The goal we all seek - liberation - is a distant one. That said I’m skeptical that UBI is the right way. UBI assumes and requires an elite ownership class and a powerful state to force them to share their profits. But as we’ve seen, such class members will organize to penetrate the state and contort it for their own ends. Thus any successful UBI will be a compromise or it will be dismantled by the powerful class that owns the economy.

In my mind, only community ownership of the means of production can truly achieve what we desire. Of course with all distant goals, it is hard to see how we get there. And to be clear I do not mean state ownership.

But I am curious, on my basic point of elite capture of the state, does that make sense?

I am struck that TFA’s title says UBI is “the only way to share”, amusing to me since literally directly sharing is another way. I understand we all have spooky ideas of what that means, but think for example of the concept of library economies. You borrow what you need, but you don’t own it nor have the right to destroy it. We share.

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PaulDavisThe1st 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> UBI assumes and requires an elite ownership class and a powerful state to force them to share their profits.

It makes no assumption about an elite ownership class at all. It merely assumes profits, and rearranges how those profits are distributed (away from shareholders, towards labor). There is no need for community ownership of the means of production (though that might have some different benefits, along with some different disadvantages).

You need high marginal (or maybe not even marginal) corporate taxes and a committment to the concept of UBI. Who owns the companies, from the perspective of UBI, is immaterial.

Community ownership does not share the productivity in sector A with workers in sector B. UBI does.

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AnimalMuppet an hour ago | parent [-]

Community ownership does share across sectors if the community owns both sectors. Why would it not?

Also, you haven't really answered the point. You may be able to get this established. But how do you keep it established? How do you keep the elite ownership class from dismantling it? (Based on historically observed behavior, the default assumption is that they will try.) If you don't have a plan that accounts for that, you don't really have a workable plan.

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PaulDavisThe1st an hour ago | parent [-]

I didn't say that tackling the elite class wasn't important.

But saying that the existence of an elite class implies regulatory capture is a step beyond that.

Regulatory capture is absolutely a problem. While one could advocate for eliminating the elite class (e.g. wealth taxes, confiscation, execution ... as you wish), I'd probably go for tightly controlled political donations & spending, combined with a strong anti-corruption culture (which has been severely damaged by, ahem, recent administrations).

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jacquesm an hour ago | parent [-]

I don't think anybody but those that are really close to the halls of power and have sufficient capital to engage in large scale lobbying is going to be able to achieve regulatory capture. So I suspect there is significant, maybe even perfect over lap between the groups that could achieve regulatory capture and the ones that actually do, and that outside of that group it is pointless to even try. You can get into the club by lucky accident, you stay in the club through regulatory capture.

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PaulDavisThe1st 25 minutes ago | parent [-]

Regulatory capture requires that laws (or regulations) are drafted that favor your interests. The only ways I am aware of for that to happen are:

(a) sufficient political donations/bribes to get lawmakers to draft suitable language themselves (or via their staff)

(b) a combination of political donations and a worldview on the part of lawmakers in which it is "just normal" for those affected by regulations to draft them, such that you yourself are able to draft the legislation.

There are levels of government where neither of these require incredible levels of wealth, I suspect.

Both could be stopped by limiting political donations and a political culture in which "the chemical industry writes its own rules" is self-evidently corrupt and/or non-sensical.

	▲	jacquesm 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		True, but the USA has institutionalized the power of money in politics to the point that this is now a reality: what would be called outright bribery elsewhere is called campaign donations, there are lobbyists who get to write the laws that favor their paymasters and in fact it has been argued that 'money is speech' (it doesn't get much more bizarre than that to me). What Musk did during the last elections would get you jail in some 3rd world countries, you know, where they take voting serious. Whether any of these require incredible levels of wealth or not is moot, I think. The reason for that is that it only matters when 'lesser levels of wealth' come up against 'greater levels of wealth' and the latter will always win that confrontation.

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lyu07282 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

UBI finds broad appeal by liberals and the right, you can find right-wing people supporting it in this very thread who despise unions passionately, that should already tell you a lot.

It's effectively liberals seeking a liberal solution to mass starvation and obscene wealth inequality, they see a soon to be trillionaire like Musk alongside children starving on the street and try to find a solution within their narrow world view that demands the protection of capitalism, that's how it ends up so incoherent. It's same with the 'abundance movement' it's neoliberals seeking to fix neoliberalism with more neoliberalism.

Don't expect much clarity from these people, they are deeply confused and propagandized, to them their workplace is ought to be like family, collective bargaining is viewed as breaking the mutual trust you should have with your bosses. It's gibberish.