Joe Vasicek, $0.99, ISBN 978-1005141417
Sci-fi, 2020
Joe Vasicek’s Payday is about what happens when universal basic income is implemented in the near future, as seen through the eyes of our protagonists, Peter Cernosek and his wife Jill. Yes, this is a political story in the sense that I have a feeling that dedicated, zealous progressives will not like this one, heh. Then again, sci-fi has always been a political genre in many ways, so this story is only unusual in that it dares to go against the mob mentality that rules the current social media and violently pursues anyone that dares to express an opinion that is different from theirs.
My issue with this story is not the message itself, which I actually agree with for the most part, but just how preachy it is. The last few pages, in fact, are practically a “I told you so!” rant from a character clearly designed to be the author’s mouthpiece.
Yes, I agree that universal basic income, if left unchecked, will likely lead to insane inflation, as when everyone has at least $300,000 to spend each time the government-mandated payday arrives, then the prices of basic necessities will only rise accordingly. This happens all the time in countries that see a spike in the number of wealthy people among the population. To keep things under control, the government will need to intervene and implement policies such as price fixes, which again have been proven to rarely work and only serve as an invitation for the government to seize more control of the average person’s life. Much of the progressive politics I see in the US operate on this assumption that having the government control every aspect of one’s life is the best way to control oppressive capitalism, one that I find dangerously naïve because doing so just means trading one oppressive overlord for another—and a government that has total control over its population is not going to bring the story to a happy end, let’s just say.
So yes, in many ways this story resonate with me, but at the same time, I’m hard pressed to call this one a story. It feels more like propaganda, really, and a lighter hand with the preachy stuff would have made this story more of a joy to read and less of a hammer between my eyes. Show more, tell less—that’s a better way to go in winning over new converts!
