by Guest Contributor | Jan 9, 2017 | Opinion
Seth Ackerman, Mateo Alaluf, Jean-Marie Harribey, Daniel Zamora. Contre l’allocation universelle , Lux Éditeur. Kindle Edition, 2016
Review by: Pierre Madden
This is a book written by and for French intellectuals. Hegelian and Marxist notions are bandied about like so many baseball scores. Nevertheless, the message is plain and the reason for the vigorous opposition to Basic Income (BI) is clear. Some of the points inviting skepticism are well taken. Tracing the origins of BI back to Thomas More and Thomas Paine is in fact quite a stretch. The same familiar More passage is always quoted but have you ever seen a different one? We are dealing here with a posteriori myth making to establish legitimacy.
For this group of authors, the concept of BI is a part of neoliberal ideology. “The concept of BI is tied to the emergence of neoliberalism both in its response to the crisis [in post-war social protection] and in the conception of social justice it embodies.” Furthermore, in the words of economist Lionel Stoléru “the market economy can encompass the fight against absolute poverty” but “it is incapable of digesting stronger remedies against relative poverty.” The latter refers to income inequality rather than to deprivation.
Neoliberalism is opposed to the concept of social rights. A generous BI would be prohibitively expensive without cutbacks in “collective” spending such as welfare, education, public pensions, health, etc. Market forces would replace the idea and institutions of social justice. The “equality of chances” defended by neoliberalism would lead to a society that is more meritocratic but no less unjust, claim the authors.
It is no secret that wealth has increased dramatically since the 1970s but that the rich have benefited disproportionately. BI is seen by the authors as a Trojan horse in the heart of Social Society, whose purpose is to undo all of the social programs developed in the 20th century before the advent of neoliberalism. Proponents in the libertarian left argue that BI would be the “Capitalist road to Communism,” in the words of Philippe Van Parijs himself. BI is seen as a synthesis of liberal and socialist utopias. A description of the conflicting attitudes towards work will best illustrate the divergence in approaches. The classic leftist view is that a citizen’s work defines his contribution to society and tends to conflate work and employment. It is up to society to validate each member’s work effort. The authors claim that BI proponents refuse to accept the idea that work can be a factor for social integration, thus their view that full employment is not a useful goal. On the contrary “the social utility of an activity cannot be established as valid a priori; it must be submitted to democratic approval.”
What democratic approval would mean in practice is not explained but then the Swiss were asked to approve BI with few details provided and 23% voted in favour. Another argument in favour of BI is that it would enable natural caregivers in the home to provide for the young, the sick and the elderly. The authors of this book cannot agree that these activities are valid work in the Marxian sense. To believe otherwise, they say, is “to espouse neoclassical propositions omnipresent in economic pseudoscience.” Some feminists also oppose BI because they see it as a trap to keep women in traditional roles.
So, is BI just a neoliberal plot to destroy the social protections developed in the post-war years by the social state that are inextricably linked to the strength of labour? If not a conspiracy, BI is presented as the culmination of the free market utopia in our collective neoliberal imagination.
The four writers of this tract are nostalgic of more coherent times:
“Since Durkheim,the sociological tradition considers that in developed societies, the division of labour and the resulting specialization of functions produces a solidarity that assures social cohesion. The assignment of individuals to social positions does not only depend on their own will. Impersonal social forces, determinism, belie the claims that attribute to individual merit alone the possibilities of emancipation. The more autonomous the individual the more dependent he is on society. We cannot therefore be but ourselves, anchored in our individuality, to the extent that we are social beings.”
This is no longer the world we live in. In a post-industrial sharing economy, we are still social beings but employment where labour is pitted against capital no longer defines us. The nostalgic socialist authors are justifiably suspicious of neoliberal aims to cut existing social programs but these have a long history and broad support. Making sure that BI beneficiaries do no receive less than before is a part of any serious discussion or test of Basic Income. Vigilance is always appropriate but not to the extent of, as we say in French, tripping on the flowers woven into the carpet.
