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Title: Universal Basic Income Author: Michael Stauch Date: 2016 Language: en Topics: universal basic income, capitalism, The Utopian Source: Retrieved on 10th August 2021 from http://utopianmag.com/archives/tag-The%20Utopian%20Vol.%2015.2%20-%202016/ Notes: Published in The Utopian Vol. 15.2.
I wanted to share some thoughts I’ve been having recently about the idea
of a “Universal Basic Income” or UBI that has become an important topic
of discussion in the US recently.
This January, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist firm called Y
Combinator issued a “Request for Research” to explore the idea of a
guaranteed income. [1] In the proposal, the firm requests applications
from researchers interested in examining what happens when you give a
set of people a basic income for a five-year period. The underlying
assumption is that they want to know if people will blow free money on
heroin, basically.
Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator and its “philosopher king”
according to the Awl, summarized his interest in the problem of income
inequality in an essay called “Economic Inequality”: “when I hear people
saying that economic inequality is bad and should be eliminated, I feel
rather like a wild animal overhearing a conversation between hunters.”
[2] After facing criticism for saying this, Graham removed this language
in an updated version of the text. [3] The essay is a gripping read.
Graham begins by acknowledging himself as a “manufacturer of income
inequality” and “an expert on how to increase income inequality.” Graham
strikes me as an important, articulate figure explaining how
contemporary robber barons in the early 21^(st) century understand the
capitalist system.
So UBI is an idea that’s floating around and it’s no surprise that it’s
coming from an economic sector, venture capitalists, who make money by
investing in companies which are exploring ways to eliminate jobs on an
enormous scale. The idea is emerging at the outset of what bourgeois
economists are calling “Industry 4.0.” [4] This fourth industrial
revolution (after mechanization, water/steam power; mass production, the
assembly line, and electricity, and computers and automation) will
involve cyber-physical systems, the “Internet of things” and cloud
computing, according to its contemporary prophets. But in addition to
the enormous profits capitalists hope to make from this transformation
in the foundations of the contemporary economy, they are also
recognizing the political problems it might produce, in particular the
very real possibility of substantial increases in unemployment as new
technology enables companies to eliminate jobs once previously
considered untouchable.
Truck driving is an important example of how this transformation might
take place. Auto companies, as I’m sure everyone knows, are actively
pursuing partnerships with Silicon Valley in order to bring computers
into cars. In spite of all evidence of the problems of global warming
from carbon-based fuel consumption, these companies are actively
pursuing self-driving cars. [5][6][7][8]
The problem with this technology, which relates to truck driving, is
that driverless technology is actually extremely expensive. Recently, a
company called Otto launched with a view toward migrating the technology
for driverless cars to trucks. In an interview I heard on the radio, one
of its founders noted the expense associated with driverless technology,
something like $50,000. For a consumer vehicle, such technology would
effectively more than double the cost of a car. But for a semi-truck,
that might only add an additional 33% to a truck that would otherwise
cost $150,000 or so. The article cites the public health risk that
trucks pose — they account for 5.6 percent of miles driven while causing
9.5 percent of the country’s accidents. The article also notes that
driverless technology could allow drivers to nap, allowing the trucks to
stop less frequently. But the article also notes that there are over 4
million trucks on the road, transporting over 70 percent of the
country’s cargo. Let’s face it: there is a real chance that some
ambitious trucking companies will seek to eliminate jobs by implementing
this technology. Even that modification — sleeping and never stopping —
would eliminate jobs. Initially developed as a palliative to long, lone
commutes by individual workers, driverless technology can be almost
seamlessly converted into an engine of massive job loss. [9][10]
So what is at stake with a Universal Basic Income is that capitalists
are recognizing the potential to automate through “Industry 4.0” and
want to pursue it. But they also recognize the enormous social
dislocations automation on this scale would unleash. And, as Graham
says, they would like to not be hunted in the streets and eaten.
The left, as ever, is divided into thousands of competing camps on this
issue. One Jacobin article distinguishes between a “livable basic
income” (LBI) and a “non-livable basic income” (NLBI), arguing that a
UBI would need to be established on a level “high enough to eliminate
the need to work for a wage.” [11] I’m not convinced by this, and it
also seems, in the context of this article, to support the Jacobin’s
interest in reviving not so much a basic income but full employment. The
Endnotes collective has criticized this approach as the “primary
contradiction” of the labor movement, that is, “that the generalization
of one form of domination was seen as the key to overcoming all
domination.” [12] Or, more pithily, “Everyone is being proletarianized,
and so, to achieve communism, we must proletarianize everyone!”
This approach, Endnotes claims, understands the factory “as the
foundation of socialism, not as the material embodiment of abstract
domination.” Endnotes demurs on providing strategic guidelines, however,
and that vacuum ends up being filled by thinkers like Nick Snick and
Alex Williams, authors of Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a
World Without Work and the #Accelerate manifesto. The latter argues for
unleashing “latent productive forces” in technology that a capitalism
economic system holds in check. [13] The manifesto suggests that
technology has no politics, basically, and the authors want to explore
its expansion as a way of creating an alternative to capitalism. I’m not
entirely convinced, however, that this technological accelerationism
won’t ultimately result in a Matrix-style scenario in which the working
class basically functions as batteries fueling a “clean” or
environmental future for a few capitalists.
Anyway, I hope this provides some basis for future discussion on another
important aspect of contemporary transformations in capitalism,
alongside our discussion of the emerging “green” economy.
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