Socialize basic needs
main idea: Everyone should have access to a bare minimum of essential stuff for free. You want more than that, you still gotta pay - there's still a market economy for everything beyond basic needs.
- what counts as a basic need?
- let's start with housing, clothes, food and housing would of course include utilities like water, electricity and internet discussion TO DO: link to a more elaborate description page, of a cheap reasonable comfortable standard of living
- also schooling and health care discussion Status quo: Some countries already have this but it needs improvement. Also, maybe we should link to pages about how education could be redesigned, and how health care could be redesigned. And what actions/nextsteps various countries would need in any case
- why not just socialize everything?
- You know when capitalists say that socialism is slavery - because "if goods are free, then people must be coerced to work for free to produce the goods"? Well that WOULD be true if ALL goods were socialized. On the other hand, if just a small subset of goods (the essential ones, roughly) are socialized, the goods can be produced without any forced labor at all! discussion TO DO: add: 40hr/wk vs 7hr/wk model thought experiment. What society would you rather live in btw
- who would pay for it / how would it work ?
- TO DO: tax model, simple numbers compared to status quo US gov budget
(...)( link to new budget draft (use a "see also" popup icon?) )
- but wouldn't everything be the same and boring? No!
- housing can be diverse and have character, which barely impacts the costs btw discussion TO DO: link to page with examples and brainstorming. See also: walkability
- clothing too, lots of variety
- but some people would just choose to not work?
- Yes, and that's perfectly fine. Society doesn't need everyone working - and the people who work wouldn't have to work full time. It doesn't take that much labor to generate the basic goods that are socialized. discussion TO DO: link to analysis / estimate Most of us would be better off if we had more free time! See also: Make the internet less addictive, so that people don't end up spending all their extra free time on doomscrolling lol
- environmental impact of certain food choices - too high to socialize? Then should we maybe only socialize cheap plant-based food (and design it to be nutritionally complete)? Also, soup kitchens or what?
- status quo economy is very good at producing lots of cheap clothes, but not so good at producing lots of cheap housing. So we need a different approach to socializing each. Btw we shouldn't have to rebuild all housing from scratch. Existing housing can provide most of it. How to fairly seize it from landlords? We can be harsh to big real estate companies, but that's very different from small homeowners who just rent out a room or two in the same house they live in
- housing the homeless: "But what about people with such bad mental health issues that they'd ruin any housing they live in (write on walls, make too much noise for neighbors, etc)?": Design special homes for that. If you make your place ugly you still have to live in it, we're not gonna repaint the walls for ya. It's still a roof over your head
- same goes for clothes. You get new ones but not very often[QUANTIFICATION needed] discussion for growing kids, i guess there could be some system to hand clothes down if the clothes are still good; discuss? If you ruin your clothes you still have to live with them - or buy more with your own money. Remember, it's still a market economy for everything beyond the socialized basics
- how does this compare to universal basic income?
- UBI has inflation issues, potentially
- some kids could still starve on UBI (or even be homeless) if the parents are bad enough at managing money.
- socialized basic needs helps prevent overworking. People won't have to work their butts off to afford basic stuff
- this is aligned with the USA's "right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". Fulfilling basic needs is required for the life part. And then people will have more free time (more liberty) to pursue happiness btw