One winter a grasshopper, starving and frail, approaches a colony of ants drying out their grain in the sun, to ask for food.
“Oh no!” say the ants. “How horrific for anyone to starve to death in a world that has enough food to easily feed everyone! For you see, we aren’t savage animals just about getting by. We live in a successful civilisation with overproduction. We actually have 1,5 times as much food as would be needed to feed everyone. We keep tossing the excess away and letting it rot.”
So of course, they give the grasshopper the basic food he needs.
The grasshopper is baffled. He begins to launch into a tragic tale of how he ought to have food due to his hard work, but does not because of an unforeseen flood. How he wanted the fear of poverty to motivate him to work even harder to compensate, but it eventually just left him stressed and burned out and depressed and physically sick, and how very very sick he is now. How his children, who are innocent in all this, are also sick now, and losing all their potential. How they lost their home, and now, they are dirty and cold and cannot cook and noone wants to hire them.
The ants say that sounds horrid, truly, but frankly, they don’t need a story of how he deserves to be given enough food not to starve. That they have neither the time nor inclination to check up on stories for who deserves what due to how horrid they are doing, that doing so is a bureaucratic mess. That these sort of checks reward needing a lot and being ill and not prepping for catastrophes, and encourage people to not get partially better, lest they be stripped of help they still need without being able to get well enough to be fully independent. That they will help him now that he is sick, but that if he gets well, all the better, and no sanctions for him. And anyhow, that you do not need to be a hardworking person desperately and unpredictable unlucky to be allowed to have food. That there is enough food. The fruits and nuts are literally falling from the trees in the permaculture food forests they planted, becoming more productive with every year that they grow, needing less and less labour. That he can just have food as is. No paperwork. Even if he just spent all year singing, they would prefer to have him fed now, to having him rob them later in the streets. That you do not need to earn the right to just survive. That people starving in a world of plenty is abhorrent to them whether they work or not.
He and his kids can also have a safe place to stay, medical care, and access to education; what they need to stay healthy, and safe, and learn. It is what everyone gets. No matter what.
The grasshopper and his children are happy, and eat their fill, and clean up, and get medical checks, and rest, and recover. They get a prefab dirt cheap flat. Their health conditions are caught preventatively before they become more complicated and expensive. They have shelter now, so they don’t keep getting sick from exposure and lack of sleep. They can cook again, so the need less expensive food items and their clothes can be thinner and last longer. They are costing less now than when they were on the street, and they are less dangerous. They aren’t curled up in filth on the streets, begging, but safe and dignified in their own small spaces. Their mental health improves, and with time, most of them get restless—most of them want to do things, give back, help and be admired.
The grasshopper family discovers that the ant society has some cool luxury items. The grasshoppers do not need them, their lack does not involve existential dread, but they do want them, for the joy and status of them, and enquire about them. But you do not get the luxury items just like that.
The ants tell them that if the grasshoppers can find something to do that others in the community genuinely want, the other community members will pay them in an online system. That this is mostly directly between them and other citizens, but that there are also some few tasks the government is offering for doing in exchange for rewards, like tackling collective environmental issues or international problems or long-term issues. A part of this reward will go to making sure everyone has the basics to participate. The other part, they can individually use on the luxury items. Art, travel, scientific tools, fashionable clothes, tech gadgets. The grasshoppers listen around. The ant society has no pointless busywork; there is no value in doing work that does not need doing, everything stupid that can be automated has been, there is no value to creating jobs that aren’t needed. But it does have some things that still need to be done in person that are gross or difficult or dangerous—but you get a lot of credit to spend on luxury items for these tasks.
Some of the grasshoppers say they are content with less, if they do not have to do those things. They don’t work, but then, they also weren’t productive before, and they also only use up very little now that they are off the street; a homeless person tends to spend ten times as much money on food compared to a person with a home, because they are freezing and lack storage facilities avoiding spoilage and prep facilities allowing them to finish the dish themselves.
