The highest pinnacle of society.
Basic income for all people, in order to eliminate poverty, and dismantle social classes.
Basic income's most core concept is allowing anyone to acquire enough money to live each day in a modern establishment, such as a house or condominium, and have access to electricity, fresh water, food, and a computer, without having to work or beg.
The true word for basic income is this: Free money.
Thus, skepticism shall be highly valued here.
The question upon the surface of my mind, and perhaps yours, is this: Will it work?
I could imagine fears that the people will grow lazy, fat, entitled, and absolutely wretched. Rat paradise. Like John Calhoun's morally troublesome, but enlightening experiment, he put mice into a paradise.
Beautiful buildings. Endless food. All the sex they could get. And so they bred, and had their fill. They filled the perfect little simulation world up, living in perfect happiness.
Until it turned into a nightmare. Utter chaos and dystopia. They grew hideous, murderous, pathetic as their familes broke down and they became isolated and corrupted.
Yet, mice lack a certain thing that we have. Although a mouse can satisfy all of its most basic needs, it still lacks one thing, and very likely lacks the philosophical competence to think of it.
It lacks advanced technology, and the ability to build computers, as well as have glorious dreams and aspirations.
Computers are able to sort basic income funds, and manage them in such a way as to provide people incentives for using their funds to build great things.
Of course a human given everything it needs to survive may very likely turn into that which evolution itself despises, and our civilization could collapse as people become vain, entitled, and simply monstrous.
Or there could be a path that encourages people to continue to build upon society.
People could become teachers of anything, even how to build advanced technology, or concepts beyond what we are taught these days. You could have children learn from birth how microchips and data processing work. Why have them learn obedience to authority or elementary job skills at school, when you could train them specifically in one area, so that they don't need to bother with other areas?
They could become gifted. Have the child learn about their true interest, and because they will have access to basic income for what we must assume will be their entire life, they will not need to worry about anything else except developing their skills.
We could have experts able to build anything they wanted, with skills beyond what we see in the current world.
But who will work for them?
Who will work if there is already free money to go around? Well, I certainly would. Why not? I would for sure join skilled teams that help build and create, and because you could still make money, it could be quite common for many people to want to make above basic income, to have an extra nice life. It could even be a coming of age tradition: By your 30th birthday, create something amazing, something worth all that you have to give to the world.
It could be farming skills, or building computers, programming, dealing with infrastructure, create an artful masterpiece, or anything else useful.
Or you could just not do that.
You could eat delicious food. Watch the best movies and TV shows. Look at art that people create. Read stories or essays. You could just use birth control, practice safe sex, and satisfy your desires in the pursuit of pleasure, with whomever is willing.
If the world doesn't need human workers, but we still have plenty of room for humans, and excess food as well, why not give these people far more freedom, the freedom to just live a lazy, fun life?
But I don't think this life will be very common. People want responsibility and purpose.
If you do not give it, they will take it. There are people with true passions for creation and invention, and producing art. They will do it.
But what if it fails for economic reasons? What if there are people with dark hearts, who wish to usurp the power of basic income, and use it to their advantage?
Of course it is normal for people to be greedy, but is excessive greediness a mindset we want regarding this?
Those with money to fund business would have to cease business with overly greedy and power hungry people. They would have to be denied access to the economy, because what if they were to start to use their basic income to fund war?
To build bombs or weapons, or even to perform terrible experiments upon the unwilling? They could try to create cults, and other pyramid schemes to collect even more money and power. They could try to use it to change public policy according to their will, even spread propaganda that poverty is trendy, such as living in a tiny house, or using services for things like housing, cars, even phones or usage of other necessary infrastructure, rather than actually owning such things, just to keep certain people or groups of people weaker than they.
If people were able to lower how much each person received in their basic income, it could ensure that the people always received only just enough, to keep them weak, and keep them helpless and dependent, rather than free, and with their own personal power.
The most greedy, insatiable fiends could desire to oppress others, to tell them that it's wrong to do drugs or have fun sex, wrong to just look at art, wrong to just enjoy life, not because of any real harm, but because of weird, intrusive moral codes or dark-age cultural norms. Concepts that only make sense in a more medieval world, but not here. Not in the new world of basic income. If oppression was to rear its ugly head, what must we do?
Fight.
Fight, I say.
Don't tell me that we would put up with this in a new world.
If there was ever such a wicked threat to people, even in the grand new world of the future, where humans ought to be free, but are not free, then we must fight back.
The most promising form of basic income would be one that is not sponsored by the state, but instead, created by free people by their own will, to ensure that basic income is not forced upon anyone, but instead, is a voluntary thing that anyone could sign up for, perhaps by an initial contribution to the economy, or just by birth, if sponsored by another entity. Even if the state was to contribute to a private basic income source, all that matters is that control of the basic income is put into the hands of the people, by the authority of code, or other non-violable or manipulable mechanism.
Yet, in the world today, we are still living in a dark age.
Oppressive social norms keep us obedient, keep us compliant. We work our 40+ hour a week jobs. We pay our taxes. We follow the laws. We do as we're told.
We don't have time to paint, no time to invent. We just struggle to get by, even if there is seemingly enough. It's not a proper way to live, yet, here we are.
Basic income, save us! Save us from our monetary oppression. Let us live the life we truly desire.
~Kitten
