What kind of Citizen’s Dividend from Goa mining would promote intergenerational justice?

What kind of Citizen’s Dividend from Goa mining would promote intergenerational justice?

by | Sep 23, 2020 | Opinion

Goa Foundation and the Goenchi Mati Movement advocate for a fair mining and intergenerational equity model defining it as commons, which you can read in this article and the other resources. They develop a vision of maintaining the wealth coming from selling inherited minerals to serve the broader community and not just the privileged few. One of their proposals is citizens’ dividend, which, they argue, will “create a strong bond between the citizen and their commons“. According to the calculation mentioned by the Research Director of Goa Foundation, Rahul Basu, every citizen in Goa would receive a commons dividend of thousand rupees a month if the fund were managed according to their proposals. I outline how this proposal may be enhanced by deepening the commons as a philosophy and governance model, which is already incorporated in their blueprint. Instead of focusing on just giving cash transfers, I would ask how the money can create sustainability. This is a big issue in the context of environmental disruption by short-term thinking. Wealth distribution can liberate from the incentives that poverty produces. You have the chance of posing and giving space to these important questions.

The answer may need a long time and a lot of expertise but the results may be not only aligned with but strengthen the basic tenets of intergenerational justice. This reflection is relevant to the broader debate on a UBI, citizen’s dividend, and accountability.

I develop in my writing a broader vision of UBI going beyond just cash transfers. I believe that the reform needs complementing measures to be added to create a real alternative to the current system. As part of this vision, I want to inspire creating organizational structures that will enable people to access high-quality basic services and be an alternative to the monopoly of the current market system which has many disruptive externalities. You can see examples of such an organization of work in my articles.

I propose to focus on building sustainability to maintain the health of the community and yield long term advantages for future generations.

Agriculture and correcting market food supply

It is difficult to free farmers from the vicious cycle of the past mistakes and the short-term planning that living in poverty imposes. Therefore, the best way to use resources is through giving subsidies and knowledge transfer to enable advanced low-tech agricultural methods such as permaculture, wild agriculture, or agro-forestry. The abundance in the food supply, which such a change of direction promises, can benefit various forms of organizing food distribution. This can have both forms of targeting farmers in particular as their practices pollute the environment around them as well as the broader community to enable the poor to produce their food in community gardens. One can think of a hybrid solution such as the one described in the case of a small farmer who invites consumers to participate in food production. Such methods require a long-term commitment and the resources to invest in developing soil but with time they will produce abundance that can be redistributed among citizens. It will also contribute to sustaining the natural resources in the region. With this kind of approach, you not only redistribute wealth (nutritional wealth) but multiply it.

The influences that have destroyed agriculture all over the world are taking a toll on India. A recent initiative by the government wants to foster organic agriculture but the project resembles the commercial, export-oriented type of intervention, which may not benefit the poor directly. How can you protect the soil from land grabbing and the interests of monopolies like fertilizer producers and other branches of the agricultural industry? The answer needs to mobilize various actors, also consumers.

While in India, I talked to a 19-year old woman who studies sociology and has all this critical thinking and discourse pouring out of her. At the same time, she eats at McDonald’s and thinks it is cool. Industrially processed food is particularly dangerous for India due to ineffective recycling and waste management. Cash transfers may add freedom but the one promised by the interests of the multinational companies at the cost of sustainable health and agriculture. 

Collective rather than individual approach

While I understand the argument against taxing citizens by transferring real income from the Permanent Fund to the government instead of giving individual dividends, this type of redistribution may also be as short-sighted as the extractive industry is. We can imagine a different approach, which is neither former nor the latter option but something in between. Definitely, the government has shown limits in governing resources, which calls for other than tax solutions. By building up robust structures and practices that will sustain collaboration capacities of the population, you are enabling the population to multiply rather than only consume resources. And this is something that benefits the entire population so the dividend has a universal effect in the long run.

Nowadays, there are many instances of technologies that create abundance, for example, solar energy; think of community solar stove in neighborhoods. Think of all sorts of circular economies that could change the mindset about how resources are used and produced. There is this magic thing about nature that once you work with (and not against) nature, including human nature, you can create abundance.

Instead of atomizing the resources, I propose to give them at collective disposal so that people can make collective investments to share resources: building collective kitchens, gardens, and other commons. Giving money into collective hands as opposed to just individual transfers, which you don’t know how people will end up spending and whether their spending will actually be good for the community and for their health, will produce cumulative results.

