Excited to check out the book! I would draw a distinction between support for growth and support for the types of policies that lead to sustained growth. Of course most people want the former, but less common is an understanding of what will actually lead to that objective. I do agree that politicians have little incentive to advocate / communicate the benefits of such policies in the current political climate
Pardonne mon français . . . Je suis obligé d'écrire dans plusieurs langues parce que: 1. La plupart des gens aux États-Unis ont subi un lavage de cerveau leur faisant croire que les Juifs sont leur salut ; et 2., leur anglais est de la merde et ils ne peuvent pas rester silencieux assez longtemps pour entendre ou voir ce qui se passe évidemment autour d'eux . . . Le judéo-messianisme répand parmi nous son message empoisonné depuis près de deux mille ans. Les universalismes démocratique et communiste sont plus récents, mais ils n’ont fait que renforcer le vieux récit juif. Ce sont les mêmes idéaux.
Les idéaux transnationaux, transraciaux, transsexuels, transculturels que ces idéologies nous prêchent (au-delà des peuples, des races, des cultures) et qui sont le subsistance quotidienne de nos écoles, dans nos médias, dans notre culture populaire, à nos universités, et sur nos rues, ont fini par réduire notre identité biosymbolique et notre fierté ethnique à leur expression minimale.
Les banquiers juifs ont inondé l’Europe de musulmans et l’Amérique de déchets du tiers-monde . . . L'exil comme punition pour ceux qui prêchent la sédition devrait être rétabli dans le cadre juridique de l'Occident . . . Le judaïsme, le christianisme, et l’islam sont des cultes de mort originaires du Moyen-Orient et totalement étrangers à l’Europe et à ses peuples.
On se demande parfois pourquoi la gauche européenne s’entend si bien avec les musulmans. Pourquoi un mouvement souvent ouvertement antireligieux prend-il le parti d’une religiosité farouche qui semble s’opposer à presque tout ce que la gauche a toujours prétendu défendre ? Une partie de l’explication réside dans le fait que l’Islam et le marxisme ont une racine idéologique commune : le judaïsme.
Don Rumsfeld avait raison lorsqu’il disait : «L’Europe s’est décalé sur son axe», c’est le mauvais côté qui a gagné la Seconde Guerre mondiale, et cela devient chaque jour plus clair . . . Qu’a fait l’OTAN pour défendre l’Europe? Absolument rien . . . Mes ennemis ne sont pas à Moscou, à Damas, à Téhéran, à Riyad ou dans quelque croque-mitaine teutonique éthéré, mes ennemis sont à Washington, Bruxelles et Tel Aviv . . . Va te faire foutre toi et ton dieu juif.
I agree with a lot of what you said. But I would ask you to consider one thing: I know (from a previous post) that you oppose UBI, but please hear me out and see this page that I have compiled:
Attaching any sort of "strings" to any serious proposal for UBI would add unnecessary complexity, create perverse incentives and cracks to slip through, and ultimately undermine it and defeat its basic purpose as a social dignity floor as well as a permanent economic stimulus.
The late, great, Buckminster Fuller would surely agree with me. The outmoded and utterly specious that everybody must "work for a living" is, well, outmoded and specious given today's technology. It is just as outmoded and specious as the idea that "everybody must procreate".
Additionally, we must be aware that, as Edward Abbey famously said, "growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell," which eventually kills its host.
Thanks for posting a link to your article, but it is simply too long. From a brief skim, I do not see you adding any new arguments that I have not already seen before.
My counter-proposal is not complex at all. In fact, it is much simpler than the current system. It is also dramatically cheaper.
It is the UBI that creates perverse incentives by rewarding non-work and subsidies single-parent families and many people who need no assistance.
Other than the above, what cracks does my proposal have?
Do you you intend to abolish the current welfare system to pay for UBI, or is your UBI in addition to the current system? There is a huge difference between the two.
Since human beings evolved for hundreds of thousands of years to work in order to survive, it is absolutely preposterous to argue that work is “outmoded and specious.”
Economic growth is “not for the sake of growth.” It is for the material benefit of humanity and the act of work is a key factor in human flourishing and character development.
If you cannot see that, then I have a hard time taking your other moral arguments seriously.
An unconditional UBI without growth would be a catastrophe for the human condition. The fact that you add an anti-growth argument shows your true intentions.
Many UBI supporters are actually trying to persuade others why the should not have to contribute to society. It is laziness and selfishness disguised as virtue.
Your proposal promotes neither material progress or upward mobility, which is the point of this article.
"We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living."
And he said that back in 1970, mind you. And plenty of other futurists back then, and all the way back to Keynes in the 1930s, believed that by now, the workweek would have shrunk down to 15-20 hours per week. And yet that didn't happen. Why? Because the oligarchs took nearly all of the productivity gains since the early 1970s following the Powell Manifesto, and especially since the neoliberalism of Reagan and Thatcher. If that doesn't make the reader feel RIPPED OFF, check your pulse 'cause you might be dead!
