Re:The perpetuation of bonded labor in Pakistan
by nojvek on Friday December 27, 2019 @12:53AM
(#21889513)
A lot of things need to change. Better transparent and accountable governance. Reliable and fair police/courts. Technology that can self sustain the population. (None of that patented seeds for farming).
Some level of sustainable land distribution (otherwise land lords suck all that UBI money anyway)
One could say SF is on average quite wealthy, but very broken. Even a UBI of $1000/month doesn’t do jack shit there until you solve the housing problem.
Basically people need to have good nutrition, have a roof over their head (feel secure), be autonomous and have some sort of self worth (mostly comes from doing some sort of work that creates value). All without destroying the planet (which we’re doing at an accelerated pace)
UBI doesn’t necessarily guarantee all those conditions are met.
If everyone in the world gets $30 - warlords in Africa, and landlords or local gangsters in other impoverished nations with weak law enforcement will easily be able to extract $25/person from their locality as 'protection money'.
Now though, if those thugs at the top end up spending that money on local businesses, they're slowly boosting their economy. But they're more likely to buy smuggled German cars, thus evading local import taxes and funneling that money back into the developed nations with zero gain for the local economy.
However, what I've stated is the worst case scenario. More likely than not, that $5 left with individuals is quite a lot in most countries and may end up boosting their economy albeit at a lower scale than what was imagined.