The problem with cash transfers is that if you just give money but there is no consciousness, no awareness of how to spend money in a sustainable way then the money will be just spent on things that actually contribute to the damage of the region and the future generations. Cash transfers are intermediated by mentality and culture. Therefore, it is important to build this intermediating fabric in the community. For example, how could you enable creating public spaces where self-organization happens, where connection happens, where people are brought back to responsible and sustainable consumption?

Culture and community

Another building block of creating sustainability is preserving culture and community. It is important to ask what organizations, what projects, what knowledge could preserve the indigenous and original Indian culture to protect it from erosion? The dying out of traditional cultures will lead to spreading addiction and other social dysfunctions. The question is how to prevent Western style of capitalism and cultural and relational poverty from imbuing your region. Investing in protecting the community is a form of creating a commons, which foster public health outside of the pharmacological approach and dependency on extractive industries.

If we look at the intergenerational equity in structural and cultural context, giving out cash transfers appears as delivering the region to the tyranny of near-sighted vision and forgoing a deep social change. Cash may enable and encourage consumption that fits well into the interests of hegemonic actors and ideologies. Before enabling consumption, we need to transform the underpinning culture and underpinning patterns which brought obesity and other health problems in the West.

Rahul Basu’s comment

We wholeheartedly agree that fostering communities is necessary. Our structure has been designed to deal with the serious issues that arise from the misgovernance of mineral extraction. One aspect particularly important for India is the large number of power hierarchies – class, caste & gender being just a few – and which permeate even traditionally self-governing villages. This enables politicians to develop winning coalitions using a divide and conquer strategy. The Citizen’s Dividend is essential to connect people to their mineral inheritance and the equality of the dividend prevents the division of the people.

While it is desirable that this income be pooled in ways that foster communities, we believe that this should be left open to the recipients of the dividend. Indeed, in the SEWA pilot of UBI in India, one group pooled their dividends and jointly took up fish cultivation. If on the other hand, this money is mandated for community creation through the legally recognized legal structures like villages / cities, we will neither have a community nor will we have resolved the misgovernance of the mineral inheritance.

***

You can find Katarzyna’s soon to be released book: “Imagine a Sane Society” 

Further publications on UBI by Katarzyna Gajewska:

1. interviewed by Tyler Prochazka (January 2016): Beyond temptation: Scholar discusses addiction and basic income – an interview: http://www.basicincome.org/news/2016/01/beyond-temptation-scholar-discusses-addiction-and-basic-income/

2. (September 2015): UBI and alcoholism (or other substance addictions): exploring the argument against UBI: http://basicincome.org.uk/2015/09/ubi-and-alcoholism-or-other-substance-addictions-exploring-the-argument-against-ubi/

3. (9 June 2017): UBI needs peers (part three): Reconquering work – inspiration from People’s Potato. URL: http://basicincome.org/news/2017/06/ubi-needs-peers-part-three-reconquering-work-inspiration-peoples-potato/ .

4. (10 April 2017): UBI needs peers (PT 2): Re-imagine work organization, basicincome.org, http://basicincome.org/news/2017/04/ubi-needs-peers-pt-2-re-imagine-work-organization/

5. (11 February 2017) UBI needs peers to control services of general interest (part one), http://basicincome.org/news/2017/02/ubi-needs-peers-control-services-general-interest-part-one/

6. (30 June 2014): There is such a thing as a free lunch: Montreal Students Commoning and Peering food services. P2P Foundation Blog, http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/there-is-such-a-thing-as-a-free-lunch-montreal-students-commoning-and-peering-food-services/2014/06/30

7. (16 May 2014) : UBI and Housing Problem, Basic Income UK, http://www.basicincome.org.uk/ubi_power_relations_and_housing_problems

A short history of BIEN

A short history of BIEN

by | Jul 26, 2020

The origins: an idea, a collective, a prize. In the Autumn of 1983, Paul-Marie Boulanger, Philippe Defeyt and Philippe Van Parijs, three young researchers attached to the departments of demography, economics and philosophy of the University of Louvain (Belgium) decided to set up a working group in order to explore the implications of an extremely simple, unconventional but attractive idea which Van Parijs had proposed to call, in a paper circulated in December 1982, “allocation universelle”. The group chose as a collective pseudonym Collectif Charles Fourier. Its main output was a special issue of the Brussels monthly La Revue nouvelle (April 1985). But along the way, it won a prize, with a provocative presentation of the idea and its putative consequences, in an essay competition on the future of work organised by the Brussels-based King Baudouin Foundation.

