#3. The Case for Care: Decommodifying Survival
Critics of UBI, however, raise a haunting question: What happens when you give everyone $1,200 a month in a broken market?
If housing supply is artificially constrained, landlords will simply raise rents by $1,200. If healthcare is profit-driven, drug companies will swallow the cash whole. In an unregulated market, unconditional cash risks becoming a taxpayer-funded subsidy for private monopolies.
Enter Universal Basic Services.
Instead of feeding cash into a flawed market, UBS aims to take life’s essential building blocks out of the market entirely. Rather than giving you money to buy expensive private insurance, the state builds a world-class public healthcare system. Instead of giving you money to pay exorbitant public transit fares, transit is made free at the point of use.
The argument for UBS is built on collective efficiency:
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Cost Control: Bulk public purchasing power suppresses the runaway inflation seen in private healthcare and housing.
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True Equality: High-quality public services create shared spaces where people of all social classes interact, building social solidarity rather than class division.
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Climate Resilience: Shared infrastructure scales back carbon footprints far faster than individual consumer choices ever could.
Next#4: Cash vs. Care or Cash and Care?