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(WIP): SPINOZA AND THE ETHICS OF DEATH

What does it mean to die? Should anybody care about death, and if so how should they treat it? In this paper I aim to address Spinoza’s ethical and metaphysical theories and how they relate to the idea of death. My goal is to thoroughly extrapolate the ways in which Spinoza’s theories might lead us to think about death, and how death plays a role in his major work “Ethics.” Examining the role of death in “Ethics” seems perhaps a strange and irrelevant question. However, I believe that examining its role not only provides ethical insight itself, but that examining it in fact helps to illustrate Spinoza’s theories at large. I will begin by providing an exegesis of Spinoza’s relevant arguments which pertain to the topic, in addition to what little he directly states about death. Besides providing a thorough exegesis and brief formalization of his thoughts on death, I argue that Spinoza’s view of death actually is able to define a uniquely moral conception of death, thus however rendering it inefficient for practical use but useful in terms of its language and distinctions.

WHAT IS DEATH?

One of the most beautiful quotes in the entirety of “Ethics” occurs late into Part IV:

“A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.” (Proposition LXVII, Part IV.)

This quote sounds particularly stoic – but what does it really mean? To understand it, there are two different ways that Spinoza addresses or alludes to death in “Ethics” which we can refer to. Firstly his metaphysical theories regarding motion, and secondly his ethical theories regarding virtue and the affects. His ethical theories are of great interest in this paper, however it is impossible to discuss death in “Ethics” without first defining it. Thus, the first place to start is the first instance in which he truly addresses death. Spinoza first refers to death in his explanation of proposition XLVIII during Part III, however he does not substantially define it further than suggesting it is something to be avoided. Later however, in the note to proposition XXXIX of Part IV, Spinoza defines death as occurring in the body “when the proportion of motion and rest which obtained mutually among its several parts is changed.” This seems like a rather confusing definition of death – generally when thinking of death, we simply imagine it as a permanent interruption to our experiencing of being, coupled with the ceasing of our bodily functions. So why does Spinoza make mention of motion and rest?

               Spinoza refers to motion and rest because, for him, the issue of death is effectively what constitutes a being, rather than a question of our experiencing of our being. This is due to the way that Spinoza establishes his physical theories in Part II, specifically how he accounts for the individuation of bodies within a monist conception of reality (his conception of God being something which unfortunately cannot be entirely recounted here for sake of brevity). Spinoza defines a “body” as “a mode which expresses in a certain determinate manner the essence of God, in so far as he is considered as an extended thing” (Definition I, Part I).  A body then, exists as a mode of God, who constitutes reality, and all bodies exist with an essence. Concurrently then, in conceiving of all appearances to us as being of and within God, Spinoza has the difficult task of explaining variety in appearances. Since all appearances are attributes of one substance, Spinoza differentiates them through a series of axioms:

“AXIOM I. All bodies are either in motion or at rest.

AXIOM II. Every body is moved sometimes more slowly, sometimes more quickly.

LEMMA I. Bodies are distinguished from one another in respect of motion and rest, quickness and slowness, and not in respect of substance.” (Axions I-II, Lemma I, Part II)

All bodies distinguish themselves in relation to other things though the motion that they exhibit – all objects in our perceivable world then must definitively exhibit different amounts of motion and rest. However the body itself evidently differs in this way among its own parts too, it seems. Postulates I-V of Part II states that the human body is made up of a series of its own “individual parts” and is “extremely complex”; likewise these parts seem to be of a “diverse” nature and respond to external motion differently, be they soft, hard, or fluid (Postulate I, Part II.) If bodies are defined against each other by differences in motion, it holds that the parts of a human being form parts of a whole, which all exhibit their own amount of motion and rest, thus creating one predominant mode of God, a body of movement. The motion and rest of these parts combine to create a collective, defining nature of motion, which explains why bodies contain such variation. For example our bodies have complex brains, eyes, arms, and more, which are defined by the motion and rest they exhibit – if there was no variation in motion down to this level then we would not perceive anything but a single appearance.

               Thus his definition of death seems more easily understood having this in mind. A body is defined by the particular and collective motion and rest of its parts all together. This means that for Spinoza, death is not concerned with how our experience of being is interrupted, like when we normally think of death, but instead that death occurs when the particularity of that body, the sum of motion and rest which is an expression of God, is changed to be unrecognizable. This seems a fairly cohesive argument, however it does lead to some incredibly strange conclusions. For example, Spinoza himself refers to a story of a Spanish man who recovers from a terrible sickness only to find that he has completely forgotten all of the past works he has written, and was so different that he could be mistaken for a “grown-up child”(Proposition XXXIX, Part IV). He even goes as far as to vaguely suggest that growing up is a form of death, considering how unrecognizable a person is as an adult compared to when they were a child.

               Looking back to his two other mentions of death, this view might seem more obscured – if death is something he believes we naturally avoid, and is something undesired enough to warrant his quote about how a strong individual shouldn’t think of death, does this not imply that we consider death as a matter of experience rather than motion? After all, a child does not live in fear of growing to be forty years old. This is a warranted criticism, however I believe that Spinoza’s theory in fact provides answers to this. The issue of why a child does not fear growing up and henceforth experiencing “death” in the Spinozan sense is related to his conception of the mind (again, a very complex theory that unfortunately cannot be fully explained here). Propositions XI-XIII of Part II present his conception of the mind fairly well, proposition XIII being the most forward:

“The object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body, in other words a certain mode of extension which actually exists, and nothing else” (Proposition XII, Part II).

