this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2026
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Everyone conscious has the ability to preform some type of labor so…. Let’s just skip this stupid argument and just say UBI.
UBI keeps capitalism and thus inequality. It’s a zero sum game where people’s wealth will flow towards the rich, enabling them in future to amass power to undo UBI and repeat the mistakes we have now.
Better solution is to ditch currency and focus on meeting people’s wellbeing needs directly.
You can’t ditch currency. Currency isn’t some grand invention of the state. It’s the direct result of beings valuing things at different amounts at different times. Technically current is using any stand in to ease the trade barrier but colloquially some people use love as a currency. Many kinds of social animals trade and what they trade could be deemed currency.
You can 100% ditch currency, you don’t not need a trade or barter based system. Humans have been operating on a gift economy model for hundreds of thousands of years, currency and trading is a blip in our history.
People are capable of supporting each other without profit incentives.
So let's say I really want to investigate superconducting magnets, because I really like that field and want to do research. I need processed rare earth products that only exist on the other side of the globe.
In your gift economy, how would I proceed to acquire those?
I suspect these policies often assume that either we live in startrek or we’re back to the woods and have no need for superconducting magnets :-/
Gift economies mean the rich get to buy favors and influence with their gifts. Those who can gift the most will be the ones with the most power and influence. A gift economy is pure trading of favors and influence. At the same time there’s zero transparency. It’s institutionalized bribery. It’s pretty horrible for people with below average social skills. Charming narcissists will rule this society according to their whims.
. . . There can’t be rich people in a system where resources are owned by the community.
Please just stop arguing nonsense takes and go learn about anarchism. I’m not here to debate bro your lib shit opinions.
You shouldn't state this as fact. It's not, archaeologists have been arguing between the formalist and substantavist theories of economic models for decades now. You seem to be favoring the formalist view, but there is a strong arguement to be made that market principles such as supply and demand existed deeper in the past as well.
While there may not have been currency, the historic economics of humanity were certainly greater than a gift economy model.
You can absolutely do away with currency if the current mode of production got abolished. Currency itself is a necessity in a society that produces commodities for exchange, which creates rise for social constructs such as value, value forms like money, the possibility for an innate crisis and so on.
The first 2 chapters of Capital explains this, the commodity production system was a historical development rather than something coming out of nature (no chemist was able to find value through microscope), and we can certainly produce things to satisfy needs rather than exchange, with a much lower amount of work hours needed to do so.
People aren’t equal in their abilities, need, desires, and dreams. Being able to perform better should be rewarded in some way. Otherwise the incentives aren’t there to get anywhere.
How selfish do you have to be to not understand that there are incentives other than the profit incentive?
If the only reason you do anything is because you believe you are rewarded for it, you're a terrible person who needs to practice some introspection at why you are only motivated by personal greed.
No, nobody should fucking be rewarded more than another. Wellbeing for fucking all you right wing fuck.
No. Currency is convenience and convenience wins 99% of the time.
Yeah I’ll pass thanks, currency and capitalism is killing the planet and us along with it.
Nothing easier than being dead tho I guess.
My cousin has consciousness as well as Chromosome 5q minus. She can not preform any type of labor.
Fucking abelist class traitor.
Forgive my ignorance of the condition but what are her limitations? Can she communicate? Care for house plants? Read a book? Perform any artistic expression? Can she make you laugh? Even once a week/month/year?
I'm struggling to think of a scenario where a person has any amount of conscious agency but can't do anything of that produces a even a minor amount of value, unless you're unduly restricting the definition of labor.
UBI will just cause inflation, it increases aggregate demand without increasing aggregate supply. More dollars chasing the same amount of goods leads to inflation.
It also doesn't really address inequality, anyone's relative position on the income hierarchy doesn't change, if I make $500 more than another guy before UBI, I'll still make $500 more than them after UBI, and your position on the income hierarchy determines your standard of living, not your absolute income. Eg. If you get a raise that matches inflation your absolute income may have gone up, but your relative income stayed the same and thus so did your standard of living.
We need to stop focusing on money and focus on the systems of production and hierarchy that actually determine our living standards. Money is just an expression of those structures, it's downstream, and changing that won't change the actual structures.
UBI can make lots of other dead end spending unnecessary. For example you won’t need huge unemployment offices, bureaucracy, less social workers, less law enforcement because of lower crime. All of these don’t add any value to the economy directly. You won’t need inefficiencies like social workers, food stamps, etc.
UBI increases demand in some areas. Low income folks tend to spend most of their income out of necessity. Supply will increase with demand, leading to more jobs for building housing, groceries, schools, etc.
It’s cheaper to give people enough money they don’t need to become criminals to survive. Give everyone the opportunity for education, healthier lives, become more productive members of society.
UBI is an uplift mechanism which, along with socialized housing, transport, food, healthcare, etc., provides those who would otherwise be marginalized with the means by which they can become more productive. There will be people who take advantage and live on the dole, but in all of the trials done thus far, that has been a vanishing minority. What has happened is people went back to school, learned a new trade, produced art, and made themselves better and more able to help society in a fashion that better suits their capabilities.
Is it perfect? no, absolutely not. It's a patch that can be implemented with relatively little difficulty in most "western" governments, and help a lot of people.
For your inflation argument, say I make $5,000 a month before UBI, and maybe I'll make $10,000 after. Jeff Bezos alone robs us of about $24,000 every 60 seconds and wants more. UBI would have about as much impact on inflation as pissing on a forest fire to put it out would.
UBI doesn't uplift people, again it doesn't touch the income hierarchy which is the source of inequality, it just inflates the hierarchy.
All the previous trials were limited to a set group. If you give money to a set group then yes there position on the income relative to everyone else will increase, and thus there access to goods and services. If it is truly universal and everyone gets it then the income hierarchy remains the same, just the incomes are inflated in absolute terms. Just like if everyone got the same percentage raise in a year prices would just go up by that same percentage because the people setting the prices know you can now pay x percent more. If you give a select group of people a raise though then they can now outbid others and get more products and services.
Jeff bezos doesn't spend most of the money he gets, it just gets reinvested into his ungodly hoard. If that money doesn't actually get spent and doesn't enter the economic system it doesn't effect inflation. The lower you go on the income ladder the larger percent of your money gets spent until you get to the bottom of people living paycheck to paycheck, saving nothing. If you give those people money they'll spend it right away, because they have to, and that will contribute to inflation.