At the World Economic Forum in January this year, four panelists were invited to talk about universal basic income (UBI): Professor Guy Standing (University of London), co-founder of BIEN and author of several books on UBI, Neelie Kroes, former minister in the Dutch Parliament, former EU commissioner, and current member of several boards, Amitabh Kant, CEO of the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog), and Professor Michael Sandel (Harvard University), author of “What Money Can’t Buy, the Moral Limits of Markets”.
According to Guy Standing, there has been much evidence gathered through foundational research on the feasibility, affordability and implications of UBI, but this research has been ignored for many years. Due to the realisation of the potential effects of automation, however, interest in UBI has recently increased. Automation is not Standing’s personal motivation though—he advocates for UBI for three main reasons:
It is a means of realising social justice in line with Thomas Paine, Henry George and others, who have claimed that public wealth is created over generations. Therefore, if private inheritance is permitted, we should also establish public inheritance as a social dividend of this public wealth.
It is a means of enhancing republican freedom: freedom from domination by figures of authority using their arbitrary power.
It is a means of providing people with basic security. It is not designed to eradicate poverty per se, but rather to address the issue of insecurity, which underlies the rise of populism we see today. It is known that mental health and mental development is improved by basic security.
Standing: “I wish people would look at the evidence rather than continue with their views. We have done pilots, covering thousands of people and most fundamentally we found that the emancipatory value of a basic income is greater than the money value.
It gives people a sense of control of their time, so that the values of work grow relative to the demands of labour. The values of learning and public participation grow, the values of citizenship are strengthened. We found evidence from UBI experiments showing that the values of altruism and tolerance are enhanced. At the moment, society is suffering from a deprivation of altruism and tolerance.”
When asked to explain the support for UBI from both left- and right-wing politicians, Kroes argues that the flexibility of the concept is a reason why there is an interest from both left- and right-wing political movements: it can either decrease or increase the role of the government, the level of the UBI can vary and there are a number of different ways to fund it.
As Kroes explains, the UBI could replace large parts of the existing welfare system and would require choices to be made in advance regarding which benefits would be cut. This specificity would make it more difficult to find support from politicians across the political spectrum, which is why Kroes suggests starting off with a more modest system that would more easily find political support and can be seen as a starting point.
“The least ideological arguments in favour of a UBI are coming from technical entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley at the moment”, Kroes continues, noting that “they are trying to defend their own future”.
Kant is asked to explain the attractions of a UBI from a governmental perspective. He explains that the huge rural employment guarantee scheme and the public distribution system in India are very inefficient, mostly due to corruption.
Furthermore, India is facing changes in the labour market, where low skill-low pay jobs are decreasingly necessary, while the demand for high skill-high pay jobs is increasing. This shift requires radical restructuring of the educational system to provide the right skills, Kant argues.
There are huge inequalities in India: one third of the population is living below the poverty line. These are the people that should be targeted with a UBI, and 1000 rupees per person per month would be affordable, says Kant. India also has a few specific advantages, he further argues. There is a huge infrastructure of biometric and mobile phone payment systems in the country. At the same time, India recently transformed its ‘black economy’ of almost 1 trillion US dollars (parallel to a 2 trillion US dollar formal economy) into a ‘white economy’. This resulted in a significant increase of government tax income, so there is enough money to potentially fund a UBI, Kant explains.
Kant suggests it would be best to provide people with a UBI in the form of an interest-free loan for a period of three years, ensuring the money is repaid and recycled so it can reach more people. Simultaneously investing in creating jobs on the back of domestic consumption would give this scheme a push.
In response to this, Standing argues that, “in our pilots in India, we found that people improved their nutrition, family health, schooling, schooling performance, and entrepreneurship. The consequence was that they were generating more income and lowering the public service costs, as they were healthier. I would be very wary about turning it into a loan, because a loan rewards the entrepreneurial and therefore would increase the inequality in the villages. Where there was a basic income, it didn’t sort out the potential winners from the losers, it increased community solidarity”.
Professor Sandel is asked to talk about the role of work and the importance of paid work. “We tend to think of work primarily as a source of income, but work is also a source of meaning, an identity. The debate about basic income forces us to debate about the social meaning of work,” he explains.
There are two basic arguments for a UBI that are fundamentally distinct, according to Sandel: the ethical argument, which suggests that one can still choose to work and contribute to society, and the compensatory argument (from Silicon Valley), which sends the message that one is compensated for accepting a world without work and contribution to society is no longer of value.
Standing responds to Sandel’s view: “We need to reconceptualise what we mean by work. I believe the technical revolution is actually creating more work. The only problem is that it is not being remunerated, so it is contributing to growing inequality. The reason why Silicon Valley types are worried is because they think income is going to the owners of the robots and the others are going to be without an income.”
