I have just had a nice conversation with Stanislas Jourdan from the Universal Basic Income ECI comittee. They have just launched a video clip, for which I provided Polish subtitles.
Now, I think the issue is interesting enough to put it here:
I am basically convinced that - on the commons paradigm basis - all members of community, by default, are equally entitled to the stream of benefits coming from shared resource pool. Be it a resource in terms of the commons, or a communal property - ‘same dog’, as we say in Polish.
The UBI seems to be a perfect sidekick for all our considerations regarding youth, (un)employment, (un)alienated work etc. etc.
It’s getting official now - registered ECI, which is probably the only worthy way to exercise citizen rights at large, deserves serious consideration - at least for the sake of respect to our fellow Europeans who spend their resources for the common good.
From the anarchopositivist perspective, the UBI case is an acid test for the state - if states can meet righteous demands of their citizens, there may still be some hope for them. If not - perhaps it’s finally time for restructurisation…
To highlight your point 2, Carlien launched a discussion on basic income in Edgeryders 1 – it seemed to trail off, as most people agreed the job paradigm is probably not credible but did not really go deep into the actual basic income idea. Later, I offered my own point of view on my blog: by giving people the freedom to think (instead of scrambling for subsistence), basic income feeds innovative processes and could be repackaged as innovation policy.
While i love the idea of increasing social freedom and reducing inequality, still have a really hard time understanding how it would work in practice and if it is feasible. Curious how this will unfold, 33 000 signatures so far… 260 days to go!
The goal of the Initiative isn’t to introduce UBI - just to make sopme countries consider it - and spend some resources on researching. Until now, no one provided valid analysis, what would be the outcome if we replace all/most social benefits in a certain country with a single payout (sot of tax-per-head reversed). The model would need to include at least the overall pool of money currently spent, distribution cost sevings vs. bigger unemployment among bureaucracy etc. etc.
Probably the analysis itself would not provide enough input for decision, which is the major political shift. But it could be helpful.
And wait, we are not talking about the huge money - just enogh, say, to spend like a month in the year on doing unpaid work, for example. How about that?
If you like the idea and want to help with the campaign, please be welcome! I am coordinating the campaign for France and the european coordination so please contact me if you want to get involved
I checked the latest stats on the website and it says 44500 signatures so far, to reach a million it would seem a lot of resources need to go into outreach and maybe some sort of lobbying? Is it important at this stage to have national or local institutions backing up the idea, collecting signatures, or are there limiting regulations in that respect? Are you guys working with (supportive) policy makers as advisors, at the extent to which they can get involved…? The reason is that the more effort put into communicating what basic income is the better the chances… Curious how this can be done in a way that doesnt put off those who wouldnt want their contributions to be redirected to the so called unconditional support, especially in countries where the rethoric of redistribution is nothing but politicized and can ruin the initiative if taken on board by political parties.
44k signatures is not so bad. At the same stage, the right to water initiative had a similar number of signatures. They now reached more than 1.5 million…
But figures apart, you are absolutely right: we have not worked enough yet in the direction you draw. The reason behind is because most of the basic income networks in Europe are still not organized enough, even though it’s a long-time idea that has kept spreading for decades now. Long-run basic income supportive organizations like the BIEN are not so much committed in direct activism, rather they just produce research and educational material. That’s an inheritage we have to deal with now.
Therefore, we don’t have yet strong support in the civil society and therefore very little financial means. However, we do have lots of supports from individuals working at high levels in our policy making institutions. We have to work better with them, just as you say. I am personally going to work from Brussels in the coming months to connect closely with our supporters inside the EU institutions and organize some sort of lobbying. Wish me luck!
Last bu not least i’d like to emphasize that our initiative really has triggered a lot of positive actions & cooperations. Just to name a few, we now have kickstarted a movement in Greece and Portugal. There was nothing few months ago… So even if we were not to collect enough signatures, what we are doing will never be a waste of time
Thanks for the insights, i think its good to see it spread, which i am indeed! and even suprised to see so many people i’m following online endorse BI, even if mainstream media is slower in catching up. Surely these things take time, and efforts to mobilize a continent wide population are expensive… so onwards we go.