Book reviewer biography: Pierre Madden is a zealous dilettante based in Montreal. He has been a linguist, a chemist, a purchasing coordinator, a production planner and a lawyer. His interest in Basic Income, he says, is personal. He sure could use it now!
by Tyler Prochazka | Jan 8, 2017 | Opinion
While many basic income advocates concentrate on shifting government policy, some in the tech world are taking the fight into their own hands.
Cyrptocurrencies have the potential to dramatically disrupt the government system of fiat issued currency. When new money is created, some cryptocurrencies are planning to distribute the dividend as a basic income to its members. This is a very exciting time because cryptocurrencies are completely separate from the government and the more it becomes mainstream, the more people are investing in it. Many investors are looking to comprar bitcoin (BTC) for their long-term investments because they can only see the prices of the cryptocurrency to increase. Many are interested in investing in it, and instead of jumping straight in they are rightly researching some useful tips from xCoins and other online sites on how to invest in it properly, successfully and safely.
However, despite this positive potential outcome people are still nervous about doing it all digitally and with their money, luckily now there are VPNs that can be put in place here that can keep traders’ privacy safe and secure if they so choose to do it. It’s not just Bitcoin that’s making big waves in the crypto industry. Reading up online resources about investing in cryptocurrencies could be a good place to start. Someone looking to buy Bitcoin and Ethereum could also look up a few great review of crypto exchanges on the internet.
Duniter (formerly known as uCoin) is helping to push this monetary revolution. Duniter would evenly distribute all of the money created, potentially even on a daily basis, to add up to 10 percent growth each year.
One of the lead developers of Duniter, Gaël, said he was inspired by the basic income after the financial crisis in 2008, when he realized something was wrong with the global economic system.
“We needed a system that would let people create without having to prove to the institutions, be it the banks, or the state, that what they were doing was useful,” Gaël said.
The full interview can be found below:
1. What is your involvement in Duniter? What is your background?
My name is Gaël and I’m known as “inso” in the Duniter project. I am the Lead Developer of Sakia, a desktop client for Duniter networks.
I am an engineer in Software and Systems. I have been working as part of the Duniter team in my free time for 3 years. At the beginning, I was building the only client existing on Duniter network, so that advanced users could see and test it for real. I gave cgeek (the founder of Duniter) some feedback about his developments and the API (a set of functionality for the developers) of the Duniter network. Our goal at this moment is to help more developers to contribute to the project, by testing and working with us.
Apart from the technical stuff, I communicate about the project as much as I can on Twitter and diaspora (inso@framasphere.org). I translate our French articles into English on our blog. I try to explain what we are doing and why : what are the problems with modern money systems (debt-money, crypto-currencies, etc.) and what we are trying to fix by developing Duniter.
2. What inspired you to get involved in this project ?
I grew up with the Internet and I have always been passionate about the decentralized aspect of it.
When the 2008 financial crisis hit the planet, I suddenly realized that something was inherently wrong in modern economics. I discovered that if banks disappeared with their debts, the common money we were using would disappear with them. The banking system was too important — “Too Big To Fail”. At the same time, the Universal Basic Income was starting to become a real topic on the social networks. Automation was going to replace a lot of manual jobs really fast, what is called “Disruption” today. We needed a system that would let people create without having to prove to the institutions, be it the banks, or the state, that what they were doing was useful. Because if the society was not agile enough to adapt, social crisis were going to hit soon or later.
This is where I discovered the Relative Theory of Money (Here in French or here for a basic English translation). This theory describes a money which is issued by every individuals, using a symmetric distribution in space and time. It means it is decentralized and growing regularly. There is no one who has the power of money issuance on others. It understands the fact that nobody can definitively say what is valuable, and so it is respectful to what humans want to do with their own life.
A first crypto-currency project began, called Open-UDC. But it was complicated and I did not understood exactly how it would work. This is were cgeek forked Open-UDC by creating what was called by then uCoin, now Duniter. He used technologies I could understand, and it was based on concepts which were proven to work (Web of Trust, Blockchains), so I was willing to work with him.
