Why We Still Need A Universal Basic Income Guarantee for All, Yesterday (Re-post)

I have repeatedly noted before why any serious proposal for a pragmatic utopia would require some sort of unconditional Universal Basic Income (UBI) Guarantee for all.  At least as long as we still have a monetary system, of course, and it will be quite some time before money can be phased out completely.  To wit:

1. First and foremost, "It's payback time for Women".  Recently, a Woman named Judith Shulevitz wrote an op-ed titled thusly, arguing in favor of a Universal Basic Income Guarantee for all.  Her feminist argument for a UBI, which I agree 100% with, was that such a thing would provide long-overdue compensation for Women's unpaid work (i.e. housework and caregiving) that society currently takes for granted and considers a "free resource" for the taking.   As the saying goes, there are two kinds of work that Women do:  underpaid, and unpaid.  While that is true for some men as well, it is overwhelmingly true for Women.  Thus, her argument makes a great deal of sense overall, and I agree.  It is indeed LONG overdue.
2. Men are becoming increasingly redundant in the long run due to technology, globalization, and the overall ascendancy of Women.  When men are no longer artificially propped up, they will fall--and the bigger they are, the harder they fall.  And this will only increase in the near future.  This is a potential ticking time-bomb that must be defused sooner rather than later.  Men become extremely dangerous creatures under either of two conditions:  1) when they have too much power relative to Women, and/or 2) when they are desperate for money.  Ever see the 1996 film Fargo? Indeed, a Universal Basic Income is one of the best ways to tackle the second one.
3. A UBI is far more efficient in theory and practice than much of what currently passes for a social safety net these days, and would have far less bureaucracy.  No means tests, no discrimination, no playing God.  It's simply a basic human right, period.  And it would be far less costly in the long run.
4. As Buckminster Fuller famously noted, there are more than enough resources for everyone to live like a millionaire with today's technology.  And he said this back in the 1970s, mind you.  And the specious notion that everybody and their mother must "work for a living" is not only outdated, but is also seriously classist, ableist, and ageist, and by extension indirectly sexist and racist as well.
5. Poverty is a razor-sharp, double-edged sword, spiritually speaking. Being attached to riches is clearly counter to spirituality, but then again, so is being attached to poverty. Either way, it's the *attachment* that is the problem.  And poverty today is largely if not entirely man-made via artificial scarcity.
6. We would all be better off on balance, spiritually and otherwise, if material poverty were eradicated--and a UBI is the most efficient way to do so. As William Bond (and others) noted, with today's technology that is certainly doable, but for the greed of the oligarchs at the top who control the system. And that in turn is a result of patriarchy, given how men tend to see war and scarcity as inevitable, so they create a self-fulfilling prophecy as a result.
7. With an unconditional UBI instead of means testing or other conditions, gone will be the perverse incentives that exist under the current system that trap too many people in poverty today.
8. Negative liberty and positive liberty are NOT opposites, but rather two sides of the same coin.  Indeed, one cannot be truly free if one is systematically denied the basic necessities of life.  And truly no one is free when others are oppressed in any way. 
9. Inequality, at least when it is as extreme as it is today, is profoundly toxic to society and makes the looming problems/crises of climate change and ecological overshoot that much more difficult to solve.  This is over and above the effects of poverty alone.  And a UBI can dramatically reduce both socio-economic inequality as well as absolute material poverty.  (And when funded by an Alaska-style tax on fossil fuels, it can also double as a Steve Stoft or James Hansen-style carbon tax-and-dividend as well.)
10. We consume and waste a ludicrous amount of (mostly fossil-fuel) energy in the so-called "developed" world, and much of that wasteful consumption can be curtailed simply by making it so no one has to "work for a living" unless one really wants to.  Just think of all the energy spent (and commuting to and from) unnecessary work at a job you hate, to buy stuff you don't need, to impress people you don't even like.  A UBI could thus greatly reduce our carbon and overall ecological footprint in the long run.
11. And finally, one should keep in mind that, as Carol Brouillet has noted, the literal and original meaning of the word "community" is "free sharing of gifts".  What we currently have now under patriarchy/kyriarchy is more of a pseudo-community in that regard.   And that needs to change. Yesterday.  The exchange economy of capitialist patriarchy has failed us, and we need to rediscover and re-create the gift economy in its place.  A UBI will make the transition much smoother and peaceful.