The first meeting. With the money it thus unexpectedly earned, the Collectif Charles Fourier decided to organise a meeting to which they would invite a number of people to whom the idea of an Unconditional Basic Income had, they gradually discovered, independently occurred. This meeting became the first international conference on Basic Income, convened by Philippe Van Parijs in the university town of Louvain-la-Neuve on 4-6 September 1986, with sixty participants individually invited. It turned out to be quite an extraordinary event, with many seemingly lonely fighters suddenly discovering a whole bunch of kin spirits. They included, among others, Gunnar Adler-Karlsson, Jan-Otto Andersson, Yoland Bresson, Paul de Beer, Alexander de Roo, Rosheen Callender, Nic Douben, Marie-Louise Duboin, Gérard Roland, Ian Gough, Pierre Jonckheere, Bill Jordan, Greetje Lubbi, Annie Miller, Edwin Morley-Fletcher, Claus Offe, Hermione Parker, Riccardo Petrella, David Purdy, Guy Standing, Robert van der Veen, Georg Vobruba and Tony Walter.

A network is born. At the final session of the conference, several participants expressed the wish that some more permanent association be created, with the task of publishing a regular newsletter and organising regular conferences. Guy Standing proposed calling this association Basic Income European Network, which gathered an easy consensus, since no one could beat the beauty of the corresponding acronym (BIEN, which means “good” in French and Spanish). Its purpose, later enshrined in its Statutes adopted in 1988, was formulated as follows: “BIEN aims to serve as a link between individuals and groups interested in Basic Income, i.e. an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement, and to foster informed discussion on this topic throughout Europe”. Peter Ashby (National Council for Voluntaty organisations), Claus Offe (then at the University of Bremen) and Guy Standing (then at the International Labour Organisation) became BIEN’s first chairpersons. Walter Van Trier (then at the University of Antwerp) became secretary, Alexander de Roo (then parliamentary assistant at the European Parliament) treasurer, and Philippe Van Parijs (University of Louvain) newsletter editor, subsequently combined with secretary. Ashby and Offe left as co-chairs in 1988 and were succeeded by Edwin Morley-Fletcher (1988-1998) and Ilona Ostner (1996-2004), jointly with Guy Standing (1986-2008).

Lifeline of the network: the newsletter. In the pre-internet era, the regular dispatching of a printed newsletter formed the very core of the existence of a network. From 1988 to July 2001, BIEN published a printed Newsletter that was sent to fee-paying members three times per year (36 issues). In order to facilitate the management of the subscriptions, the annual membership was replaced by a life membership formula in the Autumn of 1998, The emergence of electronic communication made it possible to intensify and widen the spreading of information. From January 2000 onwards, BIEN News flashes were sent several times per year to a large number of subscribers far beyond BIEN’s membership (138 issues between January 2000 and January 2020, when BIEN adopted a new style of Bulletin). In 1996, BIEN also inaugurated a website. Initially, it did little more than making newsletters and newsflashes available for downloading. It later grew rapidly to provide a wealth of information and resources on Basic Income and the Basic Income movement.

Congresses of growing scope. Starting with the founding conference, BIEN organized a congress every second year, with a growing and increasingly diverse set of participants:

  1. Louvain-la-Neuve, BE (UCLouvain, 4-6 September 1986, convenor: Philippe Van Parijs)
  2. Antwerp, BE (Universitaire Faculteiten St Ignatius, 22-24 September 1988, convenor: Walter Van Trier)
  3. Florence, IT (European University Institute, 19-20 September 1990, convenor: Edwin Morley-Fletcher)
  4. Paris, FR (Université de Paris-Val de Marne, 18-19 September 1992, convenors: Yoland Bresson & & Pierre Lavagne)
  5. London, UK (Goldsmith College, 8-10 September 1994, convenor: Richard Clements)
  6. Vienna, AT (United Nations Centre, 12-14 September 1996, convenors: Lieselotte Wohlgenannt, Michael Tepser & Bernd Marin)
  7. Amsterdam, NL (Universiteit van Amsterdam, 10-12 September 1998, convenors: Robert J. van der Veen, Loek Groot & Paul de Beer)
  8. Berlin, DE (Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin), 6-7 October 2000, convenor: Claus Offe)
  9. Geneva, CH (International Labour Office, 13-14 September 2002, convenor: Guy Standing)
  10. Barcelona, ES (Forum Universal de las Culturas, 19-20 September 2004, convenors: David Casassas & Jose Noguera)

