I still remember being a guest student at LSE and walking past David Graebers office on my way to the library where you would see him through the open door with a mountain of books next to him and deep in thought. At the time I didnt realize what a great thinker and writer he was. Wish I had talked to him whilst I had the chance
@@6Diego1Diego9 _oh sure, and this not everyone can do. It takes a great level of stamina and mental determinism, comparable to athletic training. Or, if you will, an olympian._
Me to but one great thing about modern life is that for someone like me who does not like to spend a lot of my time reading I can sit and listen to radically sensible people even when they have passed away.
I have worked in corporate america for about 15 years now....I have become mentally, physically, and emotionally sick....and this is not an over exaggeration!!! I hate the corporate environment with a passion!
Late professor Graeber was obviously a great thinker, but he also seemed like a genuinely sweet person. He had such a warm smile, that's something that always caught my eye in all the videos of him speaking.
Fantastic analysis, and he's dead right! I've noticed increasingly that even in my line of work,childcare, the actual job of looking after the children has been sidelined, and ticking boxes, written 'planning' and evidencing everything you do, have become all important. Everything is about 'proving' you are worthy and making the company look good on paper, instead of about what's right or enjoyable for the children.It's as if they've forgotten what nurseries/day care centres are supposed to be there for(other than to separate kids from their parents, but that's another issue), and everything is about profit, form-filling and constantly making workers feel 'grateful' for the pittance they work for, rather than happy and fulfilled, which is what work/life should or could be about.
it is pretty much a trend now that company will have a million managers who all give you fake feedback and pretend to work hard on something, because of this, those people at the very top (investors/execs or owners) become completely disconnected from the reality of their business and realities of their decisions.
Everett Ward Because the upper class knows that if the lower classes have free time, eventually they will use that time to organize and even revolt. So they have to keep them working long enough to suck the life out of them.
Edward Maxwell I totally agree. They don't have time to question anything because they're so bogged down in useless work they just want to get it done so they can make the most of the little free time they actually have.
I was a teenager in the 1970s in UK. When you look at the audience in TV programmes or type of media~~these were bold ,educated working class people bringing common sense with their optimism. Cricks~folk went to evening classes to study new skills. One of the reasons Thatcher shut down the Golden Age since the war, was happiness
I discovered this something like 25 years ago and have uncomfortably trying to negotiate the least painful way through this paperworld ever since. It's broken me, many times.
it is painful. its invaded every aspect of life. climbing through your letter box. monitoring your social interactions while making noted on a clipboard. ever observant and demanding
No one really likes freeloaders, but folks who criticize academics like Graeber are often those who spend less time thinking critically. Honest academics work much harder than financiers who play the markets and who are basically spreadsheet junkies, and who are not producing any real wealth but rather merely funneling wealth up the plutocratic ladder. Critics also forget that plenty of research shows human beings are a bit inherently lazy but also inherently desire to work hard, the trick is to help people work at things they love.
Depends on what "financiers" are doing. If they are doing something counterproductive, it is necessarily enabled by government decree. Things, for example, like speculating in commodities on a futures exchange benefit you directly with stable grocery prices.
I have not seen any studies that commodity speculators stabilize prices, quite the opposite, or at least little correlation. The problem is that speculators have the wrong incentive, they are out to make money, not eat or consume the products they are pricing. This is exactly why we get housing bubbles. The speculators are not actually using the houses that they are trading or renting. Without the speculators the prices may or may not be as stable, but they would probably be more affordable (and I would argue also more stable, and definitely less prone to bubbles) The same principles apply to almost all markets that are either free or quasi-free markets (lightly regulated): which is to say, if the market traders are stakeholders in the products of the market, if they use the products, then they have the right incentives and you will tend to get stability and reasonably affordable prices. Compare then to the faux free markets that financial instrument traders speculate on, they are not free markets at all because the real users of the commodities have very little to say about setting the prices, the price will then float fairly arbitrarily between the extremes of what the real consumers can afford to pay for and a bit less. If you need to learn about supply and demand curves and why they are bogus I suggest reading Debunking Economics by Steve Keen.
Commodities exchanges like Chicago Board of Trade simply would not function at all without speculators. I used to be a licensed commodities broker. There is no research on this because speculators are a core part of the system. No research necessary. It would be like trying to find research studies on why it is necessary to breathe. Just read up on how the commodities futures system works. That's where it says speculators help provide liquidity for the farmers and producers both.
Producers do not need speculators for liquidity, banks would do fine, so would cooperatives. The speculators are basically inefficient middle-men, no disrespect to your former profession, Ethical traders do perform a reasonably good efficient exchange facilitation role. I would not disagree about that. It is a social role. But I suspect few (perhaps apart from yourself) think of their profession in social value terms, and most just see it as a job where they can make money, and I think this is where the efficiency breaks down. The incentives are screwed up. What concerns me is how the rules are unbalanced and allow unethical trading creeps in, as well as automated (morally neutral) computer trading and other dubious financial activities of almost no real productive value which piggy back like parasites on top of commodities markets, sucking out a lot of the real value. I do not see how the inefficient and corrupt trading practices are easy to eliminate without either excessive regulation or abandoning trading commissions and moving the economy towards a more cooperative style of exchange. This would be easy and more efficient than in the past perhaps with the vehicle of the Internet? I suspect (although I am no expert) that trade exchanges can function perfectly fine at cost without the need for profit incentives, so like trade banks. No speculation is needed to set prices reasonably efficiently. Efficient price setting by the way is a myth, because no one can define "efficiency" when there are so many factors influencing what people are willing to pay for goods, not to mention individual psychology which introduces huge variances. The commodities markets where physical goods have to be physically moved are just not free and flexible enough for the textbook assumptions required for EMH to apply. My perhaps overly biased view, is that speculators should be limited to places like casinos, or markets like the Iowa Exchange, where the true negative sum costs of playing those games are born only by the payers, not by the tax payer who typically wants no part in such games. You do realise that most financial markets result in net losses, because in any trade someone loses, and the transaction cost on a zero sum trade makes all trades on net balance a loss overall. In other words, trading on anything other than an Index fund which matches inflation is a mugs game, and the typical millionaire "winners" are simply the lucky ones or the most corrupt or both. That's a bit of a jaundiced view for sure, I admit, but I doubt it is far off the mark if you had all the data to make an honest assessment. Maybe future financial historians will be able t do such studies. I think that chap who founded Vanguard might agree with me (John Bogle). I do not know if such principles apply to all commodities markets, I have only heard of the data on the comparatively much more efficient financial markets, so I could be being unfair to the commodities traders. (Sorry for the rant, feel free to snipe back!)
My uncle used to say, "You never get rich working. You need to find an angle." Graeber is so correct. Paper pushing is much more rewarding. Create virtual worth, & you have the ultimate slight of hand. It's worked for the Don-key.
Money is paper!!! So when this agent of cultural hegemony tells you "give everybody money" he is actually reinforcing in you the idea that paper is value. That dude is either an Useful Idiot, or an Agit-Prop Agent, one whose job is to allow you to whine about the system, do your little rebellion against the system, on social media, so you can shed your guilt, and keep living your life as a consumer of stuff made in China, thoroughly dependent on the system. think about your smartphone...
Stravo Lukos I've always worked in electrical engineering or maintenance , I don't even know what is a paper pushing job is. When people ask me what do I do, I fix trains, planes , computers etc. It'll be interesting to know about paper pushing jobs
Maintenance work is productive, a fact many economists fail to factor in to productivity measures. Why? Because of thermodynamics. Maintenance costs energy and is productive in averting decay and disorder. A healthy and wisely run economy will thus factor in such costs and reward such work handsomely.