Perhaps Bucky's other prediction, that Women would take over the world, is a prerequisite for his vision to be fulfilled?   Honestly, it can't happen soon enough!
In other words, it would be a win-win-win situation for literally everyone but the 0.01% oligarchs at the top.  So why aren't we doing this yesterday?  Because that would make far too much sense.  To quote Buckminster Fuller:

We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.

In fact, one could argue that two of the most toxic, outdated, and specious ideas ever conceived by the patriarchy (aside from the central doctrine of male supremacy itself and the entire "dominator" model, of course) are that "everybody and their mother must work for a living" and that "everybody must procreate."  And both are now literally KILLING this very planet that gives us life.  Thus, on balance, a Universal Basic Income Guarantee for all is a good idea regardless.  Again, it's a win-win-win situation for everyone but the oligarchs.  And the only real arguments against it are paternalistic and/or sadistic ones, which really means there are no good arguments against it in a free and civilized society.  So what are we waiting for?

The "Anti-Mary" Exposed? (Spoiler Alert: Just Look In The Mirror)

It seems that the perennial anti-feminist backlash is rife these days, as one can see it most everywhere today.  This backlash is always strongest when Women seem to be winning the gender war against patriarchy.  As I had noted in a previous post, there have been several anti-feminist Women who have done more harm to the cause of feminism and Matriarchy than any man could ever hope to do.

But it seems a more subtle yet effective attack from another angle can also be added to this list as well.  While I really do not want to give her any sort of publicity, a female conservative Catholic "scholar" by the name of Carrie Gress has apparently written a book called The Anti-Mary Exposed:  Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity.  And this book is in dire need of a serious debunking, even more than when I debunked Mark Regnerus' own verbal defecation.

Like the concept of the Antichrist, Gress claims that there is a demonic spirit called the "Anti-Mary" that first reared its head in the late 1960s via the second-wave feminist movement.  She calls it the "Anti-Mary" in that she believes it is diametrically opposed to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  In fact, in Gress' view, the entire feminist movement, the pro-choice movement, birth control, the pursuit of personal happiness (for Women, that is), divorce, gay rights and gay marriage, the Goddess Movement, and the "occult" are all manifestations of that same spirit (peppered with the obligatory references to Lilith and Jezebel, of course).  And according to her, there is a small group of elite Women controlling society from behind the scenes since the late 1960s that she ironically calls "The Matriarchy" (which paradoxically demeans and opposes motherhood, go figure), thus the book essentially becomes its very own parody.  And she blames this so-called "Anti-Mary" (read: feminism) for essential all of modern society's ills today, and believes that Women are more miserable than ever as a result, or at least less happy now than they were in the so-called "good old days" before the 1960s.  Riiiight.

In other words, she apparently wants to go back to a time of rigid and dehumanizing gender roles when Women had no real civil and human rights and were essentially treated as brood mares at best.  Because that is exactly what happens when Women are denied their reproductive rights to decide when or whether to have children, and when Women's sexuality is repressed and controlled by men, the church, the state, or all of the above.  While she would never say such blunt words out loud, she certainly implies them in an Orwellian fashion (where freedom is slavery and vice-versa).

Remember, even the supposedly "kinder and gentler" patriarchy of "third way" Catholic Distributism is still patriarchy, and thus cannot be redeemed.  And no amount of disingenuous zero-sum thinking can turn a Big Lie into the truth, or turn enforced motherhood into liberation.

And of course anyone familiar with the Goddess Movement would almost instantly recognize the patriarchal splitting of the Great Mother archetype into the Good Mother (Mary) and the Terrible Mother (Lilith/Jezebel) archetypes in Gress's writing.  Which is of course, neither novel nor inspiring.

There is a lot to unpack here, a pack of lies mixed with just enough truth to confuse and misdirect the gullible, but I can assure you that while it takes a real leap of logic to actually believe such fatuous and facile arguments wholesale, her thesis will nonetheless actually resonate with numerous disaffected Women who are looking for a scapegoat for the problems of the modern world, and her words will certainly tickle the ears of anyone who does not immediately respond with rage and vomiting.  Her thesis reeks of internalized misogyny, albeit in a shiny and pretty wrapper, and there seems to be no shortage of that, as so many Women seem to be socialized to be their own worst enemy even today.

Having the GALL to try to openly pit the Blessed Virgin Mary against feminism and Matriarchy and the Goddess Movement (i.e. effectively against Mother God Herself!) is nothing short of blasphemy, and ironically exposes who the real "Anti-Mary" actually is: traitorous anti-feminist Women who side (and collaborate) with the demonic patriarchy.

QED