Why basic income would usher in an unprecedented age of freedom

In our current system of wage slavery, most of us are never truly free. We start every single day with a freedom deficit because we have to fulfill some of our most basic needs. Food, water, shelter, that kind of stuff. Only once we earned enough money to pay for this, we have actually achieved freedom.

So each working day, we will spend 8 hours in a state that is decidedly unfree. When our very existence depends on having a job it’s not a choice, it’s a must. And this particular must not only robs us of our freedom, it allows us to be exploited in nefarious ways.

Let us assume we have a young single mother named Mary. Her support system isn’t strong and because of her age she has no savings. Still despite being on her own she has made it work and found a way to provide for herself and her child. She works as a clerk at a small company. But after a couple of months her boss starts requiring her to stay on at work even after everyone has left. Giving work reasons as the justification, Mary soon has to realise that her boss has an interest in her. And even though she rebuffs him, he persists. The boss starts sexually harassing her.

Now with no witnesses and no evidence, Mary has no legal recourse to fall back on to. Reporting to the police would only lead to a “he said/she said” situation. And if she’s in the US, chances are high that she would be working in an at-will employment state, meaning that unless she can prove discrimination, her boss could fire her for no reason at all. What if her boss starts blackmailing her?

Also, do keep in mind that single parents are amongst the most vulnerable classes in our current society. Mary can’t just simply resign from her job and hope she will find something else. She and her child depend on this steady income.

Wage slavery not only robs Mary of her freedom, it also opens her up to exploitation. With basic income, knowing that the needs of her and her child are going to be met with or without that job, it would be a no-brainer for Mary to deal with her predatory boss. Without basic income she’s stuck in a no-win situation.

Dongles & Doxes

But while the first example is pretty much timeless, social media has introduced new pitfalls and trappings that can lead to innocent people losing their jobs.

In 2013 a couple of developers at a conference made a series of inappropriate jokes to each other involving “big dongles” and “forking repositories”. A person overhearing those jokes took a picture of the developers and shared it widely on the internet in an attempt to shame them. This saw one of the developers in question fired (as well as the person initiating the public shaming) and the whole event was dubbed #donglegate by the internet.

It should be fairly obvious how reading about #donglegate can have a chilling effect on free speech. Knowing that even a whispered and harmless joke to a colleague could lead to loss of job because someone listened in and got offended is a scary proposition.

Another more recent example saw a Lyft driver getting fired in 2016 from his job for refusing to remove a hula dancer bobble head after a passenger took exception to it. The passenger publicly smeared the driver with the company and only after a video recording surfaced — which showed the driver behaving in a calm and polite manner towards an unreasonable passenger threatening him — did he get his job back.

Would we really want to live in a society where drivers working for services like Lyft or Uber are required to make sure that the interior of their cars has to be completely empty because otherwise the threat of firing looms large over them?

While those examples I have listed are from real life encounters, similarly social media activity can be used to get someone fired. Last year a female Nintendo employee was doxed (purposeful broadcasting of typically sensitive information like names, addresses, social security numbers etc.). People found out that she had been working as an escort girl and then used that information to send emails to Nintendo asking for her to be fired. This was in response to said Nintendo employee typically being very vocal on social media on controversial topics. She was fired then fired by Nintendo.

Basic income would instantly obliterate the concept of wage slavery, giving us back those 8 stolen hours of freedom. But it would improve our quality of freedom beyond that. When your livelihood is no longer a realistic attack vector it’s easier to speak up against injustice. You are no longer beholden to lopsided power structures. And you don’t have to be afraid that a mildly controversial opinion or a joke that is perceived as offensive by a few can be used to destroy your life. It will be easier than ever to just be the person you truly are.

Basic income could in fact be the first step towards a libertarian utopia.