Productive(ish). Most maintenance departments are top heavy and the hands themselves spend more time with protocols than tools. Typical task: weekly filter check: remove filter>examine>needs replacement>reinstall(temporarily)>go to supply room for new filter>remove old filter (again)>replace>document. There's a reason construction workers/install technicians earn more.. Its not that maintenance work is valued less, it's that the end product is worth less (when redundancy protocol, micro management and slow days are deducted).
We need to create a sustainability economy. The old capitalist model is the need for a business to be ever expanding and profitable to survive. That is how the corporate world operates but not the natural world. An ever expanding logging industry, for example, will obviously cut down all the trees. Unless new trees can replace the the cut ones at not just the same rate but slightly faster to maintain the industry. But we know that isn't possible. It takes 60 to 90 years for a douglas fir to be harvested for framing lumber, how many forests have lumber companies replanted 60 years ago?On top of that, there is climate change, where 5 million trees have just burned. Where are those companies getting the lumber now? Just food for thought.
The problem is here with the definition of productive. In current economic mentality fixing and maintaining things is bad, because the money is not linked to energy and resources, but debt. On one side producers make products that become quickly obsolete to make customers buy more, more modern, upgraded. The need for upgrades must be stimulated in order to stimulate artificial demand. One consumer side, and I mean mainly large corporate consumers, buying new equipment (to replace old, still functional) and wastefulness is encouraged, because a particular branch or department of a company must remain in the budged deficit. If you declare surplus of capital in your department, you can't claim higher budget next time. So even when there is no need to modernize, rebuilt or buy new, decision makers got an incentive to waste and claim for more money. In short: you always need to buy more than you can afford, as a company or indyvidual, in order to keep economy "going".
David Graeber, you made feel bad about myself. I am nurse but at time I don’t like my job. I would quit if they were was a basic income and become a fashion designer and a writer.
Good Point Grabber makes - Marx is credited for things he never originated. A lot of hippies/neo-pagans are rebelling against puritan work ethic backgrounds (why hippies overwhelmingly come from former Puritan cultures Britain & USA. Fab, but its more knee-jerk rebellion than conscious, so they find ways, especially when older, to revert to their type. Thats why wall street-think didn't slowly dissolve after the 60's, and came back with a ferocity, having simply incorporated to their advantage the casual liberalism of the 60's.
When Rome introduced basic income ("panem et circenses"), it was pretty much an admission that their economic model of mass slave labour has made a large mass of people uneconomical to employ. And this was the beginning of the end for Rome.
Money is meant to be a measure of value so money paid should be for the value that is created through work. Work is the creating and selling of value. Defining value, not money or work, is where the problem lies. Distorted perceptions of what is valuable create distortions in the money paid (or not paid) for work.
I guess that's why you've got some people being payed obscene amounts of money, like TV presenters, footballers, directors of public limited companies. Then you have the millions of workers on low wages, minimum wages, these people often doing jobs that are soul destroying, and damaging their health, repetitive strain injuries, back injuries, stress and mental health issues etc. And those people who are lower payed, paying all their taxes, not just on income but everything they buy, car insurance, home insurance, road fund tax , tax on energy bills, & fuel for the car. TV tax, tax on services payed for etc etc. Really the higher earners and big corporate businesses should be paying more tax, this tory government has been following an austerity policy since 2010, funding cuts for all public services including NHS. Tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporate businesses, what we really need is an increase in minimum wage or a universal wage and put the annual allowance up so lower payed will pay less tax not tax cuts for the rich. Since 2010 the national debt is much higher, the economy is in a mess, and immigration is higher than when they came into power in 2010, all this before the corona virus outbreak. So this tory government didn't keep any of their promises. All that's happened is the rich are getting richer, the poor poorer, public services going down the pan, workers rights slowly being eroded away. According to statistics gathered from the office for national statistics the lower payed are paying more tax than higher payed as a percentage of their income, I guess this is when you take into account all the other tax we pay, vat etc. I saw an example of unfair taxes, if Jeff Bezos buys a shirt that costs £100, and £20 of that is VAT. Then somebody who earns just £18000 per annum buys the same shirt they also pay the £20 tax how is that fair when Bezos is worth billions
Graeber was a great mind and is spot on here. Basic Income needs to be done carefully though. Wang and other rich people want it to replace our safety net instead of expanding it, e.g.. want healthcare? we give you $1000 month, go get healthcare. Those outside the us probably don't get that. I think a simple change is to ABOLISH THE STOCK MARKET and make corporations owned and controlled by their employees. If they want to work 3 days a week, their choice, not shareholders choice. I point out the corporation owns Dollar Tree. They have had $1 for everything for decades. Now activists shareholder says you don't make as much profit as the other dollar stores that charge more, so raise your prices to make more profit. Well that might just kill that business altogether and thus all the employees will be fired. Having worked in big corporations, it is astounding how much the mangement gets paid to do just about nothing, with our president making like $600k, and spends most his time playing golf, his only real job is to make a quarterly presentation to the company and even that is mostly numbers that come from the accountant department. And I kid you not, the new HR head said we don't want smart people working here, studies show its better to have average people working harder working together. I.E we don't need good ideas, just put your head down and do what your told. And this was a software company, we had half the staff working on things that would never see the light of day, total wasted effort that was thrown out when management come up with a slightly different plan.
I think ubi would end up rising wages and empowering the middle class. And this why people are trained not to like it. It would provide all the benifts the unions were created for (negotiating leaverage, stable income, workers rights, better working conditions) without the negatives (added bureaucracy, social conflict, disproportionate incomes across the country). The main issue in this country is really simple. Its that workers have no real rights or levearge to gain rights. Because you cant demand concesions when the alternative is starving in the streets. And by extension are forced to settle for qhatever is offered. Even if the nasic income was modest it would add immense levearge, between indebited working classes and the employer. Now with this being said the transition would be nasty for upper classes. Alot of business would loose alot of employees. but employment wouldnt necessarily drop, but rather transfer. This would cause all bussiness to restructure. Alot of small companies would go under and large companies would loose profit. But in a short time demand will drive companies to pay far greater share to workers. And it would balance out. Than within a decade or so lots of small bussiness would be formed. The idea that people wouldnt work is laughable, people would just not work for substandard pay. And added demand would increase the pay. So after a couple decades you would still have massive corperations and inequality. But you would also have a much wealthier, more educated middle class. The issue is the capitalist argument of motivation is still in play, they just are not seeing it. People will still want more. People would still value social status. The only difference would be you couldnt pay someone 7-15 an hour an expect them to work or starve. Wich economically most companies dont rely on, they just do because you forcex to accept.
@@stephentrueman4843 I can't wait for scientist to invent some form of biological weapon, which targets just one specific ethnic group/race. Go scientists!
This is a message for @Basic Income UK: This video is very interesting. Is there a way to contribute to the subtitling because it could be improved and it would be important.
I think a UBI is an important part of a stable transition to a new rentier-free economy, but it does need to be rentier-free... because otherwise it's just rentier-capitalists paying tax so the general public can pay rent straight back to them. And that makes no sense at all - even if rentier-capitalists did pay tax, which right now they don't terribly much. I think a UBI is a requirement for a stable transition... but long-term? I'm not so sure. Personally I think we need to have free-markets of worker-owned-enterprises, with specific discouragement of rent-seeking... probably by removal of tax from productivity/innovation, in place of increased tax on unearned-income (eg: resource-extraction, rent-seeking, externalisation of health/pollution costs etc)... and probably a land-value tax. We really seriously need to end the housing market. A place to live should be a basic human right. Everyone wants the house with the view, but I'm sure we can allocate those according to means other than "whoever has rich parents", which is basically what we're doing now. Wealth isn't generally "earned" (as it used to be (to a greater degree) in 1950s), it is inherited. Rewards for innovation need to be on the basis of bounties (or something - which may well self-organise via blockchains). We need to get rid of "Intellectual property" as quickly as we possibly can. It's optimised for scarcity - we need to optimising for abundance.
