Universal Basic Income vs Package Capitalism

There is a term recently coined called Packaged Capitalism.

What is it?

Short answer, its when things become so cheap to make, they get packaged with other more expensive items in the same category (or vertical industry).

For example phone plans use to charge for minutes on the phone and amount of txt messages. Now phone plans come with unlimited talk and txt and the variation in plans begin in the amount of Data included.

To compare UBI to Package Capitalism lets first address the dilemma UBI came to solve.

Problem statement: If automation reduces the amount of man hours needed for product production, this will significantly reduce the paying jobs available. How will all the people who now have no steady income afford to live in our society?.

The UBI answer.

Universal Basic Income says that in order to keep people being able to afford basic life amenities. There needs to be a system in place to distribute “basic income” for people to afford their basic living necessities.

Simply put the government should give out money to people so that they can afford to pay for food, toiletries, roof over their head…

If you hear a socialist ring to this you’re not wrong, but the argument is that this outcome from automation is inevitable. The answer UBI gives will keep people from falling out of affordable living.

(If you believe in commodity/value backed currency, this answer starts to scare you. I see this as a fiat based system only.)

The Package Capitilism Answer.

Package Capitalism believes in the natural progression of capitalism applied at scale. In english that means it sees the unlimited talk and txt concept being applied in a much larger way.

It looks at automation as a reduction in cost of labor/production, if we attach that with a shrinking “demand” (of what people can afford). Capitalism then adapts to this by either lowering the cost or coupling it with a different necessity the market can afford, to make that item more attractive.

Package Capitalism says let’s play this out for a second. As companies look to compete against each other they both lower cost and add value to their existing products. An example is how Amazon and Walmart both offer free shipping and not only free shipping but its now 1 day shipping (on most items). We can see that after becoming more efficient they both added a better service (1 day shipping) and added it as a free value to their existing service (free shipping).

Thats all great but you still have to pay for the basic items and how would people with no income be able to afford that?

Enter the bread winner. So the breadwinner bought the house in which the whole family lives, the car which the whole family uses, the electricity, water…

Now what if the bread winner was able to get a lot more for their service.

In tech companies we already see things like, free catered food at the office, free laundry, dry cleaning, transportation… For all employees.

What if because automation will make production and service so cheap there will be even more “Packaged Capitalism” and applied to your whole family. Like free self driving car rides for the whole family, free groceries delivered… Offered to even minimum wage employees everywhere.

In the future there will be less bread winners but those bread winners will be able to afford to take care of their whole social circle.

Some things may even be part of the public things provided through taxes. Like paved roads today maybe housing in the future. (This is different then UBI because its the actual goods not money to buy them. For all you conservatives out there this is valuable to those paying the taxes and falls under the category of policing.)

Its like socialism just done through a capitalist system, it allows the middle class to be the distributer of “UBI”.

An esoteric moment:

Let’s say in the future everything gets automated and no ones needed, that’s a good thing. The point is, using our collective ability we’re supposed to reduce the effort required to make the things we need to live. That’s why we got together to form a society in the first place.

Questions one might have:

What if people fall out of the social fabric and have no support system?

I think that maybe in the future Packaged Capitalism will be the bulk and then for those who fall out of a support system there might be UBI, like how today we have government aid.

What if a certain needed necessity never gets produced efficiently to the point where its worth it to be packaged in?

Meh I think looking at the way production of necessary items are getting more efficient now they’ll keep going that way, or hopefully they will… (if not that might be a problem).

Full disclosure I totally made up Packaged Capitalism, but I like it over UBI.

[Also not to freak anyone out but the general public offers society a value by just existing. It teaches systems how to do things. AI needs as many variable inputs of data as possible, in terms of health, preference, and probability. All these things are valuable to those who provide service and product. Hopefully we never turn to that solely.]

This whole discussion really skips out the value society has outside of pure function utility. Namely our emotional capacity to each uniquely share our experience, be able to listen, and help each other grow spiritually.

Which to be honest is how I see the future, especially after progress reduces our effort to just survive to nothing. After all the progress is done we will finally be forced to just exist and to figure out what that means and what it means for each of us.