UBI Is The Only Way To End Modern Slavery (Updated Re-Post)

Most of the objections to Universal Basic Income (UBI), from both the left and the right (usually the right), are fundamentally patronizing, paternalistic, and/or sadistic in nature, whether subtly or not-so-subtly.  Those are, of course, very easily debunked as void on their face in anything even remotely approaching a free and civilized society.  But what about the very few supposedly ethical objections that don't quite fit this mold?

One such objection to UBI is that it is really just "crowdsourced slavery", both within nations as well as (especially) with the imperialistic Global North continuing to exploit the Global South.  Or something.

Tell me, how exactly does one "crowdsource" slavery?  And if everyone is getting free money, and all work thus becomes de facto voluntary and optional, who exactly is really being exploited or enslaved?  How would anybody be able to economically coerce anyone else?

And how exactly can it possibly be any worse than the status quo?  (Don't think too hard about that.)

Even the biggest degrowth advocates like Jason Hickel openly support UBI, and he is certainly no imperialist shill.  Ditto for Charles Eisenstein and David Graeber.

True, the Romans had the Cura Annonae (aka "the dole"), and slavery still persisted for quite some time then.  But what they didn't have, of course, was anywhere near the number of "energy slaves" that we have now, let alone today's technology that should have made all forms of slavery obsolete long ago, but for the system of late capitalism under which we live.

True, UBI is unlikely to be global overnight, and will have to start at the national or subnational level.  To avoid the worst unintended consequences, particularly those related to currencies and inflation, a global UBI (especially one directed primarily towards the Global South) would best be funded by a Tobin Tax on foreign currency exchanges, while a national, subnational, or local one would best be funded by seigniorage via national or local currencies, and/or Georgist-style taxation on the use of natural resources.  But until then, even a globally lopsided national-only UBI is highly unlikely to be any WORSE than the status quo, even if we do still maintain a sizable "trade deficit" in the near term.  In other words, if you make the perfect the enemy of the good, you ultimately end up with neither.

(Some may counter that they are really "making the necessary the enemy of the convenient", but that is really just begging the question.  Any way you slice it, it is an unserious argument to oppose UBI.)

Over the lifecycle, we ALL subsidize each other to one degree or another.  Period.  And whether we like it or not, the globalization genie is out of the bottle, and has been for some time now.  And while all empires should of course go back to being republics, returning to complete autarky (whether it be national or small-scale autarky) is a practical nonstarter for the foreseeable future, so a new model of "alter-globalization," perhaps combined with some partial economic relocalization, is the least worst way forward.  (The scarcity mindset sure doesn't help.)

Until then, we need to meet people where they are at.  Dismantling an empire this massive is best done very, very gingerly to avoid catastrophic unintended consequences, even if it takes a bit longer to do.

(Sorry, Tereza Coraggio, but history has shown that strictly small-scale sovereignty also has it's own set of pitfalls as well.  And unfortunately, NOT all people are inherently good either, and thus to blame any and all bad behavior entirely on The System is to rob individuals of agency.  Better to be protopian and not utopian, as the latter, which literally means "no place" in Greek, ultimately leads to dystopia in practice.)

As for slavery, I hereby cordially invite anyone reading this to go look up your own slavery footprint under the status quo.  Go on.  I bet your hands don't feel so clean now, do they?

If you still feel guilty about receiving UBI for whatever reason, then by all means, feel free to to donate it to GiveDirectly then.  Put your money where your mouth is.  Otherwise, silence is golden.

Bonus points for those who decide they now support UBI, even if only so they can now finally afford to buy ethically sourced, fair trade products instead of the usual cheap junk often produced by slave labor.  (Because, let's face it, "just doing without" is not only a political nonstarter, but often is not even a viable option at all under the current system, at least for those who are not extremely privileged, and is really like saying "let them eat cake".)  If you just spotted the very, very glaring "collective action problem" in the status quo before I mentioned it, you are thus quite astute, and even more bonus points to you.

If that's still not purist enough for you, dear reader, then feel free to "sell all you have, and give the proceeds to the [global] poor", as Jesus of Nazareth famously instructed the rich man.  (You may not feel rich, but you are far, far richer than even the very richest person was back then on an absolute basis, albeit admittedly ignoring relative wealth and poverty.)  And while there is no guarantee that you will "find treasure in Heaven" after doing so, at least then you could finally honestly oppose UBI for moral reasons without being a flaming hypocrite.

(Cue the crickets and cicadas)

Honestly, NO ONE's hands are truly clean in the system we currently live under.  Except for those at the very top (the oligarchs) and the very bottom (literal chattel slaves) of the global pyramid scheme, we are ALL effectively varying degrees of slaves AND slavers at the same time under the global kyriarchy.  (And yes, contrary to popular opinion, it is entirely possible for slaves to own or rent other slaves, as Harriet Beecher Stowe noted in her famous, and now politically incorrect, book whose very title was since converted into a mild to moderate racial slur.  There was then, and still is now, a pecking order that goes ALL the way down, in fact.)  And clearly some form of UBI is necessary, even if not sufficient by itself, to finally end this evil system once and for all.

(TL;DR version:  there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, and the sooner we move beyond it into post-capitalism, the better we will all be.  UBI is a crucial key policy tool that, while not perfect, will still help further that goal from a protopian perspective.  After all, life doesn't have to be a zero-sum game.)

(Mic drop)

This November's Election Is For All The Marbles

Listen up, everyone.  Make no mistake, this November's election is for ALL the marbles.  And not just because the Donald has lost his marbles (he lost them long ago), but because the stakes are even higher still this time around.  A vote for Trump (or a vote for any third party candidate, or not voting at all) is effectively a vote for Project 2025, the latest Republican agenda, which would lead America into Margaret Atwood's worst nightmare.  What they are proposing is downright horrifying to say the least!  And it is also a vote for the Trump-Putin-Xi-Kim Axis of Evil as well.  Some may say that this election is essentially a choice between World War III and Civil War 2.0, but we think that Trump winning would make it that much more likely that we will get the two-for-one special, barring a miracle of miracles.

And to those who say that their vote doesn't count because it is rigged and the outcome is predetermined, keep in mind that such a thing really only happens when the election is close, and it becomes that much HARDER to cheat when the election is not close.  We still haven't gone so far down the rabbit hole of kleptocracy that we have full banana republic sham elections--YET.  (Though if Trump wins, he could very easily make that the case in the future.)  And if everyone who was eligible to vote actually voted, Trump (and the Republicans in general) really wouldn't stand a chance.

The lesson that should have been learned in 2016:  if you make the perfect the enemy of the good, we ultimately end up with neither. Seriously. 

P.S.  To all of the young(-ish) Trump supporting men out there who are still smug about Project 2025 because of your gender, race, etc., read the fine print.  One of the things on the agenda is to bring back the military draft.  Seriously.  That means YOU too.  So maybe you might want to reconsider which candidate, and party, you are willing to support.  And to all of the Serena Joy-esque self-hating misogynists out there, who think they personally will be spared, well, remember what ultimately happens to Serena in Atwood's novel.  Don't say you haven't been warned!

Like the song "Freewill" by Rush goes, "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."

Excellent Article About UBI

The ever-insightful Rodger Malcolm Mitchell has a great new article about the topic of UBI from a Monetary Sovereignty perspective.  Read it and share it far and wide.  It needs to go VIRAL!

The only arguments against UBI are either ignorant, obsolete, greedy, selfish, patronizing, paternalistic, and/or sadistic, which means that there are really NO good arguments against it in any free and decent society worthy of the name.  Period.

