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Wow! If I read you right Ray, you are still
associating BI with work, whether for profit or not for profit. I can't go
there with you. It sounds a little too much like workfare, essentially
grabbing people by the scruff of the neck and making them do the shit work
nobody else wants to do in order to teach them "responsibility" and
"self-reliance". IMHO, a BI has to be based on need and if there is a
moral purpose behind it, it has to be that everyone has a stake or "entitlement"
in society that must be respected by society. How great is this
entitlement? I don't think that a liberal democracy could function
properly unless it recognized that everybody's entitlement is
equal.
If one were to look at this entitlement in terms of
income, which is only one of many ways, one might say that everybody should have
an income that provides for the basic needs of families, including needs
associated with education and health. For families that need that income,
whether their heads are working or not, that level of income should be provided
without any stigma and without grabbing people by the scruff of the neck in
order to teach them "self-reliance". Indeed, the underlying assumption has
to be that people are self-reliant, but they are not in a position to exercise
their self-reliance due to circumstances beyond their control. People who
do not need the income should have it available to them for the sake of
universality, but it should be withheld or clawed back via the tax
system.
What I've argued is that a variety of programs for the
poor that are currently operated by governments be cobbled together to form at
least part of a BI. What can happen when these programs are kept separate
and administered by separate bureaucracies using different rules is illustrated
by a tragic case which occurred here in Ontario recently. In the summer of
2001, a young woman, Kimberly Rogers, pregnant at the time, died in her
sweltering apartment while under house arrest. Rogers was convicted of fraud for
violating the rules of social assistance; she concurrently received both social
assistance and a student loan. I might add that Rogers has become
something of a cause celebre by advocates of better ways of treating
the poor, but she can't take any pleasure in that because she's dead.
Surely we can do better.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2003 12:41
PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] A Basic Income
as a form of Economic Governance
I want to thank you all for this excellent
discussion. For me, I prefer the Capitalist system's attitude
towards work. But I believe the limitation of for profit
only works for certain types of work that cannot be "free ridden"
on. i.e. the problem of "public goods" that are essential but are
incapable of profit or capitalization because they cannot be limited or the
limitation does not equal the cost of production.
"Productivity" is another problem concept for these essential
businesses.
If I may be allowed to take you on a little circle here
as we look at some of the key issues for me from the perspective of my own
work. Just a quick review so that we are on the same page.
The problem of for profit capitalism is one
of making expenses and then making enough to pay yourself and your
stockholders a profit. Capitalization means that you have to
guarantee some form of profit return in exchange for the seed money to make
things possible. Expensive projects that do not guarantee profit are
either lotteries, like Broadway Shows where you gamble on the show
"Hitting" the audience and then you make a big return on a long run or they
are stable ventures like industrial companies where your money is supposed to
be, but in the case of Enron etc. isn't always, safe. I realize
this is an artist's over-simplification. But I think that is
basically the story on capitalism. Everything else, hedge funds,
etc. are improvisations on the basic story for the purpose of some
"getting ahead" of others and winning a higher profit. But this
works only for certain segments of the society and it is extremely externally
motivated.
Certain activities are in the long run highly
"profitable" for a society but in the short run are too expensive to actually
accomplish privately. Space Programs for
example. In fact, if you look at most of the crucial
services of society like education, law enforcement, healthcare, religion, or
culture to apply the for profit motive amorally in a business sense
is to create a nightmare of chaos. Chaos is always creative
ultimately but inhuman and horrible in the short run. Such a
thought is Nazi like in its application. Consider if your doctor
chose to make you sick in order to heal you or to test a drug
without your permission or if your teacher deliberately created
problems that he knew he could fix (not uncommon in the voice teacher
world). Neither case is a substitute for real healing for
real education. Healing and Education are
expensive. More expensive than for-profit private work can
accomplish. They are not productive. They cannot be
mass produced and sold at a profit and they cannot be downsized and
succeed. Like the old economist joke that can't tolerate a flute
player in an orchestra not playing and still being
paid. There are other issues here than just
"profit."
Let's look closer at just one of these, for
example in education, you must have small classrooms and the possibility
of individualized instruction that shapes the material to the perceptual
profile of the student. A for profit school can work for
a time but truly outstanding students will eventually destroy it because they
are expensive to teach. Scale or mass machine type production is
essential for productivity. Outstanding students often don't
"fit." Not "fitting" costs more. Truly productive
schools can't tolerate outstanding disruptive students if they are to be
"profitable." That is the same problem with individuals that
pharmaceutical companies have with nutrition. In the case of
nutrition, people are bio-chemically individual and programs must be
individually developed for their nutritional needs. That too is
expensive.
