-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Future Work <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: Thomas.Lunde <" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>"@dijkstra.uwaterloo.ca>
Date: September 2, 1998 4:05 AM
Subject: Re: Basic Income
>I refer to Thomas Lunde's proposals for a Basic Income.
>
>The idea of a basic income is appealing. Indeed, I have no objections to
>it in principle.
>
>But it won't work because it ignores one basic fact of human nature: we are
>essentially a tribal species, the product of millions of years of
evolution.
Thomas: I would argue that it is because we are essentially a family and
tribal species that it will work. When your total support for life is the
other 60 to 80 people in your tribe, you don't set up two or three as the
rich guys and make the rest exist at a poverty level. Tribes work because
of the Basic Income of sharing food, skills and supporting each other.
Capitalism and to a degree, the concept of democracy shift our tribal
instincts of cooperation into predatory instincts of "I'll take care of me
and screw the rest of the tribe."
>
>A basic income would work in a society of small governments because
>fairness and equality of transactions would operate visibly. Recipients
>would be seen to pay back their monetary incomes -- as much as they are
>able to do so -- by other forms of non-monetary help and service to the
>population paying the taxes. Malingerers could be readily identified and
>told to pull their weight or lose their basic income.
Thomas: The concepts of large governments grew out of the development of
nation states which, I believe could be argued developed out of the use of
energy. As Jay points out so continuously, our concepts of energy may be
going through a graphic re-evaluation as they collide with the reality that
we are soon at the bottom half of the Earth's fuel tank. (Combine this with
the results of energy use, global warming, soil depletion through industrial
age agri practices and a profit and loss model which disregards long term
thinking, the overuse of water polluted with chemicals and fertilizers and
you get the whole nasty paradigm.) The very concept of paying taxes, do not
exist in a tribal - familial society. This is an invention of larger forms
of government. As long as we wallow in these paradigms, then we will only
see certain kinds of solutions.
As far as your concepts that Malingerers should be told to pull their
weight, I would argue that many of them should be held up as saints for
refusing to participate in the madness around them. Read my article and you
will see that your basic assumptions are those of the "middle class" who
have accepted the "work ethic" as your religion. It's a shocking discovery
to consider that perhaps doing less is actually doing more.
>
>We cannot institute a basic income when taxes disappear into a distant
>central government maw and are then redistributed (after huge
>administrative expenses have been paid) to people we do not know and cannot
>observe -- and which, besides malingerers, also contain substantial numbers
>of confidence tricksters in their midst. (The situation is bad enough
>already and the welfare state cannot be sustained for a great deal longer.
>In the UK there are twice as many national insurance numbers as the total
>population -- and I cannot imagine that we are unusual in this respect.)
Thomas: Again I would point out that for many of the statements you make to
be true, you have to believe in the self interest view of humans. I choose
to believe that underneath that view exists a human who is compassionate,
inclined to sharing and supportive of others. However when you devise
economic and governmental systems totally out of alignment with a million
years of growth in tribal and family sharing, you end up with the ethics of
the Gulag as individuals follow their prime directive which is to survive.
Respectfully,
Thomas Lunde
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________________________________
>
>Keith Hudson,6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
>Tel:01225 312622/444881; Fax:01225 447727; E-mail:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>________________________________________________________________________
