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Paul Mason on Post-Capitalism and Universal Basic Income

by Kate McFarland | Nov 24, 2016 | News

British journalist and broadcaster Paul Mason, author of Post-Capitalism: A Guide to Our Future, recently delivered a lecture in Amsterdam in which he points out the need for a universal basic income as a partial solution to changes in the economy due to new technologies. He raises related concerns in an article in The Guardian published shortly thereafter.

On October 25, author Paul Mason delivered a lecture at the De Balie culture center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, wherein he argues that technological advancement has been not only correlated with but in fact a cause of economic stagnation. He attributes this to several characteristics of new information technologies: the ability to automate more jobs and job tasks, the ability to produce and reproduce goods at very low (even zero) marginal cost, and the ability to combine data through networks to generate new goods not reflected in standard measures of economic growth.

In addressing how the left should respond, Mason says, “Our long-term aim should be to push more and more economic activity [to be] done outside the market and the state.” This requires, in part, that we “end [the] reliance on wages for work.” In this context, he continues: “We need quickly to pursue the experiments with the universal basic income … and aim within 10 years for states to be in a position to roll out the policy itself.”

He goes on to add, however, that UBI alone is insufficient; the state, for instance, should also provide “cheap basic goods” (he mentions housing, healthcare, education, and transportation) and promote open source and non-profit businesses.

The entire lecture, along with the Q&A session, can be viewed below. Mason has also published a text version of his lecture on Medium.

https://vimeo.com/188859000#t=8m42s

In an October 31 article in The Guardian, Mason again broached UBI as a potential solution to technological unemployment — predicting a world in which smart technologies, such as autonomous vehicles, cause paid work to become scarce and sporadic. Here, in passing, Mason also links UBI to the potential fulfillment of Marx’s vision of a society in which people are free to “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, [and] criticise after dinner” without ever assuming an occupational identity as hunter, fisher, cattle-rearer, or critic.

References

Paul Mason (October 27, 2016) “Postcapitalism [in Amsterdam]” Medium.

Paul Mason (October 31, 2016) “The battle over Uber and driverless cars is really a debate about the future of humanity” The Guardian.

Photo: Paul Mason in 2015, CC-BY-SA-4.0 DTRocks via Wikimedia Commons

Leeds, United Kingdom: Readers’ meeting on Paul Mason’s ‘Postcapitalism’, 16 Nov 2015

by Toru Yamamori | Nov 9, 2015 | News

Leeds Taking Soundings Readers’ Meetings

The date: Monday, November 16th (2015)

The time:6PM

The venue: Broadcasting Place AG10 (opposite the Fenton pub).

The contact: https://www.takingsoundings.org.uk/contact-us/

The organiser’s homepage said, ‘Paul Mason’s new book, Postcapitalism, has attracted a lot of attention, and deservedly so…..The Leeds Taking Soundings group wants to provide an opportunity to discuss what the book is about and how relevant it is.’

The book recommends the implemantation of an unconditional basic income as one of necessary measure during the transition to what the author called ‘PostCapitatalism’ from capitalism.

LONDON, United Kingdom: Postcapitalism: Paul Mason Lecture, 18 November 2015

by Toru Yamamori | Nov 4, 2015 | News

Postcapitalism: Paul Mason Lecture

The date: 18 November 2015

The time: 6.30-8pm

The Venue: Old Theatre, LSE Campus, London.

This event is free and open to all however a ticket is required, only one ticket per person can be requested.

The contact: events@lse.ac.uk or 0207 955 6043.

The detail can be found here.

Paul Mason advocates an unconditional basic income in his recent book.

Bristol Festival of Ideas: 6 October conference on Basic Income

by Guest Contributor | Sep 29, 2021 | Events, Featured, News

On Wednesday 6 October 2021, the Institute for Policy Research, University of Bath, and Bristol Ideas are running their second virtual conference, ‘Is it time for UBI?’. The conference is free to attend.

Leading thinkers, politicians and policymakers will come together to debate and explore new approaches to macro-economic policymaking, the prospects for Universal Basic Income, and the political economy of social and economic change.

Speakers include: Kate Bell (TUC), Young Jun Choi (Yonsei University), Anna Coote (New Economics Foundation), Diane Coyle (University of Cambridge), Geoff Crocker (author of Basic Income and Sovereign Money), Sarath Davala (Indian Network for Basic Income), Anna Dent (policy and research consultant), S Mahendra Dev (Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research), Martin Ford (author of Rule of the Robots), Cleo Goodman (Basic Income Conversation), Paul Mason, Jane Millar (University of Bath), Bernhard Neumärker (University of Freiburg), Thomas Palley, Nick Pearce (Institute for Policy Research, University of Bath), James Plunkett (author of End State), Sumbul Siddiqui (Mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts), Kate Soper (London Metropolitan University / University of Brighton) and Paola Subacchi (Queen Mary University of London).

The programme, biographies of speakers and registration can be found on this web page.

Karl Widerquist’s list of Media Appearances

by Karl Widerquist | Jul 25, 2018 | Opinion, The Indepentarian

On this page, I attempt to keep an updated list of media appearances, big or small; basic income related or not; audio, video, or text; starting with the most recent. It’s not exhaustive, but it’s extensive.