When you favor some people or demographics or families or walks of life over others, that inevitably creates cracks to slip through. And quite frankly, with all due respect, I see your proposal as patronizing and paternalistic, and ultimately treats human beings as means to an end rather than ends in themselves.
Literally every single study of UBI or UBI-shaped pilot programs, experiments, and such has NOT found the significant disincentives to work that you claim would occur if there were no strings attached. From the Alaska Permanent Fund to Give Directly to Dauphin, Manitoba to the Eastern Band Cherokee to so many other studies around the world, it's basically a non-problem.
As for UBI replacing current programs, I would favor it as a partial replacement of *some* social welfare programs but *not* all. I would argue that we also would still need single-payer Medicare For All, for example. And things like Social Security, well, we can also integrate that in and make UBI "Social Security For All".
UBI does not create any perverse incentives, as one is not penalized for working and earning more, and one will still come out ahead. UBI merely sets a social dignity floor.
And I am not arguing against growth per se, only that growth in GDP should not be seen an end in itself, but rather a means to an end, lest it ultimately become an "own goal" (pun intended).
And finally, I will quote Robert Reich: "The economy exists to make our lives better. We do not exist to make the economy better".
I'm afraid we may just have to agree to disagree about UBI then.
Very good analysis. It seems to me that "progress" is lower on the list of progression. To achieve progress we must have production. To get more production, capital is needed. To accumulate capital we must have a respect for property and the ability to keep it. And here we come to what Henry Grady Weaver calls "The Mainspring of Human Progress."--Freedom. To get to progress we must have freedom. Simple concept. Difficult for us to accept as right.
Along with progress comes increased leisure time, and I'm increasingly of the opinion that this surplus of time not spent in problem-solving, either subsistence problems, or more abstract intellectual problems, is at the core of what looks to be today's social dysfunctions.
I'm not reaching backward to a more rosy era, but instead I'm commenting on a noteworthy rise in the cult of the individual which has supplanted social cooperation and hence cohesion. Where once social cohesion was the necessary key for group survival, and later, advancement (progress), lengthy deviation from social cooperation toward individual self-fulfillment has become possible, and we are now living in a fragmented society of individuals pursuing their own ends, which are divergent, unfocused, and often at odds with a stable social structure.
So it seems that expression of the individual is a luxury reserved for a society whose individuals can afford it and still survive. It has a lot in common with other self-indulgent practices, like purposeful intoxication. You can afford to be drunk at all hours if you do not need to show up for work.
I don't think that mankind has yet evolved a way of dealing positively with its new-found leisure.
I wrote a later article that made a similar argument, although I think it has more to do with affluence and leisure enabling individuals to embrace the non-rational parts of their brain with fewer short-term negative consequences.
Your argument that the cause is is actually declining need for social cooperation is also plausible. This is certainly the case with digital technology.
Though I am a strong supporter of material progress, I share your concerns that humanity is not well adapted to affluence and leisure. I believe, however, it is largely among people with certain psychological temperments, not necessarily the general population. Unfortunately, they are particularly likely to express itself in ideology and politics:
Since I was here already, I used your thread to test the Substack Edit/ Save feature [the three dots on the lower right of a post]. I have found that when I edit a longer comment, I seem to lose part of it upon re-saving. Testing just now, I have confirmed the lower portion of my long comment text no longer was displayed, but if I go back to Edit mode I can see the whole text body.
Do you have any insight into Substack's functioning to explain this, or to find a solution/ work around?
I now will sometimes add a nested reply as an "edit" to a long comment, if I don't need to change the existing text. Or I will end up cutting and pasting the lower portion into a nested reply as a "continuation" of my previously too long comment. Then I can display the total original and edited content in two separate comment fields. Ugh!
I don’t know how Substack commenting works. It does seem to have a memory problem is the text box is open for a long time period or you make quick edits immediately after saving.
I was going back and forth to other web pages to capture their respective links, but lost my initial commentary here as a result. Now you get a more truncated version. I guess the solution is to save a prelim comment with a note it will be edited later?
Came here from Nathan Cofnas's Substack, discussing human biodiversity (HBD) and the need to consider the innate intelligence of subject populations "being helped by public policy". Found your comment about pursuing Upward Mobility to be intriguing and link to here.
From my read of this post, and touching a couple of other links, my initial impression was along the lines of "oh, another guy with a lot of rather naive ideas about how to improve the world, with inadequate detail." But I see from your About page you seem to have a credible background to explore these ideas, so I hope to continue to give you the benefit of the doubt.