In the case of education, people are perceptually
individual and the one size fits all education used today eliminates all but
the three Rs, all in the visual perceptual mode that is
inadequate to fit the needs of any one student who happens to
be primarily aural, kinesthetic, haptic, kinetic or chemical in their
perceptual dominance. The idea that all perceptual modes
need to be integrated to achieve a symmetrical synergy for maximum individual
efficiency is a foreign country to most educators who are still stuck in the
out of date European school models. Even home schooling is
preferable when the student is not primarily visually
dominant. The primary tools for education integration
of these perceptual universes is the Arts and yet this tool is both expensive
and exceedingly time consumming of teachers. Especially music
(aural) teachers have to be virtuosically trained not only in education but in
the performance of the artistic subject. Often students are
required to expend hours a day in extra supervised rehearsals with groups
outside of school just to keep up and then spend hours in individual practice
as well. Such a requirement is not in keeping with the scale
activities of science, math and reading which require much less time and are
more controllable with fewer teacher supervised hours. Also,
visual testing is not done in public and teachers are not submitted to
performance type criticism if a student fails a math test. If an
instrumental or choral ensemble performs poorly the teacher is blamed and the
entire community knows they failed.
I admit the exception to this in the graphic arts
and so the graphic arts have recieved more money while other arts are
cut. (check the US Dept of Ed. Stats on the net) Graphic arts
are visual and relate to the visual curriculum and individual
tests unlike dance, music, drama or home economics where the
chemical modes of taste and smell are buried in the current
curriculum.
As an aside, it doesn't seem to compute with this
society that the chemical mode might have anything to do with the rampant
obesity of the nation as a whole and that it could be an issue of educational
development. Because junk food is, like junk TV,
productive one only visually notices the effects of such monetary
success while ignoring the disease and chaos that comes about as a result in
the individual lives of people who aren't fortunate enough to have a
quick metabolism but who lunch daily at McDonald's.
Another proof of the tyranny of vision is found in what
constitutes "proof" itself. How many chemistry majors have
known what an "unknown chemical compound" was for a chemistry class, but
couldn't prove it in visual testing and therefore it wasn't
true? They knew what it was because of the smell and the
taste but they couldn't construct a visual formula to prove their own
body computer's conclusions.
I realize that I am on a "Shamanic" orgy of
connectedness here so I will get back to the "visually primary point" that
work is more complicated than capitalist for profit
economics can even imagine much less consider important.
Still I prefer the capitalist structure as a base to the
overt control of a socialist one. But, that being said I
believe that it has to be admitted that the capitalist structure as a system
is incapable of meeting the medical, educational, religious, legal and
cultural needs of a working society. Business should be business
but it should be clearly articulated what IS business i.e. profitable
and what is not. It should also be said that all work need not be
business but that everyone needs to eat and have money for the development of
their work.
In this realm I believe the Soviet system was superior
in their intelligent application of money to non-business
enterprises. If you passed the test for artistry you were
paid a stipend to create. It was acknowledged that some would
never do much more creating than they did under the external motivation
of force. These were admitted and paid basically
welfare. While the main group used the money to free
them to create. As a result, the artistic productivity of
the Soviet Union far outstripped anything the West had to offer. No
matter what the Master Art happened to be they developed far more product
and at a very sophisticated level than the US or the rest of the world in
spite of the KGB's interference. The one exception to this
was when the US government funded the European Arts programs
through non-communist socialism in order to compete with the Soviet Union
in the cold war. But that was not so in America. That
is why the Russian immigrants and international artists are
taking over much of our artistic institutions even though they are
bringing in a foreign culture and stripping American culture of its
identity. Eventually American children will
speak Russian music, not our own unless you are talking the simpler folk
forms. The Master forms and accents are
Russian. Instead of Charles Ives' July fourth
Masterpiece we are more comfortable with Tchaikovski's 1812 Russian overture
and its not just the cannons and the hymn. We know as much about
contemporary Russian composers on our concerts as we know about Ned
Rorem. American Masterworks are written but performed rarely and
in many times only once, as an oddity on concerts that preach a TNC musical
ideal which is as destructive of American identity as it is of other national
industries and even the concept of identity itself. What we
would resist as visual military conquest we welcome aurally because we are
aurally unsophisticated.
Keith may not like the EU but the EU is the political
version of the statelessness that is indicative of the Internationalist ideal
manifest in TNC corporations with no loyalty to anyone but their own little
Aristocrats and citizen stockholders.
So what does this mean for BI and for
Capitalism? I believe the answer lies in the concept
of balance and the human body. These are all just systems in
the body of society and each must be balanced, made symmetrical and efficient
so that society can achieve a geniune synergy reaching beyond the sum of all
of these parts and into what it means to be human. In order to do
that people need to eat, be healthy, have education, proper shelter and enough
money to work in capitalizing their work whether for profit or not for
profit. In each case people should be paid for their work
whether it fits in the for profit world or not.
