The phrase "The beatings will continue until morale improves" is so useful, because not only it can be seen in official corporate and state policies, but it actually describes the internalized mindset of our neurotic civilization.

We beat ourselves into being motivated by this.

Capitalism, which is the name we give mostly to this wage-slave system as a whole, gives people the freedom to take the propaganda and either force it into themselves and survive, or reject it and fall into the margins.

Basic Income does not fix what's fundamentally wrong with the wage-slave system, but it does make it incredibly better in a number of key points.

Immediately and most obviously, the "margin" ceases to become a horror dungeon and a death sentence, to become a... comfortable place. Think everyone having a home and education and healthcare as in "Communism," but without all of the militarism and secret polices.

Though society as a whole keeps on doing jobs, now people will not get stuck into jobs that are an obviously bad fit to them (or maybe, to anyone at all, given its conditions). Because we always compare the immediate benefits of quitting a job to the ensuing poverty.

This feedback effect on the job market itself is more long-term, and it is the least talked about but the most important change.

The $0/UBI capitalist wage-slave system that runs on fear and deprivation destroys not only people's bodies with poverty, but it destroys the collective intelligence of the industrial machinery it serves as a "motivation system" for.

You see, the endemic and systemic hatred of jobs people only hold and value because they have forced themselves to emulate a self that *has* to care about these jobs to *survive*, reflects on the collective result of what those jobs *do*.

And this affects consumption as well.

We do not lack information to find out what is good and what is bad to "The Planet." We are destroying the planet because we have no *soul* left. No *perception.*

Capitalism destroys the possibility of what Buddhism calls a privileged life that's capable of meditation. $0/UBI, wage-slave capitalism destroys the integrity of the human psychological self. It is a system of worldwide trauma.

That does not mean there are not worse fates than wage-slavery $0/UBI capitalism. But $0/UBI capitalism is obsolete. And its obsolescence, and our refusal to progress -- because we have been stuck with an evil Neoliberal detour since the 1950's -- is dooming us.

Our relapse into regress, our collective flinching into Neoliberalism, is humanity failing its rite of passage at a crucial juncture. The lion ate the would-be adult of the tribe, who was sent into the woods to become one.

The change from $0/UBI wage-slavery system into a ~$1,000/UBI wage-slavery system for the entire planet, using a model like Consumer Monetary Theory (CMT) as is explained by Alex Howlett, massively changes the threshold of abuse (and self-abuse) we perpetrate.

An UBI that IS real money that ends up directly in the hands of all people IS a concrete step into ending capitalism, because capitalism is, ultimately, about social control and monopolization by systemic deprivation.

It is not truly "enclosed" if you can buy it.

With an UBI, you need to beat yourself far less. The "B" in UBI means "Basic." It means you can actually go home for an indefinite amount of time. It means you engage in industrial production when you "want" to -- that is, NOT because you have BODILY needs that make you.

I'm sure lots of people will still want to work for Lockheed Martin or Palantir, or an industrial meatpacking murder factory or an oil company or Facebook. But, in the aggregate, people will have more time to think, to reflect, and to really consider whether a job should be done.

By the way, there are academic references to this. In humanities stuff this is called "Empreendedor de si mesmo" (The Entrepreneur of the self) and the colonization of the self.