(Mic drop)

The Latest Universal Basic Income (UBI) Experiment Study Is A Political-Philosophical Rorschach Test

Much has been made of the latest Universal Basic Income (UBI) experiment run by tech CEO Sam Altman, lasting for three years beginning in 2020, and the study of the results by Eva Vivalt et al.  In a nutshell, the abstract below, particularly the text in bold (emphasis ours), seems to be a sort of political and philosophical Rorschach (inkblot) test, in which we all see what we subconsciously want to see:

We study the causal impacts of income on a rich array of employment outcomes, leveraging an experiment in which 1,000 low-income individuals were randomized into receiving $1,000 per month unconditionally for three years, with a control group of 2,000 participants receiving $50/month. We gather detailed survey data, administrative records, and data from a custom mobile phone app. The transfer caused total individual income to fall by about $1,500/year relative to the control group, excluding the transfers. The program resulted in a 2.0 percentage point decrease in labor market participation for participants and a 1.3-1.4 hour per week reduction in labor hours, with participants’ partners reducing their hours worked by a comparable amount. The transfer generated the largest increases in time spent on leisure, as well as smaller increases in time spent in other activities such as transportation and finances. Despite asking detailed questions about amenities, we find no impact on quality of employment, and our confidence intervals can rule out even small improvements. We observe no significant effects on investments in human capital, though younger participants may pursue more formal education. Overall, our results suggest a moderate labor supply effect that does not appear offset by other productive activities.

And there you have it.  Some commenters have reacted positively to it, seeing it as a good thing, and some negatively, seeing it as a bad thing, often quite predictably based on political leanings.  That said, the following comment from a libertarian perspective on the Reason article clearly wins the internet:

check out reddit.com/r/antiwork

There are large groups of people who simply think it’s unfair that they are required to work in order to feed themselves. Why should they be required to do things that society deems “useful”?

I’m in favor of UBI as a replacement for welfare. I’m in favor of single payer basic healthcare as a way of decoupling healthcare from employers.

I’m ok with one of the consequences being that some people can stop pretending to work.

The commenter, Bubba Jones, makes an excellent point there.  So what if UBI results in such a modest drop in work hours and the nominal size of the labor force?  A drop of merely two percentage points and 1.4 hours per week is hardly a mass exodus from the workforce, and I would hazard a guess that the lion's share of the drop is concentrated among those who are at the lower end of the bell curve and the vitality curve, that is, marginally attached workers who tend to enervate more than they energize.  (Note as well that this study was done largely during the outlier years of the pandemic, so that may have biased the numbers.)  And in any case, more leisure is NOT inherently a bad thing.  As Robert Reich famously said, the economy exists to make our lives better, we don't exist to make the economy.   This of course echoes Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative that we should always treat humanity as ends in themselves, and never solely as a means to an end.

And it dovetails nicely with the famous quote by the late, great Buckminster Fuller, the Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th century:

We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.

(Mic drop)

UPDATE:  The ever-insightful Rodger Malcolm Mitchell has a great new article about the topic of UBI from a Monetary Sovereignty perspective.  Read it and share it far and wide.  It needs to go VIRAL!

Also, as the ever-insightful Marco Fioretti notes, the laws of physics ultimately demand some flavor of UBI from a limits-to-growth perspective.  Thus whether you are pro-growth, anti-growth, degrowth, or agnostic about growth, all roads lead to UBI.

And finally, to clarify, the TSAP agrees with the Reddit comment IF the middle part is modified as follows:

"I’m in favor of UBI as a replacement for [cash] welfare. I’m in favor of single payer basic [comprehensive] healthcare as a way of decoupling healthcare from employers."

There, fixed it for you.  And once again:

(Mic drop)

What Hath The FERAL Reserve Wrought?

The FERAL Reserve needs to answer the Clue Phone, as it is ringing louder than ever.  The stock market is crashing, and the Sahm Rule recession indicator is currently flashing red.  The broader economy itself is not crashing--yet--but at least a mild recession seems to be already baked into the cake at this point.  

The Fed's overzealous crusade against inflation has ultimately jumped the proverbial shark a while ago.  They hiked interest rates too high and stubbornly kept them too high for too long, creating a stagflationary quagmire as a result.  Inflation began to fall on its own once the pandemic-induced global supply chain crisis was resolved, and also the geopolitical issues abroad (war, sanctions, etc.) were less intense for the USA than initially thought, no thanks to the interest rate hikes, which only deepened the quagmire in the long run. 

We have been saying for a while now, and will say it again:  the Fed absolutely MUST cut interest rates yesterday, full stop.  An emergency rate cut of 100 basis points (aka one full percentage point) is clearly indicated for this situation to prevent the worst case scenario from unfolding.   

Don't say we didn't warn you!

UPDATE:  Looks like the stock market has recovered from the correction for now.  But our point still stands regardless.  And inflation is basically defeated for the time being.  Cut interest rates NOW!

Liberty Is Not A "Luxury Belief". It Is A Birthright For All

The term "luxury beliefs" has gained quite a lot of traction since it was coined in 2019, and especially since 2022, by Rob Henderson.  Per Wikipedia:

A luxury belief is an idea or opinion that confers status on members of the upper class at little cost, while inflicting costs on persons in lower classes.  The term is often applied to privileged individuals who are seen as disconnected from the lived experiences of impoverished and marginalized people. Such individuals supposedly hold political and social beliefs that signal their elite status, yet which are alleged to have negative impacts on those with the least influence. Exactly what counts as a luxury belief is not always consistent and may vary from person to person, and the term in general is considered to be controversial.

Make no mistake, it is typically only (social) conservatives that have been using the term in recent years to describe their opponents' views on various hot-button issues (bail reform, criminal justice, policing, MMT, immigration, net zero, environmentalism, marriage and family, sexual freedom, reproductive rights, drug legalization and decriminalization, etc.).  Occasionally the left and center-left have used the term (much more accurately, we would argue) to describe conservative beliefs like "supply-side economics", "trickle-down theory", austerity, artificial scarcity, weak or nonexistent social safety nets, and stuff like that, but the use of the term on the left in that context is relatively rare.

On the right, and even somewhat on the "third way" neoliberal left since President Clinton, there seems to be this specious idea that too much personal liberty is somehow apocalyptically worse than too little, particularly for the poor, downtrodden, and vulnerable members of society, and especially for racialized minorities (who says conservatives don't "play the race card" when it's convenient?).  We argue that this is a patronizing and paternalistic attitude towards people that the talking heads (consciously or unconsciously) feel smugly superior to, and it essentially robs such people of agency.  And to be blunt about it, as the saying goes, "crap always rolls downhill".  That is, granted, ANY policy can have unintended consequences per Murphy's Law, and as a well-known corollary, those negative consequences tend to accrue disproportionately to those who lack the means to insulate themselves from such consequences, particularly those at the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy.  For example, in that regard, we can call the War on (people who use a few particular) Drugs just as much if not more of a "luxury belief" as full drug legalization would be in practice, as the adverse consequences (which are not entirely unintended!) fall disproportionately on poor people and/or racialized minorities. 

As Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) famously said, "you can get over an addiction, but you will never get over a conviction".  And that clearly applies tenfold to the poor as it does to the rich.

The real problem is systemic, as must any real solution be.  But liberty per se is not the problem.  While the utterly patronizing and paternalistic protectionism and "tyranny of the weaker brother" is the real luxury belief here, as are the economic ones like "trickle-down theory", austerity, and neoliberalism. ("Catch and release" and "defund the police" are the only ones that Henderson mentions that even come close in that regard.)