“The affordability question is a very easy one to answer,” Standing replies to a question asked by the chair. “Somehow, with Quantitative Easing [QE], the US government managed to fund Quantitative Easing of 475 trillion dollars. If that money had been used to pay a basic income, every American household could have received 56,000 dollars. That is just one little example. But I strongly believe that we must frame basic income as paid from rentier capitalism and from rentierism. Because at the moment the corruption of capitalism about which I’ve written is primarily because the returns to property and intellectual property and the rentier incomes from natural resources are going to a tiny minority – and we need to be sharing that.”
Martin Sandbu last week offered a defence of universal basic income (UBI) in his Financial Times newsletter, Free Lunch. The article is part of a week-long series on automation and its economic effects.
In this piece, Sandbu addresses the question: “which policies can help those who face reduced demand for the labour they are used to providing when robots, automation and other technology come in?” He argues against protectionist policies and those responses that would, he claims, hinder the advance of automation, like a robot tax.
He then weighs UBI against a job guarantee, citing another Financial Times article by Diane Coyle favouring the latter. Agreeing with Coyle that jobs are valuable to individuals beyond the income they provide, Sandbu argues that a UBI would in fact fare better in the long term in ensuring access to employment:
“[T]he fact that UBI leaves job creation to the private sector means it can meet the goals of the job guarantee proponents better than the job guarantee itself. It is important to recognise that one function of UBI is to create demand for jobs that serve the UBI recipients themselves — because that’s what they will be spending their money on.”
Sandbu also recently spoke about UBI on the Financial Times’ podcast, Alphachat, and has written favourably about basic income in the past.
People’s Potato as an example of alternative work organization in the world of Unconditional Basic Income (UBI)
This is the second part of a series proposing a reform of public services to be included in the UBI reform package (first part here). This article presents a model of organizing production based on spontaneous work contribution to the commons so that citizens’ participation is facilitated. Re-organizing work in such a way so that people want to contribute, but without being forced by the necessity to earn a living, should become part of the UBI movement’s agenda.
Certainly, citizens living solely from UBI would need to contribute somehow to sustain support for UBI among working populations that may resent those not working. So far, no viable solutions have been proposed. An “approved” citizen contribution1or rewarding of such contributions2 implies wasting resources on monitoring, control3 or operating a system of remuneration, which would undermine the entire project and philosophy behind UBI. I propose an alternative to generating such unsatisfying administrative jobs (also known as “Bullshit Jobs” – a term coined by David Graeber) and intruding citizens. The state (“Partner State” – a concept developed by Michel Bauwens) should allocate instead resources and liberate spaces where commons are produced and work is a source of fulfillment.
In this article, I will elaborate on the elements of work organization that would turn making contribution attractive to citizens. A new logic of work organization, which could be generalized for the domain of services of public interest, will be exemplified with the case of a cooking collective, People’s Potato, distributing lunch meals for free at the Concordia University in Montréal. One can define the mode of operation in this collective as a peer production project. Access to the service is not conditional based on involvement as a volunteer. The production is financed by fee levies, but the meals are distributed for free and broadly accessible. One does not need to be a student at the Concordia or have paid the levy to receive a meal. The Annual General Meetings are accessible to the stakeholders and the public.4
In September 2014, I volunteered in the kitchen and interviewed several other volunteers, as well as a coordinator, to learn more about work organization at People’s Potato.
Contributing work without barriers
Members-employees of the worker cooperative that manages People’s Potato coordinate volunteers’ work. Since economic survival does not depend on the volunteers, this removes the pressure typically found in commercial gastronomy or other traditional employment systems. Volunteers join the work process spontaneously and are assigned a task. It is possible to join or leave at any moment. Preparing food is organized in a modular way so that coordinators can easily find something to do for a volunteer. Inclusion is also fostered by the fact that each participant can decide their degree of involvement. For example, one can choose whether to contribute to governance decisions or not.
This very flexible way of organizing work at People’s Potato generates more inclusion in work participation, opening it up to those who might not be able to work as an employee, nor find their place in worker cooperatives. Among volunteers, there are people with physical and mental handicaps. Part of People’s Potato’s anti-oppression policy is to create an environment of tolerance so that everyone can work at one’s own pace. Many volunteers appreciated the flexibility that is possible in the involvement. For example, one volunteer – a busy student – enjoyed the fact that the project can go on without her if she does not show up. She does not need to take on additional responsibility.
Organizational framework for p2p production in the physical world
Coordination is a crucial factor in sustaining spontaneous work. Cooking (and other services of general interest) requires time management, as well as obeying safety and hygiene regulations. In Montréal, past non-professional cooking collectives, which managed to peer produce food, were short-lived (see the article by Silvestro5). However, some chapters of the international movement Food Not Bombs are quite successful. Certainly, these non-professional initiatives help advancing the practice and attitude of non-conditionality, both as a principle for redistribution and as a way to organize work contribution.
