Comment by gehwartzen
9 years ago
Could you clarify what you mean? a UBI seems like pretty straight forward wealth re-distribution which I generally don't see described in most capitalist philosophies.
Everyone gets $10k. Obviously not everyone is going to pay $10k in taxes otherwise the system would be pointless and we could instead just eliminate taxes altogether. Those at the bottom would benefit, those at the top would pay more in taxes, and somewhere between is a break even point.
Each act of homesteading is an act of force against everyone else, who previously enjoyed free access to that land/resource. A UBI is a payment for the lost access.
While I don't disagree with this, I don't think that Georgism can justify a large enough payment to have the effects that people expect of UBI. The value of land (meaning all natural resources in their natural state) is ultimately pretty low compared to all the other value in the world. Per wikipedia, all US land is worth less than two times GDP.
It’s fundamentally Capitalist because its intent is to prevent workers from abandoning the authoritarian hierarchy of modern day corporate structures (which have served many quite poorly) and moving towards worker ownership through unions or other means. It’s paying off the poor and disenfranchised to prevent revolt against Capitalist ordering principles.