General Motors has laid off more than 1,000 workers at its Factory ZERO assembly plant in Detroit while simultaneously introducing 50 AI-powered collaborative robots to the production line.
At the union’s 39th Constitutional Convention in Detroit, UAW President Shawn Fain warned, “We are in a fight for humanity.”
Fain argued AI should improve jobs and productivity rather than leave workers behind.
That’s exactly what UBI should be: Enough to remove the desperation of “subsistence” from the obligations the individual must fund with their labor.
A drowning man will trade the lives of his wife and kids for one more breath of air; nobody can hope to earn a living wage while competing for work against a drowning man. It’s only when he can keep his own head above water that he is able to consider anyone else. A UBI that barely keeps his nose above the waterline is good enough, and infinitely better than what we currently have.
All I am saying is first demand a job, if not that then demand bread, but understand that if all the collective we have are hand outs and “charity” then we can just as easily starve too. If our well being is irrelevant to the system then expect to be treated as such.
We weren’t starving a hundred hears ago, at the dawn of automation, when per-person productivity was a tiny fraction what it is today. Quite the contrary, 40 hours of labor back then was routinely sufficient to adequately meet the needs of two adults, and multiple kids. Unions were a big part of ensuring that.
Now, despite widespread automation massively increasing productivity, even 80 hours of labor a week is somehow insufficient for this same family. There is an order of magnitude more productivity available today than during our most prosperous decade, but we find ourselves having to work twice as hard to remain just as prosperous. That math just doesn’t work.
Our well being is essential to the system, but not for our labor.
The source of political authority in a democratic system is We The People. Through the Constitution, we invest our political power in government. Government uses that political power to provide various services (“law and order”) , and charges taxpayers for those services. Those powers are conveyed equally, from every man, woman, and child. Those services are not utilized equally. Those who make greater use of those services pay more in taxes. The government uses our powers to provide and charge for various services. Missing from the equation is compensation for the use of our powers. We are individually owed a “citizenship dividend”, and we are not currently receiving it.
That citizenship dividend is no more charity to the people than a stock dividend is charity to the shareholder. That citizenship dividend is UBI.
| we invest our political power
What is the basis for our political power? I am tracking our labor in the best of times and our capacity for violence in the worst of times as the primary sources. Unions are a great example of leveraging the former. Militias which led the revolution being the example of the latter. Riots and community organizing being the tools of major reform since the start, with incremental reform leveraging the tools of civil society set up to appease the people and prevent riots or the withholding of labor.
That is to say if a few people could maintain fully automated leizure and suppression of the masses, our opinions mean squat. Maintaining the political power base of the people is essential for maintaining political authority.
| We weren’t starving 100 years ago
During the great depression many families killed their own kids because they had to choose who would be able to eat this month. So 1920s-1930s were a bad time. Again nit picking but just saying 100 years ago was before the New Deal era politics. Also before Medicare and Medicaid. And the hight of union membership of the 1940s. We haven’t had it long is all. The “good ol days” were shorter then you’d think (and fraught with other reforms needed to end social class oppression). We largely stopped organizing and recognizing the need to and are suffering the consequences to this day.
#We. The. People.
The basis of our political power is not what we do, but the mere fact that we exist. Our power arises not by what we do, but simply by our being. The religious among us would say it is “God given”. This is the fundamental concept of “Democracy”.
Contrast with “Monarchy”, where political power is considered to flow from the King and the basis of that political power is “Divine Right”.
The duty that the nobility owed to their king is the same duty that the government owes to the people. Democracy is the idea that We The People are the royals, and not the peasantry.
The divine right of kings was a farce as well. The power of the nobility layed in the contracts of armed men, the people that armed them, and the peasentry that worked the land to feed the others. The invention of those fedual contracts being ordained by God was a helpful enforcement mechanism based on myth making to justify it.
Regularly still the divinity of kings was tested and found lacking compared to more men on more horses with more spears and more armor.
Myth is good, we are narrative driven beings, but don’t mistake the parable for the certainty of steel or the weight of gold. The constitution of the US is actually written as such too. It is not, by divine will we are free, but rights we are born with must be defended with greater force then by those that would violate those rights.
Maybe I should clarify I’m not saying the ideals of democracy and human rights are wrong. At all. I am saying that treating the existence of those ideals as enough to manifest them is naive and ultimately failing to maintain power to defend and uphold them is the same as giving up on them.
What I am talking about is a justification for the government paying each and every individual a regularly stipend. A justification that doesn’t rely on “welfare” or “charity”.
UBI is a citizenship dividend. It is what the government owes each of us for allowing it to operate.
“Demanding a job” in order to survive is servitude.
If we need to pick up steel, or confiscate gold to convert this “parable” to “certainty”, so be it.
But few are suggesting a dividend. I would prefer that. Instead they are suggesting a charity program ran out of the general fund based on whatever taxes corporations couldnt get out of. With no ownership, as mechanisms to ensure that the direction is in the public good, being mentioned.
That’s charity. It’s alms from the lords table. What they ought to give after the had what they wanted.
If we get it. Great! Alms save lives. I just don’t people mistaking it as some kind of working class win for control.
They are asking for money to be given to every individual, equally, regardless of circumstances.
That act can be called charity. It can be called an entitlement. It can be called a bribe. It can be called a stimulus. It can be called a refund. It can be called a gift. It can be called wealth redistribution. It can be called a dividend.
Every single time you see “UBI” and take umbrage at the idea of “charity”, feel free to substitute “Citizenship Dividend”. The two terms are functionally identical. Their only differences are a matter of philosophy. You can make it very clear that you do not subscribe to the “charity” or “wealth redistribution” philosophies if you find those justifications offensive, while continuing to support the regular release of “dividend checks”.