Dear Brad:
As usual, your scholarship awes me and I am grateful for your responses and
the book references you quote. Let me try and stay on theme here using your
references. If in the Greek democracy, the highest ideal was not the vote
but the participation which culminated in the vote, because they valued a
society of their peers. Contrast to our society in which a number of
writers have postulated we are governed by an elite and the electorate on
the whole is considered the great unwashed and only consulted infrequently
via elections. (Which is manipulated by the most creative and best financed
people in our society acting in the capacity of spin doctors.)
This has led to a puzzle that others as well as myself have not found an
answer for and that is why the poor and disenfranchised cannot be enticed to
enter more fully into the political process. Could it be that they/we often
are made to feel that we are not peers? Let's face it, the poor, though not
yet a majority, certainly represent a major block of voters. But most of
them do not vote. Could it be the subliminal threat of whatever meagre
livelihood they have might be threatened or is it that they don't have the
time and resources to involve themselves?
Would a Basic Income provide the self esteem and the stress reduction (that
the poor constantly live under to deal with the basics of survival), that
would allow the poor to begin to invest in the body politic as equals rather
than second class citizens.
Respectfully,
Thomas Lunde
-----Original Message-----
From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Thomas Lunde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: Future Work <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Hi Kathy & Robert
&Chelsea & Bree <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Gregory Roche
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: February 22, 1998 3:06 PM
Subject: Re: FW - Some hard questions about a Basic Income 1
>Thomas Lunde wrote:
>>
>> Brad McCormick wrote:
>>
>> where as Marx wrote -- albeit about the
>> future instead of the past -- there is no longer the
>> government of men but only the administration of things...),
>> whereas we have devolved into aspiring
>> to freedom *of* enterprise, i.e., to make more money as
>> the summum bonum.
>
>Let me straighten out the bibliographical "gold" behind the
>"scrip[t]". Marx wrote about a future (what he called communism),
>in which the government of men would be replaced by the
>administration of things. Hannah Arendt, in _The Human Condition_
>wrote that, in the clasical Greek polis, there was no
>government in our sense, because the
>polis was a society of peers who
>jointly shaped their social world as a space of peer "speech
>and action" (my words: no leaders and no followers).
>For the ancient Greeks, "representative democracy" would
>have amounted to *an imitation of life*, in which the
>most persons were deprived of the most important thing
>in life: being a peer political actor.
>Arendt also pointed out the difference between the
>classical Greeks' valuing freedom *from* enterprise as the
>condition appropriate to man (oops!), in contrast to "our"
>idealization of the "animal laborans" and his (or her)
>drive to maximize their freedom *of* enterprise.
>
>>
>> Thomas
>>
>> What a lovely quote - thanks. One of the arguments to favour a Basic
>> Income would be that it would not be political. It would be an
>> administrative thing in which every citizen received a payment. You
>> would not have to be poor to qualify. You would not have to be
>> disabled. You would not have to be old. You would not have to have
>> only one parent. It would just be a transfer of wealth - in some way
>> - and it would be done without any criteria except citizenship and as
>> everyone is a citizen of someplace, everyone would be guaranteed the
>> funds for living their life.
>>
>> Marx is also prescient in noting that we have "devolved" into aspiring
>> to a "freedom of enterprise" as the major rationale for living. I am
>> searching for another rationale as compelling for providing a Basic
>> Income for everyone while still allowing those of enterprise to
>> achieve more. Can you tell me what that rationale is?
>
>The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that
>a kind of "bounded" marketplace might be worth a try.
>First, prohibit the renting of persons (no wage labor):
>if anybody works on your project, they work with you
>instead of "for" you (the "for" is telling there, in
>connection with the Kantian notion of every person as an
>end-in-themselves, rather than merely being-for-another's
>benefit).
>
>Second, remove all the important business of life from the
>vicissitudes of the market (your "Basic Income" would largely
>accomplish that. *Then* let those persons who wish to
>use their leisure to "make money" do so, under the watchful
>eye of the society of citizens, who would have the
>right at any time to intervene if this intrinsically
>irrational behavior got out of hand and ceased to be
>beneficial or at least innocuous to society.
>
>And, while we're at it, I would also outlaw "trade
>secrets". No use of *withholding knowledge* from others
>as a way to get one up on them.
>
>Some persons like to "go sailing" in their free time.
>Some like to study [I've just bought a wonderful looking
>book by Cornelius Castoriadis: _World in Fragments_!!!].
>Some may wish to be couch potatoes. OK. Let them all
>"be", and let the person with a passion for "enterprise"
>pusue his or her dream too, *so long as they don't hurt
>the others*!
>
>What is a good rationale for providing a basic
>income to all? So that we can approach closer to
>material instead of merely "formal" democracy, i.e./e.g.,
>to a condition in which, if persons go to a workplace,
>they do it because they want to rather than
>because they are intimidated with an "or else"
>(The "invisible hand" isn't really all that
>different, IMO, except in terms of difficulty
>in assigning responsibility...,
>from the more visible strong arm of
>personalized dictatorships...)....
>
>\brad mccormick
>
>--
> Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but
> Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world.
>
>Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>(914)238-0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
>-------------------------------------------------------
><!THINK [SGML]> Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
>
>
