Introducing a “Universal Basic Income” is a bad idea

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BrusselsReport.eu
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By Elena Leontjeva, President of the Lithuanian Free Market Institute

Artificial intelligence and robots will soon create prosperity that will make human work superfluous, not to mention that there won’t even be a place to work as we will become redundant. Echoing his earlier predictions, Elon Musk has made the point that people will be able to stop working if everyone is paid a “universal high income”. Not a “universal basic income”, he argued, but a “universal high income”. Since massive job losses are associated with universal income, this issue is worth a closer look.

Will robots replace us?

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a regular benefit paid to every citizen to provide for their basic needs without any obligation to work or otherwise contribute to the civic well-being. Elon Musk believes that progress will guarantee us not just a basic income, but a high and unconditional one because silicon and quantum substitutes will do everything for us.

While robots are being used successfully all over the developed world, we are experiencing an unprecedented labor shortage. The artificial intelligence revolution has only made things worse. Job vacancies are rising, and unemployment is at historically low levels. It turns out that as long as some jobs go to robots, others inevitably appear. There is a shortage of IT specialists: the need for new professional skills is emerging at a breakneck speed. Yet, it is not just smart brains that are needed, but hands as well.

No matter how much wealth robots can create, human labor will still be needed. There will simply be a need for a different kind of work than the one we have been doing. There have been numerous technological breakthroughs in the history of civilization that foretold people would become redundant, or they would only need to work a couple of hours a day. None of these prophecies have come true.

Welcome couch potatoes

Progress may require all of us to change careers, sometimes more than once. Entrepreneurs may have to change their field of activity, range and composition of products more than once in their lifetime. How would unconditional income affect this universal need for change? Acquiring new knowledge and competencies always requires effort. Today, some people in their fifties are qualifying as programmers even though it requires crossing many barriers and internal obstacles. People go beyond their capabilities when they set their minds to it or when they have no other option. Yet would they do so if promised an early unconditional retirement?

A person on a living wage does not need to look for a new profession or a new place in the fabric of society. We have never acquired anything without effort – whether in our youth, whilst studying, or when we changed jobs or place of residence – as we have always grown through our perseverance, will, and focus.

UBI allows us to avoid change, to relax, or even sleep through it. On a rainy morning, a free ration would allow a person to stay at home when it takes a heroic effort to overcome oneself. Here is the greatest inconsistency in the message of the prophets of progress and their merciful concern for man. Change is always an effort, a blindfold walk, and uncertainty. The reason for the rise of man above all other homo species is that he has been able to concentrate his mind and will and respond to any challenge – whether it came from  nature or progress.

What would hinder us most from adapting to the changes, and the very rhythm of progress is various guarantees of security and stability, especially unconditional benefits.

To catch up with progress means to keep moving

The whole history of civilization is a response to constant challenges, and if we are artificially shielded from them, then we as individuals and as a society are set back. Therefore, it is a universal income – even more so a universal high income – that should be most feared by those concerned about humanity’s ability to adapt to progress.

Whenever people are freed from the need to learn and advance, many will take advantage of this hour of relaxation. They may think it is only for a short while, but they may soon find themselves in the same situation as the unemployed long-term, i.e. stuck in the unemployment trap, which means that making an effort, changing, knocking on doors to get a little more than they are getting now may not be motivating enough for the average person.

To put it bluntly, if universal income were implemented, the world would move forward along with a tiny fraction of people while everyone else would be trapped in the false comfort of the couch. Furthermore, to consume progress also requires skill, continuous learning, and advancement. If people are provided with everything, they may not be able to keep up with progress, neither as creators nor as consumers, which is the least attractive image of human progress.

The argument that progress will necessitate people to do different jobs than they are used to is against UBI, not for it.

Retirement Coach, Handicraft Grandmaster

Not only does progress manifest itself through the creation of robots, but it also extends life expectancy of human beings, which means that more compassionate and gentle hands will be needed to care for us in sickness and old age. More and more hands will be needed to create beauty for the world and people. If two decades ago we wondered how the sprouting beauty parlors were surviving, today we wonder more about how they get so many customers where demand still exceeds supply.

No matter how good robots are at making furniture, someone will always want a special table handmade by a good carpenter. Such things will be even more valuable, and handmade work will be even more appreciated.

We will need fewer workers at the conveyor belt, and more workers in services where people’s needs are almost inexhaustible as their life expectancy increases. Who needed a physiotherapist, or a yoga instructor in the nineteenth century? Who needed a job coach? Today, we need them. The inexhaustible needs of human beings give rise to the equally inexhaustible emergence of new professions, which provides new opportunities for self-realisation.

Universal provisions (allotments) alter motivations, which inevitably change economic efficiency. No matter how good society’s starting point is or how much wealth technology promises us, if the foundation of private ownership, motivation and responsibility in society disappears, everything can quickly crumble and turn into ruins. It is prudent to remember the Soviet Union – so rich in resources, yet after the revolution suffering from absolute poverty and hunger – or the current example of oil-rich Venezuela where people have nothing to eat and struggle to get toilet paper. Both are a potent contemporary warning: deprived of the motivation to act and the responsibility for the consequences of human action, any country faces poverty and turmoil.

That sweet liberty and equality…

The UBI, which promises to create equality for all, would be the greatest source of inequality. A small number of people would remain active, learning, and flourishing while an increasing number of people will be paralysed into inactivity. The UBI would satisfy their material needs, but the appetite for other, non-material goods will remain insatiable and even more acute. As a result, these people may face existential challenges that no amount of benefits will help them cope with.

Elon Musk himself warns about the lack of meaning while predicting high universal income for all. By saying that if we get everything for nothing, we will miss meaning most of all, Musk acknowledges the universality of the phenomenon of lack. Understanding that lack is as fundamental and ubiquitous as gravity allows us to debunk the illusion that scarcity of resources is a temporary technical obstacle that will soon be removed by his majesty, the progress.

The promise that the UBI will make people free and independent is very appealing. However, this independence from others is not so much appealing as it is dangerous. In the long run,    one dependence will become absolute: dependence on the hand of the government that provides UBI, which will become a bitter parody of freedom! The people will be surprisingly loyal to this hand that feeds them, yet,  from time to time they will snap its fingers, demanding increases in food, housing, and other rations. What will these uprisings be like and who will suppress them? We cannot know it today, but if we follow this path, democracy will eventually devour itself.

 

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