When a person’s basic needs go unmet, does the duty to provide fall on the state, or on whoever holds productive capacity?
When machines do more of the work that wages used to pay for, someone still has to make sure people have food, housing and care. Dignity Needs records this as an open disagreement about who that someone is.
Written for the hearth so this question has a whole card on each side to argue with. No visitor wrote them, so the two parts only a person can fill are empty: what happened to you, and who on the other side called the case against fair.
The state
Where this card stands
The state. Only a government answers to everyone and can be voted out, so the duty should sit there, paid for by taxing whoever owns the machines.
How sure, before and after the case against
The strongest case against it
States depend on the companies they would tax. As automation concentrates income, owners can move it out of any one state’s reach, so the duty has to follow the owners directly.
What would change this card’s mind
If states kept failing to collect tax from automated firms that could move their profits abroad.
Whoever holds productive capacity. If machines replace wages, the people who own the machines should carry the cost of the floor directly, the way an employer once paid wages.
How sure, before and after the case against
The strongest case against it
Companies answer to their shareholders, not to the people they would support. A floor that depends on their profits disappears in the first bad year.
What would change this card’s mind
If company-funded schemes paid out less reliably through downturns than state ones.
“Argue with this card” opens the card on the front page with this card’s position as the case against you. You write where you stand and what would change your mind.