this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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I didn't write the original post, but did post it and it's informative how much people get caught on that phrase. My take is that people are paying a gatekeeper. It's not about "does it take effort to live" or an appeal to return to nature. It's, "you have to work to live, plus you have to work extra so someone else doesn't have to work."
Not sure I'd lead with that specific phrase in the future, but it does seem to have generated a lot of interest and discussion.
Yeah, I get the overall idea, I'm just being pedantic. You can't just live your life without paying somebody for the privilege of existence, we're basically still medieval peasants paying a Lord for the right to live in his fiefdom. If you look over a map of the US/Western world, probably very square foot of land is owned by somebody somewhere. We're trading the value of our labor, which has been artificially suppressed for the value of a piece of property, which have been artificially inflated. It's all very one-sided and benefits people who provide seemingly no real value to society.
I don't think it really is pedantic. The premise of the post was that humanity is somehow unnatural and that leads to our suffering. That universal basic income is somehow more natural. Everything in this world needs to work to survive. Life is not a given. Nature is savage. Brutal and oft uncaring. Often in nature children are eaten for breakfast, the sick are left behind to die alone, and the old starve to death. The few exceptions are created by the creatures who strive towards a social community – like Humans. Something like universal basic income could only be possible because of our efforts thus far. It's an opportunity that's never existed before. We just have to seize it.