We should probably de-couple money from basic standards of living.

Very true, and we already KNOW this to be true because it already happened with Covid relief money. People threw that money away in to "meme" stocks, drugs, alcohol, tattoos, sex reassignment surgeries, and other modes of degeneracy.

And... now food cost is up 80%, fuel cost up 150%. We played ourselves

You mean go back to a primitive barter economy (many thousand years BC)? I'll fix up your house if you give me a piece of bread so I don't starve?

How exactly would that benefit struggling people? That would mean they need to work even harder to meet their basic needs. Money is a tool of liberation for the downtrodden. Without money you have slavery.

This post was edited by El1te on Aug 28 2023 02:42pm

Most people go to work because they have to. Remove the necessity with ubi then production stops.
Especially millennial and genz who want to sit at home all day and play video games.

The goal is noble and generally agreed that we should all have basic needs met. But the solutions are bad.

Improve capitalism through transparency and take away bailouts for financial institutions who piss money away on greedy and risky ventures. Let them make better and more sound investments. People shouldn't pay for their mistakes.

Reduce the government spending on ineffective programs like lockdowns which only increase inflation and dig a deeper hole.

Drastically reduce the Defense budget from $842b down to $300b as it dissapears into the ether anyway. That leaves $500b to feed all the poor.

Subsidize farmers more they feed everyone. Especially those which promote sustainable practices and don't nuke the land with herbicides and nitrates.

Better food distribution and waste. There is something like 40% of food wasted in US alone that's $408b or 130billion pounds of food.
Let's work out a method which reduces that.

These are far better and more practical solutions which don't end up collapsing the country.

Ubi is the most braindead non solution you can come up with. At the very least you could create an optional tax deduction for high networth individuals. They could voluntarily give that money towards ubi or some help the poor fund.

We should de-couple basic standards of living from that of 'commodity'. Food, water, shelter, medical care, education, etc. Those needs should be met without necessitating transaction.

I think there is an opportunity to explore why, should you be correct, "Most people go to work because they have to. Remove the necessity with ubi then production stops" is true. It would mean exploring the relationship between people, labor, 'work', and capital. If people would otherwise completely discontinue the work they currently do under a UBI system, then I question the necessity of that work to begin with.

How can you decouple basic standards of livings from commodities, when the basic standards of living are commodities in themselves? (Food, building materials, fuel, literally everything material)

Do you forcibly enslave people to build houses and grow food? How do you get people to perform the labour without payment, either in the form of money or commodities?

What you describe is communism. And it has been tried around the world.. MANY times.. and every single time it has led to mass-scale famine and death.

This post was edited by El1te on Aug 28 2023 03:24pm

Standards of living do not exist without work.

Houses must be built and maintained. Food must be grown. Security is self-evident: someone has to do the work.

I'm not entirely sure. Economic systems are quite complex, and there's a lot that I don't know. I think the idea is righteous though, and should be striven for irrespective of whether it is fully feasible.



There would still be labor, and mutual aid can go a long way. One may be happy to lend their skills towards the construction of homes if it means that there are also others who lends their skills towards the medical field, and will then render medical care to them.

I agree that the idea is righteous and I support it.

But you can't ignore the fundamental reality: In order to provide for everyone, there needs to be a hyperproductive section of the population that produces enough resources and wealth to give it away freely

I support right-wing politics for this reason. More energy, more production, more food benefits everybody. More resources to go around (supply side economics) means better living conditions for the poor. The poor are better off when gas is cheaper, food is cheaper, housing is cheaper. And these all follow the law of supply and demand