FAANGs¹ on UBI²
The Surveillance Economy and Universal Basic Income
The drive for economic activity could be measured by the will force in individuals to freely capitalize on their nurtured cultural potential to put their needs³ up for sale. The 2020 Crisis can be seen as a disease that has not spared any domain of the social organism; not only has it temporarily re-defined what a need is, but it has also re-classified the economy and people into essential and non-essential groups, while deploying a de facto prototype of universal basic income (UBI) across many nations. This period of social high fever allows us to explore the UBI paradigm within a surveillance economy⁴ and review the existence of the non-essential economy and the motivation for economic activity of non-essential human beings.
If one looks at the “heart is (not) a pump” model from the “not” side, as an analogy to the circulation of money in the social body, it is readily apparent that the blood does not gain locomotion at the heart but at the capillaries, where life-supporting phenomena occur — this is not unlike the phenomena that (should) occur in the cultural domain where Gift money is met by push (towards Purchase money) and pull (back to Loan money) forces. This is a delicate zone in both sides of the analogy where harmful stagnation, or even paralysis, as in the 2020 Crisis, can set in, and where stimulus would yield a healthier return to fluidity. In the social body, this stimulation would be towards nurturing new cultural potential in individuals to fend off the problem, just as rest builds antibodies to combat a disease. Administering UBI as a painkiller to individuals, companies, and entire sectors of the economy at the Purchase or Loan stage can serve to ambiguate these recipients’ active will to build the necessary antibodies for fending off the real underlying problems of the non-essential disease.
The Surveillance Economy, epitomized by the FAANG+ monopolies (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google, and the like), has emerged out of our over-leveraged Real Estate, Financial, and Labor markets as the ultimate frontier in the profit-maximizing utopia, turning our will-forces into the novel commodity to be exploited. So far, FAANGs have not only been immune to the Crisis but have thrived in this novel context of the useful and useless. A large number of the useless have been provided with UBI, effectively diverting them from contributing to or nurturing their cultural potential for economic life, and swapping their free striving toward real needs for the less tangible offerings of the FAANGs. Having tasted this phenomenon, the FAANG’s model to profit-maximize this new commodity has been successfully validated, regardless of who will pick up the UBI bill in the long run.
This temporary alignment of UBI with the FAANGs’ rise to economic supremacy could become a permanent leftover of the 2020 Crisis, as the non-essential individuals, companies and entire industries struggle to revert to essential status and people find themselves displaced by mechanical automation or by machine learning, both byproducts of the FAANGs. How we will, what we need, and what being human means, could enter uncharted territory with a weakened will force. One could argue that a more holistic UBI is implied in Rudolf Steiner’s World Economy Course⁵, where the free will of those confronting economic life is strongly disambiguated. If you want to be essential to the economy, for instance, you’ll be met with as much Loan and Purchase Money as your will commands; if you opt to be non-essential, then you’ll be met with as much Gift money as your nurturing capacities or needs demand. Either option mirrors the free will and circumstance of each individual. Muddling the three kinds of money into UBI, as a catch-all kind of money, has the potential to ambiguate the will of human beings in exchange for a profit.
[1] FAANGs is an acronym for Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google, representing the surveillance economy.
[2] UBI: Universal basic income.
[3] “Needs” is used here in reference to Steiner’s True Price Formula. World Economy Course, Lecture IV (https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA340/English/RSP1972/19220729p01.html)
[4] Surveillance Capitalism: The commoditization of personal data for profit making (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism)
[5] World Economy Course: Fourteen lectures given to Economy Students in Dornach, 24th July to 6th August, 1922. GA 340 (https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA340/English/RSP1972/WldEco_index.html )
