• Boisterous [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Here's the thing, philosophically this isn't a bad thing. Getting people with severe disabilities to feel like 1. They're useful/productive 2. More human interaction than they works lying in bed, and 3. Some money they can spend on luxuries would all be incredibly beneficial to their recovery/quality of life. So many people who become severely disabled as adults talk about feeling "useless" or a drain on those around them. From that point of view alone, this is a good thing and they should be allowed to work if they want to.

    The real issue we all see is how this will be used by capitalists to exploit people with disabilities. I always wanted to see a Black Mirror episode about a person in their 20s who's working a horrible service job, has a terrible accident and becomes severely disabled, becomes severely depressed and loses many of their friends, finds out about this program, enrolls and benefits greatly, then advocates for it to be nation wide to increase the quality of life of other people with disabilities. Then halfway through watch the system they fought for displace other workers, become increasingly predatory, have universal Medicare stop covering their treatment as they're now expected to work and earn money, and have them return back to a sad life of exploitation, except now they're still horribly disabled. It would be so potent, but now that Netflix owns Black Mirror I doubt we'll ever see that episode.

    • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      The Japanese health system isn't a glorified extortion racket like it is in the US, so it's possible that these people want extra income instead of necessarily need it.

  • UlyssesT [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    The near future is going to be a lot of Mechanical Turks pretending to be autonomous robots to further alienate the worker from the fruits of their labor. Bazinga! :so-true: