Idle
2025 07 01
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I spent a lot of time being idle today. Was it a choice? In part. Also partly not. I did the usual round of looking for work and came up dry. The dryness is as usual as the looking for work. You know the job market is bad when even Amazon isn't hiring.
People like to use laziness as an excuse for their negative impressions of things like a basic income, when the opposite has been borne out by countless studies and trials, and even by human nature itself. Humans don't actually like being idle, going without occupation, being bored. But, we've worked ourselves into this pickle of thinking wage labour is the only way to lead a valuable life, that providing even the basics for people will make them shiftless, and trapping people into doing things they loathe because we're terrified of not having enough to survive, nevermind thrive.
Basic income can open the doors for greater independence of the disabled, for people to escape abusive situations, for people to pursue education and training for work they enjoy or find fulfilling, for people to fill volunteer roles that need filling, and for people to be caretakers to their loved ones. And if someone takes that basic income and sits home playing video games all day, content with basics and bothering no one, who cares? The job they'd have been forced to take up is now open to someone else who will want it and do it. Basic income is meant for basics. There will always be those, like myself, who will work because they want something a basic income can't buy.