Out with orthodoxy, in with experimentation
Right on, Jennifer Brown. We do need a global conversation where everything is on the table.
Universal Basic Income? Let’s try it. I’m interested to see what happens with early pilots in Ontario and Finland. No matter what, we shouldn’t be beholden to orthodoxy that says “this can’t be done.” It’s not as if our current economic system has always existed.
I see the early sparks of this conversation, for example through John Battelle’s introduction to NewCo Shift: “I think the answer lies in the reinvention of capitalism. We’re on the brink of an entirely new approach to business, one built on shared principles of integrity, transparency, and sustainability. If we succeed, the world could become a far better place.”
He also talks about the idea of shifting from a focus on short-term profit interests to long-term sustainable value. I don’t know what this looks like in practice, but like you said, let’s start the conversation first, then see where that takes us.
The last paragraph of your article made me think of Manna, a sci-fi short story I read recently (some of this passage is context-dependent):
“In the U.S., everyone had to work, and in most cases “work” meant doing something that a rich person wanted so that the rich person could get richer. Thinking back to the jobs available at the turn of the century — you could work scrubbing toilets in a hotel, or you could flip burgers in a fast food restaurant, or you could restock shelves and check people out at a retail store, etc. — No one wanted to do any of these jobs. No one, as a child, ever aspired to scrub toilets or flip burgers or restock merchandise. But you had to earn money to live your life, and these were the jobs being offered to tens of millions of people. People had no choice but to take them, and in the process a rich person became richer. Then robots replaced those workers, and they ended up in Terrafoam.
In an economy like that, there were all sorts of musicians who wanted to do nothing but practice, write music and perform. There were programmers who wanted to do nothing but program their own creations. There were scientists who wanted to do cutting-edge research. These people did not care about money. They simply wanted to do what they do best. Getting paid for it was a necessary evil for these folks — they had to have a day job to pay the bills, and then when they got home from work at night they would indulge their real talents and their passions.
In Australia, these people could completely fulfill themselves, and humanity would be much better off because of their contributions. Creative people want to — need to — create. That is their passion. Instead of millions of talented people working in jobs that had nothing to do with their dreams, simply to make ends meet, in Australia they could follow their dreams.”
Now this is certainly idealistic, but I think it’s illustrative of the bigger question that underlies so much of this debate: Why shouldn’t we be striving for better as a society?
