by Kate McFarland | Oct 27, 2016 | News
On November 23, BIEN co-founder and honorary co-president Professor Guy Standing (SOAS, University of London) will deliver the 14th annual Kilbrandon Lecture in Strathclyde, Scotland.
In his lecture, titled “Addressing the needs of children and young people in Scotland: The potential of a Basic Income”, Guy will discuss the impact of economic insecurity and inequality on child poverty in Scotland and argue that a universal basic income is an necessary element in an economic system that avoids these ills.
The lecture will be chaired by Jennifer Davidson, Director of the Centre for Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland. It will be followed by a drinks reception.
Initiated in 1999, the annual Kilbrandon Lecture honors the legacy of the judge Lord Kilbrandon, who chaired the committee whose report led to the formation of Scotland’s children’s hearings system in 1968. The lecture series receives support from the Scottish Government and University of Strathclyde.
Attendees must register online by November 11: ewds.strath.ac.uk/expo/KilbrandonLecture2016.aspx
On November 24, Guy will deliver a lecture on his new book, The Corruption of Capitalism, at the University of Strathclyde.
Photo CC BY 2.0 Catrin Austin
by Kate McFarland | Oct 4, 2016 | News
BIEN co-founder Guy Standing will be speaking on basic income and the precariat at Oktoberdans–a well-regarded contemporary dance festival held biennially in Norway–on October 25.
Held every two years, Norway’s Oktoberdans is an internationally-regarded contemporary dance festival. The eleventh Oktoberdans will be held in Bergen from October 20-29, 2016.
Oktoberdans incorporates occasional events falling outside the usual scope of dance and performance art. This year, in connection with the 500th anniversary of the publication of Thomas Moore’s Utopia, the festival will include a workshop called “Changing Utopia”, featuring six speakers over the course of three days (October 25-27).
A utopia is defined as a “non-place” and is itself impossible. Yet it is a concept most of us can relate to; the ultimate goal, something to strive for. Is it part of human nature to always long for the next, something better? Can this urge explain why we, as a species, have come to a point in our technological development where we are beginning to question if we are making the human workforce unnecessary?
Is it viable to argue that the discussion about what we want with our world has stopped? Is it possible to discuss a utopia for community and a utopia for the individual in the same breath? …
In this discursive program we will plunge fearlessly into the above-mentioned questions, hoping to generate new perspectives for artists, students, and a general audience attending Oktoberdans 2016.
The opening speaker on the first day will be economist Guy Standing, a co-founder and honorary co-president of BIEN. Standing will speak about the “precariat revolt” anticipated in his latest book, The Corruption of Capitalism. Specifically, he will explain what this revolt entails with respect to “reversing the trends of insecurity, inequality and the growth of the precariat.”
Rune Salomonsen, an organizer of the workshop, states that the organizers asked Standing to focus on his “politics of paradise”. Explaining the decision to invite a researcher and advocate of basic income, Salomonsen says,
The subject of basic income needs definitely a more frequent highlighting within the art field, but then again this subject is of universal importance, and this utopia as we now call it, has other important ingredients in addition to the basic income, it involves essential democratic structures.
Salomonsen mentions philosopher Jacques Rancière’s speech at the 2004 Summer Academy in Frankfurt as a precedent in which a thinker from outside the arts world delivered a presentation at major arts conference to great results. In this case, Rancière’s speech led to his book The Emancipated Spectator, which has become influential in both philosophy and the arts (especially performance art).
To enhance the dramaturgical elements of the presentation, the organizers have asked Standing to deliver his speech without printed notes and stand atop two Euro-pallets–creating a setting like a Speaker’s Corner.
Other speakers at Changing Utopia include Norwegian journalist Linn Stalsberg, Swiss artist Christophe Meierhans (who “showcased a complete political system” for a recent performance), and Wolfgang Heuer of the Institute for Political Science at the Free University of Berlin.
At the time of this writing, two speakers have yet to be announced (although they are specified to be “very exciting”).
BIT Teatergarasjen presents the Changing Utopia seminar in collaboration with House on Fire.
For more information, see the homepage of the 2016 Oktoberdans and the page for the Changing Utopia seminar.
Information, photo, and proofreading from Rune Salomonsen (Bit Teatergarasjen).
by Andre Coelho | Sep 18, 2016 | Opinion
(image credit to: The Economist)
IMF’s (International Monetary Fund) Deputy Director for Capacity Development Andrew Berg, Research Department Senior Economist (at IMF) Luis-Felipe Zanna and Edward Buffie, a Professor of Economics at Indiana University Bloomington, just published an article articulating an analysis revolving around technological development and its implications on society, particularly regarding labor, capital and (in)equality. At the end of the article they refer to basic income as a possible solution, in order to redistribute the excess capital brought by the computerization of production.
But what do we have here? A miracle conversion of hard-core capitalist economists into soft-hearted left-wing liberals? Can we, after all, turn lead into gold? No, of course not. What we have here is textbook capitalist economy, with a new ingredient: basic income.
So their logic goes like this: We have inequality, but that is fine. Inequality is merely a result of market forces; we can live with that because we belong to that fortunate group of people who have not experienced poverty and cannot imagine experiencing poverty. But there are a couple of challenges with too much inequality: people revolt and cannot buy all these wonderful things corporate capitalism churns out daily. You see, this humanity thing has one big problem: it is full of humans. And humans, unlike machines, have two amazing features, which these brilliant economists have just discovered: they tend to fight back if pressed too much and cannot survive without their basic needs met.