The TSAP supports liberty and justice for all, in contrast to liberty for "just us", NOT all.  To quote Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies (sic) attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it".  Truer words have never been spoken indeed.

(Mic drop)

To Refurbish Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), One Must Admit That Lockdowns Were Indeed Harmful On Balance

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has been taking quite a drubbing lately.  Some say it has been thoroughly discredited since it was de facto practiced (to an extent) during the pandemic, and massive inflation resulted.  But that glib commentary misses the real root cause of the inflation:  the shortages of goods, services, and labor resulting from the massive global supply chain disruptions, which in turn resulted from the lockdowns and related restrictions. 

(And it's not entirely due to ignorance, since those naysayers actually DO admit as much about the lockdowns, but yet they still speciously put most, if not all, of the blame on MMT, because reasons.)

MMT per se was never the problem.  But to refurbish it, one must admit that lockdowns and related restrictions did very real harm, something that the pseudo-left is loath to do.  Not that MMT is flawless, by any means.  But Rodger Malcolm Mitchell's related theory, Monetary Sovereignty (MS), essentially fixes those flaws, especially when he (belatedly) jettisoned the specious idea of interest rate hikes (which only deepened the stagflationary quagmire) as an inflation-fighting tool.  A good essay about the differences between the two can be found here.

In a nutshell, when you literally shut down the broader economy in most of the world for an extended period of time (which greatly disrupts and shrinks supply), AND then try to paper over it by printing unprecedented amounts of money (which stokes demand), that WILL be inflationary.  But the money printing was NOT the root cause, and remember that if the powers that be didn't do that, there would have been a full-blown depression, if not a complete collapse of civilization as we knew it, and within a couple weeks the masses would have been furiously calling for their heads with torches and pitchforks.  Or, they could have simply adopted the "flu strategy" and NOT imposed any restrictions, and perhaps implemented a more modest (but more brief and front-loaded) stimulus package, and this whole stagflationary quagmire could have been avoided.  And as the experience of Sweden and other countries has famously shown, it would not have resulted in any more excess deaths than occurred with lockdowns.  Hindsight is quite literally 2020.

It's not that lunch cannot ever be free.  It actually can be, at least to a point.  But truly lockdowns can never be a free lunch, no matter how much money gets printed to paper over the massive holes they make.

As for the specious notion that MMT (and by extension, MS) is a "luxury belief", well, we know that the real luxury beliefs are austerity and artificial scarcity.  Not to mention lockdowns as well.

This November's Election Is For All The Marbles

With President Biden officially dropping out of the 2024 presidential race, and VP Kamala Harris the most likely candidate in his place, the 2024 election just got that much more interesting.  This is of course right on the heels of the recent (and mysterious) assassination attempt on Trump (which we condemn, of course), which has apparently elevated him to "martyr" status among his cult-like base.  

Make no mistake, this election is for ALL the marbles.  And not just because the Donald has lost his marbles (he lost them long ago), but because the stakes are even higher still this time around.  A vote for Trump (or a vote for any third party candidate, or not voting at all) is effectively a vote for Project 2025, the latest Republican agenda, which would lead America into Margaret Atwood's worst nightmare.  What they are proposing is downright horrifying to say the least!  And it is also a vote for the Trump-Putin-Xi-Kim Axis of Evil as well.  Some may say that this election is essentially a choice between World War III and Civil War 2.0, but we think that Trump winning would make it that much more likely that we will get the two-for-one special, barring a miracle of miracles.

And to those who say that their vote doesn't count because it is rigged and the outcome is predetermined, keep in mind that such a thing really only happens when the election is close, and it becomes that much HARDER to cheat when the election is not close.  We still haven't gone so far down the rabbit hole of kleptocracy that we have full banana republic sham elections--YET.  (Though if Trump wins, he could very easily make that the case in the future.)  And if everyone who was eligible to vote actually voted, Trump (and the Republicans in general) really wouldn't stand a chance.

The lesson that should have been learned in 2016:  if you make the perfect the enemy of the good, we ultimately end up with neither. Seriously. 

P.S.  To all of the young(-ish) Trump supporting men out there who are still smug about Project 2025 because of your gender, race, etc., read the fine print.  One of the things on the agenda is to bring back the military draft.  Seriously.  That means YOU too.  So maybe you might want to reconsider which candidate, and party, you are willing to support.  And to all of the Serena Joy-esque self-hating misogynists out there, who think they personally will be spared, well, remember what ultimately happens to Serena in Atwood's novel.  Don't say you haven't been warned!

Like the song "Freewill" by Rush goes, "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."

Reclaim The 4th!

As John Pavlovitz notes, it is no secret that today, the Fourth of July, has become a high holy day for the MAGA movement and fascists in general.  And that truly is a shame.  They have, essentially, culturally appropriated and turned thoroughly inside-out such an otherwise wonderful holiday celebrating our nation's hard-won independence from the British Empire, and the ideals of liberty and justice for all.  

Thus we must NEVER let them have exclusive use of this day, as that is dangerous.  Instead, we must reclaim it from the fascists, lest we let them win.

So what are we waiting for?  Happy Birthday America!  And hopefully many, many more!

Hey FERAL Reserve, Cut Interest Rates NOW!

The FERAL Reserve still has yet to cut interest rates, and despite the Dow Jones recently hitting 40,000, the risk of recession is apparently growing by the day.  And after falling dramatically from its 2022 peak of 9% once the pandemic-induced (more like lockdown-induced) supply chain issues and shortages got resolved, inflation currently remains stubbornly stuck in the neighborhood of 3%.  Because Jerome Powell is too stubborn to cut rates, thus keeping us trapped in a quagmire.  Hello, stagflation!

A recession is probably already baked into the cake at this point, and thus is probably too late to avoid entirely.  Granted.  But the Fed can still at least delay the onset, reduce the length and severity, and promote a speedier recovery IF they would deign to cut rates yesterday.  And even just delaying the onset by a quarter or two would likely postpone it until after the November election, reducing the odds that the Donald would win again. 

Flag Day

Just pointing out that today is Flag Day. But this blog looks no different today because we display the Stars and Stripes every day.

To all the ignorant fools who burn it, remember what it is that you're really burning, and all those that fought and died for it. Those who consider themselves to be on the political left would be better served by "taking back the Flag" and waving it proudly, so it is NOT perverted into an ultra-right-wing symbol by the fascists.  Make it clear that the government policies you oppose are NOT in the national interest. And let everyone know that you can just as strongly love this country as you dislike its government. In fact, plenty of true patriots often do feel that way.

The Flag is not Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative, or belonging to any other faction. It is the American Flag, and it belongs to all of us. 

LIVE FREE OR DIE!

Trump Is Guilty As Charged

It's official, Trump is GUILTY as charged.  On May 30, 2024, he was found guilty on all 34 counts in the hush-money trial.  That means he is now literally a convicted felon, and the first president in US history, current or former, to have ever been convicted of a felony.  That is, as he would say, "unpresidented".  He will be sentenced on July 11, and can face up to four years in prison, and also have to pay up to $5000 per count, if the judge (hopefully!) decides to give him the maximum sentence.  That's, as he would say YUUUUUGE!  Also, as he would say, Sad!

Of course, his die-hard supporters will see him as a martyr.  LOL.  But hopefully, even if he ends up avoiding prison and somehow still remains on the 2024 ballot, enough of the fence-sitters will be swayed to guarantee that he will lose the election, bigly.  

Believe me.