Well said, I am a skeptic of ubi, as i can see it abused and just create a kind of inflation and solve nothing. If I got $1000/month it would not really help when rent is $3k, food is $1k, etc, and how the government works, they try to fake inflation data so they don't have to raise entitlement payments. Just look at social security today.
@@murraymadness4674 Apologies for the right-angular reply... I literally can't remember writing that. It's quite good isn't it? 4 Years? That was like... 4 years ago, when I was living at the old place, and I didn't realise I was so political then. I was so young.
More young men would work if it was worth it. Between income tax, mandatory SS payments, property tax, shit wages and tons of red tape on business startups it simply isn't worth it. But America has such a strong "good little worker" mentality that most suck it up because of pride and hate anyone who won't bend over or didn't get lucky.
I always wanted to be a director or do something creative in life,but because of family pressure and being elder son of my family I had to join in my father resturent in middle east and its 11 years now I am working here.But after all this years I still can't connect myself with all this,though its giving me a basic income and I have also a fear of loosing a secure life if I ran away...So please suggest me what should I do please
I do agree, however a UBI ought to provide an income which is sufficient for a decent standard of life, but that income would be supplemented through employment (hopefully in worker managed firms). It wouldn't be fair to dent people who are unable to work a standard of living similar to that which people in employment get, so you'd have to have some scheme by which the disabled, the elderly, and the involuntarily unemployed receive more payments. Which means a burocracy. Not one on the same scale as the moralistic one we have now, perhaps, but you'd still need people to assess and verify claimants for additional support.
Once we reach like 90 - 95% useless jobs, UBI or very short work weeks will be unevitable, until then the safety net is probably not large enough to safely move masses of people out work (But that will probably happen in the next 20-25 years)
Although I agree on having a UBI, the problem is how much. You can't really have a flat rate because the cost of living differs depending on where you live. For instance, the cost of living is far higher in New York city or LA as opposed to living in more rural areas. So how do you determine how much everyone is supposed to get?
Paperwork does have some use. Medical records, for instance, although the idea of a GP who spends their entire day just writing records is pretty awful admittedly.
Medical records are good for keeping track of patient health, but the real reason so much time is dedicated to paperwork is for Hospital billing and profit. They need to know exactly how much to charge the Insurance Company, and the Insurance Company needs to know exactly how much to charge you. So they keep track of every band-aid and every ounce of saline. This kind of paperwork doesn't improve health outcomes, and it only adds costs to health care.
@@joallen5750 Actually it's a bit different, but you're close the paperwork we did was to actually try and help the patient avoid paying as much as possible (I was in a therapist's office; so a hospital may be different profit wise). He actually increased his rates solely so that he could get the insurance companies to cover more, and then gave "discounts". It was a clever way of getting it to the insurance companies, who were honestly the worst fucks to deal with. There was no need for any of it, it should've just all been free. Also, even with the discounts, he was able to pay for his trips to fiji and his own rehab inpatient resort there too, and that's why I quit :D
That's what i mean, if we compared your brain to the intellectual capacity of a dog, they would be about the same. And i find great pleasure in knowing that.
Without the current levels of auditing we would have more Enron-esque fiascos. Would Mr. Grueber prefer the economic climate that occurs when investors and creditors cannot trust the financial statements of public enterprises? How will he finance his basic income utopia then?
By eliminating creditors and investors from the equation completely. Capital will be provided by the society/government instead, no more capitalists. Markets have never been the problem, private capital has always been.
Stay-at-home mothers are rare but still way more common than stay-at-hime fathers. Stay-at-home mothers have zero value in capitalist/consumerist America. Stay-at-home fathers are looked upon as escapees from the local zoo and at least have value in that they are curious to society and even considered quaint/amusing. Women's work of almost any kind, inside and outside the home, is almost universally, with a few exceptions in a few professions (doctors for example) undervalued.
I agree with him. But I don't know how to change the situation. He doesn't know either. Most people with some income but without external "discipline and structure" that demands even stupid job will degrade to "social cockroaches" or animals or criminals.
We already have that , and even worse in some areas where crime is profitable. Would it completely decrease crime? No , but economically motivated crime I believe would be affected positively. I dont see how it would be made worse though
Mr.Graeber seems to have ignored that the greatest wealth comes not from labour initially, nor nurture, but from patiently waiting for food to grow, and secondarily from mining, in advance of the uses to which metallic and other ores may be put. Labour and then maintenance are tertiary and quaternary phases therefore, the point being that a basic income, applicable to all, is a facile sop, for the rich benefit more than the poor, who lose either opportunity to earn more, or pay a greater percentage in taxes when they do, in order to support said basic income. A social wage, an alternative (and preliminary concept) to a basic wage, where one is automatically paid an 'unemployment benefit', where one is paid to be 'a member of society', and is left free to do as one will, whether with limited monies but much time, or to seek employment with others, more monies but less free time, were to be preferred one would opine, as such benefits society as a whole without privileging further those already rich (ie. well enough off to never have to need to work), and emphasizing the choice one makes in working, whether with or for others, toward a different latitude of privilege. The fact is, where such a scheme were tried, people preferred to work at least some of the time, and pay taxes, to simply being lazy, and little wonder: the society they enjoyed appreciated the simple fact of their existence in a way that few societies ever have (especially since the industrial revolution).
Misery gives people a voice and a false sense of identity, validation and pride. There would be no reason to shout, judge or look down on others if they were happy and secure.
You can’t just fire everyone. He should know that if you fire a bunch of people you also need to change the laws around it which creates more paperwork Jokes aside… Problem is though how can we measure how much a job is helping people and how do we decide that? These systems for value are incredibly incredibly incredibly hard to solve. I’ve always had this dream to be a leader and so everyday I learn so I can help. But every day I come across dead ends. We just don’t know enough. I want to start a company because politics scares me. Everything problem always ends up at human nature. Every single fucking one. Maybe someday everyone’s basic human needs can be met and world peace can arrive. But it’s going to take effort. Not a new partner that you met at a party. Listen to your communities and try to make them a better place! ‚The only real change comes from inside‘ J-Cole
Not exactly thought out given that you will have totally subjected yourself to the mercies of government. Nothing in life is free and you'll be paying for 'freedom from work' with freedom writ large - social credit controls where 'bad girls' and 'bad boys' will see their "guaranteed" basic Income esp. in the form of CBDCs restricted, reduced, constrained, conditioned by degree of obedience to authority...in short, enslaved by the owners of capital in whose world "you'll own nothing and be happy", I'm afraid.
The earth was free. People trying to maintain the status quo have to lie about this to make any sense. The majority is already at the mercy of our governments. You're not making much of an argument.
Basic income would be a great idea in the presence of absolute border control and absence of corrupted hierarchical organizations, but in practice would be a more extreme manner of bankrupting a nation than letting the banks run amok like vikings.
In the academic field, where he comes from, there are some people, who are totally uncritical of Marx. As if everything there is to say about Capitalism has already been said by Marx...
That's Grand David. But how do you deal with corruption? when we are communist and on the same wage are we pure and noble? This man is an idealist when we have "enough" are we going to be poets and writers artists?. That is not going to happen. When people are idle, there is plenty of time to indulge, and that's what people will do with a good chance to excess some with a desire to go higher and higher. David's profession is all about marking and passing judgement very hard to get away from that side of things though I agree it is most unpalatable. I think we have had this experiment before chasing after utopia. What happened was and is terrible. I have a strange desire to say be careful of what you wish for.
