Liberty and the Universal Basic Income

Paul Signac, Portrait of Félix Fénéon, 1890

Being a writer is a highly individualistic and egotistical endeavor. It really is, and it can be both exilirating and painful. Here I am putting my knowledge and my thoughts out into the world in order to make a difference. Wow, what hubris!
The reason why I blog and post on facebook because I am looking for attention. Of course, let's be honest. Why else do people post?  Hey world! Here I am and I got something to say! But I also want people to challenge my hubris, my assumptions and claims. I looked to be humbled, see. There is value in creativity and in  adversity and you cannot have a worthy life without both.

Freedom, balanced it must be.

This general effort in our society to sanitize life of adversity is wrong-headed and is leading to all kinds of grief. On the other hand, too much adversity grinds people down.When people are under the thumb of systematic oppression it is simply wrong and there is a moral imperative to do something about it.  In many ways, politically I am quite lefty, but I also consider myself a libertarian. I know, it seems contrarian, bear with me. First a personal note. Lefty libertarian is as close to a label as I want to get. I distrust labels in general. So, I suppose I will settle with a label that doesn't make sense to most people.
Still, there is an obvious "what the heck?" aspect to lefty libetarianism, and I have some explaining to do. Why am I left ideologically? Because I believe society should have broad institutions to insure the material well-being of its citizens. That includes things like universal health care and education, etc. But that takes taxes and regulations which libertarians consider tyrranical.

Grant Wood's American Gothic,1930

How then can I claim to be libetarian in any way?
See, political ideologies tend to measure themselves against an idealized world. Progressives want to rid the world of oppression, libertarians want to rid the world of tyrrany. The problem is that society is messy and always will be. In fact, it must be. We humans are a mess. We have very conflicted psyches, a mix of high-minded ideals and reptilian brain desires. To believe we can ever have a perfect society of any stripe is delusional. The "perfection" would inevitably turn to horror.
To shape a good society requires that we look beyond ideological and utopian standards to what is possible. Humans are what they are. Total freedom is not only unworkable it is also undesirable. Total equality is equally unworkable and undesirable. We need to find ways to balance the needs of freedom and equality, always with the knowledge that it will not be perfect. The hard truth is that lizard brain will always require some form of institutional framework that governs society. The question we constantly ask are, how limited can it be and who benefits from it?
I see the tyrrany in "nanny state" institutions. To rid society of ills, we have developed bureaucracies that control people's lives to different degrees. Yet forcing people to do things they do not want to do is obviously antithetical to freedom. We live in a technocratic world, where elites, e.g. the experts, seek to tell the rest of us how to live our lives for our own benefit. This "paternalism" is the hard tack which free-minded people do not want to swallow.

Occupy Poster

But here's the thing, in ridding ourselves of government, rules and regulations, libertarians miss the fundamental point that power always rises. Power weaves and concentrates in whatever ways it can. It does so usually through government, but remove government and power finds another way. In the end, the coersive forces grow and dominate society allthesame. The effort to rid ourselves of a coersive state only shifts the power into a different forms which may be even more oppressive.
There are ways to ensure the welfare of people that can reduce the amount of social control and allow for more freedom. Big bloated welfare bureaucracies can be streamlined in combination with a universal basic income. UBI proposes to give disadvantaged people a stipend and they do with it what they wish. Simple. Right away, tens of billions of administrative costs are cut and a huge number of technocrats have to find something else to do with their lives.

Seek not perfection, but the good...

The liberal, technocratic state that is now being undercut by a right-wing movement isn't the only model available. An UBI would fundamentally change the nature of the state apparatus, creating more freedom while ensuring the life part of life, liberty and happiness. Some UBI recipients will squander it for sure, but most will use it to improve their lives. Hardships will remain for some, but overall people will have more freedom, access to the basics and the opportunity for much more.  It will also cost less by most measures.
Inequality will remain and that's just fine. Humans do not thrive only when it is always safe and easy.  People make mistakes, suffer and learn. That's life. To protect people like parents who are afraid to give children needed freedom because of safety concerns harms. Paternalism in excess damages.
The freedom to fail and a safety net are both necessary. Well-being cannot simply be defined materialistically, but that is an essential component. To prosper, grow and evolve, human beings, in different stages of life, need the freedom to explore their creative selves through the market, art and music, the intellect, sports and physicality.

Pexel Photo

Without a home, health care and proper nutrition the freedom to explore life is curtailed. Without a good measure of both freedom and basic material well-being people struggle and mostly fail in realizing their full humanity. Extremes of wealth and poverty destabilize society with uncertainty and violence.

On the other hand, liberty requires the ability to falter and fail and at times suffer. Without such things there is little growth and life can become devoid of the richness that makes it meanigful. UBI is a sensible compromise and...

...in balance we must trust our future.