A Better Than Nordic-Style Social Welfare State With Less Than ALASKA Taxes

A friendly reminder to all readers:  contrary to popular opinion, it is entirely possible to have a better than Nordic-style social welfare state with less than Florida Alaska taxes.  Why?  (You really may want to sit down before reading any further.)

Because federal taxes do NOT fund federal spending, that's why!  Not the individual income tax, not the corporate income tax, not FICA, not the various excises, duties, and tariffs, not estate or gift taxes, nor any other federal tax for that matter.  It is all a Big Lie illusion to prop up the oligarchy, especially the big banks, via artificial scarcity of dollars.  As Rodger Malcolm Mitchell famously notes, and echoed by Dr. Joseph M. Firestone, the federal government is Monetarily Sovereign, that is, being the issuer of it's own currency, it by definition has infinite money.  Any money they receive, through taxes or otherwise, is effectively like bringing coals to Newcastle, in that it disappears into infinity (thus de facto destroyed).  And whenever they spend money on anything, they create each dollar on an ad hoc basis to pay as they go.  

Switching to what Dr. Firestone calls "Overt Congressional Financing (OCF)" is LONG overdue.  On August 15, 1971, the gold standard effectively ended for good, but the method of Congressional financing remains more or less stuck in the past.

Meanwhile, the so-called "National Debt" (TM) is also an illusion, in that it consists of Treasury securities that are only spuriously linked to federal spending due to arcane and archaic rules left over from the now-defunct gold standard that ended over half a century ago.  Each T-security is effectively equivalent to a CD savings account for those who choose to invest in them.  Additionally, the idea that money can only be created with interest or other "strings" attached to it is yet another part of the Big Lie as well.

(It could literally be paid off in one fell swoop at zero cost to anyone, in fact.  And it's technically not even "borrowing" at all.  Infinite money, remember?)

Ditto for the Social Security, Medicare, and other federal "trust funds", which are literally nothing more than accounting gimmicks based on artificial scarcity.  They could fund all of that and more by simply creating the money on an ad hoc basis.

As for inflation, that is generally caused by shortages of goods and services, NOT by printing too much money.  It is ultimately a supply-side problem that requires supply-side solutions, including (counterintuitively) more federal spending targeted to incentivize more production of scarce goods and services.  Thus, rationing dollars via austerity measures and/or raising interest rates to fight inflation and/or recession is like applying leeches to cure anemia.  It is a fundamental category mistake that does far more harm than good on balance.

Of course, the oligarchs want to condition We the People to accept mere crumbs from the tables of the rich.  That way they can keep widening the yawning gap between the haves and have-nots, givng the oligarchs more power to lord it over us all.

Bottom line: all of these gimmicks are completely artificial, contrived, and designed to deceive us all.  The ONLY purposes of taxes in a Monetarily Sovereign government that issues it's own currency (like the federal government, but not (yet) state and local governments) are 1) to control and regulate the economy by encouraging or discouraging various behaviors and activities, 2) to (crudely) fight inflation, 3) to create demand for the currency, and 4) to prop up and give credence to the Big Lie.  But the supposed need to raise revenue is NOT one of them at all.

Thus, with the stroke of a pen, Congress can very easily square the circle of a better than Nordic-style social welfare state with less than Alaska taxes, complete with a national version of the Alaska Permanent Fund.  They gave the FERAL Reserve its power in 1913, and they can just as easily take it away today if they chose to.  But of course, their oligarch masters would NOT want that at all!  Most Congresscritters save for a tiny few, are of course bought and paid for by the big money interests.  Thus, we need to throw the bums out, yesterday!

So what are we waiting for? PAGING DR. FIRESTONE!  NEEDED IN WASHINGTON, DC, STAT!

Hey FERAL Reserve: Cut Interest Rates NOW!

The FERAL Reserve still has yet to cut interest rates, and despite the Dow Jones recently hitting 40,000, the risk of recession is apparently growing by the day.  And after falling dramatically from its 2022 peak of 9% once the pandemic-induced (more like lockdown-induced) supply chain issues and shortages got resolved, inflation currently remains stubbornly stuck in the neighborhood of 3%.  Because Jerome Powell is too stubborn to cut rates, thus keeping us trapped in a quagmire.  Hello, stagflation!

A recession is probably already baked into the cake at this point, and thus is probably too late to avoid entirely.  Granted.  But the Fed can still at least delay the onset, reduce the length and severity, and promote a speedier recovery IF they would deign to cut rates yesterday.  And even just delaying the onset by a quarter or two would likely postpone it until after the November election, reducing the odds that the Donald would win again. 

We Re-Affirm Our Zero-Tolerance Policy Towards Antisemitism (And All Other Forms Of Racism And Bigotry)

In the wake of the still ongoing Israel-Gaza war following the brutal and barbaric terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel, and especially with all of the recent protests on college campuses and elsewhere, there has been an outpouring of antisemitism lately from both left and right (though largely from the regressive "left").  Some of it is ostensibly at least tangentially related to current events, while some of it is simply a "mask off" moment for longstanding hatred against Jews that has always been there but now has come to the surface now they have found a politically convenient excuse to hide behind. Either way, it is completely unacceptable.  Regardless of how one may feel about current events, there is NO excuse for that sort of bigotry.  Period.  And the silence is truly deafening among those who should know better than to be silent in the face of it as well.

As we have said in the past, we the TSAP hereby vow to NEVER make that sort of mistake by either omission or commission, and hereby condemn antisemitism in the very strongest of terms, just as strongly as we do racism in general.  And the reader is put on notice that we will NEVER tolerate any overt or covert antisemitism in our party, period, no matter how much one tries (in vain, by definition) to dress it up in any sort of leftist or social justice rhetoric.  Bigotry by any other name still stinks.

Therefore, using any of the following red flag words, phrases, or references will get your comments promptly deleted, and severe and/or repeat offenders will be banned permanently:

Obviously, any known slurs against Jews ("y*d", "k**e", "h**b", "Chr*st-ki**er", etc.), or any permutations thereof
Using the word "Jew" or "Jewish" itself as a pejorative or insult
Adding pejorative modifiers such as "dirty", "cheap", or "money-grubbing" to same

Comparing Jews to vampires, vultures, bloodsuckers, parasites, pirates, carpetbaggers, etc.
Blood libel or vilification of any kind
Stab-in-the-back legends vilifying Jews

Claiming that Jews are sinister puppeteers or secretly rule the world 

Claims of divided loyalties 
Calling for violence of any kind against Jews or Israel
Inciting pogroms of any kind

Praising the October 7th terrorist attack

Denying or minimizing the October 7th terrorist attack, or blaming Israel for it
Any Holocaust denial (including "soft" denial or minimization, or JAQ-ing off)
Any Holocaust jokes, or any jokes about gas chambers, ovens, or death squads in relation to anyone Jewish.  NOT FUNNY!