UUuuuuuu, scary C word creeps up in your comment. Let's not give people too much time and freedom, they will start doing bad things. Typical nonsense form a person supporting slavery.
@@marygunning5121 The connection on my side is excellent. You are not asking the question, but merely injecting your indoctrinated views. I was mocking you, because you are a faithful lapdog of your corporate masters and internalized your enslavement so much, that you are ready to repeat nonsense propaganda about C word bogey man, whenever alternatives to capitalism are presented.
Basic income is a needless middleman standing between working people and basic human needs, and if we can guarantee money to purchase basic human needs, then we can surely just guarantee the basic human needs instead and not have to worry about the needless middleman (which functions only as a means for the plutocracy to siphon that money upwards via debt payments extracted from bank accounts automatically). As much as I loved and still love David, UBI is not the answer.
Any basic income will be followed by huge inflation as the market knows that this money is available in an economy. Any Government money will be the baseline and any basic income will be sucked up by the economy. It will be like playing poker where the opponent will know half your hand.
No it will not work because market thinking and interaction is an intrinsic part of a human being's life - all values including friendships, family relations, jobs, gold, investments, love etc. are all traded on a market place between people - if you remove that you remove a huge part of expressing your humanity:)
This is a pernicious piece of neoliberal ideology: the persistent insistence on reducing all humanity to this or that form of "market transaction." It is complete and utter rubbish.
I love how you put "gold" and "investments" right between family relations and love. So are you saying that without "investment" portfolio or stacks of gold I am not fully human? Damn, you are fcn brainwashed by your corporate overlords.
@@sodalitia I just now saw the quite negative responses here and was wondering what precisely it is that you're finding so objectionable? I think it might be a strawman, but perhaps you could enlighten me:-)
@@dkvikingkd233 The marvellous thing about humans is that we can do so many things largely for their own sake. Family, friendship and sexual relations only become overly transactional in certain social and cultural climates, and people do vast volumes of volunteer work with no expectation of monetary or social reward. You can of course make the (largely correct) egoistic philosophical argument that 'people only do things they have a will to do, therefore all action is self-serving', but it's a sliding scale really, and it's actively making the world a worse place to advocate that people operate all elements of their lives in an increasingly transactional way. A basic income would allow people to express their interests and fill their time far more freely, and they'd therefore be more likely to engage in the most human of behaviours, rather than merely responding to incentives
I don't have to work and get money for free :o nothing is ever free, should I take this so called Basic Income? :D and lose something else that could be very important to me.... We don't give a dog a treat unless they do a trick, it is not because we want them to do tricks it is because it is healthy for them, basically we want to give treats to people for nothing... hmmm, what a nice feel good concept but not healthy, we know that, we all know that....
"Become poets of musicians" is what he classifies as useful. I love music but in what way exactly is that useful? We have enough poets and musicians; The internet facilitated that. Also, the way he posits basic income is not new or novel, it's been done numerous time before and it's called communism. His ideas are shallow and he lacks the ability to grasp how they are unsustainable.
Exactly. He’s just regurgitating shit that’s been tried over and over with bad results. Basic income? Sounds nice...until you’re the one who they steal the money from to redistribute it. Also, basic income leads to inflation. So the people who get the income will be no better off than they were before after prices level out and the people that have money taken from them to pay the others become less productive.
My issue with Graeber is he seems to assume that people are more helpless than they are. "So many people spend their working lives doing jobs they think are unnecessary"- as though there are no other choices. What about working an "unnecessary" day job to fund your night hustle that you're absolutely obsessed with? I would be more aligned with: given a set of constraints (i.e., the status quo Graeber complains about), do what it takes to get what you want in life (i.e., sacrifice your weekends working on your new idea). Instead, Graeber has us paralyzed waiting for the minds of the masses and the systems of the government to change. Will they? Maybe. But why wait for that? Work with what you've got now.
Graeber never said individuals couldn't improve their economic standing in these corrupt systems. He's talking about problems with the entire system as a whole.
(Paraphrase)" "The only one who can place a value on the work that is done is the one doing it.." -Uhhhhh 'Sure this makes no practical sense., "not solely because I may be stuck in a capitalist bent -I hoped for better reasoning from a herald of the left. (RIP)
I respect his thoughts and ideas, but I think he needs to step away from ideology, maybe work in the business sector for awhile. A lot of ideas seem great in theory, but in real life application they fall apart. Typically people that think they know what's best for the world, and how the world should operate, end up leaving the world far worse than they found it.
He talked for 6 minutes and scarcity is a point less and less important. You seem to just lack imagination sufficient to see that the economy could be organized in new ways
Scarcity of what, exactly? Not food, we have enough to feed more people than there are currently on the globe. Not clothes, we dump the excess of those on countries that don't want them. Not phones and computers, we deliberately make those non-durable so that people will buy new ones every two years. What is scarce?
Alan Green Why would you just assume that someone who takes their paycheck from the private sector would always be honest about its shortcomings? For that matter why would you just assume that being employed in the private sector means that you actually understand how the private sector works?
Value comes from paperwork? That's such a ridiculous over-simplification. He laughs at himself like he came up with such a novel idea, but it's just a really stupid one.
If you read his books Debt: The First 5,000 Years and The Rules Of Utopia, you find he's very against bureaucracy and all of that paperpushing. There's no value in mindless labor like office work or being stuck in a cubicle.
I still remember being a guest student at LSE and walking past David Graebers office on my way to the library where you would see him through the open door with a mountain of books next to him and deep in thought. At the time I didnt realize what a great thinker and writer he was. Wish I had talked to him whilst I had the chance
I assume to reach his level of enlightenment you have to read constantly. entranced by books all day long. every waking second he is reading.
@@6Diego1Diego9
_oh sure, and this not everyone can do. It takes a great level of stamina and mental determinism, comparable to athletic training. Or, if you will, an olympian._
His death is such a loss, I'm only just beginning to discover his thought and to learn from him. So sad.
Me to but one great thing about modern life is that for someone like me who does not like to spend a lot of my time reading I can sit and listen to radically sensible people even when they have passed away.
Yeah same, I found out about him recently and am so sad he passed away. Great mind, big heart. RIP
I have worked in corporate america for about 15 years now....I have become mentally, physically, and emotionally sick....and this is not an over exaggeration!!! I hate the corporate environment with a passion!
Here here! Amen brotha
Looks like you’ve got a bullshit job
Your only option is to quit.
Congratulations, and now do something meaningful without ressentiment.
I am sorry, comrade!
"You make a glass once, but you wash it a thousand times" That is a great line.
3:08 "The thing that people in power fear the most is a population that has basic security and time."
We can do it.
freedom ?
free time is the ultimate freedom@@peeedroprc
Late professor Graeber was obviously a great thinker, but he also seemed like a genuinely sweet person. He had such a warm smile, that's something that always caught my eye in all the videos of him speaking.
Fantastic analysis, and he's dead right! I've noticed increasingly that even in my line of work,childcare, the actual job of looking after the children has been sidelined, and ticking boxes, written 'planning' and evidencing everything you do, have become all important. Everything is about 'proving' you are worthy and making the company look good on paper, instead of about what's right or enjoyable for the children.It's as if they've forgotten what nurseries/day care centres are supposed to be there for(other than to separate kids from their parents, but that's another issue), and everything is about profit, form-filling and constantly making workers feel 'grateful' for the pittance they work for, rather than happy and fulfilled, which is what work/life should or could be about.
it is pretty much a trend now that company will have a million managers who all give you fake feedback and pretend to work hard on something, because of this, those people at the very top (investors/execs or owners) become completely disconnected from the reality of their business and realities of their decisions.
Yeah, society seems to hate people with good, secure free time.
