UBI’s potential as an anti-poverty measure is clear. Nobody who is eligible will be permitted to fall beneath its income floor. Yet it is important to qualify this by remembering that in today’s employment-centred societies, jobs are supposed to provide much more than an income. They are also designated as a main source of psycho-social goods such as recognition, meaning and sociality, playing a major role in how people gain self-respect, a sense of personal direction and a public life (at least in theory). If UBI is being conceived as a form of alternative income for people, in a world where more job tasks are performed by robotics and AI, it is important to acknowledge that jobs have a personal as well as economic significance.

This point was made forcefully by Amber A’Lee Frost in a recent takedown of UBI for Jacobin magazine. In the article, Frost depicted advocates of UBI (Yang supporters in particular) as ‘failsons’ – champions of a comfortable but spiritually empty social withdrawal, who spend most of their time on the internet. She compared this with the tragedy of the postwar middle-class housewife, who shared the economic security of her husband, but became self-destructive and chronically bored in the process, dosing up on tranquilisers or listlessly wandering the suburbs. Frost’s essential argument was that UBI would enable a new generation of ‘paid off and discarded’ individuals, wallowing in their own social dislocation.

Frost’s core concerns with isolation and the death of public life are extremely valid, but her argument was based on an odd assumption. It seemed to suggest that economic protection (what Frost derided as ‘being kept’) and social isolation share some fundamental connection. I would in fact argue that the loneliness of the postwar housewife was not a case against economic protection, but a case for economic security and more: a case for collectivised care, for a right to meaningful employment (for those who want it), for the death of the patriarchy, and for an injection of public life into the stuffy suburb. There is in fact nothing inherent in UBI proposals to say that individuals should be discarded or denied a public existence, but there is a question we must still ask: does UBI do enough for people who are expected to live without, or with significantly less work?

These are concerns that Evelyn Forget takes up in her chapter ‘Work and Worth’, which cites a number of empirical studies to show the harsh psychological consequences of unemployment. These consequences include the horrible ‘deaths of despair’ as a result of poor labour market opportunities, studied by Anne Case and Angus Deaton. The problem is real and deeply concerning, but reading Forget’s chapter, I wondered whether the author had been too decisive in her conclusion that ‘work is inherently valuable to human beings’ (even if Forget acknowledges that the problem is complicated by the existence of bad jobs). The chapter’s empiricism leaves no space to explore the possible contingency of employment as a source of psycho-social goods. This is a possibility that the book’s co-editor, Michael Cholbi, explored in a recent contribution to Autonomy, where he suggested that employment might be more of an adaptive than inherent preference. In other words, it is possible that today’s personal dependency on employment says less about the inherent psychological value of jobs, and more about our system’s withdrawal of other ways to gain respect, maintain a public existence and put food on the table.

I was inclined to agree with Andrea Veltman’s argument in a later chapter on ‘the good of work’, which suggests that even if a public preference for work can be demonstrated empirically, policymakers needn’t feel beholden to this in their designs for the future. Factors like overproduction, automation, the impositions of work on freedom, and the harms of work present a strong case for policies that help people acclimate to a society where jobs are more peripheral. Here, Veltman follows Cholbi in considering the kinds of initiatives that could operate alongside UBI: things like redefining education as more than preparation for jobs, lowering the retirement age, shortening the national working week, and commending rather than shaming young people who prefer self-exploration over a job.

A separate issue from the empirical reality of work’s psycho-social significance is whether, based on the data in hand, the state and related authorities should be permitted to push their own views on the goods of work. This is a highly relevant question, given recent developments in the UK. Drawing on a dubious evidence-base on the health benefits of employment, the government has been rolling out a programme of work-focussed Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, as well as applying pressure on NHS doctors to adopt work as a ‘health outcome’. By contrast, what is praiseworthy in Evelyn Forget’s approach is that although she accepts the evidence on the health benefits of work, she still defends the sovereignty of individuals to decide the value of employment for themselves. This is a view she shares with Kory P. Schaff in a later chapter on UBI and inequality. Schaff suggests that although things like the opportunity for self-realisation, self-respect and community might constitute some generally agreed-on goods of employment, clearly not everyone will agree, meaning that the state has no grounds to impose these goods. As Forget writes, an advantage of UBI is that ‘everyone can be their own judge’.

Finally, as well as exploring the personal significance of work and the state’s right to impose its own ideas, the book takes a more concrete look at the question of what people might actually do with themselves in a society where employment was more peripheral. As a species, post-work writers have tended to be vague on this question (perhaps intentionally so), but something often stressed is that a shift away from employment need not be a shift toward idleness. This is a point made by Andrea Veltman, when she argues that it would be pragmatic to avoid couching UBI as a takedown of the work ethic. This is not because Veltman glorifies employment. Her argument is in fact no different from many critiques of work that came before: that one of the main problems with employment is it keeps people from doing work with genuine utility – a utility Veltman defines in terms of ‘contributing our time and talent to communities’. Framed in this way, UBI is not so much an expression of ‘anti-work’ sentiments, but a case for resourcing people to opt for work that is genuinely valuable, whether this takes the form of care work, craft work, or political and civic-minded activities. It is about broadening out our definitions of what we are prepared to call, recognise and reward as ‘work’.

In his chapter, ‘In Defence of the Post-Work Future’, John Danaher takes a different tack. Unembarrassed by anti-work sentiments, Danaher suggests that what we should celebrate in UBI (if coupled with the labour-reducing potential of automation) is the potential to reprioritise our lives in favour of a more game-like existence. As a fan of games, I was fascinated by Danaher’s exploration of what constitutes play – something he defines as a ‘voluntary triumph over unnecessary obstacles’. Danaher suggests that true games are something we are never required to take part in, although this is not the same as saying they have no impact in the ‘real world’. Playing games involves and develops real human qualities like self-efficacy, aesthetic appreciation, character and community. What differentiates them from work, however, is that they are primarily undertaken for non-instrumental reasons, motivated by an individual’s autonomous sense of what is good or worthwhile. This leads Danaher to perceive playing as a noble activity, in which there is more scope to live authentically and vigorously. The non-instrumentality of playing likens it to craftwork: activity that is directed by something other than extrinsic motivations like the promise of promotions, pay rises, or certificates. In the modern world, with its harsh economic realities, this purity of intention is a luxury that few of us can afford. According to Danaher, the ultimate promise of UBI and the post-work paradigm is a future where what we do and how we do it are no longer dictated by economic necessity.