3. What is the goal of Duniter ?
The Duniter project wants to create a Libre Money, as defined by the Relative Theory of Money. A Libre Money is issued as a Universal Dividend, which is a percentage of the existing monetary mass, shared to all the money members. For a Libre Money to issue a valuable Universal Dividend, it will need a lot of users. We would like the first Libre Money to be issued by 1 million to 10 million users. So Duniter has to be easy enough to use and secure enough to be trusted.
4. How does Duniter work ?
The Duniter network is decentralized. It is using a blockchain to synchronize the money state across its nodes. As opposed to Bitcoin, there is no power race in Duniter. In Bitcoin, because of the CPU race, the power is given to the ones who own the more computing power. In Duniter, it is democratic; because every user is identified as a unique human, they can write in the blockchain in turns. Simply put, each node is associated to a member of the money. When a member writes data in the blockchain, he has to wait before being able to write again. This is what ensures that the blockchain does not end in the hand of a few users, and that it does not burn too much energy.
To identify users, Duniter makes the choice of a self-regulated system by its own members. This is the Web of Trust. Each member can certify new users. When a user receives enough certifications and is not too far away from the existing members in the web of trust, he becomes a member.
For example, if I certified cgeek and that cgeek certifies you, your distance from me is two steps. This distance is checked with all the members of the Web of trust, and if it is below a given limit, let’s say four or five, you join the web of trust and start to issue your own Universal Dividend. Simple as that!
5. How much of a basic income does Duniter include for each member ?
Duniter issues around 10 percent of new money each year. This new money is shared to all the members. The rhythm can be faster: for example, we can issue every day 0.026 percent of new money, and at the end of the year, it will be a growth of 10 percent.
Ten percent is not a number chosen randomly. It respects the symmetry in time. If a new user join the Duniter network in 35 years, he will start to issue the Universal Dividend at the same speed as we did before. Ten percent is calibrated so that in half a human life, 40 years, you create the same share of the monetary mass as every members did before. One should not be privileged and create a bigger share of money during his life just because he joined Duniter earlier or later.
6. What are the reasons Duniter is utilizing a basic income and how did the team first get introduced to the basic income concept?
I think most of the team discovered Basic Income before reading about the Relative Theory of Money. One of the biggest debate within basic income community is “how much should we give to individuals?”
The Relative Theory of Money demonstrate that to consider individuals equals and free, a money has to be issued symmetrically between individuals, in space and time. It means that it has to be issued by a Basic Income called Universal Dividend.
Yoland Bresson (an early advocate and participant in the Basic Income Earth Network), who wrote the preface of the Relative Theory of Money, is the author of the theory of “Time-Value”. Interesting enough, both theories, applied to the euro-zone, result in almost the same Universal Basic Income amount.
Another interesting thing is the Theorem of equivalence between a Libre Money and a Universal Basic Income. This demonstration states that a Universal Dividend, based on money issuance, is strictly equivalent to a Universal Basic Income based on a tax with a lower issuance rate of money. Basically, issuing 10 percent of new money each year is strictly the same as issuing three percent of new money and taxing seven percent of every accounts. But the Occam’s razor principle states that the simpler a system is, the better. The Universal Dividend is really simple: no taxation is required, no administration is necessary to check for the redistribution. It is only about issuing new money. And it is strictly equivalent to a Universal Basic Income! You can analyze on the website of cuckooland how it works (in french).
7. How many members does Duniter currently have and what is the utilization rate? What have the trends been so far?
Our current testing money is issued at the rhythm of 10 percent per day. This is huge because we do not want this money to take any value: we are just using it to test Duniter network. This money currently has 200 members. This is pretty good for a test. We have seen a growing interest for Duniter recently. In France we are doing events every six months to work on Duniter and find new contributors. More and more people are coming each time, so this is really encouraging.
We will start a new test money at the beginning of January, called “GTest”, and then the first real money, calibrated at 10 percent growth a year, will be started. We expect a lot of people to register at this time. For the first time in history, we will be able to create our own Universal Basic Income without having to wait for governments and banks to understand its importance!
by Kate McFarland | Jan 1, 2017 | News
The UK-based activist network Radical Assembly interviewed Barb Jacobson, coordinator of Basic Income UK and member of the board of Unconditional Basic Income Europe, about basic income and women’s liberation.