From what I see in this post, I do not have any major issues with your commentary so far. I do urge you to incorporate thinking about genetic heritage as well as cultural heritage in your explorations. Charles Murray (and maybe Cofnas?) seem to be honest analysts while exploring a touchy topic about race and intelligence that does seem more and more deserving of attention if it provides useful explanatory value. I also keep in mind Sowell's cautions about possible cultural bias in such IQ testing, even when the test creators strive to avoid that. Beyond my expertise to critique further.
Also that our society that believes "all men are created equal" has derived this view from the cultural impact of the Judeo-Christian civilization; and is basically the only major culture to do so. [See Inventing the Individual by Larry Siedentop or Dominion by Tom Holland, plus Tom's many You Tube interviews/ speeches.] I understand that early "scientific investigations" were also commenced with the idea of better understanding God through understanding His natural laws, etc. Whatever such explorations were commenced by Islamic believers between 800 to 1100AD were squelched by later "clerics". Perhaps somewhat indirectly, some advances in Western Civilization may have resulted from Church laws on consanguinity reducing the influence of European tribes, so a focus was directed to the family and to the "nation" rather than the clan/tribal inheritance, etc. [See http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/whatever-happened-to-european-tribes/ ]
Hopefully you have or will also consider the impacts of transferring past learning via the discovery of writing, printing press, and internet, along with its promotion of class based or more universal literacy.
Finally, I checked your Upward Mobility page, found 4 or 5 links related to housing that I did not read (yet), and somewhere a comment you would be exploring training and educational assistance in future posts. That latter seems most promising to me, with the caveat that we have tried "Head Start". It seemed to work well for the pilot/prototype program with dedicated parents, teachers, and support staffers, but when expanded to the real world using average parents and people, it did not show any net improvement by age 8 or 10. Maybe someone has a better idea, as clearly core competence in literacy and numeracy is essential to do well in our Progress Society. Apprenticeship and trade school programs sound promising, but the value of those jobs depends on supply and demand, along with the productivity enhancements provided by energy and information tech. In the final analysis there is no "job security" except having the skills required by the marketplace - anything else is delusion.
I better stop here. You know most of the above so thanks for the opportunity to rant. I will sign up to your Substack, look for your Upward Mobility items to come, etc. But I have trouble keeping up with the 6 or 7 Substacks to which I am already a paying or nonpaying subscriber.
I think that you were looking for Upward Mobility. That is the topic of the book that I am writing now. I will be adding many posts on the topic in the near future.
As for your other points, I am familiar with the literature that you mention, and I have incorporated them into my thoughts to the extent that I think is necessary.
I will also add remark on the Cofnas site that readers should explore this site as well, even it they need to take a skeptical view.
I checked Amazon for your second book so I will probably buy it there, but no promises on when I will actually get to read it. The Amazon blurb book summary suggests I won't agree with parts of what you propose, but at least you are exploring and presenting solution options.
I suppose I should read your Left vs. Right post before I leave this site (sigh!).
Hi, Michael. I moved this comment from another site as requested.
I have read both your books and all your stuff online, and the one place where I differ from you is in how we define progress. You focus more on material prosperity. I certainly agree that this is super important, but would add other values, such as freedom, knowledge, understanding, health, longevity, and even meaning.
The advantage of your narrower definition is that it is easier to measure. The disadvantage is that it may be too narrow and restricted and thus lead us astray at the margins.
I kind of agree that the future is not definable, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t speak about it in general terms. Progress is not just about the present and the past, but also about the possibility of a better future as well.
Thanks for the comment. I am really glad to hear that you enjoyed my two books.
If you have not already done so, please leave a review on Amazon. Positive reviews really help independent writers like myself.
As to your specific comments:
I plan to write more in future posts about this, but I certainly do not believe that human material progress is the only thing that matters. I only believe that it is the most important. I agree with all those other things that you mentioned.
And I also agree with your last paragraph.
I am curious what you mean by a narrow definition can "astray at the margins." Can you give me an example of what you mean?
"And the village was deserted, the huts gaped black, rotting, all askew within the fallen enclosures. A calamity had come to it, sure enough. The people had vanished. Mad terror had scattered them, men, women, and children, through the bush, and they had never returned. What became of the hens I don’t know either. I should think the cause of progress got them, anyhow." — Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Al contrari . . . Estic obligat a escriure en diversos idiomes perquè: 1. A la majoria de la gent dels Estats Units se'ls ha rentat el cervell perquè cregui que els jueus són la seva salvació; i 2., el seu anglès és una merda i no poden romandre en silenci el temps suficient per escoltar o veure el que òbviament passa al seu voltant . . .
El judeomessianisme fa gairebé dos mil anys que escampa entre nosaltres el seu missatge verinós. Els universalismes democràtics i comunistes són més recents, però només han reforçat la vella narrativa jueva. Són els mateixos ideals.
Els ideals transnacionals, transracials, transsexuals, transculturals que aquestes ideologies ens prediquen (més enllà dels pobles, races, cultures) i que són el sosteniment diari de les nostres escoles, als nostres mitjans de comunicació, a la nostra cultura popular, a les nostres universitats, i sobre al nostres els carrers han acabat reduint la nostra identitat biosimbòlica i el nostre orgull ètnic a la seva mínima expressió.