The reason for this sudden, latent, realization has to do with the one thing all capitalists share: they are not entirely human. They hold this strange belief that there’s nothing wrong with trying to extract more water from the well than the amount that exists there. It is like writing a three-thousand-page essay and drawing this sole conclusion: 1+1=3.
But back to the logic. So, inequality is tolerable, but not too much. The solution? Give these poor people a basic income and, all of a sudden, they stop being such bad loser crying babies and resume buying enough stuff to maintain this completely absurd system of domination, privilege and exploitation. Shut them up, so we can keep doing our thing without distraction. Note that I have not, until now, said a single thing about robots, computers or automation. Because at bottom it has nothing to do with that. With robots or not, the capitalist mind just wants to extract wealth. How they do it is irrelevant, or relevant only to the extent as it is efficient in doing so.
What these enlightened IMF economists, and possibly other IMF officials do not realize is that basic income is a complete game changer. It will allow people to say “no”, to enjoy enough freedom to completely turn the capitalist system on its head. And these people will start doing much more bizarre things, like volunteering for causes close to their heart, or starting their own businesses (refusing to be slaves to some capitalist boss), and enjoying more leisure time, and time to care for family and friends (go figure out why). Living out their own lives, for a change.
I predict that, after basic income is implemented, in part following up these economists’ recommendations, capitalism will hardly resemble its own shadow in 10 to 20 years. Society will barely recognize itself, when looking back at today’s world. Mark my words.
More information at:
Andrew Berg, Edward F. Bufie and Luis-Felipe Zanna, “Robots, Growth, and Inequality”, Finance & Development, vol. 53 nº3, September 2016
by Kate McFarland | Sep 16, 2016 | News
BIEN cofounder Philippe van Parijs (Professor at the Université catholique de Louvain) delivered a TEDx talk on basic income earlier in the year. A video of the talk is now available online.
Van Parijs’ talk, “The Instrument of Freedom”, was organized as part of a TEDx event called “Bits of Love”, held in Ghent, Belgium on June 18, 2016. The topics discussed at the event were not restricted to basic income or even political and economic issues. Titles and themes of other talks range from “Why We Don’t Need Oil for Plastics” to “How Farm Dust Protects from Allergies” to “My Secret Ingredient for Classical Musicians: Stage Presence” — and many more.
In his talk, which he frames as a critique of the goal of continuous growth, Van Parijs recounts the worries that led him to conceive of basic income as a better alternative to “capitalism as we know it”, and describes how basic income is an essential part of a society that delivers “real freedom for all”:
For more information about the surrounding TEDx event, see the “Bits of Love” page at the TEDxGhent website.
TEDx Talks, “The instrument of freedom | Philippe Van Parijs | TEDxGhent“, YouTube; uploaded August 18, 2016.
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod
Philippe van Parijs photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Bibliotheek Kortrijk
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by Kate McFarland | Sep 3, 2016 | News
The European Forum for New Ideas is a conference that convenes annually in Sopot, Poland, bringing together academics, politicians, entrepreneurs, workers, and others to discuss the direction of the European economy.
This year’s conference will take place from September 28-30 on the theme of “The Future of Work: Realities, Dreams and Delusions”:
The implications of serious challenges currently facing Europe are all reflected in the continent’s labour market. The influx of immigrants, resuscitating EU unity, the technological revolution and the automation of processes will have tangible consequences for every EU citizen who wants to have a good job, decent pay and a stable future. Companies also have to tackle specific questions. Where to recruit new workers? How to retain those already employed? Which business models will be imposed by the automation of work and the possibility of artificial intelligence?
Notably from the standpoint of the Basic Income Earth Network, Guy Standing–BIEN’s cofounder and honorary co-president–will be participating in two sessions on the economic implications of technological change, both of which will be held on Thursday, September 29.
At the first, a morning plenary session, Standing will be one of six panelists. He will be joined by the author Martin Ford, who has promoted basic income as a way to cope with the automation of labor, especially in his popular book The Rise of the Robots (as well as in a recent White House roundtable discussion). Other panelists include Michał Boni (Member of the European Parliament), Michel Khalaf (President of MetLife EMEA), Ade McCormack (digital strategist), and Elżbieta Rafalska (Minister of Family, Labour and Social Policy in Poland). Marek Tejchman, Editor-in-Chief of Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, will moderate the discussion, which seeks to answer such questions as “Is polarization and fragmentation of work along with its attendant rise in inequalities inevitable?” and “What does the future hold in store for us: the end of unemployment, but also the collapse of stable employment?”
Later in the day, Standing will deliver an introductory speech at a debate on the topic “Is a Flexible and Secure Labour Market a Utopia?” (although he is not a participant in the debate itself).
Guy Standing is a Research Professor at SOAS, University of London, well known for his research and writing about the precariat. His latest book, The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does not Pay, was published in July of this year.
The European Forum for New Ideas is organized by Polish Confederation Lewiatan, in association with BusinessEurope.
For more information, including complete schedules, see the page for “The Future of Work: Realities, Dreams and Delusions” at the website of the European Forum for New Ideas.
Article reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Image (Krzywy domek Sopot ul. Bohaterów Monte Cassino) CC BY-SA 3.0 Topory
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