But most decide that they want the cool things. So most of the grasshoppers do existing open tasks, some even the difficult or gross tasks. Most of them use the credits to buy the things they want and have now earned, with those doing gross work delighted in the many cool things they get in exchange so quickly, but those doing less bad work are also happy with their trade.
Another wants to help his former community. The ants think this is an excellent idea that they should have done a long time ago, and get together with him and discuss; one could maybe plant mangrove trees to prevent the floods, rewarding locals to plant and protect them and giving them the tools and info they need to not just fix their own coast line, but teach others. This would lead to the grasshoppers doing better, being safe in their communities, so they would be trading partners, or new citizens who would come out of choice and in their strength, and not desperate refugees forced from their homes by catastrophe who need to be put back together. They develop a plan and those knowledgable and experienced in the situation, who will also implement it, vote on it. As a result one ant group heads out with the grasshopper to assist the other grasshoppers out there so disaster won’t strike again, and get a special government reward for doing so.
Most figure out how to do a thing they genuinely enjoy and are good at, because they do not have to fear starving if it doesn’t work out, hence not making them reluctant to take risks, but they are very excited to succeed and get cool stuff. They are brave and ambitious and try cool things. Some fail, but the net catches them. Some succeed, and are awesome.
One of the grasshoppers does not spend the credits, but saves them for something even better. This grasshopper identifies an unmet, genuine desire by figuring out how to create a new items from existing materials, and figures out how to make it, and gets a lot of luxury items for her useful invention.
***
Bureaucracy and centralisation: Near zero. Like, the biggest risk here is failing to count that someone has already gotten their universal basic stuff, and hence not noticing that he is eating triple his allotted amount of huel. But who eats triple their daily need in huel? That stuff is healthy and edible, but you do not gorge on it once you are full, it tastes too boring. Similarly, I do not see myself going to a second yearly gyno checkup for no reason. These are basic needs, they aren’t exiting or cool, and if you always and reliably get them, there isn’t really a point in accumulating them, and often, they plain can’t be overconsumed or accumulated.
Starving people: Near zero.
Angry mobs who descend on the ant civilisation out of desperation: Nope. You don’t need to to survive. And luxury is accessible if you help society by working.
Innovation: I would expect this to actually improve, because people are more inclined to take risks with new ideas when they cannot fall too deep if they fuck up.
Average good production: Likely lower than now, but I strongly suspect not existentially so.
Average happiness (which I am more interested in): I think average happiness would rise. I think a lot of people in shitty jobs would rather have less stuff and not have to do them. I love working as a researcher, but looking around me, most people hate their jobs—and these are often jobs noone needs anyway. People working as cashiers, with those jobs only existing because people think it would be inherently bad for them to disappear, even though it would be cheaper and the people don’t like the jobs, because else, it would not be okay to feed them.
Would everyone work? Nope. But provided the necessary stuff would still get done (which I find plausible, and more plausible the further AI advances), and the work that is done is rewarded fairly (everyone gets the basics, harder work gets you more), I do not find that tragic. Both polling and early long-term experiments suggest Universal Basic Income would be a doable system.
Meanwhile, the US prison situation, average age of death and the number of homeless folks in the Bay Area have me highly sceptical of the idea that existential risk for those who don’t make enough money is necessary and helpful for a productive economy and healthy, happy populace. The European welfare system has significant issues in what it incentivises and what it fails to reward, and I do think it needs considerable reform, but I would still take it over the US system any day.
I am highly sceptical of abandoning real, tangible people now for a hypothetical future far away. It reminds me unpleasantly of religious preachers telling the poor that of course, right now, their life totally sucks, but that they will certainly be rewarded in heaven, so they should accept this actual system right now leaving their kids malnourished today.
The point of our economy is organising resource production and distribution in a way that makes the sentient beings in it find their desire for happiness, safety, freedom and purpose fulfilled, and the ecosystems stable and healthy for future generations. There is no inherent value to working, or money, or profit, at all. These things, and a productive and fair economy, are a means to an end, not an end in itself.
