This document is a response to Tim Pool's video titled "Socialism Won't Work Part 3, Homeless Guy Blows Money on Drugs," found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6njpeistr6w
He starts off the video with a case study about why UBI
won’t work, the case study being that of a homeless man being unable to access
money raised by GoFundMe in the amount of $400,000, half of which he spent but
still ended up being homeless, using drugs, and panhandling once again. The other half is being withheld on the
condition that he gets a job and stops using drugs.
The problem I see is that Tim is extrapolating this one
instance, a homeless man using drugs and panhandling that gets a bunch of
charity and doesn’t improve his situation, to demonstrate that paying a stipend
to a country’s citizenry with no strings attached won’t work (and calls it
Socialism, btw). This argument is flawed
for several reasons:
First, it’s reductionist on its face. Not everyone who would benefit from a stipend
is homeless and drug-addicted. Not
everyone who gets a stipend will spend it on short-term pleasure and end up
back to where they are or worse.
Second (and closely related to the first), there’s also no evidence
that when a person gets a stipend, they will behave as an addict would and
spend their stipend to feed their addiction.
I have had friends that have received a stipend from the military (the
Montgomery G.I. Bill) of $1980 a month for 33-months with the condition that
they go to school for at least two classes per semester (which are 100% paid
for by the government, btw). Yes, that
makes the G.I. Bill a conditional stipend (both on prior military service of 24
months or more, a requirement to be enrolled for a minimum of two classes, AND
a limit on 33 months’ worth of benefits), but all that serves is that one
stipend is harder to qualify for than the other.
I, myself, served in the U.S. Army for 22 months and
couldn’t take advantage of the G.I. Bill, and I REALLY could’ve used those
benefits to get back on my feet when returning to the civilian world. I came to learn several years later from a
friend and fellow veteran that I could’ve qualified for a 40% reduction in
post-secondary education fees (but no stipend whatsoever), but by that time, I
was already over $23,000 in student loan debt and in default. I’ve always tried to apply the following rule
of thumb when it came to income: while employed, if your bank account is higher
than it was your last paycheck, you’re going in the right direction. In other words, spend only a portion of what
I make so that I steadily accumulate more money. On periods where an unexpected expense occurs
and I end up worse off than my last pay period, I tighten my belt. When I foresee myself not getting paid during
a certain period, I tighten my belt.
While this strategy does allow me to eke out a living, my income limits
what I can buy and being default on my student loans drastically hinders my
ability to pursue higher levels of education in career fields that I’m
passionate about (mental health). Yes, I
made a mistake in career path when I pursued the path of wanting to be a game
designer, but in simply being unable to repay my loans, loans that were
ultimately created at the touch of some keyboard strokes, do I really deserve
to be so hampered?
Third, the argument he presents about how he knows a bunch
of people that would rather be aspiring professional skateboarders and guitar
players instead of plumbers and carpenters and that, if they had UBI, there
would be no useful professionals of this category. If said handyman would REALLY quit his job to
pursue his passion for an art or a sport that he would ultimately not achieve
monetary gain in, then what happens next depends on how much the money they
earned actually mattered to them. If
they end up hurting financially for pursuing their passions, they can always
opt to go back to their handyman career, as society is always in need of
handymen. If they don’t go back to being
a handyman and continue to pursue their art or sport (or not), then we know
that their bar for homeostasis actually lies and they STILL get to participate
in the market by circulating their UBI to basic necessities, which the provider
of said necessities want (merchants want customers to buy their stuff). The argument that no one would go back to
their old jobs is preposterous; people like making more money (to varying
extents) so that they can buy stuff they wouldn’t have access to without their
jobs. For those that are content with
little, they still need to eat and participate in society with dignity. Regardless of the matter, said “handyman
aspiring to be an artist” doesn’t need to be forced to stay as a handyman just
to survive and can actually find out whether or not they’ll be a professional
artist, and if they don’t reach that goal but stay with their choice, they can
still participate in the market and keep themselves alive and not living in
abject desperation. Yes, they’ll deprive
their surrounding portion of society of their trade, but they may provide an
experiential benefit to those they choose to provide for. And if not, (and they’re law-abiding
citizens), it’s their fucking life!
Seriously!
Fourth (closely related to the third), not everything that
people are good at is marketable or marketable enough to illicit sufficient
exchange value (which is the be-all, end-all of someone who wants to dominate
in a market environment). The fetishization
of exchange value, however, severely undervalues (or completely ignores)
experiential value in and of itself, especially when said purveyor of
experiential value cannot be commodified.
Why is the ineptitude of providing exchange value condemned with the
promise of exile and death (as is the case with the homeless man presented or
with an unskilled person who doesn’t want to cosign his waking hours to being a
meat robot)? This is a highly
misanthropic view of the world. There
has to come a point in time when we have to remove the market society lenses
and see what kind of lives we’re living.