Els banquers jueus han inundat Europa amb musulmans i Amèrica amb escombraries del tercer món . . . L'exili com a càstig per als que predicen la sedició s'hauria de restablir dins el marc legal d'Occident . . .
El judaisme, el cristianisme i l'islam són cultes a la mort originats a l'Orient Mitjà i totalment aliens a Europa i als seus pobles.
De vegades ens preguntem per què l'esquerra europea es porta tan bé amb els musulmans. Per què un moviment sovint obertament antireligiós es posa del costat d'una religiositat ferotge que sembla oposar-se a gairebé tot allò que l'esquerra sempre ha pretès defensar? Part de l'explicació rau en el fet que l'islam i el marxisme tenen una arrel ideològica comuna: el judaisme.
Don Rumsfeld tenia raó quan va dir: "Europa s'ha desplaçat en el seu eix", va ser el bàndol equivocat que va guanyar la Segona Guerra Mundial, i es fa més clar cada dia . . . Què ha fet l'OTAN per defensar Europa? Absolutament res . . . Els meus enemics no són a Moscou, Damasc, Teheran, Riad o algun eteri bogeyman teutónic, els meus enemics són a Washington, Brussel·les i Tel Aviv.
Agreed that we need to create a prosperous working class (and accessible pathways to the same) in order for growth-oriented policies to see broad-based, sustained support. The argument here seems to be that if we make consumption less expensive, then such support will follow. However, we've seen systematic decreases in the relative price of most goods for the past half-century even as (anecdotally, at least) there has been a profound erosion in support for growth-oriented policy. How do we make sense of this correlation? I suspect that access to "good, dignified jobs" is the key to a prosperous working class that feels truly prosperous to its members and encourages them to buy into progress-aligned policy. While I would like to see us roll back short-sighted regulations that place tremendous upward pressure on the prices of key basic goods, I also think we're going to need (a) systematic reform of K-12 education such that people leave school with basic literacy and numeracy and (b) extensive implementation of corporate apprenticeship programs that enable people without an insanely expensive (both from a cost and opportunity cost perspective) 4-year college degree to take on a "good, dignified job". (a) seems hard and unlikely, but (b) seems ~maybe~ possible, and likely to be politically popular as well. Perhaps counter-intuitively, clear pathways to good jobs seem to feel more important to most people than pathways to greater material wealth in a low-skilled job.
Thanks for the comment. I don’t think that there has been much of an erosion of support for growth among voters. I think elected officials are just ignoring the issue so they can focus on issues to rally the base. I will give my plan on job training in my next book.
I voted for Ron Desantis to be governor of Florida, not ambassador to Israel.
The recently ousted Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who took at least a dozen votes to get elected speaker, traveled to Israel immediately upon his election, declaring to the Israeli Knesset that the USA is steadfastly committed to supporting Ukraine in their war against Russia.
Was he running for speaker of the Israeli Knesset too?
Following his ouster . . . McCarthy (R-CA) traveled abroad again, this time to England, and expressed his open contempt for the white Republicans who make up the majority of the GOP and praised Democrats for their diversity during a debate at Oxford in the wake of his ouster as House Speaker . . .
Is he now running for the Prime Minister of the U.K.?
Nevertheless, he is free to go on media tours bashing white people and lobbying for Israel, because he has now resigned from the US House of Representatives . . . I can only conclude that the collective RINO butthurt over former Speaker McCarthy is all about the Israelis who have hijacked the American deep state war machine . . .
It has become so painfully obvious, especially where you have someone like Nikki Haley wagging her finger and shouting down Vivek Ramaswamy in a presidential debate on live national television when the questions of this Ukrainian war against Russia and any mention of Israel are concerned, that the United States government has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the American Israeli Political Action Committee.
Excellent piece.
It seems I need to purchase a copy of your book and put it on my reading list
Yes, you do! LOL
But, seriously, glad that you found this article interesting.
Excited to check out the book! I would draw a distinction between support for growth and support for the types of policies that lead to sustained growth. Of course most people want the former, but less common is an understanding of what will actually lead to that objective. I do agree that politicians have little incentive to advocate / communicate the benefits of such policies in the current political climate
Pardonne mon français . . . Je suis obligé d'écrire dans plusieurs langues parce que: 1. La plupart des gens aux États-Unis ont subi un lavage de cerveau leur faisant croire que les Juifs sont leur salut ; et 2., leur anglais est de la merde et ils ne peuvent pas rester silencieux assez longtemps pour entendre ou voir ce qui se passe évidemment autour d'eux . . . Le judéo-messianisme répand parmi nous son message empoisonné depuis près de deux mille ans. Les universalismes démocratique et communiste sont plus récents, mais ils n’ont fait que renforcer le vieux récit juif. Ce sont les mêmes idéaux.