How about this, instead?
One winter a grasshopper, starving and frail, approaches a colony of ants drying out their grain in the sun, to ask for food.
“Oh no!” say the ants. “How horrific for anyone to starve to death in a world that has enough food to easily feed everyone! For you see, we aren’t savage animals just about getting by. We live in a successful civilisation with overproduction. We actually have 1,5 times as much food as would be needed to feed everyone. We keep tossing the excess away and letting it rot.”
So of course, they give the grasshopper the basic food he needs.
The grasshopper is baffled. He begins to launch into a tragic tale of how he ought to have food due to his hard work, but does not because of an unforeseen flood. How he wanted the fear of poverty to motivate him to work even harder to compensate, but it eventually just left him stressed and burned out and depressed and physically sick, and how very very sick he is now. How his children, who are innocent in all this, are also sick now, and losing all their potential. How they lost their home, and now, they are dirty and cold and cannot cook and noone wants to hire them.
The ants say that sounds horrid, truly, but frankly, they don’t need a story of how he deserves to be given enough food not to starve. That they have neither the time nor inclination to check up on stories for who deserves what due to how horrid they are doing, that doing so is a bureaucratic mess. That these sort of checks reward needing a lot and being ill and not prepping for catastrophes, and encourage people to not get partially better, lest they be stripped of help they still need without being able to get well enough to be fully independent. That they will help him now that he is sick, but that if he gets well, all the better, and no sanctions for him. And anyhow, that you do not need to be a hardworking person desperately and unpredictable unlucky to be allowed to have food. That there is enough food. The fruits and nuts are literally falling from the trees in the permaculture food forests they planted, becoming more productive with every year that they grow, needing less and less labour. That he can just have food as is. No paperwork. Even if he just spent all year singing, they would prefer to have him fed now, to having him rob them later in the streets. That you do not need to earn the right to just survive. That people starving in a world of plenty is abhorrent to them whether they work or not.
He and his kids can also have a safe place to stay, medical care, and access to education; what they need to stay healthy, and safe, and learn. It is what everyone gets. No matter what.
The grasshopper and his children are happy, and eat their fill, and clean up, and get medical checks, and rest, and recover. They get a prefab dirt cheap flat. Their health conditions are caught preventatively before they become more complicated and expensive. They have shelter now, so they don’t keep getting sick from exposure and lack of sleep. They can cook again, so the need less expensive food items and their clothes can be thinner and last longer. They are costing less now than when they were on the street, and they are less dangerous. They aren’t curled up in filth on the streets, begging, but safe and dignified in their own small spaces. Their mental health improves, and with time, most of them get restless—most of them want to do things, give back, help and be admired.
The grasshopper family discovers that the ant society has some cool luxury items. The grasshoppers do not need them, their lack does not involve existential dread, but they do want them, for the joy and status of them, and enquire about them. But you do not get the luxury items just like that.
The ants tell them that if the grasshoppers can find something to do that others in the community genuinely want, the other community members will pay them in an online system. That this is mostly directly between them and other citizens, but that there are also some few tasks the government is offering for doing in exchange for rewards, like tackling collective environmental issues or international problems or long-term issues. A part of this reward will go to making sure everyone has the basics to participate. The other part, they can individually use on the luxury items. Art, travel, scientific tools, fashionable clothes, tech gadgets. The grasshoppers listen around. The ant society has no pointless busywork; there is no value in doing work that does not need doing, everything stupid that can be automated has been, there is no value to creating jobs that aren’t needed. But it does have some things that still need to be done in person that are gross or difficult or dangerous—but you get a lot of credit to spend on luxury items for these tasks.
Some of the grasshoppers say they are content with less, if they do not have to do those things. They don’t work, but then, they also weren’t productive before, and they also only use up very little now that they are off the street; a homeless person tends to spend ten times as much money on food compared to a person with a home, because they are freezing and lack storage facilities avoiding spoilage and prep facilities allowing them to finish the dish themselves.
