In her chapter on UBI and anarchism, Jessica Flannigan suggests that an advantage of unconditional basic income is its potential to end the division of societies into groups of ‘deserving / underserving’, ‘productive / unproductive’ individuals. These are suspicious and resentful divisions, fuelled by today’s means-testing and welfare conditionality. Flannigan wisely suggests that such distinctions not only undermine solidarity, but are also plain unfair, given that many in society cannot work, and many others make diverse and important productive contributions outside of employment (unpaid carers are perhaps the most obvious example). UBI could boost solidarity by conveying the message that everybody shares the same rights.

The main worry, though, is that unconditional basic income could undermine a sense of social reciprocity: the some-say sacred balance between rights and responsibilities, which deems it wrong to take something without also giving back. Another way of putting this is that UBI would violate the social duty to maintain a job. This problem was tackled by the editor Michael Cholbi, in a paper which predates the current book. Cholbi looked at the modern duty to maintain employment, arguing that it only stays valid if there are ample opportunities to contribute something useful through employment, as well a chance to receive adequate rewards in return. In today’s society of dubious (bullshit) jobs and working poverty, Cholbi suggests that neither of these conditions are adequately met, making the duty to maintain employment philosophically indefensible.

Adding to these insights, individual chapters in the book by Andrea Veltman and Evelyn Forget both make the important point that the need for human labour is something that rises and falls historically. Both authors voice a truth that is rarely spoken: the fact that societies can sustain and reproduce themselves adequately on far less than full employment. Given the state’s current obsession with employment as an expression of worth and citizenship (even for disabled people and full-time carers), it was refreshing to see Forget state this so plainly: if people are not needed, ‘why should we worry about how they spend their time?’ For both Veltman and Forget, the duty to work deserves to be treated as a limited obligation rather than something that defines personal worth and the right to survival. Veltman says we should realise that individuals satisfy a duty to work in diverse ways, with Forget adding that work responsibilities could be reasonably regulated with cultural mechanisms like esteem and opinion, rather than political sanctions. Both, in sum, argue against pairing basic income with a work requirement.

Approaching the question differently, Matt Zwolinski focuses on the impracticality of imposing work requirements. Given the myriad ways in which it is possible to contribute to society, both inside and outside the remit of paid employment, sorting out which activities ‘count’ as a worthy contribution is just too philosophically fraught. Zwolinski considers a hypothetical case in which someone stays at home working on the next great American novel. Should this activity officially count as a social contribution? What if the novel turns out to be a load of rubbish and nobody reads it? Should it still count? The futility of coming up with a satisfactory definition of social contribution quickly becomes clear. Even if it were possible, Zwolinksi argues, the state could never enforce such a definition without unimaginable administration and invasions of privacy. His point is that even if we think reciprocity is an ethically valid standard to apply to work, it does not follow that governments should be entrusted to enforce it.

All of these strikes against the maintenance of work requirements lead to an obvious question – one that has been posed many times by critics of UBI: if people received an income from the state, what on earth would motivate them to work? Responding to this question, Andrea Veltman makes one of the most powerful points in the book: that those who pose this question never seem to consider the problems with how we motivate people in the here and now. Most workers now are motivated through coercion: by a system that requires all but the wealthy to either work or perish, and where the worst jobs inevitably fall to those who have the least. Critics who reject UBI on the basis that there would no longer be a way to motivate workers hence succumb to a kind of slave-driver mentality – a refusal to consider the idea that there might be ways other than coercion and deprivation to ensure that society’s necessary work is performed.

Sticking with this issue, Evelyn Forget’s chapter offers a dose of optimism, suggesting that the labour market would likely reconfigure itself in ways that help maintain the incentive to work. Most people would presumably continue to work, either because work gives them personal value, or because they want the extra money. Some will decline, deciding that the costs of working outweigh the benefits. Their jobs will be taken by people who want them. Jobs that attract no employees will be forced to sweeten the deal with higher wages, and perhaps there will be a remainder of jobs that don’t attract anybody. Forget suggests that we might treat this as the reflection of a social decision to do without these forms of labour.

All of this makes good sense, although in a separate chapter, Frank Schmode suggests that we still have to respond to the problem of ‘essentially bad work’. Essentially bad work sucks not only because the conditions are bad, or it is unsuited to the worker’s capacities (things which can theoretically be redeemed); essentially bad work sucks full-stop, because it involves extreme risks, harms or unpleasantness. One hope is that automated technologies will eventually be able to take care of these tasks, but the risk is that with the introduction of UBI, the work would fall to people who are ineligible for payments (those without citizenship status, or residing in countries without UBI). In response, Schmode invites us to consider the possibility of reconceiving terrible jobs as a collective social problem. Might there be a way to fairly distribute such tasks without relying on market mechanisms?

Also on the topic of bad but necessary jobs, Andrea Veltman designates a degree of responsibility to citizens. She thinks we should be more attentive to the labour on which our daily practices rely (labour which capitalism has tried very hard to keep from view). We should clean up our own mess, and try buying less stuff, if we can. I have always argued that the benefit of a post-work politics is that it takes us away from a focus on individual responsibility, to think at the policy level. Nevertheless, it is hard not to see the wisdom in Veltman’s words. Think about what you are doing.