Les idéaux transnationaux, transraciaux, transsexuels, transculturels que ces idéologies nous prêchent (au-delà des peuples, des races, des cultures) et qui sont le subsistance quotidienne de nos écoles, dans nos médias, dans notre culture populaire, à nos universités, et sur nos rues, ont fini par réduire notre identité biosymbolique et notre fierté ethnique à leur expression minimale.
Les banquiers juifs ont inondé l’Europe de musulmans et l’Amérique de déchets du tiers-monde . . . L'exil comme punition pour ceux qui prêchent la sédition devrait être rétabli dans le cadre juridique de l'Occident . . . Le judaïsme, le christianisme, et l’islam sont des cultes de mort originaires du Moyen-Orient et totalement étrangers à l’Europe et à ses peuples.
On se demande parfois pourquoi la gauche européenne s’entend si bien avec les musulmans. Pourquoi un mouvement souvent ouvertement antireligieux prend-il le parti d’une religiosité farouche qui semble s’opposer à presque tout ce que la gauche a toujours prétendu défendre ? Une partie de l’explication réside dans le fait que l’Islam et le marxisme ont une racine idéologique commune : le judaïsme.
Don Rumsfeld avait raison lorsqu’il disait : «L’Europe s’est décalé sur son axe», c’est le mauvais côté qui a gagné la Seconde Guerre mondiale, et cela devient chaque jour plus clair . . . Qu’a fait l’OTAN pour défendre l’Europe? Absolument rien . . . Mes ennemis ne sont pas à Moscou, à Damas, à Téhéran, à Riyad ou dans quelque croque-mitaine teutonique éthéré, mes ennemis sont à Washington, Bruxelles et Tel Aviv . . . Va te faire foutre toi et ton dieu juif.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/pardonne-mon-francais-va-te-faire
I already gave you two warnings for going off topic. You are now blocked.
Came over here from your comment on Elle’s post.
Quite a good read, thanks for sharing!
Thanks for the feedback. Do you mind adding this comment to my original comment on Elle’s post so others will know it is worth checking out? Thanks.
I agree with a lot of what you said. But I would ask you to consider one thing: I know (from a previous post) that you oppose UBI, but please hear me out and see this page that I have compiled:
https://truespiritofamericaparty.blogspot.com/p/why-ubi.html
Attaching any sort of "strings" to any serious proposal for UBI would add unnecessary complexity, create perverse incentives and cracks to slip through, and ultimately undermine it and defeat its basic purpose as a social dignity floor as well as a permanent economic stimulus.
The late, great, Buckminster Fuller would surely agree with me. The outmoded and utterly specious that everybody must "work for a living" is, well, outmoded and specious given today's technology. It is just as outmoded and specious as the idea that "everybody must procreate".
Additionally, we must be aware that, as Edward Abbey famously said, "growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell," which eventually kills its host.
Thanks for the comment.
I summarized my strong opposition to a UBI in the article that you mentioned, though much of my reasoning is behind a paywall.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-universal-basic-income-ubi-is
Thanks for posting a link to your article, but it is simply too long. From a brief skim, I do not see you adding any new arguments that I have not already seen before.
My counter-proposal is not complex at all. In fact, it is much simpler than the current system. It is also dramatically cheaper.
It is the UBI that creates perverse incentives by rewarding non-work and subsidies single-parent families and many people who need no assistance.
Other than the above, what cracks does my proposal have?
Do you you intend to abolish the current welfare system to pay for UBI, or is your UBI in addition to the current system? There is a huge difference between the two.
Since human beings evolved for hundreds of thousands of years to work in order to survive, it is absolutely preposterous to argue that work is “outmoded and specious.”
Economic growth is “not for the sake of growth.” It is for the material benefit of humanity and the act of work is a key factor in human flourishing and character development.
If you cannot see that, then I have a hard time taking your other moral arguments seriously.
An unconditional UBI without growth would be a catastrophe for the human condition. The fact that you add an anti-growth argument shows your true intentions.
Many UBI supporters are actually trying to persuade others why the should not have to contribute to society. It is laziness and selfishness disguised as virtue.
Your proposal promotes neither material progress or upward mobility, which is the point of this article.
And the full Buckminster Fuller quote:
"We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living."
And he said that back in 1970, mind you. And plenty of other futurists back then, and all the way back to Keynes in the 1930s, believed that by now, the workweek would have shrunk down to 15-20 hours per week. And yet that didn't happen. Why? Because the oligarchs took nearly all of the productivity gains since the early 1970s following the Powell Manifesto, and especially since the neoliberalism of Reagan and Thatcher. If that doesn't make the reader feel RIPPED OFF, check your pulse 'cause you might be dead!