               If a body is a particular sum of motion and rest successively, and the mind is an expression of the body, it obviously holds that the mind is an expression of that collection of motion and rest. Thus, as the proportion of motion and rest change and the body exhibits less and less motion, the mind represents this – therein as the body becomes less and less complex in its proportion of motion and rest the mind diminishes in its idea of the body. This can explain why Spinoza does make a distinction between a corpse and a child who grows up: a corpse is death at its most pronounced wherein the complexity of motion significantly diminished, whereas a child growing up experiences death in a minimal manner, keeping many of their memories as they age and their body’s motion and rest change to a much more minor extent. This seems to fit with Spinoza’s statement in proposition II of Part III that “if the body be inactive the mind is simultaneously unfitted for thinking” (Proposition II, Part 3). To conclude, I will also add that this does not seem to be in contradiction with Spinoza’s own theory of memory discussed in the notes to proposition XVIII of Part II, despite the fact that he does not provide a full explanation of why we forget things as we age.

PART 2: ETHICS AND DEATH

               Having defined what death is for Spinoza, I turn now to his ethical theory. If we are to discuss the significance of death in Spinoza’s work, the first question that arises is the following: so what? We understand what “death” means for Spinoza, that it is the change in proportion of the shared motion and rest of the collective parts which make up a body. But what sort of ethical consequences would this view of death hold, as opposed to death understood in the common sense? I believe we can easily place death into his framework despite the absence of its mention in any substantial sense in Part IV, where he focuses on his ethical arguments. Since he does not discuss death in depth here we ought to outline his ethics first in order to properly contextualize this question.

Spinoza’s theory comprises an elaborate system of virtue ethics, based surprisingly consistently in his metaphysics. Part III looks primarily at defining emotions and “affects,” and how they manifest themselves in human beings – Spinoza’s virtue ethics argues for how to deal with them:

“Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage: for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse. Why this is so, and what is good or evil in the emotions, I propose to show in this part of my treatise” (Preface, Part IV).

Following this, Spinoza interestingly defines good as that which would be “certainly useful to us,” and defines evil as that which would be a “hindrance to us” (Preface, Part IV). The first proposition looks as though it does not offer much insight at first, and seemingly begs the question of how we could measure utility. However, looking back to Part III, Spinoza in fact makes relevant claims in his sixth and seventh propositions:

“VI. Everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavours to persist in its own being.

VII. The endeavour, wherewith everything endeavours to persist in its own being, is nothing else but the actual essence of the thing in question” (Propositions VI-VII, Part III).

Thus, Spinoza’s theory looks to maximize our human autonomy so that we might be our “own master” over good and evil, that is to maximize that which is in our own best interest. Our essential interest is to persist in our own being. What is good, then, is what aids the persistence and “flourishing” of our being. It is very important to note that Spinoza specifically uses the word “certainly” in reference to our knowledge of a things utility – that which is good cannot simply be anything we think may be good for us. Only those things which we are truly certain of aiding our being to flourish should be pursued - thus only things which we understand to be in accordance with our nature can be pursued. This holds true in reference to the seventh definition of Part I on freedom, as well as the views that Spinoza proposes in regards to emotions and the way we experience them.

               What is ethical and virtuous is whatever helps a human being to flourish, and as Spinoza himself later points out, we ought to aid each other in flourishing as well – for a rational, healthy society will encourage our own flourishing in return (Proposition XXXVII, Part IV). But how could death play into this conception of ethics then, as Spinoza understands it? There are a multitude of ways that this idea could be approached. Death of course, is an affront to an individual’s freedom insofar as it takes away their ability to enforce their own autonomy and act upon the word. In this sense it’s clear that death is inherently an immoral thing, despite the possibility of it being a natural thing. Thus, enacting death on another is obviously an affront to virtue and must be avoided at all costs.

               What about situations where the individual wills their own death? For example, if a person wishes to commit suicide, or perhaps a person who’s life is painful and desires euthanasia? Spinoza does in fact provide an answer to these questions:

“…suicides are weak—minded, and are overcome by external causes repugnant to their nature. Further, it follows from Postulate iv., Part II., that we can never arrive at doing without all external things for the preservation of our being or living, so as to have no relations with things which are outside ourselves” (Proposition  XVIII, Part IV).

Spinoza considers suicide morally wrong, on the bases that it is a succumbing to the affects, and likewise any question regarding death in the traditional sense seems to be in contention with the postulate he cites, which says that “the human body stands in need for its preservation of a number of other bodies, by which it is continually, so to speak, regenerated. (Postulate IV, Part II). As well if we come back to the original quote on the free man and his avoidance of thinking about death, we can finally understand then what he means, as the idea of death would be considered succumbing to an affect a collapsing of one’s will. So the question of whether death can be ethical or not seems rather settled does it not? Not necessarily.

