Rushing to UBI serfdom
Universal basic income is actually a lure on a hook. The hook is serfdom to the state.
One of the press releases I receive daily in my e-mail inbox last week was from a charity promoting poetry in inner cities, called Poet in the City. It was advertising four forthcoming events. Three subjects were borders (opposition to), safe housing (housing subsidies) and feminism (related to BLM protests). The fourth was Universal Basic Income (UBI).
Bringing together the Repeat Beat Poet and Bea Bannister from UBI Labs Youth, this episode will explore Universal Basic Income and what it could mean for young people today. UBI Labs Network and UBI Labs Youth is a decentralised network of citizens, researchers and campaigners exploring the potential of Universal Basic Income. Bea Bannister is a student from North London currently studying for her A-levels. A long term supporter of a Universal Basic Income, Bea is a member of UBI Lab Youth and a co-founder of UBI Lab Women. She is passionate about exploring the vast range of effects a UBI could have on the lives of so many different people.
This is becoming increasingly common. Only recently, the Design and Artists Copyright Society released a report recommending UBI for artists.
The logic is that since art is a social good and that artists are very lowly paid, that the state should pay subsistence-level income for artists. Except the vast majority of art is mediocre or poor. The state would not be supporting tomorrow’s Constables or Hogarths, but substandard Tracey Emins and Martin Creeds. The prime reason producers of conceptual art, artivism and derivative paintings remain poor is because the market correctly discerns there is nothing there worth supporting. The problem is over-production of artists through subsidised art courses and provision of grants, causing too many artists in a competitive market leading to low artist income. In other words, the cause of artist poverty is government subsidy.
However, to the average artist of a leftist outlook who endures poverty, the state looks like a steady source of income. UBI would provide a safety net, giving artists enough time to set themselves up in their careers. Yet the longer a person is out of the workforce without any experience on their CV, the likelihood increases that this person will never attain independence. UBI could function in such a manner, providing not a safety net but a sticky spider’s web which retards the subject’s will and ability to make progress towards independence.
UBI is also a danger to general liberty because it ties the individual to the direct support of the state. The individual comes to rely on UBI, which is at the discretion of the state. Knowing the way the state seeks to micromanage, nudge and incentivise people to its own gain, it is too generous to assume that UBI will not be linked to an ever-growing list of requirements. Paid in a digital currency (perhaps time-dependent or limited to certain purposes), linked to a digital identity, the subject is now in what is a social-credit system in all but name. How can that be a basis for the production flourishing, original and questioning art? Yet, viewed in myopically short term, UBI looks like a solution to poverty to a failing artist. UBI is actually a lure on a hook. The hook is serfdom to the state.