A worker cooperative runs people’s Potato. The cooperative takes care of administration, logistics, and financial tasks. Coordinators who are members of a worker cooperative provide a framework for spontaneous work contribution. They decide what meals to prepare and guide the process of food preparation. They are also responsible for volunteers’ training, information events, and celebration parties.
Fulfilling a coordinator’s job at People’s Potato requires a higher level of social skill than in traditional employment settings. One of the most important factors attracting volunteers is the kindness of coordinators and the perception that contributing at People’s Potato is different from traditional employment. This is reflected in the way volunteers are addressed. Staff always asks whether one “feels like doing” a certain task. Volunteer contribution is not taken for granted. However, one of the long-term volunteers that I interviewed said they felt unappreciated, and another one wished for more warmth. The former said that People’s Potato’s staff tends to forget that the volunteers are not paid for their contribution.
Space and work process organization to accommodate volunteers
Because of the flexibility of volunteer involvement, the number of volunteers fluctuates during the day. Just to illustrate with an observation of one Monday: at 11 am there were 8 volunteers in the kitchen, at the noon – 14, at 12:40 – 29, at 13:30 – 13, and at 14 – three volunteers were working. Altogether, the kitchen space can accommodate up to 40 volunteers.
The only perk for volunteers is the opportunity to eat in the kitchen rather than wait in the line outside. Many interviewees complained that there is not much space for the volunteers to eat lunch together. However, some contribute very little and eat in the kitchen. Coordinators must find a balance between disciplining and building an atmosphere that does not feel like a workplace. Too many rules may deter people from volunteering, and too little may frustrate committed volunteers.
Since volunteers associate People’s Potato with having fun and meeting people, some volunteers may forget that it is a space for work. One of the coordinators complained that people were kissing each other in the kitchen. The staff is also worried about too many people coming to the kitchen during lunch distribution. Working as a coordinator has distinct challenges, due to the number and fluctuation of people involved in cooking. They manage stress by rotating tasks between the kitchen and the office.
Anti-Oppression work at People’s Potato
People’s Potato defines itself as a hate-free space to bring people together without judgment or discrimination. For one interviewee who belongs to a racial and gender identification minority, this aspect of People’s Potato was crucial in choosing involvement. This person trusts that coordinators would react in cases of oppressive behavior in the kitchen. This person has experienced harassment in similar jobs as an employee in commercial gastronomy.
As I reported in another article, coordinators have a role to play in sustaining a positive atmosphere:
“The involvement of a high number of volunteers may be a challenge at times. There are situations when staff need to intervene because of an oppressive behavior among volunteers: instances of verbal aggression, offences, discriminatory comments, etc. Some volunteers, when asked to stop oppressive behaviour, may become frustrated or become quiet. Sometimes this results in volunteers getting upset and leaving the kitchen, though there is an attempt to establish the anti-oppressive politics without rejecting community members who don’t understand it fully.”6
Creating spaces for a new paradigm in work organization
Sustaining work organization based on spontaneous contribution requires infrastructure, employment for coordinators, and developing skills for running this kind of project. The example of People’s Potato’s work organization helps us imagine how production of the commons could be organized. My interviewees suggested further measures that would make an involvement in spontaneous work more attractive:
– A board with the list of tasks to be done, so that one can easily find one’s project
– Concerts accompanying work
– A place to relax and lay down close to the working space (suggested by an older person suffering from back pain).
UBI may become a reality in the future, but the goal of creating a new vision of work and using human potential can already be pursued now.
The ideas expressed do not necessarily represent those of Basic Income Earth Network or Basic Income News.
About the author:
Katarzyna Gajewska is an independent scholar and a writer. She has a PhD in Political Science and has published on alternative economy and innovating the work organization since 2013. You can find her non-academic writing on such platforms as Occupy.com, P2P Foundation Blog, Basic Income UK, Bronislaw Magazine and LeftEast. For updates on her publications, you can check her Facebook page or send her an email: k.gajewska_commATzoho.com. If you would like to support her independent writing, please make a donation to the PayPal account at the same address!
Gajewska, Katarzyna (2014): Peer production and prosummerism as a model for the future organization of general interest services provision in developed countries: examples of food services collectives. World Future Review 6(1): 29-39.
Gajewska, Katarzyna (30 June 2014): There is such a thing as a free lunch: Montréal Students Commoning and Peering food services. P2P Foundation Blog, https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/there-is-such-a-thing-as-a-free-lunch-montreal-students-commoning-and-peering-food-services/2014/06/30
Endnotes
1 Anthony B. Atkinson, “The Case for a Participation Income,” Political Quarterly 27 (1 1996), 67-70; Anthony B. Atkinson, Poverty in Europe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998); Jeremy Rifkin, The End of Work, (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995).