               If we look at Spinoza’s theory of death, there seems to be one major ethical contradiction I can think of. Spinoza believes that rationality will lead us to more adequate ideas to help us achieve virtue through a strong will. Conceivably, then, it should follow that a person gaining more rationality should, as Spinoza points out, aid in creating a more virtuous society which leads to human flourishing. Thus we ought to consider the following thought experiment which I propose: there is a machine which we can seat an individual, and this machine fills their head with many of the most rational and adequate ideas that are possible to hold as a finite mode of God. The gaining of this rationality, however, radically alters the amount of motion and rest in the individual’s body, rendering them unrecognizable in some sense to their previous self. The person who uses this machine does so entirely on their own merit. This unrecognizable change, I would argue, is a moral death.

               The person does not necessarily end their “being”, unless it is argued that they are immoral for ending their old “being”, as in the way they were formerly constituted – however this is unacceptable considering that this would lead every action we take to be immoral (for example taking a growth hormone to grow faster is now considered immoral – despite the fact that this would be seen as amoral in practical terms.) Additionally it seems contrary to the relationship Spinoza describes between being and essence. Thus, I believe that the individual is now more rational, and therefore more virtuous, and more capable of promoting the good in their community and for themselves. In a way however, they have in fact committed a form of “suicide”, if we take the word to mean the instigation of “death” as Spinoza defines it. I hereby argue then, that Spinoza’s theory of death contains one fatal flaw – in that his broad definition of death allows for a situation in which death is a welcomed, in fact moral thing, despite the fact that he actively suggests its avoidance throughout his work. This proves to be problematic, as despite the complexity of his arguments surrounding death leading to issues of practicality, his ethical and metaphysical system leave a Spinozan theory of death as too broad to be readily applied.

               In this paper I hope to have completed two tasks. Firstly, I hope to have sufficiently outlined metaphysical and ethical theories in Spinoza’s “Ethics” in regards to their relation to death. Secondly, I hope to have, if not provided a conclusive example in opposition to his theory of death as I interpret it, at the very least a pointing to a major complication in its applicability. Spinoza’s ethics, and his language surrounded death and morality are captivating – despite what I believe to be a point of contention in his metaphysics and ethics of death, I hope to investigate Spinozan theories of death further in the future.

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Universal Basic Income, Wage-Labour and Neoliberalism

What is UBI? How does it work? What is it supposed to solve, and would it really solve those problems? In this piece, I aim to do two things. First, I will provide an appropriate explanation of UBI, what it is, how it may look. Secondly, I hope to illuminate some of the major counter points and difficulties behind the policy on both a policy-making level and on a structural level economically. We’re going to begin with an explanation of the policy and some general sentiments inspiring the policy proposal, followed a more in depth explanation of 3 more precise arguments in favour of UBI. The first will be a look at UBI’s effect on wage-labour. The second and third arguments are extensions of this first argument, and will be given together. They are in regards to the nature of work itself under UBI and the feminist aspects of UBI. I will be offering criticisms alongside these points, as well as offering some sincere thoughts that seem to have not been addressed anywhere really in literature on UBI. I will finish with concluding thoughts on the matter. 

WHAT IS UBI?

           There have been a number of different proposed ways in which a UBI might look, and although it is generally seen as being a socialist policy, most of its biggest advocates have in recent years been libertarians. Thus seeing as a UBI is not specific to any particular political ideology it is difficult to outline exactly what a UBI would look like. In the most accepted sense however, a UBI is a proposed policy which seeks to do what the name suggests, that is to provide a form of income for all citizens, purportedly non-discriminately, so as to allow all citizens to pay for their basic needs. This would include things like housing, food, electricity, telecommunications access, and other things necessary to live on a basic level.

           The UBI would be distributed on an individual basis rather than a household basis – the age at which an individual would receive their UBI is not consistent throughout proposals. The sum of this income is probably the most hotly debated aspect of the policy for a number of reasons, and so estimates generally range anywhere between a few hundred US dollars a month, to around $2000 USD. On the most basic level, I have seen a number of people suggest around $1200 USD monthly as a reasonable amount, or anywhere between $12,000 to $14,000 USD annually. This gives a fairly accurate portrayal of what general advocates of the policy intend for it to do, which is pay for basic necessities and provide citizens with enough income to help them keep above the poverty line (defined in the USA as between $12,000 and $24,000 annual income depending on the amount of people in your household.) [1] The amount is not only relevant to how effectively it will provide for people’s needs however – the most critical skepticism of UBI usually comes in the form how we would pay for it. Again this really depends on the overall plan on the policy itself. However there does exist actual policy proposals that we can look to for a general idea of how much it might cost to implement this sort of policy. For example, the Socialist Party ran on a platform of UBI in the 2017 French presidential election. The presented proposal, drafted by the social-democratic think tank Fondation Jean Jaurès, suggested that a €1000 monthly project would cost, on top of already existing social spending, a colossal €871 billion, which is 35% of the French national GDP. I should stress again that this is on top of already existing social spending, which is around 50% of France’s GDP.[2]  The Swiss proposal met similar challenges when suggesting a divvy of 2500 Swiss francs per adult, a seriously substantial amount of money. Economist Paul Cockshott goes into serious depth considering a UK variant as well and comes to similar conclusions.[3] Clearly, the amount of tax dollars that would go into something like this is serious.