Jacobson discusses the history of the “wages for housework” movement, connecting it to the contemporary movement for unconditional basic income.
Listen to the podcast episode here:
Photo: Barb Jacobson at 2014 BIEN Congress; credit Enno Schmidt.
by Kate McFarland | Dec 24, 2016 | News
Catherine Clifford, senior entrepreneurship writer at CNBC, wrote the CNBC article announcing Elon Musk’s prediction that automation would make universal basic income (UBI) necessary. In a subsequent article, titled “Elon Musk says robots will push us to a universal basic income—here’s how it would work,” Clifford
In the article, Clifford portrays the automation of jobs as the main motivation for UBI, continuing to highlight Elon Musk’s remark that he’s “not sure what else one would do” but implement such a policy. (This focus on automation as the sole or main motivator is arguably misleading; many historically important arguments for UBI do not turn at all on worries about automation. Unquestionably, however, the threat of technological unemployment has recently been the driving force behind much of the media attention to UBI in the United States.)
Clifford goes on to note some highlights of the global UBI movement: the impending pilot in Finland, Basisinkomen 2018’s campaign for a basic income referendum in the Netherlands, and Switzerland’s vote on a basic income referendum earlier in 2016.
One passage in the article is especially noteworthy for BIEN: Clifford discusses the resolutions on the definition of ‘basic income’ made at BIEN’s 2016 Congress. In doing do so, she emphasizes that the definition of ‘basic income’ does not entail that basic income must be replacement for other programs and social services, and she point out that BIEN recommends that it not be viewed in this way–quoting BIEN co-chair Karl Widerquist as saying that UBI “is not ‘generally considered’ as a replacement for the rest of the social safety net”:
“Some see it primarily as a replacement. Others see it as a supplement, filling in the cracks. Some people who want it to be a replacement try to create the impression that it is generally considered to be so. But that’s not accurate.”
Reference
Catherine Clifford, “Elon Musk says robots will push us to a universal basic income—here’s how it would work,” CNBC, November 18, 2016.
Article reviewed by Ali Özgür Abalı.
Photo CC BY-ND 2.0 OnInnovation.
by Guest Contributor | Dec 19, 2016 | Opinion
What is a negative basic income?
“A basic income is a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement.” A negative basic income would be one where a periodic cash payment is unconditionally demanded from all on an individual basis, without means-testing or a work requirement. This is nothing but a per-head tax or a poll tax, a payment for existence, an equal amount taken from everyone, unconditionally.
The extreme unfairness is apparent. How can you take the same amount from the billionaire and the beggar? Not surprisingly, there have been very few pure poll taxes in history – most had a number of exclusions, especially for the poor. However, there is a different kind of per-head tax that is large, widespread, and right under our noses. This is when there is loss or diversion of the commons.
Let’s take a toy example to understand this. Imagine a tiny commons, 100 people who own a 1 kg slab of gold in common, inherited from the past. As they are worried about theft, they store it under the protection of the local deity. But it is a continual worry. The community decides to sell the gold, and to invest in a piece of land. They reason that at least the land can grow a crop, whereas the gold generates no income. As long as they maintain the fertility of the land, they can all share the crop. This would be the equivalent of a commons dividend or a cooperative dividend, essentially a Universal Basic Income for the community.
Now imagine that when they go to sell, they find the gold is simply stolen. Clearly it is a loss of 10 grams each (100 persons x 10 grams = 1,000 grams = 1 kg). This is nothing but a per-head imposition of the equivalent of 10 grams of gold. Since it is an inherited asset, the loss is suffered by all future generations as well. In a different sense, the loss is the opportunity to receive the commons dividend, the universal basic income in perpetuity.
We can extend this logic to diversion of either the capital (the value of the gold), or the income stream from the new asset (the land). If the government appropriates the value to finance infrastructure or health or education, it is still effectively financing these investments with a hidden per head tax.
This is even clearer in the instance of the fruit of the land and the commons dividend. If the government appropriates the entire crop, then it is identical to distributing a commons dividend as a basic income, and taxing it simultaneously to the exact same extent – the negative basic income.