2Colin C. Williams and Sara Nadin, “Beyond the market: The case for a citizen’s income,” Re-public: re-imagining democracy, November 23, 2010, URL to article: https://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=3070.
3 Brian Barry, “UBI and the Work Ethic,” in What’s Wrong with a Free Lunch? Ed. Philippe van Parijs (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001). Bill Jordan, The New Politics of Welfare: social justice in a global context (London: Sage, 1998); Bill Jordan, “Efficiency, Justice and the Obligations of Citizenship,” in Social Policy in Transition: Anglo-German Perspectives in the New European Community, (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1994, pp. 109-113); Jurgen DeWispelaere and Lindsay Stirton, “The Public Administration Case Against Participation Income,” Social Service Review 81 (3 2007): 523-549; Jurgen DeWispelaere and Lindsay Stirton, “A Disarmingly Simple Idea? Practical Bottlenecks in Implementing a Universal Basic Income,” International Social Security Review 65 (April-June 2012): 103–121.
4Gajewska, Katarzyna (2014): Peer production and prosummerism as a model for the future organization of general interest services provision in developed countries: examples of food services collectives. World Future Review 6(1): 29-39. Gajewska, Katarzyna (30 June 2014): There is such a thing as a free lunch: Montréal Students Commoning and Peering food services. P2P Foundation Blog, https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/there-is-such-a-thing-as-a-free-lunch-montreal-students-commoning-and-peering-food-services/2014/06/30
5Silvestro, Marco (2007): Politisation du quotidien et récupération alimentaire a l’ère de la bouffe-minute, Possibles 32(1-2).
6Gajewska, Katarzyna (30 June 2014): There is such a thing as a free lunch: Montréal Students Commoning and Peering food services. P2P Foundation Blog, https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/there-is-such-a-thing-as-a-free-lunch-montreal-students-commoning-and-peering-food-services/2014/06/30
Matthew Dimick, Associate Professor of Law at University at Buffalo, has written a new article for the Indiana Law Review in which he compares the promises of basic income to those of working-time regulation, presenting a case to prefer the latter.
According to Dimick, the potential benefits of working-time regulation outweigh those of basic income, in large part because they would be shared more equitably throughout the population. For example, on Dimick’s assessment, a basic income would not allow the majority of people to increase their leisure time (a benefit he sees as largely confined those who “earn subsistence-level incomes or lower” and thus “would have either the option not to work or the bargaining power to secure a more favorable work-leisure trade-off with employers”); working-time regulation, in contrast, would increase leisure time for middle- and even upper-class workers as well. Additionally, Dimick argues that working-time regulation could allow not only leisure but also jobs to be more widely available and equitably distributed — whereas a basic income would deepen the divide between the working and non-working populations.
And working-time regulation might have other positive effects. For instance, due to the across-the-board increase in leisure time, Dimick contends that the policy would likely result in decreased consumption, while a basic income might spur additional consumption — leading to a preference for the former from an ecological viewpoint.
Further, because working-time regulation is a less radical departure from current policies — and, in particular, does not aim to sever benefits from work — it is much better positioned to gain popular and political support.
Dimick notes that basic income might do more than working-time regulation alone to “transform the workplace” (e.g. by giving more bargaining power to employees themselves) but that, with respect to this goal, working-time regulation should be conceived as part of a larger set of legislative reforms.
Matthew Dimick’s current areas of research include labor and employment law, tax and welfare policies, and income inequality. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he studied organized labor under Erik Olin Wright and Ivan Ermakoff, and a JD from Cornell Law School.
The MIT Tech Conference, an annual event hosted by the MIT Sloan Tech Club at the MIT Media Lab, took place on Saturday, February 18th this year. TechTarget reports an impassioned exchange regarding basic income that occurred at the conclusion of a panel on the current state of robot technologies. Universal basic income was “largely seen as the best answer to taking care of a displaced workforce,” though the challenges of such proposals were also addressed.
This discussion of basic income arose from points made regarding the rise of automation and the associated predicted loss of jobs:
“To be sure, embracing and adopting technology has always been a competitive advantage. Horses, for example, used to be a major force by which work got done; they labored alongside humans to plow fields and deliver goods, but they were sidelined by advances from the second industrial revolution.
“Liam Paull, research scientist in the distributed robotics lab at MIT’s CSAIL and the panel moderator, asked panelists if robotics will present a scenario where humans are the horses? The comparison was crude, but the point was clear: When robots perform factory jobs or drive trucks better than humans, those careers disappear forever.”
Points raised over the course of this discussion, reported by TechTarget, include the following: that new, unforeseen jobs may emerge when existing jobs become obsolete; that automation risks exacerbating inequality both within the US and around the world; and that more evidence is necessary before solid policy recommendations can be made.