           So the costs prove to be problematic. Rather than further dive into a criticism of UBI based on the costs however, I will instead focus on other structural and normative aspects of the policy from here on out. This is because I think that whether or not UBI is sincerely feasible from a budget perspective is beside the point and is often far too focused on. If in fact it turns out that we are able to fund it, then that is a positive and we might look at implementing it. But the true importance of UBI is in its evaluation. Considering that UBI proves quite problematic even in theory, weighing the pros and cons of the policy point to a number of foundational issues within our political economy, and UBI should continue to be looked at in the meantime as a confident thought experiment through which we might find other solutions for the problems of inequality. And so with that being said, I will now begin addressing the more normative arguments related to UBI and inequality.

WAGE-LABOUR

           The largest argument in favour of UBI comes in the form of challenging the coercive nature of capitalism. From a left perspective, wage labour is a generally coercive relationship. Most workers have only two choices, which are to sell one’s labour on the market to an employer from who you receive a wage, or attempt to live off of the meager offerings of (what remains of) the welfare state. This is due to the clearly advantageous position of the employer in the relationship: the employer does need employees, however the employer can live with not hiring you until they find an alternative that will work in your place. This disadvantage in bargaining leaves workers with little leeway in choosing what jobs to accept and decline, because there will almost always be somebody willing to accept the job offer so as to gain access to a wage.

           We see this attitude reflected in the reality of contemporary universities today even, wherein the average university student looks to study for the utility of the degree and the money it will provide them, rather than pursue what they are passionate for in fear of not being hired. This is a result of the overwhelming bargaining power employers have over those looking to be employed. To relate this idea to a more mainstream sentiment, the coercive relationship of wage-labour leads to an alienation of one’s work past a goal of self-fulfillment and instead into work for its own sake, for the employers sake, and simply for the sake of survival. As Marx puts it:

“…as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape.” [4]

           UBI proposes to radically tip the scales of power within the relationship of labour and capital. According to proponents of UBI, providing an income to all workers gives a fallback to anyone who would otherwise be unemployed. So theoretically, rather than being coerced into a job or risk total poverty, a worker has the chance to refuse a job and continue looking. The UBI is after all paying for their basic necessities – any wealth received from wage-labour is only additional spending money for “luxuries.” Therefore any unacceptable labour conditions cannot be coercive, and labour becomes “partially decommodified.”[5] The labour market becomes tighter and wage labour loses its “disciplinary character” when workers are no longer reliant on wage labour. Returning to that earlier quote from “The German Ideology,” we then in a sense come closer to the absolutely iconic phrase Marx used to describe a world of absolute voluntary labour and weaker capital, in which

“…it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.” [6]

           Nick Srnicek in his book “Inventing The Future” mentions a few other ways in which a UBI program would affect wage-labour. For example he points out that workers, with their work being more voluntary now, would more easily be able to go on strike, and organize politically and economically without having to worry of backlash from employers. Workers can – of course – choose to work less, or perhaps under the ideal system not at all. This provides a great opportunity for citizens to engage in civic activities (if they would actually do this is another question – perhaps we are too optimistic as political scientists!) It seems that so far, the first argument for UBI is quite an agreeable one, and truly from a left perspective there is little to argue against in regards to the general goals of UBI and wage-labour. I will have several criticisms to offer however, but before that I should like to address the proposed nature of work itself under UBI.

SOCIAL AND INVISIBLE LABOUR AND FEMINISM

           The second argument that many supporters cite is the effects that UBI will have on social labour and invisible labour. The argument is a compelling one. Under capitalism, it goes, there are an endless number of necessary tasks and labour that must be done in order for our society to function properly, of course. Of these necessary tasks, we can separate them into two different sorts of labour: social and invisible. That is not to say that there are only two distinct types of labour however for the sake of the UBI argument these are two forms of labour that would be heavily influenced by the policy – we might think of these two things as forming what we call “socially reproductive labour,” as in forms of labour that are essential for the reproduction of our society. This would include a number of things that we are used to in our everyday life.

           Under social labour, we can think of the many blue collar jobs that citizens undertake to make sure things run smoothly – janitors are a good example. These are jobs that are often paid far less than traditionally white collar jobs, and are as well traditionally viewed in a lower light than, say, working in finance. Under invisible labour falls the many usually more grueling work that people undertake without even being paid in the first place. For example cooking, cleaning, childrearing, etc. Critics would suggest that this is just the personal responsibilities of those individuals, however without the input of their labour society would not reproduce – hence why it falls under socially reproductive labour. If a mother does not rear her children and perform that difficult labour, then we do not have a child who grows up to participate in society and keep the economy and civilization afloat. So the questions that stand are then the following: why should a janitor be less respected and paid less than a businessman? And why should a parent who raises their children, does the laundry, cooks and cleans for a work week of more than 40 hours not deserve to get paid, but the CEO of a company which makes fidget spinners does?