Any Anne Frank jokes
Any other jokes demeaning to Jews

Any praising of Hitler or the Nazis (or neo-Nazis)
Any praising of the KKK or white supremacists or white nationalists, including the "alt-right" and neo-Confederates
Any praising of known Holocaust deniers
Any praising of Hamas or Hezbollah (or al-Qaeda or ISIL, for that matter)

Holding Jews and/or Israel to double standards, because reasons

Victim-blaming for any antisemitic violence
Falsely accusing any Jew of being a Nazi collaborator or kapo, or repeating such unproven or debunked claims

Putting (((triple parentheses))) around anyone's name, as a code for "Jew"
Obsessing over (((George Soros))), for example

"14 (Words), or 14/88"
"311" (unless clearly referencing the band)
"88" (without clear explanation)
"America First" (depending on context)
"Anglo-Israelism" (when giving it any credence)
"The Bad War" (in reference to WWII)
"Cultural Marxism" (as a dog-whistle slur)
"Death to Israel" (or something similar)

"East Coast Liberal Intellectual Elite" (dog whistle)

"False flag" (if allegedly done by Jews or Israel)
"From the river to the sea" (without detailed explanation of what one really means)
"Globalist" (as a dog-whistle slur)

"Globalize the Intifada"

"Glory to the martyrs" (in reference to terrorists)
"Gotta pay the Jews if you wanna sing the blues"
"Hexagram" (instead of "Star of David")
"Heil Hitler", "Sieg Heil", or "Hail Victory"
"Hitler was the good guy"
"Hitler was a socialist"
"Hitler was a Rothschild"
"Hitler was Jewish"
"Hoaxocaust" or "HollowHoax" or any permutations thereof
"Hooknose" (or any caricatures thereof)
"Hymietown"

"Illuminati" (in reference to Jews)

"Infidels" (in reference to Jews)

"Infowars" (in reference to Jewish conspiracy theories of any kind)

"Intifada" (when praising violence against Jews)
"ISIS = Israeli Secret Intelligence Service"
"Israel (or Jews) was behind 9/11"

"Israhell"

"Jew them down"
"Jews caused the financial crisis"
"Jews have us hypnotized"
"Jews killed Jesus"
"Jews own Hollywood"

"Jews own X percent of the wealth"

"Jews owned slaves!"

"Jews will not replace us!"
"Jewish Slave Trade"
"Jewish Cabal"
"Jewish Media (Elites)"
"Judeo-Bolshevism"
"The Jew York Times"
"Khazars"
"Kosher Tax"
"Loy-yahs"

"Lugenpresse"

"Mein Kampf" or "My New Order"
"Money boys up in New York" (dog whistle)

"New York bankers" (dog whistle)

"Octopus" or any images thereof (in reference to Jews)

"Pat Buchanan was right"
"Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" (if claiming that this long-debunked canard is true)
"Red Diaper Doper Babies" (RDDB)
"Rootless cosmopolitans" (in reference to Jews)
"Rothschilds" (in reference to conspiracy theories)

"Shylock"

"Shyster" (when referring to a Jew)

"Synagogue of Satan"
"Unite the Right"
"War on Christmas" (when used without irony)
"White Genocide" (conspiracy theories)
"White Power" or "White Pride"
"Winston Churchill was the real bad guy"
"Wipe Israel off the map" (or any variations thereof)

"Work will set you free" (especially in the original German)

"Wrathchild" (as a "clever" alternative to "Rothschild")

"Y*d Army" (derogatory nickname for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club)

"You will not replace us!"

"Zhyd" (old Russian/Ukranian slur for "Jew")
"Zionazis"
"Zionist Conspiracy"
"ZOG" (Zionist Occupied Government)
Images of swastikas, Confederate flags, nooses, burning crosses, "Le Happy Merchant" or "Evil Jew" caricatures, or any other recognized hate symbols, period
Any other antisemitic canards or tropes

Please note that anti-Zionism per se, when honestly and seriously included as part of a broader anti-colonial framework, is not automatically prohibited here.  The same goes with supporting some forms of Zionism but not others, and so on.  Criticism of Israel (and/or support for Palestinians) is fine as along as it is nuanced and grounded in reality, but be sure to be specific about exactly which individuals, policies, and/or political parties you are criticizing, and why.  Vaguely using "Zio(nist)" or any permutations thereof as a veiled slur against Jews in general will not be tolerated, and of course the same goes for any specious claims that Israel has no right to exist at all.

For the record, the TSAP supports the "two-state solution", which is shorthand for 1) revert back to the the pre-1967 borders of Israel and Palestine, 2) officially recognized Palestinian statehood for Gaza and the West Bank, 3) end any non-consensual Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories, and 4) both Israel and Palestine have a right to exist, period.  And we have long vehemently opposed Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud Party (as well as parties even further to the right still), while also vehemently opposing Hamas and Hezbollah all the same.  Yes, it's entirely possible to oppose both at the same time.

As for criticism or negative views of patriarchal religions, that is fine, but do NOT single out Judaism.  Keep in mind that the most prominent and populous branches of Judaism are typically among the most progressive and least patriarchal of all the Big Five mainstream religions nowadays.

As for conspiracy theories in general, you may share them, but please don't drag the Jews into it, and don't use any dog-whistles either.  Seriously, don't do it!

And while the TSAP loves to criticize the big banks, Wall Street, usury, and oligarchs in general, along with their nefarious system, we ask that you NOT appropriate such ideas for scapegoating Jews or dog-whistling your virulent hatred of same.  Keep in mind that most banksters and oligarchs are WASPs, not Jews.  So let's not pretend otherwise, OK?  That old trope really didn't age very well at all.

After all, as a party that greatly supports Bernie Sanders and Marianne Williamson, both of whom are Jewish, we would really be suicidal to ignore antisemitism on the left, right, or anywhere else on the political spectrum.  We also support Jon Stewart as well.  In the USA, it has long seemed to be far more prevalent on the right wing, though very recently the "left" unfortunately seems to be stealing the show in that regard. And it has NO place in our party.

We ignore it at our own peril, and everyone else's.

How To Solve The Big Tech Problem Without Violating Anyone's Rights (Updated Re-Post)

"Big Tech is the new Big Tobacco" is often bandied about these days.  And while that has a kernel of truth to it (a kernel the size of a cornfield, in fact), it is also used by authoritarian zealots with a very illiberal (and ageist) agenda.  Mandatory age verification, censorship, repealing Section 230, and other related illiberal restrictions would open up the door to many unintended consequences to privacy, cybersecurity, and civil rights and liberties in general.  Even those adults who don't support youth rights will eventually experience these consequences sooner or later.  Kafka, meet trap.  Pandora, meet box.  Albatross, meet neck.  And of course, baby, meet bathwater. 

And none of these things will actually solve the collective action problem of Big Tech and the "Social Dilemma".  But here are some things that will, in descending order of priority and effectiveness:

1. First and foremost, take a "Privacy First" approach as recommended by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).  Pass comprehensive data privacy legislation for all ages that, at a minimum, would ban surveillance advertising, and ban data brokers too.
2. Audit the algorithms and internal research of the Big Tech giants, and make the results publicly available for all to see.  Sunlight is truly the best disinfectant. 
3. Require the strictest and safest privacy settings to be the default settings for all users of all ages, which can then be adjusted more liberally by the users themselves.  For example, "friends only" sharing and "no DMs enabled from people whom one does not follow" by default.  And allow the option to turn off all DMs completely as well.
4. Require or incentivize the use of various "architectural" safety features on all social media, such as various nudges, #OneClickSafer ("stop at two hops") to reduce the pitfalls of frictionless sharing, and increase the use of CAPTCHAs to root out the pervasive toxic bots.
5. If after doing that, We the People feel that we must still get stricter in terms of age, then don't make things any stricter than current California standards (i.e. CCPA and CAADCA).  That is, a "Kids Code" would be fine as long as it is properly written and doesn't result in censorship or mandatory age verification. 