Everett Ward Because the upper class knows that if the lower classes have free time, eventually they will use that time to organize and even revolt. So they have to keep them working long enough to suck the life out of them.
Edward Maxwell I totally agree. They don't have time to question anything because they're so bogged down in useless work they just want to get it done so they can make the most of the little free time they actually have.
3:08
@@danieljosevski1169
They're so focused on just struggling to survive, they haven't got enough time to think about what's really going on
Envy, people don’t realise that everyone deserves more free time.
I was a teenager in the 1970s in UK. When you look at the audience in TV programmes or type of media~~these were bold ,educated working class people bringing common sense with their optimism. Cricks~folk went to evening classes to study new skills. One of the reasons Thatcher shut down the Golden Age since the war, was happiness
David Graeber was a legend.
So wise.
I discovered this something like 25 years ago and have uncomfortably trying to negotiate the least painful way through this paperworld ever since. It's broken me, many times.
it is painful. its invaded every aspect of life. climbing through your letter box. monitoring your social interactions while making noted on a clipboard. ever observant and demanding
No one really likes freeloaders, but folks who criticize academics like Graeber are often those who spend less time thinking critically. Honest academics work much harder than financiers who play the markets and who are basically spreadsheet junkies, and who are not producing any real wealth but rather merely funneling wealth up the plutocratic ladder. Critics also forget that plenty of research shows human beings are a bit inherently lazy but also inherently desire to work hard, the trick is to help people work at things they love.
Depends on what "financiers" are doing. If they are doing something counterproductive, it is necessarily enabled by government decree. Things, for example, like speculating in commodities on a futures exchange benefit you directly with stable grocery prices.
but stock marketers do burn out early etc stress related stuff
I have not seen any studies that commodity speculators stabilize prices, quite the opposite, or at least little correlation. The problem is that speculators have the wrong incentive, they are out to make money, not eat or consume the products they are pricing. This is exactly why we get housing bubbles. The speculators are not actually using the houses that they are trading or renting. Without the speculators the prices may or may not be as stable, but they would probably be more affordable (and I would argue also more stable, and definitely less prone to bubbles) The same principles apply to almost all markets that are either free or quasi-free markets (lightly regulated): which is to say, if the market traders are stakeholders in the products of the market, if they use the products, then they have the right incentives and you will tend to get stability and reasonably affordable prices. Compare then to the faux free markets that financial instrument traders speculate on, they are not free markets at all because the real users of the commodities have very little to say about setting the prices, the price will then float fairly arbitrarily between the extremes of what the real consumers can afford to pay for and a bit less. If you need to learn about supply and demand curves and why they are bogus I suggest reading Debunking Economics by Steve Keen.
Commodities exchanges like Chicago Board of Trade simply would not function at all without speculators. I used to be a licensed commodities broker. There is no research on this because speculators are a core part of the system. No research necessary. It would be like trying to find research studies on why it is necessary to breathe. Just read up on how the commodities futures system works. That's where it says speculators help provide liquidity for the farmers and producers both.
Producers do not need speculators for liquidity, banks would do fine, so would cooperatives. The speculators are basically inefficient middle-men, no disrespect to your former profession, Ethical traders do perform a reasonably good efficient exchange facilitation role. I would not disagree about that. It is a social role. But I suspect few (perhaps apart from yourself) think of their profession in social value terms, and most just see it as a job where they can make money, and I think this is where the efficiency breaks down. The incentives are screwed up. What concerns me is how the rules are unbalanced and allow unethical trading creeps in, as well as automated (morally neutral) computer trading and other dubious financial activities of almost no real productive value which piggy back like parasites on top of commodities markets, sucking out a lot of the real value. I do not see how the inefficient and corrupt trading practices are easy to eliminate without either excessive regulation or abandoning trading commissions and moving the economy towards a more cooperative style of exchange. This would be easy and more efficient than in the past perhaps with the vehicle of the Internet?
I suspect (although I am no expert) that trade exchanges can function perfectly fine at cost without the need for profit incentives, so like trade banks. No speculation is needed to set prices reasonably efficiently. Efficient price setting by the way is a myth, because no one can define "efficiency" when there are so many factors influencing what people are willing to pay for goods, not to mention individual psychology which introduces huge variances. The commodities markets where physical goods have to be physically moved are just not free and flexible enough for the textbook assumptions required for EMH to apply. My perhaps overly biased view, is that speculators should be limited to places like casinos, or markets like the Iowa Exchange, where the true negative sum costs of playing those games are born only by the payers, not by the tax payer who typically wants no part in such games. You do realise that most financial markets result in net losses, because in any trade someone loses, and the transaction cost on a zero sum trade makes all trades on net balance a loss overall. In other words, trading on anything other than an Index fund which matches inflation is a mugs game, and the typical millionaire "winners" are simply the lucky ones or the most corrupt or both. That's a bit of a jaundiced view for sure, I admit, but I doubt it is far off the mark if you had all the data to make an honest assessment. Maybe future financial historians will be able t do such studies. I think that chap who founded Vanguard might agree with me (John Bogle).
I do not know if such principles apply to all commodities markets, I have only heard of the data on the comparatively much more efficient financial markets, so I could be being unfair to the commodities traders. (Sorry for the rant, feel free to snipe back!)
My uncle used to say, "You never get rich working. You need to find an angle." Graeber is so correct. Paper pushing is much more rewarding. Create virtual worth, & you have the ultimate slight of hand. It's worked for the Don-key.
The stock market.
Money is paper!!! So when this agent of cultural hegemony tells you "give everybody money" he is actually reinforcing in you the idea that paper is value.
That dude is either an Useful Idiot, or an Agit-Prop Agent, one whose job is to allow you to whine about the system, do your little rebellion against the system, on social media, so you can shed your guilt, and keep living your life as a consumer of stuff made in China, thoroughly dependent on the system. think about your smartphone...
criztu Brilliant 👏👏👏 These ideologies are two wings of the same Shit Bird... Libertarianism on the Right, Marxism on the Left
there's a saying in my country "Only thing you can get with hard work is a hump"
Stravo Lukos I've always worked in electrical engineering or maintenance , I don't even know what is a paper pushing job is. When people ask me what do I do, I fix trains, planes , computers etc. It'll be interesting to know about paper pushing jobs
Wow, the best case for basic income ever!
Yep. Hard to argue with sound philosophical, ethical, analytical, data-driven conclusions lol I love this man.
Maintenance work is productive, a fact many economists fail to factor in to productivity measures. Why? Because of thermodynamics. Maintenance costs energy and is productive in averting decay and disorder. A healthy and wisely run economy will thus factor in such costs and reward such work handsomely.
Bijou Smith Who was suggesting maintenance wasn't productive?
Productive(ish). Most maintenance departments are top heavy and the hands themselves spend more time with protocols than tools. Typical task: weekly filter check: remove filter>examine>needs replacement>reinstall(temporarily)>go to supply room for new filter>remove old filter (again)>replace>document. There's a reason construction workers/install technicians earn more.. Its not that maintenance work is valued less, it's that the end product is worth less (when redundancy protocol, micro management and slow days are deducted).
We need to create a sustainability economy. The old capitalist model is the need for a business to be ever expanding and profitable to survive. That is how the corporate world operates but not the natural world. An ever expanding logging industry, for example, will obviously cut down all the trees. Unless new trees can replace the the cut ones at not just the same rate but slightly faster to maintain the industry. But we know that isn't possible. It takes 60 to 90 years for a douglas fir to be harvested for framing lumber, how many forests have lumber companies replanted 60 years ago?On top of that, there is climate change, where 5 million trees have just burned. Where are those companies getting the lumber now? Just food for thought.