           Proponents of UBI raise these two questions and suggest that UBI would be the answer in the following ways. In respect to social labour, if the theories about wage bargaining hold, then wages and conditions for janitors would improve. The argument also is that the stigmas associated with these jobs would disappear – if wages are worth it and the conditions are fine, and if the janitor has a UBI, the job is no longer associated with our class system in the same way. Rather than working a bad job for lower pay due to necessity, people would work a janitorial job because they want to for a number of reasons – the wage in comparison to working hours might be appealing for example. If these jobs were so unpalatable that we didn’t want them, some suggest that people would simply automate them out of necessity. [7] Otherwise they would become more respectable occupations and the workers could get the respect they deserve as labouring a social job. In respect to invisible labour, the argument is quite similar. People performing invisible unpaid labour would finally be compensated firstly, and secondly they would therefore hopefully be given respect and recognition for the role they play in society, accepted as worthy labourers just as a rich banker is. If these jobs are undesirable they will become automated due to necessity – although in the case of certain things like child rearing this becomes more complicated of course. UBI, in providing those who perform labour with a fallback, purportedly provides a mechanism through which socially reproductive forms of labour can therefore improve their condition materially and culturally, or simply do away with themselves.

           Understanding the implications that UBI would have one socially reproductive forms of labour, we can easily infer as to how this policy would contribute to a feminist cause. Women are the ones who perform the vast majority of invisible unpaid labour – the cultural stereotype of the “housewife” obviously comes from this. But besides paying women for their socially reproductive labour, there are two more particular implications that I think are far more important to consider. Firstly, having UBI provides the fall back mentioned earlier in regards to wage-labour. However in this circumstance, rather than allow an individual to choose between different working conditions, the UBI would allow women to support themselves financially when cut off from wage-labour. This means two things. First, women who are overwhelmingly the victims of domestic violence would now have the financial means to leave any abusive relationship. It would secondly allow women to no longer worry about losing their careers or income when having a child, something that many women have to unfortunately weigh when trying to start a family. It would even allow more fluid experimentation with family structures so as to ease the burden that is so commonplace among mothers. In these respects, we see how UBI would help those most vulnerable in society by providing them with a support mechanism for when they lack access to income – UBI in this sense then ends the precariousness in the lives of the disadvantaged. The arguments for feminism could extend to other groups such as veterans, disabled individuals, and racial minorities. UBI in this regard has a wide appeal.

CRITICISMS

           I have three brief arguments against UBI that I would like to offer. My first criticism relates to some of the points that advocates make in favour of UBI due to its influence on wage-labour. In “Inventing the Future,” Srnicek dedicates a chapter to discussing the effects of the surplus labour populations on the slack of the labour market, and therefore not only the wages of workers which respond relatively to the supply in the market, but their overall economic leverage within wage-labour. The surplus population is a simple and well known concept: we are going to outsource to China because the nature of their labour supply is different and they provide a higher supply for lower cost, for example. Now of course this may be an issue in a sense – advocates of UBI have not discussed how a system like this would function on an international scale, only local. What is more concerning than outsourcing – however that is of course a problem which undermines the bargaining power of local UBI users – is how undocumented workers or non-citizens from a country without UBI would play into all of this.

           For example if you are a factory owner, rather than cave in to the demands of your UBI employee and raise the wage, you could very well instead reject their offer and instead just hire an undocumented worker or non-citizen from the surplus population of labour to replace them. This drives down the wage bargaining of the UBI worker of course, however this is really only a minor problem considering that their UBI is enough to support unemployment (in theory). What we have really done here is further increased the position of the richer western society above those underdeveloped societies which cannot provide an acceptable UBI program, and thus we continue the core-periphery relationship of the west to the third world in a most brutal fashion. Rather than worry about how outsourcing will drive wages down, we may see an influx of populations who begin to fill the disregarded cracks of society and essentially become subject to a hyper-exaggerated class system, in which one part of society lives in luxury while all of the unfavourable jobs are taken by a new low class of people: a new “lumpenproletariat” for the 21st century. While I do not have the space here to discuss in depth the further results a UBI may have on the citizens of the global south, I would conclude my thoughts here by pointing out that a UBI coupled with mass migrations of climate refugees to the north may lead to some serious problems between surplus populations and UBI-receiving citizens. This needs to be seriously taken into consideration. Any UBI policy needs to account for the role of surplus populations on an international scale.

           My second argument has to do with the nature of private property and UBI. Under most iterations of the policy, at least on the left, the idea is to add the income on top of all existing social programs already. In Canada we would see UBI alongside socialized healthcare, welfare and disability payments, and other programs designed to alleviate the inequalities of our economy. However this does not seem entirely appealing to me at all and is in fact questionable. If the amount of money going into the UBI distribution is effectively enough to pay for everybody’s basic needs, why would we bother having a UBI rather than simply socializing and decommodifying all of the available goods and services? This obviously leads to much more complicated debates over the optimal system for distributing goods which is far beyond the scope of this essay – however why is it that under UBI we would offer free healthcare services, yet keep other basic goods such as food, electricity, telecommunications, education and housing privatized? Even on an administrative level this does not make sense, as many socialized systems such as healthcare in Canada or the previously nationally owned rail service in the UK are proven to be more cost effective than their privatized counterparts. [8] If there is enough money to guarantee that everyone can purchase these goods privately then there surely there is enough money to in fact simply offer them “free” at the point of service.