When you favor some people or demographics or families or walks of life over others, that inevitably creates cracks to slip through. And quite frankly, with all due respect, I see your proposal as patronizing and paternalistic, and ultimately treats human beings as means to an end rather than ends in themselves.
Literally every single study of UBI or UBI-shaped pilot programs, experiments, and such has NOT found the significant disincentives to work that you claim would occur if there were no strings attached. From the Alaska Permanent Fund to Give Directly to Dauphin, Manitoba to the Eastern Band Cherokee to so many other studies around the world, it's basically a non-problem.
As for UBI replacing current programs, I would favor it as a partial replacement of *some* social welfare programs but *not* all. I would argue that we also would still need single-payer Medicare For All, for example. And things like Social Security, well, we can also integrate that in and make UBI "Social Security For All".
UBI does not create any perverse incentives, as one is not penalized for working and earning more, and one will still come out ahead. UBI merely sets a social dignity floor.
And I am not arguing against growth per se, only that growth in GDP should not be seen an end in itself, but rather a means to an end, lest it ultimately become an "own goal" (pun intended).
And finally, I will quote Robert Reich: "The economy exists to make our lives better. We do not exist to make the economy better".
I'm afraid we may just have to agree to disagree about UBI then.
You're very welcome, by the way 🙂
Very good analysis. It seems to me that "progress" is lower on the list of progression. To achieve progress we must have production. To get more production, capital is needed. To accumulate capital we must have a respect for property and the ability to keep it. And here we come to what Henry Grady Weaver calls "The Mainspring of Human Progress."--Freedom. To get to progress we must have freedom. Simple concept. Difficult for us to accept as right.
Along with progress comes increased leisure time, and I'm increasingly of the opinion that this surplus of time not spent in problem-solving, either subsistence problems, or more abstract intellectual problems, is at the core of what looks to be today's social dysfunctions.
I'm not reaching backward to a more rosy era, but instead I'm commenting on a noteworthy rise in the cult of the individual which has supplanted social cooperation and hence cohesion. Where once social cohesion was the necessary key for group survival, and later, advancement (progress), lengthy deviation from social cooperation toward individual self-fulfillment has become possible, and we are now living in a fragmented society of individuals pursuing their own ends, which are divergent, unfocused, and often at odds with a stable social structure.
So it seems that expression of the individual is a luxury reserved for a society whose individuals can afford it and still survive. It has a lot in common with other self-indulgent practices, like purposeful intoxication. You can afford to be drunk at all hours if you do not need to show up for work.
I don't think that mankind has yet evolved a way of dealing positively with its new-found leisure.
That is a very interesting point.
I wrote a later article that made a similar argument, although I think it has more to do with affluence and leisure enabling individuals to embrace the non-rational parts of their brain with fewer short-term negative consequences.
Your argument that the cause is is actually declining need for social cooperation is also plausible. This is certainly the case with digital technology.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/is-material-progress-driving-us-crazy
Though I am a strong supporter of material progress, I share your concerns that humanity is not well adapted to affluence and leisure. I believe, however, it is largely among people with certain psychological temperments, not necessarily the general population. Unfortunately, they are particularly likely to express itself in ideology and politics:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/where-does-ideology-come-from
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/radical-ideologies-feast-on-mental
Since I was here already, I used your thread to test the Substack Edit/ Save feature [the three dots on the lower right of a post]. I have found that when I edit a longer comment, I seem to lose part of it upon re-saving. Testing just now, I have confirmed the lower portion of my long comment text no longer was displayed, but if I go back to Edit mode I can see the whole text body.
Do you have any insight into Substack's functioning to explain this, or to find a solution/ work around?
I now will sometimes add a nested reply as an "edit" to a long comment, if I don't need to change the existing text. Or I will end up cutting and pasting the lower portion into a nested reply as a "continuation" of my previously too long comment. Then I can display the total original and edited content in two separate comment fields. Ugh!
I don’t know how Substack commenting works. It does seem to have a memory problem is the text box is open for a long time period or you make quick edits immediately after saving.
open for long time periods and quick edits after saving -- that would be me! :-)
I was going back and forth to other web pages to capture their respective links, but lost my initial commentary here as a result. Now you get a more truncated version. I guess the solution is to save a prelim comment with a note it will be edited later?
Came here from Nathan Cofnas's Substack, discussing human biodiversity (HBD) and the need to consider the innate intelligence of subject populations "being helped by public policy". Found your comment about pursuing Upward Mobility to be intriguing and link to here.
From my read of this post, and touching a couple of other links, my initial impression was along the lines of "oh, another guy with a lot of rather naive ideas about how to improve the world, with inadequate detail." But I see from your About page you seem to have a credible background to explore these ideas, so I hope to continue to give you the benefit of the doubt.
