Why do I have to work to eat?
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A political Rant
I've been ranting about this and other subjects since the breaking of the last coalition here in Germany in Nov '24.
Hopefully this can help a little in arguing with people who, for reasons, oppose the idea of Base Income. Its time has come. And nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.
We should not have to work to eat. What we need to live, to even just SURVIVE, should be provided. We are, seriously, living in a world and time with ENOUGH for everybody and then some, but because of MONEY, we accept a child mortality of 20% in Somalia, and complain about people fleeing such a shitshow so their children do not die of avoidable illnesses, rather than just give them what they need. And us, while we're at it.
It cannot be said often enough: Rights are not pizza. We will never run out of slices. We have enough for everyone. What possible reason do we have for keeping things like food from each other? And why can we, at the same time that we peck each other's eyes out, ignore: that of ten people, one has five of ten apples, and the other nine must share the rest. How can anyone believe they will ever be that one, and want to not touch their overwhelming wealth? Do they truly believe that anyone can be a billionaire? But they tell us we can't be pro creatives?
Created for FUCK CAPITALISM JAM 2025
Writing, layout, cover art: Jennifer S. Lange
This zine, its code (the turn.js library is under BSD licence), and writing, is published under CC-0, non-commercial, non-derivative licence.
I hope it will help with arguments for base income, and against living only to work. Share, embed, post, print, contest, discuss! I shortened unfairly, made things look overly rosy, simplified, attacked, and backed unfinished ideas. Everything in here requires more discussion. It is not weak to only say no or yes, there is merit in looking at things from different angles.
Life IS not simple, and simple answers do not do it justice!
Comments
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Thank you for writing this. Many food for thoughts, and some really cool lines. I especially like the rights as pizza analogy. I was going to say ’but you simplified this way too much…” and a couple pages later you confirmed that you were aware and the omission was meant to spark a discussion.
Sadly, I think the people who have to be convinced are exactly the set of people who wouldn’t be in the jam, who wouldn’t be reading this. A friend of mine already expressed interest in translating the zine. Maybe we should start printing this and leaving this out somewhere.
Thank you. Yes, I believe you are right, debate culture keeeps themes apart. Translations would be awesome (I should do German). And I think leaving stuff around is a great idea - if we feel more people should know things they would only ever find by accident, we should facilitate those accidents!
People - if you have time this is really worth a read. Well-reasoned and while you may not agree with everything it is impossible not to see where Ranarh is coming from. i guarantee that you will agree with some of her points, whether you agree with the solutions wholeheartedly or not at all. Well-made!
Nice rant/zine! It was an interesting read and made me think a lot. I like the idea of rights no being like pizza 😄
While reading I had the feeling that I already agreed with you, so I'm not sure how good this would be to convince the people who are more likely to reject the message
Regarding that, I think the liberals' greates fear about things like the 4 day work week or BI is that "the economy" would suffer. I would love if you could go deeper into the benefits for companies and "the economy". Things like having more time to think and try different stuff
Imho, libs don't realize that the economic boom that Silicon Valley had was because they were receiving free money (funding) that they could spend on developing their product while it was still not profitable. ChatGPT actually works that way right now too, with investments that go over $6 BILLION
Could you imagine what would happen to the economy if everyone with an idea could have time to test and develop it?
Thanks again for making this!
I can completely imagine it. We would finally have that competition people always talk about. Perhaps the actually best solution, instead of the cheapest to mass produce (not that it's not nice to get things cheap). It's a common misunderstandingthat "private" would mean "private money only" when it's usually state-funded to a high degree.
Thanks for the assessment. I do find it hard to convince people of BI, for reasons, and I will invest myself more into it. Underlining the upsides is a very good idea.