI started when I had to choose a topic for my presentation in French Class. I chose Basic Income because it was everywhere on my timeline. Here’s my talk in French – Nous besoins Revenu de base? Since then, I’ve tried to keep up with the developments and read numerous studies so far. At somepoint I was so intrigued that I started collecting interesting links at Ubiexperts.com (if you visit now you might see a dump of quotes I had collected on Trello, just scroll a little for articles)
So when I read this puffy piece on ET I had to write back.
SA Aiyer goes on to say that he wants India to take pride in hard work and not in being a large public nipple for sucking.
But why do we have to ‘work’?
It’s high time that we eleminate manual labour or the kind of work that can be automated so that humans can do something more productive. Currenty, we are so busy that we don’t have the time to think and reflect. Nor are we satisfied with our work. For many work is just work you have to do to survive.
In India, we also don’t invest enough time in art and culture. I believe that it’s important for an overall development.
Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens (buy it) talks about how each aspect of our life is necessary for over all development of any animalt. A baby monkey needs the hugs and warmth of the mother to be an well balanced adult monkey.
I’ve only recently realised how being involved in art can make someone more empathetic. I can go on and on why art is important in life but that’s a topic for another blogpost.
Coming back to the topic, why not give users an option on whether they want to ‘wor’k, specially considering that at some point in future the world as a collective unit can afford it (at that point we will also need to think about One World, One Government)? We can automate whatever can be automated and reap the benefits of it. If someone doesn’t want to work, that’s fine. They’ll just won’t be able to afford the luxuries that people with job and extra cash can afford. This doesn’t mean that we deny ‘jobless’ individuals with basic needs.
This is also about fundamental right of every individual on the resources that the Earth can offer. Letting few wealthy capitalists exploit these resources while leaving others to starve would be criminal.
As I discuss in my French presentation, even now the poverty that we have is artificial. We have enough resources to at least not let anyone hungry. However, capitalism makes it inefficient to distribute these resources.
SA Aiyer also talks about “being a large nipple to suck” to discuss about immigrants. There are ways to circumvent it. One of suggestion from the UBI advocates is that you offer UBI only when immigrant has stayed in the country for at least 5 years. By that time, they’ve already contributed enough, at least economically, to their new home.
Now if only Aiyer did a little research before writing the piece.
Coming to the point where people will avoid work. There are enough experiments which shows that majority of people actually do not stop working. We humans by nature are greedy. If basic needs are covered, we’d want luxuries.
At some level I am glad that there’s at least a discussion’s going on in India. Discussion are healthy and will keep the thought alive.
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