I would not entertain this argument except that today the Anglophone world’s firmest conservative-libertarian hand has marshaled it. Here are its opening paragraphs. For the rest of the essay, please take this link to Sean Gabb’s site.—Anthony Flood
Universal Basic Income: Some Political and Economic Advantages
Sean Gabb, 16th August 2020
My vision of Utopia has remained constant since I was thirteen. It is a nation of free citizens, keeping jealous watch over a state strong enough to defend the borders and keep a minimal internal peace, but restricted from doing anything else. Sadly, this vision is further out of reach today than when I was thirteen. The modern British State is a vastly extended despotism, limited only by incompetence and corruption. It is also a despotism to which the majority of people, with whatever success and at whatever overall cost, look for immediate benefits. Libertarians and conservatives may dream of a coup in which the present order of things will be torn apart and replaced with something more natural and sustainable. But we might more usefully dream of winning the Lottery or being offered three wishes by a fairy. Any scheme of change requires the acceptance that, even if it can somehow be captured, the British State cannot in the short and medium term be minimised.
Given enough political will at the top, an end could be made in days to political correctness and lifestyle regulation. Beyond the readership of The Guardian, I see no yearning for political censorship and surveillance. I doubt there would be a general outcry if the BBC were closed, and the universities purged and the schools depoliticised. None of the fake charities would be missed. Ditto the Green agenda and most bureaucracies of intrusion. The health and welfare budget is another matter. Regardless of how little health is preserved and how little welfare is delivered, any government that announced an attack on that budget would lose immediate legitimacy. A riot of sacked BBC apparatchiks could be dispersed by a half-hearted truncheon charge. Touch the welfare state, and the demonstrations might fill a triangle tipped by Marble Arch, St Clement’s and Parliament Square.
This being said, pragmatic acceptance is not the same as acceptance of present arrangements. The principle of universal welfare cannot be touched. Its modes of provision can and should be harmonised with a new and more libertarian and conservative order of things. I will leave aside health and education. I have already discussed these here and here. I will instead focus on welfare entitlements. I propose abolishing every present entitlement, including old age pensions, and replacing them with a universal basic income.