UBI Can Make Us Freer Than Nature Allows (and That’s a Good Thing)

There is a natural limit to our free time.

Ideally, we want everyone to be in good health. However, to make that happen, some amount of work is necessary. No matter how we feel about it, we must produce the needed food, water, shelter, and medicine. The time required to do so forms a natural barrier to our discretionary time. If we work any less, Nature guarantees that someone somewhere will suffer for it. However, although we can’t break the laws of Nature, it is theoretically possible to transcend this barrier.

Universal basic income is one way of doing so.

A group of farmers can rely on the necessary work being done voluntarily.

Imagine a group of farmers.

Thanks to their hard work, their food storage is full. They have enough food for two years, which means they don’t have to work for another year.¹

This is good news, but a question is raised by the community: what should be the policy for getting food from storage? One farmer argues that one should only get food if one works — he thinks it’s important that the food levels are maintained. Another claims that they shouldn’t work more than necessary and that everyone should be free to do whatever they want. After much discussion, they decide on the less stringent policy but emphasize the value of working ahead of time, even if they don’t have to.

With this policy, the group members don’t have to do anything to get what they need, at least not for now. At some point, they must do what’s necessary, but instead of forcing themselves or waiting for Nature to demand it, they rely on members voluntarily doing so ahead of time.

They must still do what’s necessary to produce what they need, yet the members don’t have to do anything to get it.

A UBI relies on the necessary work being done voluntarily.

Fundamentally, a UBI can enable the farmers’ situation in modern society.

If a universal basic income is large enough, no one must do anything to get what they need. However, someone somewhere must still produce what’s necessary. No one has to do it, yet someone must. Consequently, just like the farmers, a UBI relies on the necessary work being done voluntarily. Nature is out to get us, but we are shielded from its demands.

We must work to produce what we need — but with a UBI no one must work to get it.

A Universal Basic Income can make us artificially free.

For our freedom of time, there are two essential parameters.

One is the work required to produce what we need. This is the limit placed on us by Nature that dictates how much work is needed.

The other is the work we must do to get what we need. This acquisition time is a limit that depends primarily on social arrangements, such as our jobs. Although similar, the two parameters are not the same. A person who produces 8 loaves of bread in 1 hour may have to work 8 hours to buy 1 loaf. Similarly, we could make what we need with zero work — everything could be done by robots — and yet we might be forced to work 40 hours per week to survive.

The acquisition time tells us how much we must work to get what we need, whereas the production time tells us how little we could work to produce it.

In other words, the acquisition time tells us how free we are, and the production time how free we could be.

Freedom of Time map — plot of the time we must work to produce vs get what we need.

Plotting these parameters reveals three possibilities. We must either:

1. Work more than necessary to get what we need (which I call Artificial survival),²
2. Work as much as necessary to get what we need (which I call the Natural Equilibrium), or
3. Work less than necessary to get what we need (which I call being Artificially Free).

In the modern USA, we must work 10 hours weekly to produce what we need.³ However, with a large enough universal basic income, no one would have to work at all. Nature would demand 10 hours to produce what we need, but society would demand 0 hours for us to get it.

Consequently, a large enough UBI would make us artificially free — it would make it so that we must work less than necessary.

In other words, a UBI can make us more free than Nature allows.

Which is awesome.

Footnotes

¹They must work in a year due to production latency. If they don’t work the second year, they won’t have food the third year.

²For more details about artificial survival, see How survival through unnecessary jobs kills our spare time (making everyone less free).

³For the claim that we only need to work 10 hours per week, see A 10-hour Workweek is Enough (To Satisfy Everyone’s Needs).