From what I see in this post, I do not have any major issues with your commentary so far. I do urge you to incorporate thinking about genetic heritage as well as cultural heritage in your explorations. Charles Murray (and maybe Cofnas?) seem to be honest analysts while exploring a touchy topic about race and intelligence that does seem more and more deserving of attention if it provides useful explanatory value. I also keep in mind Sowell's cautions about possible cultural bias in such IQ testing, even when the test creators strive to avoid that. Beyond my expertise to critique further.
Also that our society that believes "all men are created equal" has derived this view from the cultural impact of the Judeo-Christian civilization; and is basically the only major culture to do so. [See Inventing the Individual by Larry Siedentop or Dominion by Tom Holland, plus Tom's many You Tube interviews/ speeches.] I understand that early "scientific investigations" were also commenced with the idea of better understanding God through understanding His natural laws, etc. Whatever such explorations were commenced by Islamic believers between 800 to 1100AD were squelched by later "clerics". Perhaps somewhat indirectly, some advances in Western Civilization may have resulted from Church laws on consanguinity reducing the influence of European tribes, so a focus was directed to the family and to the "nation" rather than the clan/tribal inheritance, etc. [See http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/whatever-happened-to-european-tribes/ ]
Hopefully you have or will also consider the impacts of transferring past learning via the discovery of writing, printing press, and internet, along with its promotion of class based or more universal literacy.
Finally, I checked your Upward Mobility page, found 4 or 5 links related to housing that I did not read (yet), and somewhere a comment you would be exploring training and educational assistance in future posts. That latter seems most promising to me, with the caveat that we have tried "Head Start". It seemed to work well for the pilot/prototype program with dedicated parents, teachers, and support staffers, but when expanded to the real world using average parents and people, it did not show any net improvement by age 8 or 10. Maybe someone has a better idea, as clearly core competence in literacy and numeracy is essential to do well in our Progress Society. Apprenticeship and trade school programs sound promising, but the value of those jobs depends on supply and demand, along with the productivity enhancements provided by energy and information tech. In the final analysis there is no "job security" except having the skills required by the marketplace - anything else is delusion.
I better stop here. You know most of the above so thanks for the opportunity to rant. I will sign up to your Substack, look for your Upward Mobility items to come, etc. But I have trouble keeping up with the 6 or 7 Substacks to which I am already a paying or nonpaying subscriber.
Thanks for the comment.
I think that you were looking for Upward Mobility. That is the topic of the book that I am writing now. I will be adding many posts on the topic in the near future.
As for your other points, I am familiar with the literature that you mention, and I have incorporated them into my thoughts to the extent that I think is necessary.
Truncated version!! Ho ho ho ho!! :-)
I will also add remark on the Cofnas site that readers should explore this site as well, even it they need to take a skeptical view.
I checked Amazon for your second book so I will probably buy it there, but no promises on when I will actually get to read it. The Amazon blurb book summary suggests I won't agree with parts of what you propose, but at least you are exploring and presenting solution options.
I suppose I should read your Left vs. Right post before I leave this site (sigh!).
Hi, Michael. I moved this comment from another site as requested.
I have read both your books and all your stuff online, and the one place where I differ from you is in how we define progress. You focus more on material prosperity. I certainly agree that this is super important, but would add other values, such as freedom, knowledge, understanding, health, longevity, and even meaning.
The advantage of your narrower definition is that it is easier to measure. The disadvantage is that it may be too narrow and restricted and thus lead us astray at the margins.
I kind of agree that the future is not definable, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t speak about it in general terms. Progress is not just about the present and the past, but also about the possibility of a better future as well.
Thanks for the comment. I am really glad to hear that you enjoyed my two books.
If you have not already done so, please leave a review on Amazon. Positive reviews really help independent writers like myself.
As to your specific comments:
I plan to write more in future posts about this, but I certainly do not believe that human material progress is the only thing that matters. I only believe that it is the most important. I agree with all those other things that you mentioned.
And I also agree with your last paragraph.
I am curious what you mean by a narrow definition can "astray at the margins." Can you give me an example of what you mean?
Thanks again!
Reading this, I remembered the hens:
"And the village was deserted, the huts gaped black, rotting, all askew within the fallen enclosures. A calamity had come to it, sure enough. The people had vanished. Mad terror had scattered them, men, women, and children, through the bush, and they had never returned. What became of the hens I don’t know either. I should think the cause of progress got them, anyhow." — Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
LOL
Joseph Conrad had a very different definition of progress from what I am using in this column.
The 19th-century Congo was definitely not a place that was experiencing progress. In fact, it was the exact opposite.
That is all that blacks ever built . . . grass and mud huts . . .
Name one great metropolis on the planet built by blacks.
Name on great metropolis in the USA that blacks haven't destroyed.
I'll be waiting for answers even after the cobwebs drape my mummified corpse.
Did you read the article?
If so, You should be able to figure out that your comment is off topic.
