Even though minimum wage seems to take root firmly in modern developed countries as a part of wage system, its efficiency and legitimacy still remains controversial for many sensible people. In that sense, the idea of guaranteed minimum income(GMI) sounds too radical for now, but surprisingly, in some countries like Finland and Switzerland, a pilot project has already started, or a voting on a referendum to its installation is in progress.
The logic of proponents of GMI is simple; if you want to end poverty, just give people money. They remind us of the fact that we have already spent too much energy and resource to provide some relief for those people in need. Just give the people money and abolish all other transfer payments and the complex bureaucracies overseeing them. It will be much more cost-efficient, they claim. Regarding the concern about moral hazard, they offer us an optimistic prospect; if a society adopts GMI, everyone in the society will know that everyone has an income stream. Every person, regardless of their age, gender, ethnicity, job, or education, has at least some amount of money guaranteed enough to live on sufficiently, and this knowledge, consequently, requires every person to behave more responsibly because it is now impossible to blame society for my poverty, my dissatisfaction. If you want more, then do more! Don’t blame society because society gives you enough fairly.
Is GMI more cost-efficient than the current social security system? Would it make people more responsible and more reasonable in the end? If so, utilitarians would support it. I do not think that it is cost-efficient, nor is it helpful to make people become more responsible and reasonable, but even if so, objectivists would not support it. No matter how GMI is cost-efficient, no matter how GMI would help people become more responsible and reasonable, we objectivists would oppose it because the concept of GMI degrades life.
GMI guarantees our survival. We do not need to do anything. We do not need to think, because we have nothing to worry about. We do not need to focus on what is going on and what will happen next. If we do not focus on anything, that means we are not conscious about anything. If we are not conscious about anything, that means our life does not mean anything.
We objectivists oppose GMI because it creates a wrong fantasy of survival. Perhaps, we could feel happy and satisfied with no need to do anything. We could feel free and relieved because we do not need to make difficult decisions. Perhaps, we might convince ourselves that doing nothing is what we are doing now, and avoiding making decisions is the decision we make now. However, we are not free from the result of our doing, our decision, our doing nothing at all, and our decision not to make any decision. We survive because we do something, I mean, really do something. We survive because we make a decision, because we think to make a decision. Although the concepts of the welfare state and social security system supported by collectivism tend to allow some people to live like a parasite, we survive because most of us are hosts, not parasites. We survive because we know we should do something to survive. GMI is easy to fool us that we can survive even if we do nothing to survive. GMI creates wrong social dynamics that rational parasites survive at the expense of irrational hosts. GMI makes hard-working, truly responsible and truly reasonable people appear to be irrational. GMI makes people doing nothing, thinking about nothing, and thus, degrading life, appear to be rational. Is it the world of rational parasites and irrational hosts that we dream of?
Become rationally selfish. There is no future, no life, with rational parasites and irrational hosts.