Archive from the early days. Contributions to some of the congresses were published in a number of collective volumes:

  • Anne G. Miller ed. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Basic Income (Louvain-la-Neuve, September 1986). Antwerp: BIEN & London: BIRG, 1988.
  • Walter Van Trier ed. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Basic Income. (Antwerp, September 1988). Antwerp: BIEN & London: BIRG, 1990
  • Philippe Van Parijs ed., Arguing For Basic Income. Ethical Foundations for a Radical Reform. London & New York: Verso, 1992.
  • Robert J. van der Veen & Loek Groot eds., Basic Income on the Agenda. Policy Options and Political Feasibility, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2000.
  • Guy Standing, ed., Promoting Income Security as a Right. Europe and North America, London: Anthem Press, 2004.

Along with a great many other books, papers and reports on Basic Income from before the internet era, the papers presented at BIEN’s first few congresses are kept in BIEN’s Archive at UCLouvain’s Hoover Chair of Economic and Social Ethics, 3 Place Montesquieu, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.

From a European to a worldwide network. By 2004, 20% of the online subscribers and 25% of BIEN’s life members were from outside Europe. Pressure therefore increased to turn BIEN from a European into a worldwide network. The development of internet communication and of low-cost air travel made this option more realistic. And in January 2004, President Lula signed into law Senator Eduardo Suplicy’s proposal for a “basic citizenship income” for all Brazilians. This finished convincing the sceptics who thought that an Unconditional basic income could only make sense in European countries with a developed welfare state. At the September 2004 congress in Barcelona, BIEN’s executive committee proposed to change the name of the network from “Basic Income European Network” to “Basic Income Earth Network”. This proposal was adopted by BIEN’s General Assembly on 20 September 2004.

Structuring the movement. The newly elected committee undertook to modify and expand the statutes (until then no more than a single page), a new version of which was approved by the General Assembly in 2008. Owing to the growth of the network, the size of the executive committee had to increase, with the managing of the website gaining in importance. The committee of the expanded network was successively co-chaired or chaired by Guy Standing and Eduardo Suplicy (2004-2008), Ingrid van Niekerk (2008-2014), Karl Widerquist (2008-2017), Louise Haagh (2014-2020) and Sarath Davala (2020-). An Advisory Board that includes all past committee members is chaired by Philippe Van Parijs (2004-). In May 2016, the position of general manager was created, the incumbent of which is not elected by the General Assembly but appointed by the Executive Committee. Malcolm Torry has held this position since its creation. In 2016, the network was officialized as an international non-profit organization (AISBL) under Belgian law and two years later turned into a charitable incorporated organization (CIO) under British law, with its official seat moved from Brussels to London, and the statutes amended accordingly.

From biennial to annual congresses. As a result of becoming a worldwide network, BIEN started recognizing national networks outside Europe as affiliates and decided in 2004 to start alternating non-European and European locations for the congress. In 2016, given the increasing popularity of the idea of basic income across the world, it decided to start organizing a congress every year instead of every second year. The Basic Income Earth Network met in the following places:

  1. Capetown, ZA (University of Capetown, 3-4 November 2006, convenor: Ingrid van Niekerk)
  2. Dublin, IE (University College, Dublin, 21-22 June 2008, convenors: Sean Healy & Brigid Reynold)
  3. Sao Paulo, BR (Universidade de São Paulo, 30 June-2 July 2010, convenors: Eduardo Suplicy & Fabio Waltenberg)
  4. Ottobrunn, DE (Wolf-Ferrari Haus, 14-16 September 2012, convenor: Dorothee Schulte-Basta)
  5. Montreal, CA (MacGill University, 27-29 June 2014, convenors: Jurgen De Wispelaere & Daniel Weinstock)
  6. Seoul, KR (Sogang University, 7-9 July 2016, convenor: Hyosang Ahn)
  7. Lisbon, PT (Lisbon School of Economics, 26-27 September 2017, convenor: Roberto Merrill)
  8. Tampere, FI (University of Tampere, 24-26 July 2018, convenor: Jurgen De Wispelaere)
  9. Hyderabad, IN (NALSAR University, 23-26 August 2019, convenor: Sarath Davala)

[20. Brisbane, AU (University of Queensland, 28-30 September 2020, convenors: Troy Henderson & Greg Marston): postponed to 2022 because of the covid19 pandemic]

21. Glasgow, UK (Online, 18-21 August 2021, convenor: Mike Danson)

Providing enthusiasm, imagination, mutual understanding and tenacity keep feeding the worldwide basic income movement, this is only the beginning of BIEN’s history.

