I live in the bustling center of a European capital city. It’s wintertime and there’s constantly ice and snow on the sidewalk, it’s quite an inconvenience. Every time I shuffle along the slippery sidewalks I have the same thought…

Why the hell doesn’t the government give the refugees (who are cared for at the taxpayers’ expense) shovels and have them clear the sidewalks?

The refugees are able-bodied guys just sitting around bored in their centers.

It would engender goodwill towards the refugees because everybody would see them being helpful.

The refugees could probably use the exercise.

It would make life a whole lot easier for the people slipping and sliding on the pavement.

It’s such a bloody obvious solution to a couple of different problems, yet the government doesn’t do it. I’m not saying that the government should enslave the refugees to do manual labor, but I bet if they just asked them nicely a lot of them would be happy to pick up a snow shovel and make life a little less slippery for the European taxpayers providing for them.

It would not require any great organization, planning or management — just a couple dozen shovels and a bus to bring the guys downtown. This is a quintessential example of the government’s profound incompetence and wastefulness when it comes to managing resources.

Statism

If the government can’t even do something as obvious as having the refugees shovel the snow it really is a tremendous Indiana Jones stepping out into the abyss leap of faith to think that the government could effectively and honestly re-distribute resources to solve the tremendous challenge of technological unemployment.

This great undeserved faith that people put in the government is what we call statism.

Karl Marx said that religion was the opium of the foolish masses; yet Marxism is the opium of foolish intellectuals.

Free Market “Universal Basic Income”

Universal Basic Income MIGHT work if it’s truly voluntary, delivered by the free market and administered by benevolent general artificial intelligence. If not it will surely become Communism 3.0 and will result in a metaphorical (and likely literal) mountain of smoldering bodies.

For example, in 20 or 30 years the trillionaire shareholders of Amazon.com decide to offer free 3D printed modular apartment housing. The cost of manufacturing and distributing the component parts of 3D printed apartments gets so low that the fabulously wealthy shareholders of Amazon decide altruistically to give free housing to anyone who wants it.

Imagine numerous Fortune 50 firms doing this and a universal basic living standard could be provided for free to the public in the same way that Google Maps is free.

I put “Universal Basic Income” in parenthesis because we all know that nobody really wants universal basic income. Ask a true believer Bernie bro, a purple-haired SJW, a liberal tenured college professor or a hammer & sickle tattooed communist if they really think that the government should cut a $1000 monthly check to Ivanka Trump, Lloyd Blankfein or Kanye West and you’ll get a bit of angry eye twitch and they’ll admit that what they really want is basic income to help poor and middle-class people.

To avert society descending into utter chaos in the age of technological unemployment I find it highly likely that out of pure self-interest billionaires and CEOs of major multinational corporations, will sacrifice their own bottom line to provide free products and services so that we can maintain a baseline standard of universal basic dignity across the population.

$3,820,000,000,000

The popular conception of Universal Basic Income requires that the government comes up with at least…

…Yearly to distribute to everyone. Keep in mind that the US government currently has just $48 billion in cash reserves on hand, that’s about enough for four days of universal basic income. To put that in perspective Apple has about double the cash reserves of the US government, so let’s say we raided Apple, really shook them down and cleaned out their pockets, we would be lucky to get ten days Universal Basic Income.

If you can do just a little bit of math, the mathematical impossibility of universal basic income should be smacking you in the face right about now. Is it perhaps a much better idea to allow the efficient and innovative free market to provide a universal standard of human dignity?

Perhaps as a UBI proponent, you’re thinking I just don’t trust rich people that much…

Altruism

Consider the altruism of some of the wealthiest people in the world…

Bill Gates has given away over $30,000,000,000 of his wealth, he plans to eventually give away up to 95% of his wealth.

Warren Buffet who lives on a $100K yearly salary gave $2.8 billion to charity in 2016 and has committed to giving away 99% of his wealth upon his death.

Mark Zuckerberg has also committed to giving away almost all his wealth and put his money where his mouth was in 2016 by donating $3 billion towards the ambitious mission of “curing all disease”.

On the Giving Pledge, you can find many more billionaires and very wealthy people who have also committed to giving away the majority of their wealth for the good of humanity.

A cynic might say…

Well these rich people are just doing all this charitable giving for tax purposes and to promote their own celebrity. Besides does charitable giving even work? Western countries have given trillions in foreign aid to the third world and it just seems to be getting worse.

Wealthy people at this level often paid the taxes when they made the money. These guys are giving away their post-tax wealth.

Yes, it does further their celebrity to be charitable at this scale but it’s still billions of dollars that are being used to fix some of humanities worst problems, raising the universal living standard for all of us, instead of sitting in a fund or sophisticated Wall Street investment vehicle.

Do you think that perhaps these ingenuous business people will be better at meaningfully giving away their own money than apathetic, government bureaucrats are at giving away tax payer’s money?

There’s a clear correlation between intelligence and altruism and compassion towards the less fortunate in society. Some Dutch social scientists hypothesized:

“The cost incurred by engaging in unconditional altruism is lower for highly intelligent people than for less intelligent people because they may expect to regain the drained resources. As a result, unconditional altruism can serve as an honest signal of intelligence.”

With these kinds of people so insistent upon giving away their wealth to the less fortunate do we really need a coercive government redistribution scheme to provide basic income?

Free market charity outperforms government welfare programs by a long shot. According to data from Health and Welfare Studies at the Cato Institute;

Only 30% of the funds that go into government entitlement programs end up in the hands of the needy or paying for their services. The rest is eaten up by bureaucrats’ salaries, fancy offices, along with requisite waste, fraud, and abuse.

Compared to private charities who contribute 82% of all funds raised to the needy, the rest goes to fundraising efforts and administration.

Communism 3.0

But if Universal Basic Income were implemented tomorrow or anytime soon with governments at all resembling the corrupt and really criminal institutions that they are now, it’s just going to result in another disastrous social experiment like…

The USSR

Germany under the National Socialism

North Korea

China under Mao

Romania under Ceaușescu

Venezuela

Greece

Cambodia under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge

South Africa (This country doesn’t get the attention it deserves in these debates about social justice, this once rich country started implementing all the policies that social justice warriors advocate over 20 years ago and it’s a disaster! Well on its way to being the next Zimbabwe)

Socialists, communists, Democrats, Bernie Bros and other varieties of witting and unwitting Marxists will of course say…

Yeah but what about Canada and various rich European countries that have strong socialist policies, they seem to be doing pretty ok, mannnnnn!

These countries are running on fumes; fiat currency, money printing, and quantitative easing. These countries are in a profound way cheating by not paying for anything out of money actually raised from the productive economy but instead by enslaving their children with debt.

If your roommate insisted on paying their share of rent with monopoly money how long would it be before you kicked them out?

These countries will be embroiled in chaos and petty violence in the event of an economic downturn or geopolitical disruption because so much of their population depend on government handouts (look at Paris, France this week!)

These countries have massive unfunded entitlement programs. Baby boomers’ significant health needs will pound the last nail in the coffin of their socialized healthcare institutions.

These rich European socialist countries have great facades, but like ancient European architecture which is beautiful from afar their foundations are cracking and crumbling. In the next 5–10 years we’ll see these countries become the next Greece.

Population replacement rates have fallen below two children per woman thanks to high taxation, lack of opportunity and toxic feminism.

I’ve traveled the world for 5 years and I consistently meet smart, entrepreneurial, young Canadians, Swedes, and Germans in places like Medellin, Colombia and Kiev, Ukraine who are fleeing the asphyxiating taxation and regulation of these countries.

Protectionism