For those that refuse to do so, people need to be able to buy your
products and services, regardless of how they got the money they’re exchanging
with you.
Fifth (and somewhat related to the forth), when someone
exchanges money with you for your commodities, the fact that the exchange can
be made on terms the two of you agreed to should be all that matters, not how
they came about this money. If you found
out that someone was buying your stuff with charity money, are you going to
cancel the exchange because they want to pay you with charity money as opposed
to “hard-earned” money? Money is money
and works as money does, regardless of how the buyer came across it.
Sixth (and somewhat related to the fifth), and straight to
the crux of one of his big beefs, do lazy people who just want to live in
miserly leisure deserve to starve?
That’s really the crux of it all.
He’s concerned about being taxed to sustain lazy people who don’t want
to change. Let’s grant Tim that a
certain portion of the population just want to sit at home and engage in
leisurely activities and not get a job or help anyone out. Do they deserve to starve? Even lazy people need to eat. There is a market for food (duh!) Money gets circulated in the economy. The lazy people spend money to eat AND to buy
commodities related to their leisure to continue their lazy lives and the
circulation of these exchanges are what are required for the continued health
of a market economy. If these people
should instead starve because it induces indignation, then certain merchants,
by consequence, should be deprived of a portion of their customer base. But shouldn’t the free market decide who gets
to buy what? Why should these merchants
have your “indignation tax” imposed on them?
What makes you the moral arbiter of who should participate in a free
market and who should not? And this is
in regards to lazy-ass motherfuckers, if we’re being frank here.
I get where this indignation comes from; I often feel
indignant with lazy people AT WORK. Big
emphasis on “at work,” because while they may have a job (which is what your
big concern is), they don’t pull their weight.
But they’re employed, and that’s all that matters, right? And despite the anger that arises when
lazy-ass motherfuckers don’t pull their motherfucking weight and I have to pick
up their slack, I still don’t think they deserve to starve. Honestly, if they hate the work so much, I’d
rather they quit and live off of benefits while the company I work for can hire
and keep more industrious individuals. I
think that a satiated lazy person is preferable to a starving lazy person who
is unable to find gainful employment and resorts to crime. They can be someone’s customer more readily
with something like UBI without robbing or hurting their fellow neighbor. Trying to fix lazy is largely a failing
proposition, IMO.
Seventh (closely related to the first), when he says “if
everyone gets something no matter what, then I feel like too many people are
going to be like, ‘Why bother working if I’m funding people who aren’t working
either?’” That issue addresses something
more fundamental that what appears on the surface. Why do you work? To provide for yourself and your family. Work requires time and effort. Timewise, we are all capped at 168 hours a
week, though our capacity for effort may vary as well as our ability to
multiply our effort by employing others.
But how much time and effort would you truly devote if you had, say, an
extra $1000 every month, just for being a citizen? That ultimately depends on how you feel about
the work you do. If you hate your job
and can manage to get by on less, then of course you’re going to work less and
focus your time on enriching your life with more gratifying experiences.
But what of vital work that needs to be done? Well, the strategy doesn’t really need to
change: offer people more money for vital work!
UBI won’t make people like money less (I certainly won’t). Even then, that might not motivate enough
people to work 80-hour a week+ jobs. Why
not make training for those jobs more readily available? People can take on apprenticeships with
professionals without the need to be paid, since they’ll be getting a stipend,
eventually becoming professionals themselves and lightening the workload of
those who can perform vital work. Have
there never been poor geniuses or savants?
What if enough people leave jobs that it makes the product
or service diminish or vanish altogether?
Perhaps that product or service was never needed in the first
place. In other words, perhaps it was a
bullshit job that people didn’t want to do anymore. What if, in this exodus of bullshit jobs, new
products or services emerge that come in demand? Or, God forbid, what if people start doing
more humanitarian work that doesn’t have a demand in the market because that’s
where their true calling lies and they don’t have to starve for pursing these
activities? Even if it’s just a couple
of hours a week or a month? What if
people want to pursue the life of a Renaissance Man and dabble in a lot of
things at a time? Who’s to say there’s
no value in that, regardless of what the market dictates?
The market doesn’t have to be the be-all, end-all of human
civilization. Some people excel in that
environment, others don’t. Stuff needs
to get done, there’s no doubt about that, but trying to wedge every possible
solution through a market lens is unfeasible and often very harmful, as those
most successful in the market economy contribute to the greatest amount of
destruction in the natural environment (stuff comes from our natural
environment, after all). Also, you only
need so much money in order to achieve optimal satisfaction (where income is
concerned): this ranges somewhere from $55,000 to around $80,000 a year,
according to some study I have to site.
Making over this range does nothing to increase long-term happiness and
having obscene incomes (multi-millionaires and billionaires) create
catastrophic hemorrhages in society.
