January 12, 2020
The Universal Basic Income (UBI) is ‘The Reform of the Century’ because:
impacting directly on our survival-imperative psychology,
it foundationally assists in solving
all our socio-econo-environment (SEE) challenges
including,
counterintuitively,
at least, doubling our society’s prosperity.
That is, via investing in human capital, mutual respect, and efficiency, it produces a similar ‘magic pudding effect’
to that of the other 3
Universal Opportunity Infrastructure (UOI) cornerstones:
- Universal Liberal Democracy;
- Universal Education; and,
- Universal Healthcare.
This is dedicated to those most affected by the Australian bushfires…
Hi
The UBI is a prerequisite for solving our environmental catastrophes – i.e. it is impossible to solve our environmental challenges without a UBI – and what follows explains why…
As Greta Thunberg sails and rails and Australia is torched and scorched, suddenly, environmental awareness is universal.
Arguably, ‘mainstream environmental awareness’ (MEA) began in May 1985 when, as per the ‘crazy’ theory relating to chlorofluorocarbon and halon gases, which were, at that time, constituents of aerosol sprays and refrigerants, a massive hole in the ozone layer was discovered hovering above the Antarctic.
Since then, in very short thrift, MEA has graduated to:
- Massive ecosystem destruction including rainforest clearing;
- Extraordinary species extinction;
- Human population explosion;
- Plastics in the oceans, which even create plastic islands;
- Paradoxical, counterproductive and collapsed recycling systems;
- Polluted nutrient chains – food, water and air;
- Increasing potential for nuclear, chemical and biological holocaust; and,
- Climate change.
So, the mother nature of all environmental questions is, how can we best overcome these catastrophes?
The Individual-Society Interface
Societies – whether of bacteria or sentient-animals (such as humans) – are nature’s way of indirectly maximising the proportion of its individuals’ genes’ survival – i.e. to Maximise Individual ‘Survival/Reproduction’.
Thus, the Individual-Society Interface’s nexus is ‘the survival/reproduction-imperative’.
In humans, that nexus has a conscious psychological manifestation, which devolves to trust – trust in other individuals and/or trust in the societal-systems.
The mantra is: ‘no trust, no society’.
[In addition, the less trust and the more distrust, the more resultant environmental degradation as people are forced, in panic mode and with a scarcity mindset, to compensate by:
- Scampering roughshod to survive;
- Building personal ‘war-chests’, which use up excess resources;
- Seeking social-status through excess environment-damaging paid-work; and,
- Via concentrating on these matters, suppressing their concern for the environment such that it becomes a lower priority.]
And, in order to maximise trust, every individual must be sufficiently empowered such that they have the opportunity to survive and contribute to society.
Hence, trust is engendered via interactive base-level empowerment.
And, within ‘super-societies’ like ours– which are so large that people don’t necessarily know one another – collective behaviour is governed by:
- Societal systems; and,
- Individual psychological reactions to these systems.
So, given humanity is currently confronted by concurrently culminating socio-econo-environment (SEE) catastrophes, which are entirely due to a perpetual run of ‘own-goals’ – i.e. we have caused all of them – the error/s must be at the foundational societal-system level.
That is, with virtually everything going wrong at once and it being our fault, necessarily, it must be sub-optimal societal-systems that are triggering in us this non-optimal behaviour.
So, what is/are these sub-optimal societal-system/s?
The Western World’s Post-Industrial Revolution History
The Industrial Revolution (beginning c. 1760) was characterised by rural-based subsistence-farmers leaving their families, farms and communities to move to the booming cities to work as machinists.
[Over the last 4 decades, this has similarly occurred in China.]
The Industrial Revolution impacted ‘The Individual-Society Interface’ by dramatically reinforcing 3 structural shifts:
- The drift from communities where everyone knew each other to ‘societies of strangers’;
- Paid-work specialisation, which increased interdependence; and,
- Domestication such that the ability to live in the wild was lost.
Thus, paradoxically, trust was both far more difficult to generate and yet far more necessary.
Accordingly, trust had to be indirectly artificially manufactured.
Hence, in addition to security-focused governments and morality-based religions, which had begun appearing some 8000 years previous, there was also needed formalised opportunity systems, which citizens could both benefit from and, in so doing, increase their societal contribution.
That is, these societies needed Universal Opportunity Infrastructure (UOI) consisting of the 4 cornerstones:
- Universal Liberal Democracy – i.e. an interactive two-way say;
- Universal Education;
- Universal Healthcare; and,
- Universal Basic Income (UBI).
[I.e. in order for the maximisation of an individual’s societal-contribution, people need to be able to give input, be educated, be healthy and be fed, clothed and sheltered.]
