The topic of basic income has come up on the "Third Way" Economic Policy debate list at http://www.netnexus.org/debates/3wayecon/ I personally find the tone of that third way debate stuffy and unrewarding. But there is an argument there calculated to raise the hackles of Thomas Lunde, among others. The objection to a basic income scheme centres on the issue of "moral hazard", which is to say that basic income offers an incentive to people to be idle. My initial, gut reaction to that argument is "so what?" Under contemporary conditions idleness is a better social contribution than is frenzied marketing, which ultimately subtracts from net social welfare. But for the sake of argument, I'd like to worry the moral hazard problem a bit further. My gut reaction assumes a one-time-for-all-time basic income scheme and it further assumes that what people do with their time will have no bearing on the workings of the basic income scheme. What happens though, if we admit that some basic income recipients will use their freed time to lobby for a higher basic income and for preferences and privileges in the scheme that will favour "people like me"? One could imagine the basic income lobby becoming a voracious and insatiable one issue beast fueled by the slogan "more for me (and less for them)". In other words, the real moral hazard is not that people will become indolent but that they _won't_. But there's another twist. What I've outlined above could as easily be called "conflict of interest" as "moral hazard". The general attitude toward conflict of interest in high places these days is "nudge, nudge, wink, wink, y' know what I mean." Conflict of interest guidelines and legislation are fig leaves that, at best, merely caution politicians and public servants to try to be a little discrete in their self-serving activities. >From the philosophical perspective of free-market ideology, there is no such thing as _conflict_ of interest. Everyone pursues their private interest (through the market, of course, nudge, nudge, wink, wink) and that adds up to the public good. Abstractly, that position favours "downsizing" government -- curiously affecting only those operations of government that don't directly benefit the powerful interests in the marketplace. And, of course, as the Economist recently noted, government budgets have grown as a proportion of GDP under the avowedly "free market" regimes of the past 20 years. The point that I'm trying to make is that "moral hazard" is only a problem when it extends to the currently disenfranchised a 'right' that has come to be regarded by the elites as beneficent when it is theirs exclusively. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