The problem is here with the definition of productive. In current economic mentality fixing and maintaining things is bad, because the money is not linked to energy and resources, but debt. On one side producers make products that become quickly obsolete to make customers buy more, more modern, upgraded. The need for upgrades must be stimulated in order to stimulate artificial demand. One consumer side, and I mean mainly large corporate consumers, buying new equipment (to replace old, still functional) and wastefulness is encouraged, because a particular branch or department of a company must remain in the budged deficit. If you declare surplus of capital in your department, you can't claim higher budget next time. So even when there is no need to modernize, rebuilt or buy new, decision makers got an incentive to waste and claim for more money. In short: you always need to buy more than you can afford, as a company or indyvidual, in order to keep economy "going".
David Graeber, you made feel bad about myself. I am nurse but at time I don’t like my job. I would quit if they were was a basic income and become a fashion designer and a writer.
Good Point Grabber makes - Marx is credited for things he never originated. A lot of hippies/neo-pagans are rebelling against puritan work ethic backgrounds (why hippies overwhelmingly come from former Puritan cultures Britain & USA. Fab, but its more knee-jerk rebellion than conscious, so they find ways, especially when older, to revert to their type. Thats why wall street-think didn't slowly dissolve after the 60's, and came back with a ferocity, having simply incorporated to their advantage the casual liberalism of the 60's.
Rest in power man. You did good. 🌹
RIP David a truly great person
When Rome introduced basic income ("panem et circenses"), it was pretty much an admission that their economic model of mass slave labour has made a large mass of people uneconomical to employ. And this was the beginning of the end for Rome.
Money is meant to be a measure of value so money paid should be for the value that is created through work. Work is the creating and selling of value. Defining value, not money or work, is where the problem lies. Distorted perceptions of what is valuable create distortions in the money paid (or not paid) for work.
I guess that's why you've got some people being payed obscene amounts of money, like TV presenters, footballers, directors of public limited companies. Then you have the millions of workers on low wages, minimum wages, these people often doing jobs that are soul destroying, and damaging their health, repetitive strain injuries, back injuries, stress and mental health issues etc. And those people who are lower payed, paying all their taxes, not just on income but everything they buy, car insurance, home insurance, road fund tax , tax on energy bills, & fuel for the car. TV tax, tax on services payed for etc etc. Really the higher earners and big corporate businesses should be paying more tax, this tory government has been following an austerity policy since 2010, funding cuts for all public services including NHS. Tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporate businesses, what we really need is an increase in minimum wage or a universal wage and put the annual allowance up so lower payed will pay less tax not tax cuts for the rich. Since 2010 the national debt is much higher, the economy is in a mess, and immigration is higher than when they came into power in 2010, all this before the corona virus outbreak. So this tory government didn't keep any of their promises. All that's happened is the rich are getting richer, the poor poorer, public services going down the pan, workers rights slowly being eroded away. According to statistics gathered from the office for national statistics the lower payed are paying more tax than higher payed as a percentage of their income, I guess this is when you take into account all the other tax we pay, vat etc. I saw an example of unfair taxes, if Jeff Bezos buys a shirt that costs £100, and £20 of that is VAT. Then somebody who earns just £18000 per annum buys the same shirt they also pay the £20 tax how is that fair when Bezos is worth billions
Graeber was a great mind and is spot on here. Basic Income needs to be done carefully though. Wang and other rich people want it to replace our safety net instead of expanding it, e.g.. want healthcare? we give you $1000 month, go get healthcare. Those outside the us probably don't get that.
I think a simple change is to ABOLISH THE STOCK MARKET and make corporations owned and controlled by their employees. If they want to work 3 days a week, their choice, not shareholders choice. I point out the corporation owns Dollar Tree. They have had $1 for everything for decades. Now activists shareholder says you don't make as much profit as the other dollar stores that charge more, so raise your prices to make more profit. Well that might just kill that business altogether and thus all the employees will be fired.
Having worked in big corporations, it is astounding how much the mangement gets paid to do just about nothing, with our president making like $600k, and spends most his time playing golf, his only real job is to make a quarterly presentation to the company and even that is mostly numbers that come from the accountant department.
And I kid you not, the new HR head said we don't want smart people working here, studies show its better to have average people working harder working together. I.E we don't need good ideas, just put your head down and do what your told. And this was a software company, we had half the staff working on things that would never see the light of day, total wasted effort that was thrown out when management come up with a slightly different plan.
brilliant david; have 3 of his books, very interesting person!
I think ubi would end up rising wages and empowering the middle class. And this why people are trained not to like it. It would provide all the benifts the unions were created for (negotiating leaverage, stable income, workers rights, better working conditions) without the negatives (added bureaucracy, social conflict, disproportionate incomes across the country). The main issue in this country is really simple. Its that workers have no real rights or levearge to gain rights. Because you cant demand concesions when the alternative is starving in the streets. And by extension are forced to settle for qhatever is offered. Even if the nasic income was modest it would add immense levearge, between indebited working classes and the employer.
Now with this being said the transition would be nasty for upper classes. Alot of business would loose alot of employees. but employment wouldnt necessarily drop, but rather transfer. This would cause all bussiness to restructure. Alot of small companies would go under and large companies would loose profit. But in a short time demand will drive companies to pay far greater share to workers. And it would balance out. Than within a decade or so lots of small bussiness would be formed. The idea that people wouldnt work is laughable, people would just not work for substandard pay. And added demand would increase the pay. So after a couple decades you would still have massive corperations and inequality. But you would also have a much wealthier, more educated middle class. The issue is the capitalist argument of motivation is still in play, they just are not seeing it. People will still want more. People would still value social status. The only difference would be you couldnt pay someone 7-15 an hour an expect them to work or starve. Wich economically most companies dont rely on, they just do because you forcex to accept.
he was so amaizing!
This requires a lot of debate as it's a pretty complex subject. David makes a lot of great points though.
it requires very little debate... set scientists free (give them what they need) and our lives will be heavily enriched
@@stephentrueman4843 I can't wait for scientist to invent some form of biological weapon, which targets just one specific ethnic group/race.
Go scientists!
@@spacemeter3001 what we chose to do with the discoveries requires alot of debate
@@spacemeter3001 wtf are you on about
This is a message for @Basic Income UK: This video is very interesting. Is there a way to contribute to the subtitling because it could be improved and it would be important.
He was a great mind
I think a UBI is an important part of a stable transition to a new rentier-free economy, but it does need to be rentier-free... because otherwise it's just rentier-capitalists paying tax so the general public can pay rent straight back to them.
And that makes no sense at all - even if rentier-capitalists did pay tax, which right now they don't terribly much. I think a UBI is a requirement for a stable transition... but long-term? I'm not so sure.
Personally I think we need to have free-markets of worker-owned-enterprises, with specific discouragement of rent-seeking... probably by removal of tax from productivity/innovation, in place of increased tax on unearned-income (eg: resource-extraction, rent-seeking, externalisation of health/pollution costs etc)... and probably a land-value tax. We really seriously need to end the housing market. A place to live should be a basic human right. Everyone wants the house with the view, but I'm sure we can allocate those according to means other than "whoever has rich parents", which is basically what we're doing now. Wealth isn't generally "earned" (as it used to be (to a greater degree) in 1950s), it is inherited.
Rewards for innovation need to be on the basis of bounties (or something - which may well self-organise via blockchains). We need to get rid of "Intellectual property" as quickly as we possibly can. It's optimised for scarcity - we need to optimising for abundance.
Well said, I am a skeptic of ubi, as i can see it abused and just create a kind of inflation and solve nothing. If I got $1000/month it would not really help when rent is $3k, food is $1k, etc, and how the government works, they try to fake inflation data so they don't have to raise entitlement payments. Just look at social security today.
@@murraymadness4674 Apologies for the right-angular reply... I literally can't remember writing that. It's quite good isn't it?