While, ideally, the UOI should have been implemented during the second half of the 18th century, at that time, humanity had no Big Picture notion as to how its societies were changing let alone any concept of the Big Picture societal-systems required to appropriately adapt.
And, as a consequence of the UOI’s absence, nature’s trial-and-error evolution led humanity on the most scenic of scenic tours, which, including the rise and continuing fall-out from Communism, produced the most inordinate multi-faceted Unnecessary Suffering, which, far from dissipating, is still exponentiating.
Nevertheless, in most of the First World, via immense struggle including, in some instances, outright Civil War, we gained the first 3 cornerstones and, instead of the fourth, a sub-optimal UBI-substitute, which is coined here as, ‘Safety Net Income’ (SNI).
Safety Net Income (SNI)
In retrospect, The SNI began with minimum wages.
While, if a UBI had been implemented, enterprise-specific wage negotiations would rightfully still have occurred, there wouldn’t have arisen the need or request for an economy-wide minimum wage – i.e. a legitimate microeconomic phenomenon wouldn’t have become a macroeconomic distortion.
Then, since minimum wages only applied to those in paid-employment – i.e. they weren’t universal – this kick-started pressure for additional Band-Aiding (what we term, ‘Welfare’), which, over the generations, formed the SNI as it stands today.
That is, there was gradually added Aged Pensions, Disability Pensions, Unemployment Benefits, Student Allowances and a plethora of ever-changing child, family and other payments/subsidies.
Yet, in comparison to the UBI, the SNI has institutionalised immeasurable wastage, inefficiency, stress and mistakes, which include, but are by no means limited to, monstrous means-testing and administering bureaucracies such as Centrelink.
Most overarchingly of all, it does nothing for what modern society most needs – i.e. it does nothing to engender trust and base-level individual empowerment – on the contrary, doubly damagingly, it detracts from them.
And, as has been explained, distrust transmutes into environmental damage.
Okay…., but specifically, how is The UBI-absence and SNI-presence creating environmental destruction? And, why is the UBI replacement of the SNI no less than a prerequisite for solving our environmental catastrophes – i.e. why is it impossible to solve our environmental challenges without a UBI?
Personal Survival Income (PSI)
With UBI-absence, all individuals must first achieve their survival-imperative – i.e. their personal survival income (PSI).
[It’s similar to airplane masks – ‘fix yourself first before worrying about others’ – except it’s perpetual, operates in normalised non-emergency circumstances and is unnecessary.]
The paradox of a society is, while it exists only for the benefit of its constituents, the benefit is circular and indirect, which means, it is only by its constituents giving, that they receive; however, without the UBI, rather than prioritising how to give, people must first prioritise how to get – a disastrous paradigm.
Nevertheless, while still too many suffer falling through the gaps, the PSI may be achieved via:
- Inheritance;
- Paid-work;
- Entrepreneurialism;
- Private-sector charity;
- Welfare;
- Crime; and,
- Incarceration.
Given the first is only usually an option for the upper- and upper-middle-classes, of the remaining six, only paid-work and entrepreneurialism are, understandably, considered to be societally beneficial – i.e. in theory, they contribute to producing goods and services people desire and they also allow people to further contribute via taxation.
Accordingly, the latter four means of achieving PSI are punished, with both charity and welfare punished via stigma – i.e. disrespect or negative social-status – and welfare, additionally punished, by means-testing requirements and ‘mutual obligations’.
So, with most people not particularly entrepreneurial, the majority who have the temperament and skills such that their labour is worth $19.49 per hour (the minimum adult wage) to an existing appropriately close employer are corralled to fit into the paid-work category.
The Paid-Work Category
Paid-work is directly and indirectly, the greatest destroyer of the environment – i.e. resources are disproportionately used up both at work and via the income’s purchasing power (including preparing to work and travelling to work).
Nevertheless, instead of allowing the economy to be what it should be – i.e. ‘for the efficient production of goods and services we desire’ – with paid-work regarded as a kind of sacrosanct ascendance, there is enormous pressure on governments to create paid-jobs.
And, governments do this in two main ways – by using:
- Policy to stoke Demand, which signals to business to employ more people; and,
- The Public Service to soak up the otherwise unemployed in unnecessary jobs.
Both of these inefficiencies balloon paid-work, which, resulting in both misallocating and over-allocating resources, balloons environmental degradation.
In these ways, instead of maximising the efficient use of resources for the goods and services we desire, we have a policy of ‘jobs (paid-work) for jobs’ sake’.
