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Comment by jbc1 | Hacker News Reader

If you’re treating people wanting to live cheaply without a job as a negative situation that should be avoided, then I don’t think you’re in a mindset to be evaluating UBI specifics correctly. You should just be wholesale against it. The whole point is to free people from wage slavery. You’re worried that it will work!

On an even broader level though, location caused cost of living differences being taken in to account in anything like this seems odd. I read it as the equivalent of “but what about people who want Ferrari’s not Honda’s!?” When it seems like others see it as “what about people who have expensive to treat medical conditions?”

COL differences aren’t some arbitrary accident. You’re paying more to live somewhere more desirable.

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I'm for UBI. I'm just suggesting it should be implemented in a way that doesn't causes jobless people to group up into ghettos. Those areas would have high unemployment and little opportunity, putting those people in a dead-end. Even with UBI you want social mobility.

It's one extreme that could worsen class divide. The other extreme is making UBI too comfortable, which you highlight. It's a balance, and I don't know how to do it across different COL.

"wage slavery" is such a disingenuous weasel word term. There's no slavery involved at all. Involvement is purely voluntary and you're free to leave at any time.

And go to the food banks?

- to food banks

- to another job

- to a friend or relative

- to somewhere where they can farm or hunt/gather

The mere existence of any options they can pursue at any time without permission is testament that it isn't slavery.

Here we go again. People are not always in a position to leave a job. People are living paycheck to paycheck and not able to get other jobs. You're being disingenuous.

"Slavery is any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own, buy and sell other individuals, as a de jure form of property."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery

Living paycheck-to-paycheck or hand-to-mouth like most humans lived for most of human history does not make one a slave. To state otherwise is to compare mere existence to slavery.

Unless someone is an actual slave under bondage or with threat of coercion from another person, they are always in a position to leave a job. Doesn't mean they are free of consequences, like no longer getting money because they are no longer willfully trading their labor for compensation, the same way that someone farming the land will stop reaping the benefits of their labor once they stop engaging in farming behavior or if someone living as a hunter/gatherer will stop collecting sustenance when they stop hunting and gathering. At no point are any of those people slaves because no coercion is involved.

Literalism does nothing here because the concept of wage-slavery is more like the concept of serfdom than slavery. But language is malleable over time and it's commonly understood what it means, especially to people familiar with the struggle to survive in the modern economy.

Then call it wage-serfdom then. It's not slavery.

> But language is malleable over time

If the liberty someone is taking with the language is intentionally trying to manipulate how people think about something by abusing what words are commonly accepted as meaning, it's completely fair to call out that manipulation.

“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.” ― Philip K. Dick

It happens all the time that people chose their language precisely and in ways that clearly have more impact on another party's perception. Being pedantic over the definition of a word only distracts from what that word(s) is trying to do. I sense that you are really uncomfortable over what the word "wage-slavery" implies about the society you are participating in and are trying to cheapen it.

You're cheapening what slavery is. It's honestly pretty disgusting to equate serfdom to slavery. They aren't even in the same league.

Go read more about modern day slavery and then come back and try to justify comparing the circumstance of these people to those who are actually being treated as property by others.

https://www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/modern-slavery/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century

Red badges not treating you kingly enough?

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