4 Years? That was like... 4 years ago, when I was living at the old place, and I didn't realise I was so political then. I was so young.
More young men would work if it was worth it. Between income tax, mandatory SS payments, property tax, shit wages and tons of red tape on business startups it simply isn't worth it. But America has such a strong "good little worker" mentality that most suck it up because of pride and hate anyone who won't bend over or didn't get lucky.
You're spot on.
I always wanted to be a director or do something creative in life,but because of family pressure and being elder son of my family I had to join in my father resturent in middle east and its 11 years now I am working here.But after all this years I still can't connect myself with all this,though its giving me a basic income and I have also a fear of loosing a secure life if I ran away...So please suggest me what should I do please
I do agree, however a UBI ought to provide an income which is sufficient for a decent standard of life, but that income would be supplemented through employment (hopefully in worker managed firms). It wouldn't be fair to dent people who are unable to work a standard of living similar to that which people in employment get, so you'd have to have some scheme by which the disabled, the elderly, and the involuntarily unemployed receive more payments. Which means a burocracy. Not one on the same scale as the moralistic one we have now, perhaps, but you'd still need people to assess and verify claimants for additional support.
very interesting guy
What is it we actually value about what we do...
Once we reach like 90 - 95% useless jobs, UBI or very short work weeks will be unevitable, until then the safety net is probably not large enough to safely move masses of people out work (But that will probably happen in the next 20-25 years)
How much does it cost and where does the money come from?
Although I agree on having a UBI, the problem is how much. You can't really have a flat rate because the cost of living differs depending on where you live. For instance, the cost of living is far higher in New York city or LA as opposed to living in more rural areas. So how do you determine how much everyone is supposed to get?
Well, governments are already using flat rate for minimum wage and tax free allowance, why not for UBI?
I make 1300 a month and rent is 700... and then bills and shit after I be lucky to have £10 at the end of the month. It is just not livable.
Paperwork does have some use. Medical records, for instance, although the idea of a GP who spends their entire day just writing records is pretty awful admittedly.
Medical records are good for keeping track of patient health, but the real reason so much time is dedicated to paperwork is for Hospital billing and profit. They need to know exactly how much to charge the Insurance Company, and the Insurance Company needs to know exactly how much to charge you. So they keep track of every band-aid and every ounce of saline. This kind of paperwork doesn't improve health outcomes, and it only adds costs to health care.
@@joallen5750 Actually it's a bit different, but you're close
the paperwork we did was to actually try and help the patient avoid paying as much as possible (I was in a therapist's office; so a hospital may be different profit wise). He actually increased his rates solely so that he could get the insurance companies to cover more, and then gave "discounts". It was a clever way of getting it to the insurance companies, who were honestly the worst fucks to deal with.
There was no need for any of it, it should've just all been free.
Also, even with the discounts, he was able to pay for his trips to fiji and his own rehab inpatient resort there too, and that's why I quit :D
The critics of Graeber haven't read any of his works.
It’s time to redefine smart .
GENIUS
PROJECTION
I don't feel bad for you.
That's what i mean, if we compared your brain to the intellectual capacity of a dog, they would be about the same. And i find great pleasure in knowing that.
*woof* *woof*
Good boy.
the new noam chomsky
3:07
His laugh
Without the current levels of auditing we would have more Enron-esque fiascos. Would Mr. Grueber prefer the economic climate that occurs when investors and creditors cannot trust the financial statements of public enterprises? How will he finance his basic income utopia then?
By eliminating creditors and investors from the equation completely. Capital will be provided by the society/government instead, no more capitalists. Markets have never been the problem, private capital has always been.
Stay-at-home mothers are rare but still way more common than stay-at-hime fathers. Stay-at-home mothers have zero value in capitalist/consumerist America. Stay-at-home fathers are looked upon as escapees from the local zoo and at least have value in that they are curious to society and even considered quaint/amusing. Women's work of almost any kind, inside and outside the home, is almost universally, with a few exceptions in a few professions (doctors for example) undervalued.
Everyone working for Amazon should be paid above average
Rip
“The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.” -Aristotle
Amen!
I agree with him. But I don't know how to change the situation. He doesn't know either. Most people with some income but without external "discipline and structure" that demands even stupid job will degrade to "social cockroaches" or animals or criminals.
We already have that , and even worse in some areas where crime is profitable. Would it completely decrease crime? No , but economically motivated crime I believe would be affected positively. I dont see how it would be made worse though
External "discipline and structure"? Where did you take this nonsense from? Jordan Peterson?
Mr.Graeber seems to have ignored that the greatest wealth comes not from labour initially, nor nurture, but from patiently waiting for food to grow, and secondarily from mining, in advance of the uses to which metallic and other ores may be put. Labour and then maintenance are tertiary and quaternary phases therefore, the point being that a basic income, applicable to all, is a facile sop, for the rich benefit more than the poor, who lose either opportunity to earn more, or pay a greater percentage in taxes when they do, in order to support said basic income. A social wage, an alternative (and preliminary concept) to a basic wage, where one is automatically paid an 'unemployment benefit', where one is paid to be 'a member of society', and is left free to do as one will, whether with limited monies but much time, or to seek employment with others, more monies but less free time, were to be preferred one would opine, as such benefits society as a whole without privileging further those already rich (ie. well enough off to never have to need to work), and emphasizing the choice one makes in working, whether with or for others, toward a different latitude of privilege. The fact is, where such a scheme were tried, people preferred to work at least some of the time, and pay taxes, to simply being lazy, and little wonder: the society they enjoyed appreciated the simple fact of their existence in a way that few societies ever have (especially since the industrial revolution).
Yang for president
Misery gives people a voice and a false sense of identity, validation and pride. There would be no reason to shout, judge or look down on others if they were happy and secure.
You can’t just fire everyone. He should know that if you fire a bunch of people you also need to change the laws around it which creates more paperwork
Jokes aside…
Problem is though how can we measure how much a job is helping people and how do we decide that? These systems for value are incredibly incredibly incredibly hard to solve. I’ve always had this dream to be a leader and so everyday I learn so I can help. But every day I come across dead ends. We just don’t know enough. I want to start a company because politics scares me. Everything problem always ends up at human nature. Every single fucking one. Maybe someday everyone’s basic human needs can be met and world peace can arrive. But it’s going to take effort. Not a new partner that you met at a party. Listen to your communities and try to make them a better place!
‚The only real change comes from inside‘
J-Cole
✨💬📈☝️!.
He was dangerous.
Not exactly thought out given that you will have totally subjected yourself to the mercies of government. Nothing in life is free and you'll be paying for 'freedom from work' with freedom writ large - social credit controls where 'bad girls' and 'bad boys' will see their "guaranteed" basic Income esp. in the form of CBDCs restricted, reduced, constrained, conditioned by degree of obedience to authority...in short, enslaved by the owners of capital in whose world "you'll own nothing and be happy", I'm afraid.
The earth was free. People trying to maintain the status quo have to lie about this to make any sense.
The majority is already at the mercy of our governments. You're not making much of an argument.
Everyone equally poor and dependent on the state.
No idea how you came to that conclusion. UBI doesn't mean you can't earn more money.
Basic income would be a great idea in the presence of absolute border control and absence of corrupted hierarchical organizations, but in practice would be a more extreme manner of bankrupting a nation than letting the banks run amok like vikings.
But, no one thinks the way he is claiming about the value of labor and work....
In the academic field, where he comes from, there are some people, who are totally uncritical of Marx. As if everything there is to say about Capitalism has already been said by Marx...
that's social democracy for you - the northern European model!
Basic income equals corporate welfare!
