Work Ethics?
The moral case for Universal Basic Income
One of the barriers to adopting Universal Basic Income (UBI) is the feeling in neoliberal societies that nobody should get something for nothing. Even if the money is available, and there would be tangible improvements to society, the rule is that individuals must work in order to get recompense. And if you’re too sick, too stupid, too tired, too old, etc, it’s tough. Your worth is determined by how much capital you can generate, and if you can’t earn enough to survive — you don’t survive. It’s cruel and unnecessary, and it’s the belief system we’ve signed up to.
In addition to the idea that our value can only be measured in monetary terms, there’s also a perceived need for us to work for as long as we can each day, and to work every day. In this case our value is derived from the fact that we are working long hours, that we are not being “lazy,” that we are constantly producing. We know objectively that it’s unnecessary, and that we could comfortably work much shorter hours for the same outcome, but it’s a part of our culture. Anthropologist David Graeber describes this phenomenon as the proliferation of “bullshit jobs”:
But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world’s population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning…