This kind of underselling of the commons is widespread, particularly in minerals. To take a couple of examples, it has been estimated that the United Kingdom and Norway have extracted approximately equal amounts of oil from the North Sea. However, the United Kingdom received approximately GBP 400 billion less than Norway[1]. For a population of 64 million, this is a loss or a poll tax of GBP 6,250. Had this amount been saved, it could have financed a Citizen’s Dividend of GBP 250 in perpetuity, assuming a real return of 4%.
Another common problem is that the money received for the minerals is treated by the government as taxation revenue, not as the sale of the commons. Consequently, instead of creating a new asset, such as the land in the toy example, or more seriously, Future Generations Funds or Permanent Funds, the government simply spends the money as income. While this boosts the GDP figures, it is both the consumption of our inherited asset as well as the hidden imposition of a per head wealth tax. . Alaska only deposits 25% of its money from oil in to its Permanent Fund. The remaining 75% is treated as revenue in the state budget. This year, Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend was set at US$2,072. By extension, the remaining 75% that was spent through the budget could have financed an additional dividend of $6,216 per annum.
The Norway oil fund presently saves all receipts from minerals in the Norway Government Pension Fund. This is the single largest fund in the world, approximately USD 900 billion. However, instead of paying out a commons dividend or a Citizen’s Dividend, the money is appropriated into the budget. This is clearly equivalent to imposing a per head tax on all Norwegians. The 2016 budget estimates a transfer of NOK 208,994 million to the budget[2]. For a population of 5.084 million[3], that is a negative universal basic income of NOK 41,108, or approximately USD 4,863[4]. It is doubtful that any modern democracy can impose a per head tax of such a staggering amount.
The Goenchi Mati Movement, a people’s movement in Goa has adopted simple principles that they advocate for governing mining of the commons. In short, the principles are:
- We, the people of Goa, own the mineral in common. The state government is merely a trustee of natural resources for the people and especially future generations (Public Trust Doctrine).
- As we have inherited the minerals, we are simply custodians and must pass them on to future generations (Intergenerational Equity).
- Therefore, if we mine and we sell our mineral resources, we must ensure zero loss, ie. capture of the full economic rent (sale price minus cost of extraction, cost including reasonable profit for miner). Any loss is a loss to all of us and our future generations.
- All receipts from minerals must be saved in the Goenchi Mati Permanent Fund, as already implemented all over the globe. Like the minerals, the Permanent Fund will also be part of the commons. The Supreme Court has ordered the creation of a Permanent Fund for Goan iron ore and already Rs. 94 crores is deposited.
- Any real income (after inflation) from the Goenchi Mati Permanent Fund must only be distributed to all as a right of ownership, a Citizen’s Dividend. This is like the comunidade zonn, but paid to everyone.
We argue quite simply that any other structure would impose per head taxes, which is fundamentally regressive and obviously unfair. The principle of zero loss mining was clearly violated in the UK receiving GBP 400 billion less than Norway. The principle of saving all receipts from minerals is widely violated, largely due to the way governments account and report for this – windfall revenues instead of it being a capital receipt. And where permanent funds do exist, in most cases the government appropriates the income instead of distributing it as a commons dividend.
This problem is not confined to minerals. All over the world, the commons are being destroyed at a rapid rate. For example, the “Mickey Mouse extension” of copyright is also nothing but a transfer from the commons to the private sector, an imposition of a negative basic income.
It is time that activists for basic income seriously hunt out instances of negative basic income. Simply eliminating them could achieve many of the desired benefits of basic income, with a moral argument in favour, rather than the uphill battle of helicopter money.
About the author: Rahul Basu
[1] Did the UK Miss Out on £400 Billion Worth of Oil Revenue?, David Manley & Keith Myers, Natural Resource Governance Institute, 5 October 2015
[2] https://www.statsbudsjettet.no/Upload/Statsbudsjett_2016/dokumenter/pdf/budget2016.pdf
[3] https://www.google.co.in/search?q=population+of+norway&oq=population+of+no
[4] Google. 1 NOK = 0.12 USD, 41,108 NOK = 4,863.76 USD. 13 Dec 2016, 12 noon GMT