But most decide that they want the cool things. So most of the grasshoppers do existing open tasks, some even the difficult or gross tasks. Most of them use the credits to buy the things they want and have now earned, with those doing gross work delighted in the many cool things they get in exchange so quickly, but those doing less bad work are also happy with their trade.
Another wants to help his former community. The ants think this is an excellent idea that they should have done a long time ago, and get together with him and discuss; one could maybe plant mangrove trees to prevent the floods, rewarding locals to plant and protect them and giving them the tools and info they need to not just fix their own coast line, but teach others. This would lead to the grasshoppers doing better, being safe in their communities, so they would be trading partners, or new citizens who would come out of choice and in their strength, and not desperate refugees forced from their homes by catastrophe who need to be put back together. They develop a plan and those knowledgable and experienced in the situation, who will also implement it, vote on it. As a result one ant group heads out with the grasshopper to assist the other grasshoppers out there so disaster won’t strike again, and get a special government reward for doing so.
Most figure out how to do a thing they genuinely enjoy and are good at, because they do not have to fear starving if it doesn’t work out, hence not making them reluctant to take risks, but they are very excited to succeed and get cool stuff. They are brave and ambitious and try cool things. Some fail, but the net catches them. Some succeed, and are awesome.
One of the grasshoppers does not spend the credits, but saves them for something even better. This grasshopper identifies an unmet, genuine desire by figuring out how to create a new items from existing materials, and figures out how to make it, and gets a lot of luxury items for her useful invention.
***
Bureaucracy and centralisation: Near zero. Like, the biggest risk here is failing to count that someone has already gotten their universal basic stuff, and hence not noticing that he is eating triple his allotted amount of huel. But who eats triple their daily need in huel? That stuff is healthy and edible, but you do not gorge on it once you are full, it tastes too boring. Similarly, I do not see myself going to a second yearly gyno checkup for no reason. These are basic needs, they aren’t exiting or cool, and if you always and reliably get them, there isn’t really a point in accumulating them, and often, they plain can’t be overconsumed or accumulated.
Starving people: Near zero.
Angry mobs who descend on the ant civilisation out of desperation: Nope. You don’t need to to survive. And luxury is accessible if you help society by working.
Innovation: I would expect this to actually improve, because people are more inclined to take risks with new ideas when they cannot fall too deep if they fuck up.
Average good production: Likely lower than now, but I strongly suspect not existentially so.
Average happiness (which I am more interested in): I think average happiness would rise. I think a lot of people in shitty jobs would rather have less stuff and not have to do them. I love working as a researcher, but looking around me, most people hate their jobs—and these are often jobs noone needs anyway. People working as cashiers, with those jobs only existing because people think it would be inherently bad for them to disappear, even though it would be cheaper and the people don’t like the jobs, because else, it would not be okay to feed them.
Would everyone work? Nope. But provided the necessary stuff would still get done (which I find plausible, and more plausible the further AI advances), and the work that is done is rewarded fairly (everyone gets the basics, harder work gets you more), I do not find that tragic. Both polling and early long-term experiments suggest Universal Basic Income would be a doable system.
Meanwhile, the US prison situation, average age of death and the number of homeless folks in the Bay Area have me highly sceptical of the idea that existential risk for those who don’t make enough money is necessary and helpful for a productive economy and healthy, happy populace. The European welfare system has significant issues in what it incentivises and what it fails to reward, and I do think it needs considerable reform, but I would still take it over the US system any day.
I am highly sceptical of abandoning real, tangible people now for a hypothetical future far away. It reminds me unpleasantly of religious preachers telling the poor that of course, right now, their life totally sucks, but that they will certainly be rewarded in heaven, so they should accept this actual system right now leaving their kids malnourished today.
The point of our economy is organising resource production and distribution in a way that makes the sentient beings in it find their desire for happiness, safety, freedom and purpose fulfilled, and the ecosystems stable and healthy for future generations. There is no inherent value to working, or money, or profit, at all. These things, and a productive and fair economy, are a means to an end, not an end in itself.