The first two items on the list in particular would of course be vehemently opposed by Big Tech.  That's because their whole business model depends on creepy surveillance advertising and creepy algorithms, and thus incentivizing addiction for profit.  They would thus have to switch to the (gasp!) DuckDuckGo model if these items were done.  (Plays world's smallest violin) That would of course be tantamount to throwing the One Ring into the fires of Mount Doom, in J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

For another, related collective action problem, what about the emerging idea of phone-free schools?  Fine, but to be fair, how about phone-free workplaces for all ages as well?  In both cases, it should ONLY apply while "on the clock", which for school would be best defined as being from the opening bell to the final bell of the day, as well as during any after-school detention time.  And of course, in both cases, there would have to be medical exemptions for students and employees who need such devices for real-time medical monitoring (glucose for diabetes, for example).  Surely productivity would increase so much as a result that we could easily shorten the standard workweek to 30-32 hours per week (8 hours for 4 days, or 6 hours for 5 days) with no loss in profits?  But that would make too much sense.

Other good ideas we would endorse are a voluntary smartphone buyback program (similar to gun buybacks), and perhaps even paying people to voluntarily delete or deactivate their social media accounts for a time. That would accomplish far more than any realistic mandatory measures would.

Another possible idea is simply to slow down by design the pace of these social media platforms.  Much like #OneClickSafer mentioned above, adding a little bit of friction to an otherwise frictionless system can help tame the very real dark side of that system.  I mean, would you willingly drive on a frictionless surface (such as ice)?  Of course you wouldn't.

Note that internet connection speeds are more than ten times faster (!) today on average than in 2010.  That leaves a LOT of room for adding back friction!

And finally, the idea of banning certain questionable design features (infinite scroll, autoplay, etc.) may be controversial in terms of whether such features are protected by the First Amendment, but we believe that those features per se are not automatically protected, unless the ban is deliberately  abused to censor specific content.  If such bans are truly content-neutal, we are fine with that. 

We must remember that, at the end of the day, Big Tech is NOT our friend.  But neither are the illiberal control freak zealots.  These measures that we endorse will actually make both sides quite angry indeed.  But truly that's a feature, not a bug.

Big Tech can go EFF off!

Why The WHO Pandemic Treaty Needs Serious Revision Before It Can Be Signed

(Updated from the 2023 version)

The current draft of the WHO pandemic treaty is very close to being finalized now.  And while the "fact checkers" vociferously deny that the treaty will sign over America's hard-won national sovereignty to the WHO in the event of a future global health emergency, there is still good reason for all nations, and especially the USA, to refuse to sign, ratify, OR accede to it until serious revisions are made.  

First, the constitutionally questionable practice of it possibly even going into effect without the Senate's "advice and consent" (as is typically required to ratify international treaties), let alone the utterly specious notion that treaties can even supersede the Constitution itself, is enough to give anyone a severe case of the heebie-jeebies, or at least any serious student of history that gives a crap about the Constitution.  That alone is bad enough. 

But the most important problem of all, is what the treaty, by omission, does NOT require of its signatories.  The following is what we believe any such treaty absolutely MUST require explicitly, in light of the three year "free" trial of authoritarianism (and often totalitarianism) from 2020-2023:

To be prohibited in any circumstances:

• All lockdowns, in theory or practice, must be strictly prohibited. 
• All mask mandates outside of a healthcare setting must be strictly prohibited.
• All forced business closures must be strictly prohibited unless fully compensated by, and entirely at the expense of, whatever government imposed such closures.
• All forced school closures lasting more than ten (10) consecutive school days must be strictly prohibited. 
• All vaccine mandates, passports or coercion, in theory or practice, must be strictly prohibited for any vaccine that 1) has been on the market for less than ten (10) years and/or 2) has not been conclusively proven to be truly safe and effective.
• Launching or marketing any sort of vaccine, or anything that identifies as such, without the proper safety and effectiveness testing and/or without following GMP, shall be strictly prohibited. 
• Any attempt to censor alternative viewpoints shall be strictly prohibited. 
• Any attempt to officially deny or censor a known effective treatment or prophylaxis shall be strictly prohibited. 
• Any attempt to abolish cash shall be strictly prohibited. 
• Social credit scoring shall be strictly prohibited. 
• Microchipping by force or coercion of any kind shall be strictly prohibited. 

To be strongly discouraged overall:

• Blanket mask mandates in healthcare settings shall be strongly discouraged. 
• School closures of any kind shall be strongly discouraged.
• Business closures of any kind shall be strongly discouraged. 
• Vaccine mandates, passports, or coercion of any kind shall be strongly discouraged regardless of the vaccine or how supposedly safe it is.
• Mandatory quarantine of exposed individuals without symptoms shall be strongly discouraged for any disease for which the body of research evidence does not support (i.e. influenza and coronaviruses).
• Gathering restrictions or any other restrictions on freedom of association shall be strongly discouraged. 
• Travel bans and restrictions shall be strongly discouraged. 
• Mass testing with PCR shall be strongly discouraged in most circumstances. 
• Central bank digital currency (CBDC) shall be strongly discouraged (and shall be prohibited if it replaces cash entirely).
• Digital ID shall be strongly discouraged. 

To be encouraged:

• Informed consent
• Bodily autonomy 
• Human rights
• Civil rights and liberties 
• Free speech
• Public health (as it was originally founded)
• Early treatment and prophylaxis 
• Nutrition 
• Holistic view of health
• National sovereignty 

Definitions:

• "Lockdown" shall be defined as any mandatory "stay home", "shelter in place", or equivalent order lasting more than 24 consecutive hours, for all or part of the population, for any reason.  Any nighttime curfew order lasting more than three (3) consecutive nights would also meet this definition as well.  These must be off the table.
• "Mask mandate" shall be defined as any attempt to force or coerce anyone to cover all or any part of one's face for the purposes of disease control, or any penalties for not complying for same.
• "Vaccine mandate" shall be defined as any attempt to force or coerce any person to receive anything that identifies as a vaccine.
• "Vaccine passport" shall be defined as any identifier bestowed on a person that gives certain privileges conditional on having received anything that identifies as a vaccine.
• All other definitions have their usual meaning, and apply in theory or practice.

That should be the FLOOR for any such treaty, NOT the ceiling, as even that may be too much leeway. Then, and ONLY then, should the USA agree to any sort of WHO pandemic treaty, ever.

If there was ever a hill to die on, this is it.  Because once that Rubicon is crossed, there is NO going back.

(Mic drop)

Degrowth Is A Nonstarter And Won't Work. Here's What Will Instead. (Re-Post)

From ecological overshoot to all of its attendant crises, including climate change, resource depletion, pollution, and mass extinction, along with the current global energy crisis, the idea of "degrowth" (i.e. a deliberate and planned shrinking of the economy) may seem like an appealing alternative in some circles.  However, not only is it a political nonstarter, but the level of central planning and austerity required would ultimately do more harm than good, get us permanently stuck in a bad place, and we would still end up destroying the Earth in the end (albeit a bit more slowly, compared to business as usual).  It would "flatten the curve", of course, but really just drag it out and prolong the pain without solving the problem.  In other words, it would basically be like Covid lockdown, only permanently, though hopefully minus all of the antisocial distancing and ocean-killing masks.  And we saw what a disaster that was, with the Global South faring the very worst in terms of collateral damage.

And that's before we get into the sort of extremely high and confiscatory tax rates (on both income and wealth) that would be required on not only the rich, but also on the middle class and working class, and even the working poor of the Global North.  Which the oligarchs would so artfully dodge with ease of course, leaving the rest of us holding the bag.  Though to be fair, not all degrowthers necessarily agree with that idea, and many prefer Pigouvian taxes on pollution and resource depletion (most notably carbon taxes), and perhaps also taxing advertising revenue as well, instead of income and wealth.