That's Grand David. But how do you deal with corruption? when we are communist and on the same wage are we pure and noble? This man is an idealist when we have "enough" are we going to be poets and writers artists?. That is not going to happen. When people are idle, there is plenty of time to indulge, and that's what people will do with a good chance to excess some with a desire to go higher and higher. David's profession is all about marking and passing judgement very hard to get away from that side of things though I agree it is most unpalatable. I think we have had this experiment before chasing after utopia. What happened was and is terrible. I have a strange desire to say be careful of what you wish for.
@Luke F Can you back up your claim it is not the utopians who create trouble. Utopia is Latin for no place.
UUuuuuuu, scary C word creeps up in your comment. Let's not give people too much time and freedom, they will start doing bad things. Typical nonsense form a person supporting slavery.
@@sodalitia The connection is rubbish. I am asking a question and you connect to slavery.
@@marygunning5121 The connection on my side is excellent. You are not asking the question, but merely injecting your indoctrinated views. I was mocking you, because you are a faithful lapdog of your corporate masters and internalized your enslavement so much, that you are ready to repeat nonsense propaganda about C word bogey man, whenever alternatives to capitalism are presented.
@@sodalitia Well you Fuck off you shit
Universal Basic income will work like basic slavery / serfdom
@@celestialbuffalo I meant UBI I forgot the Universal sorry
Please provide any explanation whatsoever for this. Literally nothing about UBI means you can't go make more money.
Basic income is a needless middleman standing between working people and basic human needs, and if we can guarantee money to purchase basic human needs, then we can surely just guarantee the basic human needs instead and not have to worry about the needless middleman (which functions only as a means for the plutocracy to siphon that money upwards via debt payments extracted from bank accounts automatically). As much as I loved and still love David, UBI is not the answer.
Any basic income will be followed by huge inflation as the market knows that this money is available in an economy. Any Government money will be the baseline and any basic income will be sucked up by the economy. It will be like playing poker where the opponent will know half your hand.
love the talk. just wish he wouldn't laugh into the mic.
You want a basic income? Then goodluck with your basic output and basic livelihood
"Only the people who do those jobs can decide if their work has value." This is not a good idea
No it will not work because market thinking and interaction is an intrinsic part of a human being's life - all values including friendships, family relations, jobs, gold, investments, love etc. are all traded on a market place between people - if you remove that you remove a huge part of expressing your humanity:)
DK viking KD Do seriously believe this?
This is a pernicious piece of neoliberal ideology: the persistent insistence on reducing all humanity to this or that form of "market transaction." It is complete and utter rubbish.
I love how you put "gold" and "investments" right between family relations and love. So are you saying that without "investment" portfolio or stacks of gold I am not fully human? Damn, you are fcn brainwashed by your corporate overlords.
@@sodalitia I just now saw the quite negative responses here and was wondering what precisely it is that you're finding so objectionable? I think it might be a strawman, but perhaps you could enlighten me:-)
@@dkvikingkd233 The marvellous thing about humans is that we can do so many things largely for their own sake. Family, friendship and sexual relations only become overly transactional in certain social and cultural climates, and people do vast volumes of volunteer work with no expectation of monetary or social reward. You can of course make the (largely correct) egoistic philosophical argument that 'people only do things they have a will to do, therefore all action is self-serving', but it's a sliding scale really, and it's actively making the world a worse place to advocate that people operate all elements of their lives in an increasingly transactional way. A basic income would allow people to express their interests and fill their time far more freely, and they'd therefore be more likely to engage in the most human of behaviours, rather than merely responding to incentives
I don't have to work and get money for free :o nothing is ever free, should I take this so called Basic Income? :D and lose something else that could be very important to me.... We don't give a dog a treat unless they do a trick, it is not because we want them to do tricks it is because it is healthy for them, basically we want to give treats to people for nothing... hmmm, what a nice feel good concept but not healthy, we know that, we all know that....
You talk about people by comparing them to dogs. I think you have said all you need to.
"Become poets of musicians" is what he classifies as useful. I love music but in what way exactly is that useful? We have enough poets and musicians; The internet facilitated that. Also, the way he posits basic income is not new or novel, it's been done numerous time before and it's called communism. His ideas are shallow and he lacks the ability to grasp how they are unsustainable.
Exactly. He’s just regurgitating shit that’s been tried over and over with bad results. Basic income? Sounds nice...until you’re the one who they steal the money from to redistribute it. Also, basic income leads to inflation. So the people who get the income will be no better off than they were before after prices level out and the people that have money taken from them to pay the others become less productive.
Michael Doucet the main problem is usury! Usury causes concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands.
My issue with Graeber is he seems to assume that people are more helpless than they are. "So many people spend their working lives doing jobs they think are unnecessary"- as though there are no other choices. What about working an "unnecessary" day job to fund your night hustle that you're absolutely obsessed with? I would be more aligned with: given a set of constraints (i.e., the status quo Graeber complains about), do what it takes to get what you want in life (i.e., sacrifice your weekends working on your new idea). Instead, Graeber has us paralyzed waiting for the minds of the masses and the systems of the government to change. Will they? Maybe. But why wait for that? Work with what you've got now.
Graeber never said individuals couldn't improve their economic standing in these corrupt systems. He's talking about problems with the entire system as a whole.
(Paraphrase)" "The only one who can place a value on the work that is done is the one doing it.." -Uhhhhh 'Sure this makes no practical sense., "not solely because I may be stuck in a capitalist bent -I hoped for better reasoning from a herald of the left. (RIP)
I respect his thoughts and ideas, but I think he needs to step away from ideology, maybe work in the business sector for awhile. A lot of ideas seem great in theory, but in real life application they fall apart. Typically people that think they know what's best for the world, and how the world should operate, end up leaving the world far worse than they found it.
Pure ideology
Just say you don't like his idea, it's more honest than pretending you found an actual flaw without actually pointing one out.
This guy seems fundamentally ignorant of that fact that there exists such thing as scarcity.
He talked for 6 minutes and scarcity is a point less and less important. You seem to just lack imagination sufficient to see that the economy could be organized in new ways
Scarcity of what, exactly?
Not food, we have enough to feed more people than there are currently on the globe.
Not clothes, we dump the excess of those on countries that don't want them.
Not phones and computers, we deliberately make those non-durable so that people will buy new ones every two years.
What is scarce?
He is wrong and has no idea what is going on.
Enlighten us.
I'm with pinstripe, please elaborate.
How unexpected! A career academic who has never held a private sector job thinks he's smarter than everyone and knows how to run the world.
Who exactly would be qualified to say anything on this subject in your opinion?
Alan Green Why would you just assume that someone who takes their paycheck from the private sector would always be honest about its shortcomings? For that matter why would you just assume that being employed in the private sector means that you actually understand how the private sector works?
why would someone who has worked in the private sector have a better idea about how to run the world
you fail to add all the letters to your lastname: ...span
So much entitlement
Value comes from paperwork? That's such a ridiculous over-simplification. He laughs at himself like he came up with such a novel idea, but it's just a really stupid one.
because he's being somewhat facetious? duh
I don't think he is.
If you read his books Debt: The First 5,000 Years and The Rules Of Utopia, you find he's very against bureaucracy and all of that paperpushing. There's no value in mindless labor like office work or being stuck in a cubicle.
semiauto25
It's really not an over simplification of financialization. Producing something of value is far less profitable.
There is probably an actual correlation between how much paperwork you fill and how much you are worth
Basic income is a terrible idea.
How?
@@ThePalmWoods He was too lazy to answer, so he must have been on basic income. At least that's probably his opinion
@@felicityc lmaoo
We have massive populations that don't do anything now and get a basic income for it. It's called welfare nothing given it's appreciated long term.
Basic income comes from taxing other people and it's income not earned. Welfare. How it affects other welfare programs is irrelevant.