Seoul, on June 3, 2011, the Basic Income Korean Network(BIKN), in conjunction with Cultural Action and the Institute of Land and Liberty, held a symposium titled Ecology, Land Tax, Culture, and Basic Income as a part of the 5th Marx Communale that took place in Seoul National University.
Part I of the symposium, Culture Society and Basic Income, began with the presentation of Basic Income, a Virtuous Circle of Labor and Culture by Prof. Kwang-Hyun Shim of Korea National University of Arts. Despite admitting that basic income is the only perceived medium of making a radical change in an ever-automating society, Shim argued that an incomplete implementation of basic income – one without a strong, organized cultural movement – is risky, since it might merely augment market fundamentalism by granting more purchasing power. Debated topics included how basic income will/should change the boundary of labor and creative activity.
Part II (Ecology, Land Tax, and Basic Income) approached one of the most notorious social problems of South Korea – the land price. Begun with a presentation titled Ecological Society and Basic Income by Prof. Jeong-Im Kwon of the University of Seoul, it proceeded to the argument for land value taxation by Gi-Up Nam, president of the Institute of Land and Liberty. Laying a moral and economic foundation to taxing one of the largest unearned income in South Korea, Nam claimed the scheme to be an alternative to basic income. Nam-Hoon Kang, professor of economics at Hanshin University and the representative of BIKN, asserted a model where the positive effects of land value taxation and basic income is seamlessly combined, simply by funding basic income with land value taxation.
The event was a success, with the venue packed by an eager audience for five hours. Marx Communale is a biennial academic festival held by South Korean researchers and artists studying various theories originated by Karl Marx. The fifth Communale, Contemporary Capitalism and Life, was a three-day event from June 2 to June 4.
-Report by Han Don-Son, for the Basic Income Korean Network (BIKN)
Earlier this year we announced the publication of Adrienne Goehler’s new book on Basic Income. The article appears below. An English translation is now available, which can be downloaded here.
This new edition features additional material: an interview with Sarath Davala, and an essay by Julio Linares.
In 2010, Götz Werner and Adrienne Goehler wrote 1000€ für Jeden: Freiheit, Gleichheit, Grundeinkommen (1000€ for everyone: Freedom, Equality, Basic Income). Now Adrienne Goehler has written a new book, Nachhaltigkeit braucht Entschleunigung braucht Grundein/auskommen ermöglicht Entschleunigung ermöglicht Nachhaltigkeit (Sustainability needs Deceleration needs Basic Income | Livelihood allows Deceleration allows Sustainability).
To read an interview with Adrienne Goehler, click here.
Adrienne Goehler has provided the following translation of the website page about the book:
If we had unrestricted basis income for everyone, what would the consequences be? Would it increase freedom and equality and so dim down the ever faster accelerating times? Would it help to save the environment with its restricted resources?
Over the last two years, Adrienne Goehler has been addressing these and other burning questions of our time while working at the “Institut für transformative Nachhaltigkeitsforschung” in Potsdam. In this book that presents the results of her inquiries, she embarks on a journey from research to politics to art. She invited people from the most diverse parts of society to contribute essays, interviews, stories, images, and artistic interventions concerning the relationship of sustainability, deceleration, and basic income. She constellated insights into the financial world with suggestions contributed by experts in agriculture, development policy, climate change, and ecology. Artists address the most important questions of our time: What do we need for a good life and do we have enough of it for all of us? How will “work” look like in the future, and who will be employed? If we learn to think of unpaid and poorly paid social work as equally important as other kinds of work, will that lead to more gender equality? How do we identify meaningful tasks that would fulfill our lives? And last not least: Would implement an unconditional universal basic income as a basic human right be in tune with the seventeen goals of sustainability, as declared by the United Nations? The book offers insights into the possibilities and contradictions of our actions. It presents all the important aspects of contemporary debates concerning universal basic income. A passionate wake-up call: We need to break out of frozen patterns of thinking and acting, strive for knowledge, and move around more freely.