(For a flavor of a possible worst-case scenario, see Susan Cooper's dystopian novel Mandrake.  Then add hell AND high water to the mix.  Just lovely!)

Some excellent articles casting doubt on degrowth can be found here and here, truly food for thought indeed.

Of course, we clearly need to end our inane and insane addiction to growth for the sake of growth, the ideology of the cancer cell (as Edward Abbey famously said) which ultimately kills its host.  We need an economy that is no longer dependent on growth and can still provide prosperity for all with or without growth.  We need to stop obsessing over the fundamentally flawed metric of GDP, which really ultimately stands for God Damn Profits nowadays.  Rent-seeking, usury, artificial scarcity, cronyism, speculation, and other forms of parasitism and economic manipulation from the top down are the ultimate reasons why our current economic system is so hooked on growth for the sake of growth.

As the futurist Walter Ignatius Baltzley noted back in 2015, the only way to end this system of cannibalism (sorry, "capitalism") is to give it the ONE thing that it absolutely cannot survive:  ABUNDANCE.  That's right, capitalism needs scarcity to function, which is why it has to create so much artificial scarcity nowadays to prop itself up.  Capitalism will thus fatally overdose on capital, in other words.  Abundance is of course the polar opposite of the sort of eco-austerity of degrowth.  With enough abundance, we can humanely euthanize this dreadfully toxic system for good, and easily transition to post-capitalism, and ultimately a post-growth and post-carbon economy. 

For example, Baltzley in another article applies this idea directly to Big Oil.  How do you win a tug-of-war against a much stronger opponent?  By simply letting go of the rope, and letting them fall on their butt.  Thus, as crazy as it sounds, get out of the way and simply give the fossil fuel fat cats what they say they want so much.  Yes, you read that right.  Let 'em "drill, baby, drill", and "frack, baby, frack"!  The government can even buy their oil (and natural gas) at a premium and then turn around and re-sell it at a loss.  The resulting massive surplus of cheap energy would flood the market, bringing down the cost of living in general, and by doing so....will also bring down the cost of renewable energy alternatives like wind and solar that will ultimately replace fossil fuels, while oil and natural gas become less profitable over time.  In the very short run, it would be quite a boon for Big Oil, but in the long run it would be giving them the very rope with which to hang themselves.  (Fortunately for us, Big Oil is extremely shortsighted.)

Yes, it's quite the Hail Mary pass indeed.  But when both Plan A and Plan B have been ruled out as impractical and/or politically impossible, and time is running out, that ultimately leaves us with Plan C.

So what are we waiting for?  Prime that pump, and prime it good!  Let Big Oil and the oligarchs enjoy their utterly foolish pride before the fall.  Remember, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Oh, by the way, wanna hear a joke?  Peak Oil.  That's the joke.  Yes, oil production will inevitably peak at some point.  Duh!  And hopefully demand will peak before supply does.  But we still have more than enough to deep-fry the planet many times over.

Quite frankly, the biggest supply constraint of all right now is NOT geology, but rather geopolitics, as Europe is currently learning the hard way with Russia weaponizing its natural gas against them. And the aforementioned plan would solve that as well.  Canada alone could supply more than enough (liquefied) natural gas to Europe to be free from Russian energy dominance, but they won't, because they never developed the export facilities to do so in time.  That leaves the USA to fill in the gap, of course.

So what exactly will post-capitalism ultimately look like when the dust finally settles?  The TSAP doesn't claim to know the details.  But eventually it will very likely organically evolve into something like mutualism or a gift economy to one degree or another, as well as a "steady-state economy" of course. While a pure gift economy may not necessarily work at scale, a hybrid gift/exchange economy could be better.  Whatever it is, it has to develop organically.

One thing is absolutely certain, though:  if we are to create an economy that no longer has to "grow or die", we must first phase out and eventually abolish usury entirely.  That means that interest and all other kinds of fees for the mere use of money will need to be officially capped at ZERO, period.  (Or at least when the borrower is a natural person, as opposed to an organization or institution.)  To avoid seizing up the financial markets and crashing the economy, set a "sinking lid" at, say, 10% APR, and then gradually lower the cap each year until zero is eventually reached.  Usury has ultimately led to the "financialization" of the economy, inflation, worsening inequality, and just about every other social problem that has a name.  There is a reason why it used to be considered such a sin.  So let's make it history.

Oh, and by the way:  unless the population also shrinks as well at least as fast as the economy does, degrowth is, ipso facto, fundamentally an exercise in futility.  That is true both from an economic perspective as well as an ecological perspective.

FINAL THOUGHT:  We may have been a tad too harsh on some of the degrowth advocates, particularly Jason Hickel, by lumping them all together.  While our roadmaps for how to get there may diverge, the TSAP's ultimate goals for post-capitalism at least seem to be more or less the same as Hickel's (though that's not necessarily true of some of the other degrowth advocates out there).  Ditto for Charles Eisenstein and Kate Raworth as well to one degree or another.

See here as well.

The (Partial) Solution To "Limbic Capitalism"

"Limbic capitalism" is the term of art given to the phenomenon by which Big Business deliberately engineers addiction to various products and services to encourage more consumption, and therefore more profit.  It is an externality-generating practice that is ultimately a collective action problem at base.  We currently see it in practically everything from Big Tobacco to Big Tech to Big Media to Big Food to Big Booze to Big Pharma to Big Oil to Big Casino and so on, all the way up to and including Wall Street, the world's largest casino of all.  And of course, the only true and complete solution to end limbic capitalism for good is to end capitalism itself completely.

After all, it's all part of the same general addiction at base:  i.e. growth for the sake of growth, the ideology of the cancer cell, which eventually kills its host. 

That said, partial solutions can still be worthwhile, and we should not let the Nirvana Fallacy paralyze us in that regard.  Ending capitalism itself completely is a lot easier said than done, or at the very least is NOT a particularly quick process.  Thus, in the meantime, one "low-hanging fruit" measure to take is to pass a broad law that makes it categorically illegal to deliberately, and for no legitimate purpose, design a product or service to be more addictive than it would otherwise be.  That would of course include wilfully adding any gratuitous and questionable additives or features that cannot otherwise be legitimately justified.  That would of course include a wide range of troublesome food additives, and of course practically all tobacco additives a fortiori, but also the more subtle things such as curated "addictive feeds", "infinite scroll", and "frictionless sharing" on social media, and various blatantly gambling-like features built into some MMO video games as well.

Some things are of course naturally or inherently addictive (to one degree or another) in themselves, granted.  And humans are wired to seek such things out, thanks in part to our evolutionary baggage.  But there is NO justifiable or redeeming reason at all to deliberately make such things MORE addictive than they would otherwise be, for the sake of filthy lucre.

Of course, at the same time, we would also still be wise to heed Lysander Spooner's famous and timeless maxim:  vices are not crimes.  We ignore such a crucial distinction at our peril, as history has shown.

Objections To Universal Basic Income Debunked (Updated Re-Post)

Back in 2017, there was an article in The Week by Damon Linker titled, "The Spiritual Ruin of a Universal Basic Income".  He basically argues that it is a Very Bad Idea for the left to pursue the idea of a UBI because 1) it fails to address (and perhaps even intensifies) the psychological and spiritual consequences of joblessness, which are (in his view) distinct from and worse than the economic consequences, 2) most people couldn't handle joblessness even with a basic income, and would thus become depressed and purposeless and give themselves over to video games, porn, and/or drug addiction, and 3) the left should not concede that automation (and the resulting job losses) is in any way inevitable.  Because reasons, obviously. 

And all of these things are in fact false.  (Or to be exceedingly charitable, highly subjective at best.)