           On this point I must absolutely agree with philosopher Slavoj Zizek, when he criticizes UBI, suggesting that rather than call it a universal basic “income,” we ought to call it a universal basic “rent.” Identifying the nature of goods under UBI, I think that he is absolutely correct in his sentiment: the goods are there, we can undoubtedly access it, but for one reason or another we are simply paying for the privilege of that good rather than just owning it ourselves. [9] To give a most literal example of rent, why would we use a UBI to pay a landlord for the privilege of leasing their apartment? There is certainly no shortage of homes, and if everybody has enough money to pay for rent then there is absolutely no reason that a class or people ought to be illogically benefitting. If people must pay for rent under UBI then landlords simply have an entire society of people being fed money to fulfill their price demands so that they can profit. This applies to most everything else. If we can provide it to everyone, there is no reason for it to be commodified and profited off of.

           My final argument against UBI is the most foundational and should be one of the first arguments that one thinks of when coming across a UBI proposal: how do we expect that it will be implemented properly or not just rolled back? If history is any evidence, we need only look at the state of labour unions and national services throughout many of the western countries to realize the predicament we are putting ourselves in by placing our livelihood under the jurisdiction of a vulnerable state apparatus. Reformative policies that were implemented during the 20th century were created as legislation to appease the increasingly irritable working class populations. They were concessions provided through the welfare state – however a relatively strong welfare state is not enough clearly considering that the rise of neoliberalism has easily laid waste to the social-democratic visions of the last century. A reform isn’t enough if it can be rolled back. The collapse of the social democratic consensus and the rise of neoliberalism in the 80’s is proof that reformism, as incredibly appealing as it is in the short term, is precarious if there are not inherent mechanisms within the nature of the policy which would prevent its rolling back without dispensing of it all together. And so I would therefore argue that to place on society a precarious policy which is so able to meet the same fate of austerity that other aspects of the welfare state did is dangerous, considering that there is a good chance that the way it would be implemented would have a much more immense impact on the lives of people, particularly if UBI sees alongside its implementation rapid commodification of resources. It would essentially create an even easier pathway for neoliberals to channel their austerity, the likes of which would make even such radical economic liberals as Charles Murray shake their heads in disbelief. I cannot see a UBI being successfully practiced alongside a free market capitalist economy then, at least not to the extent that it exists now. We should be wary of placing responsibility for something like a UBI in the hands of people such as Hillary Clinton or Elon Musk who support it for completely utilitarian reasons such as “it will support the market” rather than “it will support the people.”  The current state project is obsolete in the face of such a powerful private sector now and we cannot rely on a government to uphold a policy for the people rather than the economy. Franco Berardi puts it:

“Money (i.e. economics) and the State (i.e. politics) are no longer able to govern or to discipline the world of production, now that its center is no longer a de-brained force, a uniform and quantifiable time of manual work. That center is now occupied by mind flows, by the ethereal substance of intelligence, which eludes every measurement and cannot be subjected to any rule without inducing enormous pathologies and causing a truly maddening paralysis of cognition and affectivity… the economy therefore appears as a hyper-reality, a simulated, double, an artificial world that cannot be translated in terms of real production.” [10]

               The idea of a UBI proves completely enticing, absolutely. However for the three reasons listed above I must remain skeptical. The goals of UBI are admirable: provide the working person with leverage in the economy to aid them in avoiding exploitation, ensure they can receive what they need to live, and then achieve a greater sense of equality for the people at the bottom in relation to those at the top. But when we truly zero in on the unique aspects of what a UBI is starting to look like in a world of neoliberal politics, I must remain skeptical that it would be sufficiently upheld, that it would take into account the needs of the surplus population, that whether we really need a universal basic “rent” at all. In conclusion, UBI proves an important policy point for evaluating the pitfalls of inequality legislation. We can use it to pinpoint exactly what is problematic within the public policies of inequality, and if it proves to be insufficient we can apply these lessons and adapt our policies intelligently. However as it stands now, there seems to be far too much impeding the successful implementation of a UBI. What might we do instead? I’m going to pull a Marx for now and leave that to history.  

[1]Institute for Research on Poverty, “What Are Poverty Thresholds?” https://www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq1.htm.

[2] Daniel Zamora, "The Case Against a Basic Income,” 2017. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/12/universal-basic-income-inequality-work.

[3] Cockshott, “What Is Wrong With The Idea of Basic Income ” 2017. https://paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2017/01/25/what-is-wrong-with-the-idea-of-basic-income/

[4] Marx, “The German Ideology.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm.

[5] Nick Srnicek, “Inventing the Future,” page 120.

[6] Marx, “The German Ideology.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm.

[7] Nick Srnicek, “Inventing the Future,” page 122.

[8] David Squires, “U.S. Health Care,” 2015. http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2015/oct/us-health-care-from-a-global-perspective. 

[9] “Zizek – Basic Income,” 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tVmSHEIKwk.