Philippe Van Parijs

In Solidarity with Black and Brown Americans: How UBI Offers a Path Forward

In Solidarity with Black and Brown Americans: How UBI Offers a Path Forward

by | Jun 4, 2020 | Opinion

We stand at a crossroads. Our great depression threatens to create a larger and more permanent underclass in the United States, as Congress loots the economic system for over $5 trillion in bailouts for the wealthy. Brave protestors and disaffected rioters have taken to the streets to speak truth to American white supremacy, even in the midst of a pandemic that threatens the lives of Black and working-class Americans the most.

George Floyd’s murder inspires unimaginable pain. We lost a soul, a neighbor, a friend, and for many—a brother—to the hands of injustice. Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Laquan McDonald, and Kalief Browder. Countless people have been stolen from their families. From every city in America. Because they were black. 

To say that Black Americans live in a state of terror at the hands of unjust policing, vigilantes, and the criminal justice system is an understatement. To many, it is a militarized occupation of the cities built by their labor, in this century, and the labor of their ancestors dating back almost four hundred years. 

If you name a disease in American society, whether it be heart attacks or COVID-19, poverty, or evictions, Black Americans are disproportionately brutalized. The underlying disease is white supremacy, in all its heinous and hidden forms. It hides in white systems. And it hides in white people’s hearts. The United States never achieved freedom for Black Americans. As Fredrick Douglass noted, as wage slavery and disenfranchisement replaced slavery after the Civil War, “Emancipation for the Negro was freedom to hunger, freedom to the winds and rains of heaven, freedom without roofs to cover their heads… it was freedom and famine at the same time.” 

Universal basic income, an unconditional payment to all rooted in the belief that everyone has a right to natural resources and the economic fruits of our labor, represents a way to make economic freedom a reality. For Black and brown Americans, it will help counter many of the innumerable barriers to voting: the cost of voting documents, forced relocation, the inability to take off work to vote, intergenerational nihilism, and the economic insecurity that makes it impossible for poor Americans to run for office themselves. Universal Basic Income posits that an individual’s right to life, particularly in a world scourged by a pandemic, should not depend on the profit-driven interest of a corporate employer. Its philosophy contends that the more conditions put on accessing economic relief, the harder it is for people to use and access it — as any person who has received welfare or applied for unemployment benefits will tell you.

In his address to Stanford in 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. famously said that riots “are the language of the unheard” for those denied suffrage or recourse through the political system. Less appreciated is what he said immediately after: “Now one of the answers it seems to me, is a guaranteed annual income, a guaranteed minimum income for all people, and for all families of our country.”

Rooting his philosophy in a politics of hope, King called on us to implement policies that fundamentally transform government. Because millions have taken to the streets, the elite finally listens in fear, making this transformation possible. Universal Basic Income is fundamental for restoring democracy, a social contract that lays the groundwork for peace and justice. We need this compromise more than ever as inequality reaches record levels, authoritarian regimes strip ordinary people of their rights, and the destruction of our planet continues unabated. With more climate and pandemic crises on the horizon, how long will it take elites to realize that this economic system threatens the rise of violent populism?

As authoritarianism reasserts itself in the  United States, Brazil, India, China, and Russia with mass surveillance and information warfare, the window for a peaceful resolution is fast departing. Now more than ever, Black and brown Americans and their allies have shown us that our only hope is taking action to demand our rights be protected. And we must be willing to risk our lives to ensure those rights are backed by transformational policies like Universal Basic Income.

Let us use this moment to demand comprehensive racial and economic justice for our nations. We owe George Floyd no less. 

 

Article By James Davis
Picture Creator: Jesse Costa
Picture Copyright: Jesse Costa/WBUR

Research index

by | Apr 21, 2020

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...