Interestingly, UBI is one of the few areas where the ideas of economic far left have overlapped with those of the economic far right. Milton Friedman, who advocated for limited government, was for UBI as a way to empower the individual to participate in the “free market.” Government action which regulates what the market wants to do “naturally” not only limits the freedom of the market but the freedom of individuals to participate in it as they please. That is, for thinkers like Friedman, the free market is the source of human freedom. To prevent the market from taking its “natural course” is to prevent humans from being in their “natural” setting.

This Libertarian argument for UBI, backed by people like Friedrich Hayek, proposes it as an alternative for all other forms of government-funded social welfare. It says, “instead of telling the individual what is best for her, let’s give her a regular check and allow her to decide for herself what is best!” This way, they say, you remove the government’s role in markets and ensure the maintenance of freedom. At the same time, you put money into the hands of the poor. If they squander it, waste it on booze and gambling, that’s on them! But, where for Libertarians UBI allows for the freedom to participate in markets, for Marxists and leftists UBI allows for freedom from markets.

Marxist and leftist thinkers argue that the “free market” is not a source of freedom, not for everyone. As Hungarian socialist philosopher Karl Polanyi (the other Karl) would say, the free market is destructive to both man and nature. It converts human beings into commodities and subjects their labor to the laws of supply and demand. Their actions are not free, they are dictated by the people who purchase their labor and time, the owners of the means of production, who themselves are dictated by market forces. Under a free market, Polanyi wrote, all of society becomes unfree, and subordinate to the laws of the market.

An individual, said Polanyi in response to people like Hayek, is not free when her only choices for survival are to either work in an area she does not choose “freely” or to die from hunger. And, laissez-faire capitalism is anything but “natural.” The existence of a “free” market, ironically, requires heavy levels of government interference. Without government involved to make sure things like contracts are honored, and to prevent the formation of cartels and monopolies which break the market’s competitiveness, there can be no freedom in the market, let alone freedom for the individual. Thus, the government should step in to provide individuals with the freedom from becoming like plankton in a sea of market forces, having limited autonomy but mostly getting pushed around by the waves. UBI allows for some freedom from the forces of the free market by allowing employees to leave employers without fear of losing all income.

Further, Marxists argue that because capitalists are constantly in competition with another over market share and profitability, they must continually innovate the means of production. It’s this competition between capitalists which eventually leads to machinery so advanced, so perfect, that no human can compete with them. And, it is at this moment, when human labor becomes less efficient than machines at most things, that we begin to transition into “the end of history.” It was nearly 200 years ago that Karl Marx, as he watched the industrial revolution unfold, made this prediction. Today, it seems, it’s on the cusp of revealing itself as true.

But, where exactly does Andrew Yang fall on his ideological spectrum? Yang frequently lambasts government for what he claims it should have no role in. Take, for example, education. He argues that the government has been historically inept at preparing people for the demands of the market. He cites excessive student loan debt and the shattered hopes of many a college student who meets the realization that they are not automatically owed a job after they graduate. He says, much like Friedman did, that the money is better spent by just giving it directly to citizens and letting them use it freely on the market, not the government.

Yet, his argument differs from those of Libertarians in key ways. He argues that UBI is necessary because capitalism has sowed the seeds of its own destruction. That is, the means of production are beginning to outgrow the current relations of production and the ability for many in the “proletariat” class to obtain a job will soon be impossible. It’s the government’s role, in this moment and time, to make sure that class conflict does not send all of society into disarray, as has been the case repeatedly throughout US Capitalist history. He’s tied up both ideological ends into one coherent, data-backed, Marxist and Libertarian argument.