Consumerism and Universal Basic Income

I often think about how chaotic the world is. We live in chaos every day. It's incredible to me that we manage to navigate it at all. Humans are growing increasingly hostile with each passing year. I worry about the future of our society if we fail to save ourselves.

Consumerism is a disease that we are all forced to have. It's a disease that is vital to the market structure. If people stop consuming, it all falls apart. The most insidious part of this is the work type culture that we have all ingrained within our society. Everyone knows that you have to go and get a job if you want to live. Those jobs are generated by consumption. That is what marketing and advertising are for, to relentlessly pound into us that we don't have enough. We need the newest phone, the bigger TV, the more high tech car. Which leads us into intrinsic obsolescence. This leads to the waste of resources. If you make the best possible goods for your customers then they don't come back to buy more. Less repeat purchases mean less profit which means...less jobs. You lose market share and have to fire people, those people who don't have income anymore can't consume and even more jobs are lost. The world slows and humans suffer. This is the ultimate flaw in the jobs for income narrative. You have to generate jobs at all costs. At any cost.

This is where the power of the elite comes from, our consumption. If we want to consume more than we need, we have to work for them. At whatever price they deem fit, we essentially rent out our labor to them in order to satisfy our artificial wants that they imprint onto us through advertising in the first place. I know from personal experience that humans don't need a lot of money to live. People are broke because we succumb to the market advertising, we convince ourselves that we need things we don't actually need. This is consumerism and it is addictive.

I had struggled with this for much of my young adult life. I grew up being able to have whatever I wanted. As a young adult, I saw money only as a continually flowing means to obtain what I wanted. I often felt like want and need were synonymous. My Amazon cart had a constant stream of products I wanted, or needed, in order to make me "happy." If I just get this air fryer, then I'll be happy. If I just get this new throw blanket for the couch, then I'll be happy. I'll finally have enough. But that's the thing...it's never enough, is it? I would just end up wanting more and more and this cycle would have continued until the end of time.

Imagine if tomorrow everyone stopped buying things they didn't need. GDP would tank and the economic system along with it. Everything would fall apart. Shouldn't this prove that the system is stupid? Why do people have to buy things they don't need for our economic system to continue?

This is why the decoupling of jobs from income is so important. It diminishes the need for consumer driven growth...and jobs. This is where the power lies, our consumption. If we decouple jobs from income this will help drive innovation for things that people actually need. Not the newest Galaxy phone or the next Apple watch. It will drive innovation for healthier food, cleaner water and more sustainable goods. When the big corporation's vanity products lose value they lose profit and hence, power. This is what a job should be, it shouldn't be necessary for survival. A job should be to afford you the ability to enhance your life with fancy gadgets and the new Jordans. Humans should have the right to choose not to waste additional resources if they wish, this is true liberty.

This is where a universal basic income comes in. I believe a universal basic income to be that liberty. It is a step away from this system. Imagine if humans had a basic needs level income. Those people can refuse these jobs to begin with. Which further reduces the power of the elites. In the market, money is the power. An injection of income to the lowest rungs of society is an injection of power and a balancing of inequality. Inequality is also a driver of consumerism, crime and hate. Chaos, if you will.

The effects of a universal basic income would give us less reliance on consumerism as a driver of our economy. It would give us the power to shift value systems across vast populations. Which can help people stop and think about the fact that there may be a better way to form our system. Instead of aiming for infinite amounts of growth, we can make our economy actually economize. The slow down of consumption will slow down GDP but it will also slow down climate change, socioeconomic inequality, hate, crime, stress, disease and premature death. When you think about it this way, it is complete madness that anyone can defend our current system.

Take a wild guess at what the advertisers own. It's television. And we wonder why we don't see Andrew Yang more on TV. However, we are waking up to the fact that these corporations are polluting our Earth, demoralizing our citizens and keeping us placated with their material distractions. We are asking for more. A universal basic income is a threat to the elites because it offers us too much freedom. These corporations don't want us to stop needing things from them. If we stop using their products or create businesses to make our own, they lose revenue and lose power. The redistribution of wealth is not aligned with their goals of hoarding all the resources. A UBI gives us the opportunity to create our own resources. This is a fundamental step in creating a more balanced system.

This year was an especially chaotic one for my family. Although, through experiencing homelessness I have found a more clear direction on where to focus my efforts in fighting against poverty. I also learned some very valuable lessons about want and need. There were a lot of things I thought I needed before becoming homeless. What I learned is that I only needed a few simple things. Shelter from the weather, clothing, clean water, food, access to medication and healthcare if needed. That's it. That's the end of the list of what I actually need. I have sat in reflection many times about all the things I had purchased in my life thus far under the false impression that I needed them.

I have talked to homeless people before but it's completely different now. These people who have learned to live without basic needs, without enough. I feel the ache to have a place to call your own, to have permanence. I feel their despair and understand their dark humor. The United States that I have been exposed to this year is indeed dystopian. The invisible people who have fallen to the wayside of our society deserve a voice. They deserve free access to basic needs, as all humans do.

Years ago, I would have said "yeah right" if you told me that UBI would become a major topic of discussion in my lifetime. We had shut down the idea so many times throughout history and I believed we would repeat it until we entered into another depression era. Have we come to it so soon? I had dreams of living long enough to see society rise up and demand justice for inequality. How fortunate I feel that it did not take very long at all. I have also had dreams of universal basic income being globally accepted as a right of existence, of humanity working together in harmony to preserve our planet and our race. A technologically advanced utopia of human cooperation and interconnection.

Here's to hoping all my dreams come true.

Much love, fellow humans.