[10] Franco Berardi, “Technology and Knowledge in a Universe of Indetermination,” page 72.

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WHY AREN’T POLITICIANS DISCUSSING AUTOMATION?

I haven't been making any posts on Facebook about the recent election because I'm sure everyone has enough political news in their feed right now. There's just one thing I wanted to add though, that doesn't seem to get any attention from anyone amid all these protests against Trump and everything else we're being blasted with in the media. Which is the fact that NOBODY during the primaries and election at all addressed any policies on countering automation. I post about this stuff a lot I know, but honestly nobody even remotely tried to address this issue, which really bothers me. I’m going to try to briefly explain why I think this issue is really one that need to be discussed.

In America there are 3.5 million people employed as truck drivers. We already have self driving cars driving on the road right now. These trucks are going to be fully automated within a very short amount of time, its inevitable. That means you now have 3.5 million people out of work, in most cases these people have poor educations. What are these people going to do? Will jobs really just magically appear for them to work, when they have no other real skills that can be applied especially considering the state of the North American economy? Besides that, a lot of the small rural towns in the country do rely on truck drivers and related jobs as a source of income for their pit stop towns, at least I would assume. Suddenly all of the truck drivers disappear - is this going to have a detrimental affect on people out in the country? Is there anything in place to protect or help these people if this becomes a problem? We don't know, because none of the politicians in power are addressing this. We are lucky in Canada because the Liberal government has at least said they will be looking into the idea of a UBI, or universal basic income, to maybe use at some point in the future, though they haven’t given a lot of details on this topic. If you don’t know what the UBI is or what it would do, here’s is a very informative video you can watch that explains it. (Also I didn’t think it was worth fully addressing but I’ll add that other jobs like taxi drivers, almost 300,000 people in the USA, and other driving related jobs will be replaced by automated cars. Here’s a list of other jobs that could be lost - food for thought.)

Besides truck drivers there's around 8 million people in retail services in the USA, about 3.4 million of those are cashiers, people  that are already being replaced with self checkout machines. Target has already announced they're working on robots to replace all of their employees. I mean this is going to become a big issue in North America particularly for the lower working class if these politicians keep failing to seriously address the problem. There was a study released a while ago from Oxford that suggested that 47% of jobs are at risk of being automated in only the next two decades. It is reasonable to assume that many new fields will open up to replace the ones we lose as is what traditionally happens in the economy, but we have never before seen automation take jobs on such a grand and quick scale. Perhaps jobs will open up, but will people have access to the education needed to work these jobs? What if things become so automated we simply don’t create enough human jobs because human workers are just too inefficient compared to machines? Again, I certainly do not know as nobody is addressing this seriously in politics. 

As well, people keep talking about trying to bring all of these jobs back from China or Mexico, yet they drastically miss the mark on this issue and fail to ever explain something peculiar: as we lose more and more jobs in these sectors like manufacturing, the productivity in all of these sectors is actually going up. Which wouldn't make sense, because if the jobs are leaving, then you would think that the production would leave too. But it isn't. Because the jobs aren't being lost to overseas countries, the people that work them are just being replaced by machines that do the job more efficiently. Studies are showing that up to 88% of all jobs lost in the last 15 or so years were due to automation and only around 13% to overseas countries. So the jobs they are trying to bring back essentially don't even exist anymore. It's a totally lost cause and it seems to me that failing to address this issue could really blow up in our faces. (CBS published a good article on this exact topic which I think everyone should read, and 538 also wrote a very informative article with charts and citations.)

So those are quick some observations and thoughts I wanted to discuss. To conclude though, I want to point out that I think politicians and especially citizens should be asking themselves another question too - that is, is it even worth bringing back these manufacturing jobs? Think about the bigger picture for a moment - there's such a shortage of jobs that for one of the first times in human history we can't even permanently employ our entire population (not as in just 2016 - this is a recent development within the last century). Yet we continue to implement policies and use worldviews that we developed back in a time where the reality of the job market was not at all the same. Is it not time for us to progress forward a bit and change the way we think about work in our society? Should we really be working so hard to hold on to a society where everyone MUST work and one where those who don’t work suffer consequences? Maybe you think yes, and that is fine, though personally I’m not certain what the answer is for me.

If you study economics or political economy, you'll realize how arguably little we still really know about managing these issues, or more exactly put, how deeply our ideas are evolving so quickly in regards to these topics, every decade even. If we knew the ideal and perfect way to run a country and economy than we would all be doing that. But we don’t know the perfect solution, which is why we have a dialectical political spectrum, with each side constantly struggling against the other thinking they might be correct, adopting new stances as they get access to new information on how things are. Nobody, frankly, has the perfect answer (as much as some people may think they do). Both sides though, continue to subscribe to many of the ideas we used to manage past economic realities, at least it seems to me, though we've never dealt with a reality like this before so in their defence how would anyone really know what to do? As Bertrand Russell once wrote in his amazing essay “In Praise of Idleness” (an essay you should 100% read if this topic interests you): “Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish forever.”