As I believe it was Keith that mentioned, use often runs years behind
discovery. Under the for profit tyranny, that condemns
creators to poverty. That is a stupidity akin to blaming your eyes
for telling you that your face is dirty. A balance must be
achieved and a logical direction must be planned. Human wisdom
must be more important than just making money on something that is
non-renewable. I'm tired of these grazers who
never stay in one place long enough to become geniuses at
anything. But there must always be a place for sheep and cattle so
I guess I will just have to accept them. But such animals need
Shepherds or they die alone. They also need herding to
give them motivation. That is not my culture or my
ideal.
BI is a form of providing the pasture for
free. All pastures are free but if not sustained through
group activity decline and turn to desert. That is the lesson that
I would suggest about BI. People should be paid for work and
work should be created that sustains the society and given the status that all
renewable activities should have in such a limited environment where even the
energy is peaking at this time and we can't even ratify the ideal of not
smothering each other in industrial shit. Forgive the lack of
political correctness here Arthur. I was feeling
French for the moment.
Ray Evans Harrell
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2003 1:39 AM
Subject: [Futurework] A Basic Income as a for of
Economic Governance
> Hi Chris:
>
> Thank you for continuing this discussion with your usual intelligence
and
> extensive background.
>
> As with many things you and
I can spent time on defensive positions, attacks
> and riposte at
another's gaffes or lack of knowledge. It's fun but
>
pointless.
>
> It seems we have to ask some really basic
questions in terms of outcomes so
> that the issue of a Basic Income has
some context or as ol Marshal would
> say, some figure ground
relationships. So, lets see if we can build some
> background on
which we can place the Economic device called a Basic Income
>
on.
>
> Taking the present, nation state, capitalistic economic
system,
> globalization, robotation as ideas and forces that we
live in and under,
> the question becomes "What about human
beings?"
>
> Human beings, young, just born, adolescents, young
parents, mature workers,
> senior citizens - that is what it is all
about - what about them? What are
> they, families, individuals,
citizens, consumers, workers, men and women -
> what are they?
>
> Well, there are many things aren't they, but what might be
their
> commonalities no matter age, sex or state.
>
>
1. They all need to eat 3000 or some variant, calories a
day.
> 2. They all need protection from the
elements.
> 3. They all personal clothing
>
> And there we can stop - or we can go on:
>
>
4. They need governance.
> 5. They
need a system of laws and rules to live under.
> 6.
They need to feel physically secure
> 7. They need a
reliable and consistent economic system
>
> And we can go on from
their:
>
> 8. And they need a Constitution and
Bill of Rights
> 9. And they need education.
>
10 And they need meaningful work.
>
11 And they need a medical system for health.
>
> And as we go on defining the background finer and finer, we come to
choices
> and it these choices in response to the above needs, and many
more unnamed,
> that lead us to discussions of how to distribute goods
and services.
>
> One model, that I might suggest you and Keith
feel comfortable with is the
> basic existing model of capitalism as it
is practiced in America and Europe.
> Basically, income is distributed
through work and therefore we need more and
> more work for economies to
grow - without any stated goal of when growth
> shall be achieved.
And with this model, more and more people work harder
> and longer to
satisfy the goal of growth. But this model has been coming up
>
against the challenge that more and more work is being done by machines
and
> less and less human work is needed. Of course they are many
more challenges
> to this system but our area of focus is primarily the
redistribution of
> income so that human needs can be fulfilled.
Unfortunatly, within this
> system is a cruelty that states that if you
can't make it, then die. The
> worker is valuable, the non-worker
is not - he becomes an expense.
>
> Another Model is one in which
the needs of humans is considered a "right"
> and that model suggests
different ways of providing for all human beings
> needs. Of
course this model will have different answers to the problem. If
>
societies and the world, made it a priority that every human being
should
> have their needs satisfied as a basic acknowledgement of their
being, then
> means would be found to do this. It would demand
different solutions to
> current mindset.
>
> Now, without
writing a book and meaning this to only be an introduction to a
> way of
productively looking at our differences - which are differences of
>
perspective rather than truth. One solution for Model One is:
>
> I would do something else immediately on taking office. I would
ask
> Congress for a Full Employment Act, guaranteeing jobs to anyone
who
> is willing to work. We would give the private sector all
the
> opportunity to provide work, but where it fails to do so,
the
> government would become the employer of last resort. We would use
as
> a model the great social programs of the New Deal, when millions
of
> people were given jobs after the private sector had failed to do
so.
>
> As quoted by Brian Adams in a recent E Mail
>
> In Model Two, the model I am defending would be a Basic Income.
My argument
> for this is that there is no need for us, as human beings,
to continue to
> live at the level of lack of needs that is currently
present for three
> quarters of the world or more and that it is time
for our Nation States to
> redefine the Rights of Man to include the
right to a Basic Income. And it
> is up to countries with wealth
to show the way.
>
> It is not really a question of money.
It is a question of perspective.
> Once we can clarify a perspective,
then we can find the means to implement
> that vision. If I have
defined the problem correctly, I will be pleased.
> If not, I ask you
for your perspective at the level of the needs of human
> beings as the
background for your choice.
>
> Respectfully,
>
>
Thomas Lunde
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