Universal Basic Income (UBI) is the increasingly fashionable idea that governments should hand out wodges of cash to their citizens without requiring anything in return. (Apparently this is Silicon Valley’s prescription for our economic discontents.)
In today’s world, such a policy is simply unaffordable (see John Kay for details). But what of a future in which most work is done by super-productive machines, leaving us poor saps at a loose end? In these circumstances, UBI would be both necessary and feasible.
Free money for everyone sounds wonderful, but as Shai Shapira argues in a brilliant piece for Quillette, we’d pay a price:
“…when we examine historical trends in politics and economics, we can spot a basic pattern: political rights are strongly correlated with economic participation. Societies where the state economy depends on small inputs from many different citizens tend to give their citizens significantly more rights, including the right of participation in the government itself. Societies where the state economy comes from natural resources, or other sources that require only a small, fixed number of people to defend or maintain them, tend to develop autocratic regimes with little concern for the welfare of their citizens.”
For evidence, let’s look at some notable resource-exporting economies:
“The World Bank gives us a list of countries ordered by what percentage of their merchandise exports comes from fuels. At 50% or more we find, in this order: Iraq, Angola, Algeria, Brunei, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Oman, Norway, Colombia, Bolivia and Bahrain. Can we notice a trend? How many of these countries provide a good set of political rights for their citizens?”
There aren’t many democracies on that list. And the most obvious exception, Norway, was a democracy long before its oil and gas industry was established.
There’s a perfectly straightforward reason why the rulers of oil-rich states tend not to grant democratic rights to their people… they don’t have to:
“We do not get our rights because we deserve them, or even because we fight for them – we get our rights because the government needs us… a country that generates its wealth from oil wells, only needs to keep a handful of mercenaries happy as they guard the access to those wells.”
If a policy of UBI ever becomes necessary and feasible, it’ll be because most of us aren’t needed anymore. With machines doing all the work, the economy would be all capital and no labour: the culmination – and, hence, endpoint – of capitalism. It wouldn’t be good news for socialism either: you can hardly have workers owning the means of production if there aren’t any workers.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe