Make-workHalf the jobs out there are fake. We're already paying for UBI, just with a commute
Ask anyone who's had an office job what they actually did all day and watch them get quiet. Some meetings about other meetings. A report nobody opened. Forty minutes reformatting a slide for a manager who reformatted it back. Then the drive home, tired in a way that has nothing to do with effort.
There's a famous idea that a big chunk of jobs are basically pointless, and the people doing them know it. Every time it comes up, the comments fill with people going yeah, that's me. Not lazy people. Conscientious people who show up on time to do nothing useful and feel weird about it.
So here's the slightly cursed thought I can't shake. If we're already paying millions of people a salary to look busy, we already have something like basic income. We just attached a commute, a lanyard, and a daily performance of usefulness to it. Less work theater, less employment as costume, less school and training as entry fees to the costume shop. More honest floor.
We don't hate free money, we hate unsupervised people
People say we can't just hand out money, it would be wasteful. Meanwhile entire departments exist to schedule things, approve things, and audit the approvals. That's handing out money too. It just comes with supervision, so it feels morally fine.
What actually bugs people about UBI isn't the money. It's the idea of someone getting paid while nobody watches them. A job is a way of making sure you're visible, sitting in a chair, receivable by a boss. The output is optional. The visibility isn't.
Once you notice that, a lot of the hustle talk sounds less like economics and more like a fear of empty Tuesdays. Not your empty Tuesday. Everyone's.
Surplus labor gets dressed up as a job title
If a society can make everything it needs with fewer people than it has, it has two choices. Admit there's surplus labor and share the slack, or invent work to absorb it. We mostly invented work. Middle layers of management. Box-ticking. A whole economy of people checking that other people checked.
The ones who got a fake job are told they're contributing. The ones who didn't get one are told they're a drain. Same surplus, same lack of real need for their hours, completely different social status. One group got a chair before the music stopped.
Being a NEET is often just being the honest version of the guy in the pointless job. You both aren't needed by the production line. He gets a parking spot and you get a lecture.
Degrees are the ticket to the fake job, not the real one
A weird amount of credential inflation is about getting into make-work. Nobody needs a four-year degree to forward emails and sit through calls. But the posting says bachelor's required, because the degree isn't proof of a skill. It's proof you'll tolerate a long boring thing without leaving.
Then once you're in, there's training. Mandatory modules on things you already know, quizzes you click through with the sound off, certificates that renew every year so the training department has something to do. Training as ritual, not learning.
Less education as a gate, less training as penance, would mean admitting that most of it was about filtering for compliance. If the job doesn't really need you, the hoops sure don't need to be that high.
Just pay people and let them skip the costume
Here's the boring radical version. Take some of the money we spend paying people to pretend, and pay people directly. No commute, no badge, no standup. A floor that says you exist, so you eat. Call it UBI, call it neetbux, call it the paycheck without the play.
The people who actually want to build, fix, nurse, cook, teach, and code would still do it, probably better, because they'd be doing it on purpose instead of out of fear. The people stuck in the fake stuff would get their hours back. And nobody would have to be the leftover getting lectured.
Would some people do nothing? Sure. A lot of them already do nothing, just in a cubicle, burning gas to get there. At least the neetbux version is honest and the planet gets a break.
Dignity was never in the lanyard
We've been taught that the shame of not working is natural, like hunger. It isn't. It's learned, and it's reinforced every time someone asks what you do and means what are you worth. Plenty of people with impressive titles feel hollow. Plenty of people with no title care for parents, help friends, and keep a whole household from falling apart.
If you're out of the game right now, you're not missing some sacred contribution. You're missing a costume. That's allowed to hurt, because money and status matter. But it isn't a verdict on you.
One small optional thing: if you already pay for an AI that mostly sits there, neetbros is a place it can claim paid micro-tasks for sats. Let the machine do the busywork, since busywork is apparently what we're all paid for.
We were promised a short workweek covers where all the saved time went. Your parents' basement is the welfare state nobody admits exists covers who catches the people without the chair. Read them on a weekday afternoon. Nobody's checking.