First, only a person of relative privilege could possibly see the economic consequences of joblessness as somehow entirely separate from, and less significant than, the (admittedly real) psychological and spiritual consequences of same.  The former can indeed cause or contribute to the latter in a big way, and it is very difficult to disentangle them.  Material poverty and desperation are in fact well-known to be objectively harmful to the mind, body, and spirit, and only meaningful work (as opposed to work for the sake of work) can really be said to be beneficial to same.  And when the economic consequences are resolved via a UBI, the remaining noneconomic consequences of unemployment would in fact become that much easier to tackle in practice.  Think about it. 

(Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, hello!  Only when the lower rungs of basic physiological and security needs are satisfied (which UBI does) is it even possible to even partially achieve the higher rungs.)

Second, there is NO logical reason why a UBI and the sort of New Deal 2.0 jobs program that Linker advocates would be mutually exclusive.  The TSAP, in fact, advocates exactly that combination, with both a UBI and a scaled-up Job Corps style program for everyone who wants one (even if not quite a guarantee).  We also advocate shortening the workweek as well, which would spread the remaining work among more workers, thus more jobs.  (The vaunted 40 hour workweek is literally a relic of 1938, and even then was almost going to be set as low as 30 hours.)  Thus, the noneconomic consequences of joblessness can also be adequately dealt with as well, and in any case, one can always choose to do volunteer work (and there most likely will still be plenty of that available) to get the same ostensible psychological and spiritual benefits as paid work.  So that is NOT a valid reason for the left to abandon the idea of UBI, anymore than it would be a reason to abandon the idea of a social safety net in general.

(Actually, John Maynard Keynes, along with many other futurists, predicted that with the increases in productivity due to technology, the average workweek would eventually shrink to 15 hours by the end of the 20th century.  Of course, that didn't happen, since the oligarchs took nearly all the fruits of the productivity gains since the early 1970s, thanks to neoliberalism.)

Third, the idea that UBI will cause most people or even a particularly large chunk of the population to become lazy and/or self-destructive is NOT borne out by the facts.  Numerous experiments with UBI and related schemes have been conducted in diverse cultures and locations in the past half-century, and the overwhelming weight of the evidence to date strongly suggests that this will NOT occur.  If anything, one notable effect is an increase in entrepreneurship due to a decreased fear of failure and more time and money to invest in their goals. Students and new mothers will likely work fewer hours than before since they are no longer forced by dint of economic necessity (the effect on hours worked is likely negligible for everyone else), but is that really such a bad thing?  Of course not.

No serious proposal for UBI has advocated one large enough to "live large" on that alone.  (The most common proposals, including the TSAP's, rarely exceed $1000/month per adult and $500/month per child under 18.)  Thus, there will still be plenty of incentive to work, since unlike traditional means-tested welfare programs, there is no penalty for earning more money than some arbitrary threshold.

In any case, with or without UBI, workers will work, and shirkers will shirk regardless.  Employers may (at first) not be pleased about having to pay somewhat higher wages than before to attract and retain quality employees, but them's the breaks for solving collective action problems.  In other words, it would now have to be entirely by mutual consent, not desperation or coercion.  And ultimately, even the employers themselves will benefit in the long run as well, as Henry Ford famously noted long ago.

(If we really want to incentivize work in the event of a labor shortage, we can, in addition to UBI, expand and convert the EITC to a simpler "reverse payroll tax" that automatically tops up workers' paychecks by matching dollar for dollar up to a point.  Such carrots would work far better than sticks in the long run.)

(And to all of the truly horrible and insufferable bosses out there, well, hear that?  That's the sound of me playing the world's smallest violin for you.  So go swallow your pride (and greed, envy, gluttony, sloth, wrath, and lust, while you're at it), before it swallows you whole.  And at the same time, to all of the users, welchers, leeches, dregs, and ne'er-do-wells, there's the door.  Don't let it hit you on the way out!)

Nor is there any credible evidence that substance abuse would significantly increase either as a result of UBI, and it may even decrease.  But just to drive the point home even further, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sam Altman argues that even if 90% of the population sat around smoking weed and playing video games instead of working, a UBI would still be better on balance than not having one, as everyone would be free to pursue their passions, and the remaining 10% would innovatively create new wealth.  Not that he thinks that 90% would actually do that, of course, and nor do we, but the point was well-made nonetheless.  One can also point to the Rat Park studies as well.  It is amazing how addiction of any kind diminishes or even disappears when rats (or people) are not treated like caged animals in the aptly-named "rat race"!

(Some cynics will inevitably bring up the infamous Universe 25 "mouse utopia" experiments, but that would really be a gross disanalogy, since a gilded cage is still a cage regardless. And in any case, at the end of the day, rats and mice are not people.)

And finally, a real pragmatist would realize that automation really is inevitable in the long run.  Contrary to what the neo-Luddites like to argue, fighting against it will NOT stop it, only delay it a bit.  The best that we genuine progressives can do is admit that fact and do whatever we can to ensure that the fruits of this automation will benefit all of humanity, and not just the oligarchs at the top.  To do so, we must take the power back from the oligarchs.  And a crucial step to that goal is a Universal Basic Income, so We the People can actually have some bargaining power, no longer dependent on our employers for survivial.  No longer would anyone have to be at the mercy of the all too often merciless.  Whether we get this one right will basically be the difference between a futuristic pragmatic utopia or protopia (as Buckminster Fuller envisioned) or a horrifying technocratic dystopia straight out of 1984, Brave New World, or [insert other dystopian novel here].  So let's choose the right side of history!

After all, as the late, great Buckminster Fuller--the Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th century, famously said all the way back in 1970:

We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.

Thus, on balance, a Universal Basic Income Guarantee for all is a good idea regardless.  A win-win-win situation for everyone but the oligarchs.  And the only real arguments against it are selfish, patronizing, paternalistic, and/or sadistic ones, which really means there are NO good arguments against it in a free and civilized society.  So what are we waiting for?

For more information and a much deeper dive into this topic, see the TSAP's "Why UBI?" page.

P.S.  I realized that the above arguments are largely utilitarian or consequentialist in nature, which still leave the reader wondering about nonconsequentialist or deontological arguments.  For the latter, Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative can also be said to apply to UBI:  "Always treat humanity as an end in itself, and never solely as a means", as well as his principle of universalizability.  Or as Robert Reich says, "The economy exists to make our lives better. We do not exist to make the economy better."  And let's not forget the Golden Rule:  "Do unto others, what you would have others do unto you", per Jesus Christ, plus the more subtle Silver Rule "Do NOT do unto others, what you would NOT have others do unto you," per Confucius, as well.  Thus, even when ignoring all utilitarian arguments, the case for UBI still exceeds any case against it.

(See also some recent articles that directly or indirectly mention the concept of UBI, here and here.)

And regardless, if we make the perfect the enemy of the good, we ultimately end up with neither. 

(Mic drop)

UPDATE:  And in case anyone brings up the "original intent" of the Founding Fathers of the USA, keep in mind that one of them, Thomas Paine, actually advocated for some flavor of what we would now call UBI, what he called a "demogrant".  So UBI is actually well within the envelope of the Founders' idea of limited government, and truly transcends the usual left-right political spectrum.  Such disparate thinkers from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Milton Friedman to Charles Murray to Nina Turner to Andrew Yang to Ellen Brown to Rodger Malcolm Mitchell to even (however briefly) Hillary Clinton have all gone on the record supporting some flavor of UBI, as has the entire libertarian-leaning red state of Alaska since the 1970s.