He starts out by saying that UBI is reformist, which is worse than the more preferred option of revolution. Sure, whatever. But that isn’t an argument against UBI, it’s an argument against any form of social reform. You could easily make that case against Medicare for All, climate change action, or whatever. Saying “but pressing the communism button is better” anytime someone brings up a reform just shuts discussion down. It’s technically true, but it’s worthless sophistry. You don’t need to make the case for revolution by punching left at reformism, especially when you load your video with conservative arguments against UBI.

The idea is there is an opportunity cost to reformism. When you have a working class that is capable of enforcing the good version of UBI why would you stop at just that? The problem with the left vs the right is that the right sets goals more aligned with their "end game" plans so to say, while the left simply doesn't.

The capitalists would prefer to have slavery and as much suffering as possible. Even when they are not successful they don't shy away from making it explicit this is their desired end result through their actions, the systemic brutality and suffering is the point and you can find so many posts on this site showcasing this.

Leftists who defend reformism tend to set the goal towards what is realistic, rational and more easily obtained, which ends up missing the point of a political movement and the ultimate goal of an ideology. You don't agitate and radicalize to make the world slightly better, we should try to make it the best we can. Perhaps there is a bigger discussion here about revolution vs reform and the Chinese example but even SWCC would not be possible without the revolutionary struggles decades earlier.

Western leftist reformists want to jump straight into reform hoping to pave way for a revolution while the only relevant successful example we have is the opposite, a reform after a revolution.

Indeed the big elephant in the room is history and all examples we had that attest to the short term success but long term failure of reforms that were not followed up by a revolutionary movement, UBI would just be the first of many worker victories and concessions that ended up being rolled back decades later worldwide.

A good example was the minimum wage, it kept up with productivity and inflation but eventually it lost out to both. Now we are hoping that UBI will be stronger than the minimum wage with nothing to back this up but wishful thinking and theory, it is not as if the working class is that strong right now in the US to begin with.

His comparisons between stimulus checks and UBI is bad. Saying “what’s stopping debtors and capitalists from seizing your UBI” is a bizarre argument, since it’s not an argument against UBI as much as it as an argument against debt forgiveness. Would Hakim argue against striking for higher wages because debtors can garnish wages? Of course not. The argument he makes with regard to student loans is even worse, since that industry has been nationalized (at least in the US). UBI to pay off student loans is functionally no different than student debt cancellation. Would Hakim oppose student debt cancellation? I doubt it.

His point banks seized the opportunity to exploit a loophole and take the stimulus check, which proves that capitalists will try and find any loophole to take a bite out of your UBI. I don't think wages fall under the same rationale. Trying to prevent this requires more political power of the government over corporations which is very hard to imagine.

As far as UBI against student loans the problem is that he is assuming UBI would come at the expense of social welfare, it would be very shitty if some bank decided to pay a student loan instead of your rent or food specialy if this wasn't your decision and you were counting on the money, being homeless and starving despite earning 1k UBI a month because some bank decided what the money should be used for is not progress and the only way to prevent this would be yet again specific legislation.

They shouldn’t be, and the left should be fighting to include them, but that has nothing to do with UBI.

Imagine you are trying to "sell" UBI and one candidate is making lies about it being cheap because people X Y and Z aren't going to be qualified for it while you sit there as a good leftist trying to propose a more honest but more expensive version of UBI without those restrictions. You are not wrong that those issues are not real issues for a proper UBI proposal but who says the UBI we are going to get and the one the capitalists are going to push are not going to be the ones most people will find appealing. Just look at Bernie's campaign, despite universal healthcare popularity he couldn't/wouldn't do what is necessary to beat the old political game against him.

They managed to convince people that they love their absurdly overpriced and inefficient health insurance. It is prudent to worry about how capitalists will be able to make people "love" literaly the worst version of UBI because I don't know it comes with a big check with a photo of your favorite Washington ghoul every month...

The rest of the video is fine. I just don’t get why so many leftists hold UBI to such a stupidly high standard compared to every other reform. Yes, there are bad ways to do UBI. There are bad ways to do every other reform Hakim talks about like public transit, universal healthcare, etc. That doesn’t mean UBI is stupid, or a dead-end, or whatever.

There is a way implement UBI properly i.e as a policy in a strong worker state what is able to implement UBI along with other social welfare programs.

I am just pessimistic that UBI will be politicized and manipulated so much that any hope of a proper UBI that doesn't fuck up most other social programs is just too unrealistic. UBI supporters tend to just take it as a given that we will get the good version, that we will win the political/media battle etc...

I find the opportunity cost argument also compelling, why UBI and not Universal basic services (UBS), why make people pay for food when you should just make it free and have people take what they need or why make people pay for rent when housing should be a basic right, why pay health insurance, why pay for education at all etc...

UBI ends up not even being the best version of the solution to those problems imo.