Encouraging paid-work for the sake of it fits neatly with a whole host of increasingly challengeable cultural cues including:
- ‘The protestant work ethic’;
- ‘Life wasn’t meant to be easy’;
- ‘The best form of welfare is a job’;
- The paid-work social-club model;
- What about people who don’t want to (paid) work?;
- What about people who won’t get up in the morning?
- It will make people lazy;
- ‘Money for nothing’;
- ‘The devil makes work for idle hands’;
- ‘Money doesn’t grow on trees’;
- ‘If you don’t work, you cannot eat’; and,
- ‘The lazy beach bum’ and ‘dole-bludger’ narratives.
Accordingly, there is a massive unwarranted social-status premium on paid-work over unpaid work.
The Paid-Work Social-Status Premium
The paid-work social-status premium extrapolates onto money per se, which propels Consumerism, Materialism and Wealthism, which, in environmental (and social) terms, is disastrous.
Thus, there are vast proportions of people running around like chooks with their heads cut-off because they are either:
- Survivalists: Struggling to physically survive – i.e. against death; or,
- The Materialists: Attempting to keep up with the Joneses.
In the case of survivalists, the pressure often leads to mental ill-health, crime, escapism (including drug and alcohol abuse), risk-taking and general anti-social behaviour, which creates more unnecessary paid-work for others to fix or manage those issues – i.e. police, court-staff, other legal-professionals, jailers, health-professionals, car-repairers, house-and-office-repairers etc.
Certainly, under such pressure, even if they aren’t so understandably angry with society as to overtly reject that same society, they cannot spare widening their focus on to what is in society’s interest (including acting in the environment’s interest).
The UBI will pull the rug out from under all these environmental-destruction-driving attitudes as the calmer and more relaxed people are, the more they can prioritise the environment including considering how their behaviour affects the environment.
Moreover, while paid-work and entrepreneurialism have become viewed as synonymous with assisting society, we all know it often isn’t the best way an individual can societally contribute.
Specifically, the most important job in society is as an unpaid-carer.
Unpaid-Carers
In addition to taking care of oneself, many care for children, the elderly, the disabled, the sick and in support of paid-workers.
However, the paid-work social-status premium is distorting and decimating unpaid-caring.
That is, while unpaid-work vis-a-vis paid-work may vastly disproportionately help society – for example, compare the intergenerational benefit of a parent raising their children to that of a high-income marketing executive selling ice-cream or a lawyer who only has a job because UBI-absent pressures are causing domestic violence, divorce etc.
Increasingly, we have both parents whose first priority is their paid-work jobs – i.e. their career, their money and their social-status.
Consequently, many go to their paid-work and farm-out the caring of their own children (including infants) to strangers if they can afford it or to no one in particular if they can’t.
Nevertheless, where, in human society’s evolution, does this have precedence?
And, regarding those of our present bushfires that were deliberately lit, aren’t the disempowered and neglected likely to be disproportionately represented amongst the arsonists?
Of course, no matter the harmful social and environmental affects, in the short run, all this extra paid-work adds to both the employment figures and headline GDP so governments love it, which is one reason the UBI was not an issue for any political party at the May 2019 federal election.
Yet, the systemic manufacture of stress manifests in everything from mental illness to homelessness to poverty to domestic violence to inequality to environmental Armageddon.
The ultimate perpetual ‘own-goal’.
Conclusion
UBI-absence/SNI-presence has subtly yet dramatically skewed our priorities into non-optimal environmental outcomes.
However, it is by no means too late to implement a UBI.
And, doing so will minimise the ‘own-goals’ of wastage, inefficiency and general unnatural distortion, which will, at least, double our prosperity – as opposed to doubling GDP, which disingenuously counts inefficiencies and wastage as positives.
This will give us enormous options.
For example, we may decide to desist from mining/exporting coal and gas.
Lastly, it’s often said Australia should be a global leader on the environment – well, replacing the SNI with a UBI constitutes supreme global leadership.
Imagine, if Brazil or Indonesia saw the success of our UBI and then decided to implement it for themselves. Imagine the effects on subsistence farmers who, in order to survive, would no longer need to clear rainforest or have enormous families.
Imagine the effect in China, India, Africa, South America, The Middle East…
The UBI is the climate change+ environment-saving sustainable-development prerequisite because it impacts beneficially at the psychological survival-imperative level.
While, with the UBI, initially, environmental problems will still be significant such that they will still require enormous thought and effort, nevertheless, they will at last be manageable.
Thank you.
Best regards
Paul Ross
Founder, The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation
P.S. Imagine the direct benefit to those who have just lost their homes due to the Australian bushfires if they were receiving a UBI.