Complaints about acceleration were already associated with industrialization, but in its present extent, its intensification and radicalization, it no longer concerns only working conditions, but the whole of life. Acceleration has totalized itself. The philosopher Byung-Chul Han, author of the book “Fatigue Society”, describes the most important change from capitalism in Marx’s time, when factory owners and workers faced each other in a clearly defined relationship of exploitation, to today’s self-exploitation relationships, in which people became entrepreneurs of themselves, caught in the illusion of self-realization. Thus neo-liberalism formed the oppressed worker into a free entrepreneur who worked incessantly on his self-optimization. We are constantly saving time through faster transportation, fast food, faster information media and tools, and therefore we are packing more and more into the day. Hartmut Rosa calls it, “quantity increase per time unit”. We believe that we have to be available 24/7, as if we were all on call at all times. The present with its unreasonable demands makes us pant, our fantasy lies idle under states of exhaustion and multiple fears. We find ourselves in a hamster wheel whose speed we cannot determine and which many believe we cannot leave. The significantly high increase of depression and burnout are symptoms of this too much, which is at the same time a too little. The time researcher Barbara Adam therefore states: “We need not only an ecological ‘footprint’, but also a ‘timeprint’. I remember with longing “Momo”, the character in Michael Ende’s novel. Momo realized that anyone who has the time of mankind has unlimited power. She brought back time stolen by grey ‘time thieves’ to the people, when she realized that by saving time people had forgotten to live in the now and enjoy the beauty in life. And I am thinking of John Franklin, the polar explorer, whom Stan Nadolny memorialized in his novel “The Discovery of Slowness”, because his perception refused everything fast and superficial and transformed slowness into calm. Time and the feeling of permanent acceleration, breathlessness, is the subject of many interviews. I also feel connected to the idea of deceleration as a further prerequisite for the chance to lead a sustainable life. Hartmut Rosa, who imagines the process of the great transformation as successful only in connection with a different way of dealing with time, is also connected to this idea. And with a basic income.
In addition to the immense challenges outlined above, there is another Herculean task: the comprehensive redefinition of life and work as a result of ongoing digitalization, with which gainful employment will change qualitatively and quantitatively in a variety of ways, some of them very fundamentally. In conjunction with the increasing importance of the service sector, a working society is emerging in which a growing part of the population does not have continuous, let alone lifelong, gainful employment, but instead works independently or on a project-based basis, often accompanied by poorer pay and greater insecurity.
With the start of the digital age in 2002, people were able to store more information digitally than in analogue form for the first time. Another ten years later, the term ‘Work 4.0’ came into circulation to describe the fourth industrial revolution.
Since then, there have been a large number of studies that look at the impact on working life to date. Many of them assume a significant loss of traditional jobs, which will in future be done by machines, and predict radical changes. A frequently quoted – and now also widely criticized – study by the scientists Osborne and Frey from Oxford University assumes that 47 percent of gainful employment in the USA is at high risk of being automated in the coming years. The Davos World Economic Forum estimated in 2016 the number of jobs that will be lost in the next five years in the 15 most important industrial and emerging countries as a result of the “fourth industrial revolution”, 5 million. Women’s jobs were particularly affected. Companies such as Siemens, SAP, Telecom and the big ones in Silicon Valley agreed with these forecasts, which clearly boosted the discussion about an unconditional basic income, because it was strengthened by a rather unexpected side.
It was late October 2019, when different academics and activists from all over Latin America were preparing to meet in the south of Chile to share our ideas and perspectives on UBI for the first time. The idea of forming a regional basic income network had been present for a long time and people were eager to contribute to it.
Suddenly, Chilean police and army went to the streets to suppress unarmed protestors. What started as high-school students protesting the rising metro fees became the a turning point in Chile’s history. The basic income event was sadly cancelled but the seed of something else was planted.
Fast forward to early March 2020, together with Gabriela Cabaña we decided to kick-start the network. Our first call was on Monday, March 9th, one day after the biggest protest turnout in Chile, on the eve when petrol prices went negative and right before the COVID-19 pandemic spread to most countries. We did not know what to expect next.