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THE SCHEMES OF RUSSIA'S PRESIDENT VLADAMIR 'ISIS EBOLA' PUTIN AND WHY EVERYONE IN THE WORLD IS RICHARD NIXON

Not so long ago, there was a time where great men and women shaped the course of history: Napoleon Bonaparte, Ghandi, George Washington, Queen Victoria, Nelson Mandela and Alexander the Great; in Canada we had our own: John A. MacDonald, Wilfred Laurier, Lester B. Pearson, Pierre Trudeau. There was a time when dedicated, good willed politicians truly believed they could change the world for the better, in some sense. But that time is not now; it slowly ended in 1969 with the election of the 37th president of the United States, Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon is notoriously known for being incredibly paranoid. When he was in power, he had an array of theories about secret societies and groups controlling America, working against him, and this plagued him throughout his entire career. He never actually acted on any of these suspicions though, until one incident in 1974 where his administration was caught bugging political opponents in Washington that they were attempting to get dirt on. This was the Watergate scandal. They tried to hide as much evidence as they could, but an unknown source ended up leaking evidence to the Washington Herald, who then outed as much information as possible and made the public aware of the deep corruption that had been going on in the government. It ended Nixon’s career, and he ended up being the only ever president in history to resign from office in the US.   Journalists  were now seen as public heroes in the eyes of the people, and saw themselves as truly doing a justice for the citizens of America by revealing the corruption in the system. News stations and papers decided to continue these investigations, but suddenly noticed something very off putting. As the journalists dug deeper and deeper into society for stories, they started to find more and more incidents of this previously found corruption in the government, from money laundering and bribes to secretly funding foreign militants and political groups; they found out that police officers had been fabricating evidence and systematically targeting certain groups of people; they discovered giant rings of conspirators in government working together illegally to abuse the system for their own personal gains, and the list just seemed to get bigger every month. And as these journalists continued to witness all of these events, they began to grow increasingly paranoid about the forces around them... much like Richard Nixon.

The 90′s then came along, and so ended the 20th century war between the forces of democracy and communism, and all the secret behind-the-scenes deals and suspicion that went along with it. After having discovered and bringing public the immense amount of issues going on in politics in the prior 20 years, they suddenly began to become even more like Nixon, and had become so severely fearful and paranoid that they began to envision hidden enemies all around them. They then unwittingly launched a brand new era of McCarthyism, and began pointing fingers at everybody thinking still that they were doing it all for the greater good. There was now a media culture of paranoia in not only America, but in Canada, the UK, Europe, and the rest of the modern world too. They were so much in a habit of finding exploitation and scandal that it had become the only routine they knew, and this has continued to this very day. Now, in 2015, we are stuck with a media industry that specializes solely in spouting hyperbole in an attempt to get any story possible; to modern day journalists, the only sort of news worth reporting is the sort that generates more news, regardless of validity. 

If you sit down to turn on CNN, or Fox News, you will suddenly be pelted in the face with great yellow banners that contain Islamaphobic headlines, and never ending reports on ebola , Vladimir Putin and his dastardly deeds, or how much of a threat ISIS is to the people of North America. Are the chances of the Islamic State ‘raising the flag of Allah in the white house’ really all that high? In reality not at all, though the modern day newscast seems to think no good story can come without fear mongering. Remember how we had to do everything in our ability to stop Joseph Kony back in 2012, and his child militants? Well, the organization in charge of that campaign manipulated the overly paranoid media and convinced everyone that we had to do whatever possible, especially donating money, to help stop Kony... the heads of “Invisible Children” are now sitting on a beach somewhere with millions of stolen dollars stuffed into their briefcases. Media has in recent years set worldwide panic over the topic of obesity: yes, you can’t even trust yourself now. Even you yourself are unknowingly eating  “the five foods you never knew were making you fat!”, so then you have to go online and read that article you found explaining “how you could lose 100 pounds in just 1 month!” People are now overly self conscious, mistrustful, and have all fallen victim to the media’s hysteria.

Worst of all, the public no longer trusts politicians whatsoever, and there is plenty of dishonesty in government to attest as to why that is. But the fear-mongering and the angst have now scared all of our good willed politicians out of government. People no longer believe that they have the power to change the world, because media culture has gone much too far, and now the very thing that they were in the beginning attempting to solve has grown into an unfixable problem, one of which the media are the most guilty of suspects. They have instilled so much fear into people’s minds that good people in our society honestly think that the corrupt members in our governments and corporations far out power them, and so they cease to take part. And though they were in the beginning trying to weed out the untrustworthy and the fraudulent people in power, they only have seemed to do the exact opposite. In the words of the BBC documentary journalist Adam Curtis: “If any politician tried to do what Roy Jenkins did 40 years ago, change Britian for the better against public opinion, we and the press would destroy them.” When leaders come out and claim that they truly want to help improve the country, it’s no surprise that people are skeptical and have trouble believing them. And now you see just why exactly the entire populace has become scared, anxious, and apprehensive band-wagoners, waiting to sit at home and turn on the news to find society’s next big scapegoat; Now you see just why exactly everyone in the world is Richard Nixon. There is one difference though, between us and Richard: he told his psychiatrist that when he looked in the mirror in the morning, there was no one there; when we look in the mirror in the morning, we think we’re too fat.