Even such breakthroughs, tremendous and unprecedented as they would be, would represent just the first step, as the arrival of virtually free gene sequencing – which would allow us to all but eliminate early-years mortality and locate cancers at ‘Stage $0 ^ { \circ }$ – moves medicine from responsive to preventative. Again, rather than propping up the profits of private business while putting millions of healthcare workers out of a job, that should mean free, universal healthcare for everyone. The alternative of allowing market rationing amid conditions of such abundance, and for matters of literal life and death, is barbaric.
The same trends are evident in housing, education and information – understood here as media production and internet connectivity. Just a few decades from now paying for a bus, or an internet connection, or a university degree or renting a home, need not be an issue. In each instance payment might feel as counter-intuitive as it would today if you were invoiced for starting an email account or checking the accuracy of a date on Wikipedia. And why shouldn’t it? After all, resources, energy, health, labour and food – just like information – want to be free. It is this fundamental tendency which underwrites why a constantly expanding provision of UBS, in line with extreme supply, should be a central demand for twenty-firstcentury politics.
Alongside a shift to municipal protectionism, the implementation of UBS would create a much larger role for the state – although given extreme supply, perhaps not as much as one might think. The state will be crucial in procurement with local worker cooperatives building homes, hospitals and schools as well as performing catering, maintenance, cleaning and support services. Under the neoliberal model these are the ground zero of the outsourcing economy, with workers subject to constant attacks over wages and working standards while users endure ever-poorer outcomes. In the transition to FALC, however, and with UBS adopting a central position in the economy, the leverage of anchor institutions will only expand. While automation will eliminate as much work as possible, those jobs which remain – most likely because of Moravec’s Paradox – will increasingly be performed by worker-owned businesses, completely transforming how we relate to society, work and one another.
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