After the Corona virus hit, the interest on basic income surged tremendously in Latin America. In a matter of months, UBI in Latin America has gone from being almost no-where in the political radar to being the politics of the future, with events discussing the idea in countries like Argentina, Brasil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Uruguay.
The Latin American Basic Income Network meets once a month. Since July and with the help of the Institute of Central American Fiscal Studies (ICEFI), the network has started to organize a series of talks in order to contextualize the importance of basic income in the region. You can watch the first one here, featuring Pablo Yanes (Mexico), Nelson Villarreal Durán (Uruguay) and Alejandra Zúñiga Fajuri (Chile), on the present importance of basic income.
Our goal is to produce a Latin American perspective on Basic Income, situating it in the socio-political context of the region on all it’s different dimensions, such as ecology, indigenous perspectives, welfare, democracy and so on. The next talk will be held on August 4th, 16h CDT, titled “Feminist Perspectives on Basic Income” which can be streamed live and viewed here.
Watch out for more news coming from the region! To get in touch, please contact us at: red-latinoamericana-de-renta-bsica@googlegroups.com
BIEN | Research Index Research Posts Research index Congress papers Research depository [ a ] anarchismin our siteacademic papers anthropologyin our siteacademic papers automationin our site academic papersthe BIS papers[ b...
Videos of all the plenary sessions are available on youtube. Abstracts of all the concurrent sessions are available here. Full papers and slides of some presentations are available below.
This table contains the papers uploaded to the congress website prior to the congress. If other authors submit their papers then they will be added to this list.
Videos are available of many of the congress sessions. Click here to see them.
BIEN 2016, Seoul
The Proceedings of the 2016 congress are contained in a single document, in which can be found plenary session addresses and parallel session papers. Click here to download the document.
Toward a renovation of economic circulation and institutionsMorley-Fletcher, Edwin (IT) Opening AddressOzanira da Silva e Silva, Maria (BRA) The Minimum Income as a Policy for Increasing Child Education in BrazilPelzer, Helmut (GE) Funding of an Unconditional Basic Income in Germany via a Modified Tax/Transfer SystemPioch, Roswitha (GE) The bottom line of the welfare state in Germany and the NetherlandsQuilley, Steven (UK) Sustainable Funding of Basic Income: Environment, Citizenship & Community, and a Trajectory for Basic Income Politics in Europe (published in Basic Income on the Agenda)
Reynolds, Brigid (IRE), with Sean Healy
From Concept to Green Paper: Putting Basic Income on the Political Agenda (published in Basic Income on the Agenda)
Robeyns, Ingrid (B)
An emancipation fee or hush money? The advantages and disadvantages of a basic income for women’s emancipation and well-being (published in Basic Income on the Agenda)
Roos, Nikolas (NL)
Basic Income and the justice of taxationSalinas, Claudio Caesar (ARG), with Philippe Van Parijs Basic income and its cognates. Puzzling equivalence and unheeded differences between alternative ways of addressing the new social question (published in Basic Income on the Agenda) Scharpf, Fritz (D) Basic Income and Social Europe (published in Basic Income on the Agenda)
Schutz, Robert (US)
More Basic IncomeSerati, M. (IT), with E. Chiappero & F. Silva Basic income: an insidious trap or a fruitful chance for the Italian labour market?Silva, F. (IT) ), with E. Chiappero & M. Serati Basic income: an insidious trap or a fruitful chance for the Italian labour market?Smith, Jeffery (US) From Potlatch to EarthshareStanding, Guy (SWI) Seeking Equality of Security in the Era of GlobalisationTerraz, Isabelle Redistributive Impact of a Basic Income: A Focus on Women’s SituationVan Parijs, Philippe (B), with Claudio Caesar Salinas Basic income and its cognates. Puzzling equivalence and unheeded differences between alternative ways of addressing the new social question (published in Basic Income on the Agenda) Widerquist, Karl (US) Reciprocity and the guaranteed income