by Guest Contributor | 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.
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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
by Andre Coelho | Oct 27, 2018 | News
Guy Standing has just posted an article on the Great Transition Initiative website. Titled “The Precariat: Today’s Transformative Class?”, the essay describes social evolution in the last few centuries and present-day neoliberal “rentier economy”, which has created the conditions to the rise of a new social class for which Standing has named the “precariat”.
Guy Standing defends that it will be through this new “precariat” that profound changes to humanity’s social organization will come about. First, because by not knowing stable employment, it does not believe jobs are the answer to insecurity, like many politicians on the Left tend to think. Jobs are, in this framework, representatives of an already falling hierarchical way of organization, which he considers contrary to human nature. Ancient societies – ex.: Greeks – for all their problems and prejudices, valued much more leisure than work, and so, nowadays, would make more sense to pursue knowledge and meaning, rather than endless consumption.
For this to come about, however, a new economic system must flourish. One that recognizes ecological limits and insures basic security for all. A profound philosophical shift lies at the heart of this process, and that’s one that ceases to consider each person as a separate individual – who to have something must own it, depriving others from it – to another where interdependency and sharing are the utmost values. From there, Standing recalls that the Commons are shared prosperity between humans and should be strengthened as a way to reverse decades of neoliberal enclosure, commodification, privatization and colonization.
He then devises a general idea on how the Commons should generate revenue for redistribution among all people, in a similar process adopted by some Social Funds around the world (ex.: Norwegian Pension Fund Global, the Alaskan Permanent Fund). That revenue would be derived, then, by taxing all those exploring Commons resources, such as land, the atmosphere, the rivers and oceans, even intellectual work. Since the Commons are, in principle, shared equally by all the commoners, it only makes sense to redistribute the Social Funds setup this way as an equal share to all of them, unconditionally. That’s where basic income ste ps in, as a crucial and structural piece of social policy, within this new kind of social contract. This will, according to Guy Standing, provide basic security for all, strengthen social solidarity and shift work time and energy towards reproductive, sharing and resource-conserving activities (away from resource-depleting ones).
More information at:
Guy Standing, “The Precariat: Today’s Transformative Class?”, Great Transition Initiative, October 2018
by BIEN | Oct 19, 2017 | News
The Future We Need campaign was launched by the Goa Foundation (GF), mines, minerals & People (mm&P), Common Cause and the Goenchi Mati Movement (GMM). Dr. K.R. Rao Committee has been entrusted by the Ministry of Mines in order to draft the National Mineral Policy, due October 31st, 2017.
A letter has been made by the campaign as a draft statement on values, which can be found here.
BIEN has reported on Goa several times (Madhavan, 2017; Shanahan, 2017; McFarland, 2017; McFarland, 2016). The article invokes the Intergenerational Equity principles, or IE, which is the protection of the inheritance resources for future generations.
“In Goa, over an eight year period (2004-2012), 95% of the value of the minerals was lost. The per-head loss from recent “legal” lease renewals was Rs.10 lakhs,” the Director of the Goa Foundation, Claude Alvares, said, “Data from across the country for iron ore, coal, oil and gas shows a similar trend. Everyone is losing equally, while a few are becoming super-rich. This is looting economics, not trickle-down economics.”
The Future We Need proposes some principles for a National Mineral Policy which regards natural resources as the Commons, in such a way that people in general are entrusted as the natural custodians of these resources In this new agreement, the Commons shall be preserved, and if sold the income must be equally shared by all.
More information at:
Alvares, C, “Goa Foundation, mines, minerals & People, Common Cause and the Goenchi Mati Movement jointly launch The Future We Need Campaign”, Futurism, October 3rd 2017
Madhavan, M, “India: Goa Foundation provides recommendations to Expert Committee to push a Citizen’s Dividend out of mining fund”, BIEN, September 29th 2017
McFarland, K, “GOA, INDIA: Citizen’s Dividend promoters find support in Archbishop’s address”, BIEN, January 10th 2017
McFarland, K, “GOA, INDIA: Mining reform group releases Manifesto, calls for citizen’s dividend”, BIEN, November 26th 2016
Shanahan, G, “GOA, INDIA: Goenchi Mati Movement gains political support”, BIEN, February 8th 2017
Photo: Goa mines, CC BY 2.0 Abhisek Sarda
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