Al contrari . . . Estic obligat a escriure en diversos idiomes perquè: 1. A la majoria de la gent dels Estats Units se'ls ha rentat el cervell perquè cregui que els jueus són la seva salvació; i 2., el seu anglès és una merda i no poden romandre en silenci el temps suficient per escoltar o veure el que òbviament passa al seu voltant . . .
El judeomessianisme fa gairebé dos mil anys que escampa entre nosaltres el seu missatge verinós. Els universalismes democràtics i comunistes són més recents, però només han reforçat la vella narrativa jueva. Són els mateixos ideals.
Els ideals transnacionals, transracials, transsexuals, transculturals que aquestes ideologies ens prediquen (més enllà dels pobles, races, cultures) i que són el sosteniment diari de les nostres escoles, als nostres mitjans de comunicació, a la nostra cultura popular, a les nostres universitats, i sobre al nostres els carrers han acabat reduint la nostra identitat biosimbòlica i el nostre orgull ètnic a la seva mínima expressió.
Els banquers jueus han inundat Europa amb musulmans i Amèrica amb escombraries del tercer món . . . L'exili com a càstig per als que predicen la sedició s'hauria de restablir dins el marc legal d'Occident . . .
El judaisme, el cristianisme i l'islam són cultes a la mort originats a l'Orient Mitjà i totalment aliens a Europa i als seus pobles.
De vegades ens preguntem per què l'esquerra europea es porta tan bé amb els musulmans. Per què un moviment sovint obertament antireligiós es posa del costat d'una religiositat ferotge que sembla oposar-se a gairebé tot allò que l'esquerra sempre ha pretès defensar? Part de l'explicació rau en el fet que l'islam i el marxisme tenen una arrel ideològica comuna: el judaisme.
Don Rumsfeld tenia raó quan va dir: "Europa s'ha desplaçat en el seu eix", va ser el bàndol equivocat que va guanyar la Segona Guerra Mundial, i es fa més clar cada dia . . . Què ha fet l'OTAN per defensar Europa? Absolutament res . . . Els meus enemics no són a Moscou, Damasc, Teheran, Riad o algun eteri bogeyman teutónic, els meus enemics són a Washington, Brussel·les i Tel Aviv.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/pardonne-mon-francais-va-te-faire
Agreed that we need to create a prosperous working class (and accessible pathways to the same) in order for growth-oriented policies to see broad-based, sustained support. The argument here seems to be that if we make consumption less expensive, then such support will follow. However, we've seen systematic decreases in the relative price of most goods for the past half-century even as (anecdotally, at least) there has been a profound erosion in support for growth-oriented policy. How do we make sense of this correlation? I suspect that access to "good, dignified jobs" is the key to a prosperous working class that feels truly prosperous to its members and encourages them to buy into progress-aligned policy. While I would like to see us roll back short-sighted regulations that place tremendous upward pressure on the prices of key basic goods, I also think we're going to need (a) systematic reform of K-12 education such that people leave school with basic literacy and numeracy and (b) extensive implementation of corporate apprenticeship programs that enable people without an insanely expensive (both from a cost and opportunity cost perspective) 4-year college degree to take on a "good, dignified job". (a) seems hard and unlikely, but (b) seems ~maybe~ possible, and likely to be politically popular as well. Perhaps counter-intuitively, clear pathways to good jobs seem to feel more important to most people than pathways to greater material wealth in a low-skilled job.
Thanks for the comment. I don’t think that there has been much of an erosion of support for growth among voters. I think elected officials are just ignoring the issue so they can focus on issues to rally the base. I will give my plan on job training in my next book.
I voted for Ron Desantis to be governor of Florida, not ambassador to Israel.
The recently ousted Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who took at least a dozen votes to get elected speaker, traveled to Israel immediately upon his election, declaring to the Israeli Knesset that the USA is steadfastly committed to supporting Ukraine in their war against Russia.
Was he running for speaker of the Israeli Knesset too?
Following his ouster . . . McCarthy (R-CA) traveled abroad again, this time to England, and expressed his open contempt for the white Republicans who make up the majority of the GOP and praised Democrats for their diversity during a debate at Oxford in the wake of his ouster as House Speaker . . .
Is he now running for the Prime Minister of the U.K.?
Nevertheless, he is free to go on media tours bashing white people and lobbying for Israel, because he has now resigned from the US House of Representatives . . . I can only conclude that the collective RINO butthurt over former Speaker McCarthy is all about the Israelis who have hijacked the American deep state war machine . . .
It has become so painfully obvious, especially where you have someone like Nikki Haley wagging her finger and shouting down Vivek Ramaswamy in a presidential debate on live national television when the questions of this Ukrainian war against Russia and any mention of Israel are concerned, that the United States government has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the American Israeli Political Action Committee.
We can't afford healthcare for American Children because we need to keep bombing everyone else's for the love of Jesus and Israel . . . https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/satanism-is-a-jewish-cult
This comment is off topic.