[Toenex]

Maybe we already have Universal Basic Income, you just need to have a pointless job to collect it.

[prawn]

One suggested weakness of UBI is a lack of purpose. I wonder if the "solution" is somewhat as you implied: jobs without a strict return on investment. You get your stipend, but you're keeping your block clean by sweeping and mulching. They're getting theirs in exchange for cranking out sourdough at cost for the neighbourhood. Someone else gardens for elderly residents.

[jmrm]

Not UBI per se, but this exists in rural parts of Southern Spain in some way, and is called Rural Employment Plan (PER in its Spanish initials).

The give simple jobs, like cleaning or painting, to people on the lower bottom of earnings. Most people in that plan are people with low formation, like those who left school in their mid teens.

[6510]

That's just a cultural bias blind spot. It can be easily cured by finding a child, pointing your finger at them then say the magic words: "You must feel useless without a job!"

I had to watch this office space clip again just to be sure. https://youtu.be/Fy3rjQGc6lA ah yes, the meaning of life. ha-ha I love the classics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBdU9v5nLKQ

A much more terrible issue we suffer from already is that without participating we forget how our civilization works. Having a job gives you at least a tiny bit of insight that may partially map to other jobs.

[rightbyte]

Cleaning, gardening and baking is proper jobs though.

[Sharlin]

Funny, because lack of purpose is exactly the problem with monotonous shit jobs. Compared to being able to freely choose to do something that's meaningful to you and brings you joy. Merely being able to afford food and shelter is not a purpose. It's survival.

[small_scombrus]

That sounds utopian

[starttoaster]

That sounds like a simpler life/role, not a pointless one.

[techpineapple]

Im sure I’m overidealizing, but I’ve wanted to live off grid, or maybe in a small community.

I watch these historical farm documentary tv shows, and they show how everyone in a town had a purpose and worked together, the blacksmith, the tile maker.

And I do often think the limiting factor to a life like this is the “market” so if you could create these communities, and could be an artist/artisan/builder, without strictly having to worry about making enough to live.

I met someone recently who lived in the Galapagos islands, and she seemed to sort of live this community oriented, trading anarchocapitalist lifestyle, and I think most people would be happier if they're small capitalist or socialist community involved direct interaction with people rather than dealing with soulless corpo's all the time.

[rank0]

How do we determine who gets what job?

[dataflow]

No we don't. We have too many people who -- even despite having respectable jobs -- can't afford the basic necessities for the month, let alone save for their future and family. The problem they're facing is the lack of the guaranteed basic income, not the lack of a job to collect it.

[rank0]

This is not a fully solvable problem. Especially if the goal is to provide the above for any location.

You can do more harm than good by implementing policies like “guaranteed free money”.

[_heimdall]

UBI will almost certainly fail to cover the necessities unless we have Marx-style price controls.

When everyone in the economy has a minimum of say $3,000 per month the cost of necessities, and everything else, will go up roughly in line with that.

[ornornor]

I never thought about it this way, but it does make sense.

[nyarlathotep_]

YES, this is exactly the case and why the Twitter layoffs and now the "DOGE" purge is a terrible thing (even in cases where it was totally legitimate to eliminate "waste").

"They had useless make-work jobs and sent 4 emails a week and watched TikToks the rest of the time"

So?

There's FAR too many people and nowhere near enough jobs for a large portion of people to do something that is both "real", and provides actual economic value.

Far more important that people have some form of dignity and can pay to feed their families and live a life with some material standard.

Anyone who's been in a corporate role knows there's loads of people that have a dubious utility and value--and people with "tech skills" are NOT exceptions to this rule, at all.

[_heimdall]

We should be striving to build a world where people don't have to feel forced into meaningless jobs, not a system that encourages it.

If meaningless jobs are important because its the only way people can make money to pay for all the shit we think we need to pay for, or because they haven't yet been offered the time and freedom to find their own sense of purpose, let's focus on fixing the root cause(s) there.

[mschuster91]

We don't just have "bullshit jobs" (which is an actual term these days), we have a "bullshit economy" as well - centered around advertising because without advertising most of the bullshit just wouldn't sell.

Like, if you already got a car, you can drive it for 10-20 years easily, or more if you take well care of it. But advertising makes you think you "need" a new car every few years... because that keeps the economy alive. You buy a car and sell the old one to someone else who can't afford a new car but also wants a new one, so their old car goes off to Africa or whatever to be repaired until truly unrepairable. But other than the buyer in Africa who actually needed a new car, neither you nor the guy who bought your old car would have needed a car. And cars are a massive industry that employs many millions of people worldwide - so if you'd ban advertising for cars, suddenly the bubble would pop and you'd probably have a fifth of the size remaining, and most of it from China because the people in Africa can't afford what a brand new Western made car costs.

Or Temu, Shein, Alibaba and godknowswhat other dropshipping scammers. Utter trash that gets sold there, but advertising pushes people to buy the trash, wear it two times and then toss it.

A giant fucking waste of resources because our worldwide economy is based on the dung theory of infinite growth. It has worked out for the last two, three centuries - but it is starting to show its cracks, with the planet itself being barely able to support human life any more as a result of all that resource consumption, or with the economy and the public sector being blown up by "bullshit jobs".

We need to drastically reform the entire way we want to live as a species, but unfortunately the changes would hurt too many rich and influential people, so the can gets kicked ever further down the road - until eventually, in a few decades, our kids are gonna be the ones inevitably screwed.

[paulddraper]

There is way more to do than we have time to do it.

[gmadsen]

sounds like a Terry Gillian dystopia

[nlawalker]

This is amazing, this would light up r/showerthoughts.

[dartos]

You should look up the definition of “universal”

[pizza]

Yup: free solar photons, and living.

[collyw]

USAID seems to demonstrate that to an extent, though it was far from universal