Among other reasons, it falls short because just as people do not need jobs for their own sake (but need a job to further some particular end), people do not in reality need money either; rather, people need those things that one exchanges for money. And while the extension of a basic income would no doubt mitigate some of this society's harms, a basic income would do little to ensure that people would be able to enjoy what we have been referring to as the infrastructure of actual democracy.
Indeed, rather than advancing actual, meaningful political-economic independence, or autonomy, a basic income is restricted -- primarily -- to enabling consumption. In spite of the fact that a basic income law would afford people with more time to participate politically, a basic income law does not address, among others, the political-economic issue of what should be produced, or not produced - or how whatever should be produced should be produced - in the first place. While a basic income could change conditions superficially, the present ecocidal, vastly unequal, militaristic, anti-democratic political-economy would not necessarily be altered at all by this. It could just keep plugging and fracking along, launching wars and other projects that benefit the few at the expense of the many.
Moreover, (in addition to a quasi-democratic politics), a basic income law is just as easily reconcilable with an aristocratic politics. And it's funny, because there is this idea that really goes back to Aristotle, who did not really like democracy at all, that what was in the interest of the best (who were by definition the few) was, because they were the best, in the overall interest of the city (the polis) and everyone else as well. But what was in the interest of the many (who by definition could not be the best) was not in the interest of the city. And this idea, which is not a democratic idea but is really a rather aristocratic idea is not only prevalent today (the entire "trickle down" argument, for instance, is associated with this notion), it is prevalent among a considerable number of people who champion a basic income law. Among those who harbor genuinely egalitarian political goals -- who have a genuine concern for social justice -- there are people who to some degree claim to be working toward democracy but wind up conflating the rule and needs of the people with the needs and rule of the market.
Followers of the right-wing economist Milton Friedman, of the Chicago School of economics, for example, subscribe to this notion. As most are probably familiar, this school of thought champions austerity, among other hardly egalitarian economic policies and programs. And in their own way they also claim to champion democracy, or they at least appeal to the idea of democracy, and freedom, while pursuing policies that are more often than not nakedly plutocratic (favoring the wealthy, privatizing the public, etc.) as opposed to democratic in the sense of championing the interests of the people, the masses, the multitude, the little people, the proletariat, pick your term -- for austerity means restricting the public realm, whereas democratization calls for its extension and expansion.
While Milton Friedman and his followers (who are well-represented in government, mass media, the business community, etc.) claim to have the interests of democracy -- or freedom -- at heart they in fact spend their time and money and energy concretely undermining what we might refer to as genuinely egalitarian democratic tendencies in the US, and other places, as unambiguously as they did in Chile under Pinochet. In spite of this flagrantly anti-democratic, pro-aristocratic tendency, however, Milton Friedman championed a basic income law, and many of his supporters continue to support a basic income law today.
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