Livable4All

“Just Doing My Job” Blinkers We urgently need a...

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:23:00 -0400

“Just Doing My Job” Blinkers

We urgently need a livable income (basic income, guaranteed livable income, citizen’s dividend) for everyone because an economy reliant on contrived scarcity, poverty, and massive waste is an economy that creates desperation, fear, and conflict.

In her book Selling the Work Ethic, Sharon Beder states:

“Following the Second World War, the United Nations, in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, included the guarantee of protection and security in the event of unemployment (articles 23 and 25). This was in large part a response to the belief that the rise of Hitler in Germany and of extreme political movements in general had been facilitated by the presence of widespread unemployment and disaffection.” —Sharon Beder, Selling the Work Ethic, 2000

And from the book: What we knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and everyday life in Nazi Germany, an oral history, 2005, Eric A. Johnson, Karl-Heinz Reuband:

“What do you think contributed to Hitler’s later success? Above all, it was the huge unemployment… once Hitler came to power, it was wonderful. Everybody had a job and there weren’t any more unemployed people. They were happy to have a job…” Ruth Hildebrand, pg. 191

“There had been 8-9 million unemployed people and that was all done away with quickly. They were all called up for the Reich Labor Service. Everybody was busy. Nobody was unemployed anymore. People who had gone hungry found work. But nobody had thought this would lead to war…. The people were at work. It was all a lot of fun.” Ernst Walters Pg. 206

“…the population in Germany at this time was basically impoverished. The unemployment was alarming. For us, as self-employed entrepreneurs, the situation was also very difficult. But, when you promise someone he will get economic growth, a reduction in unemployment, and things like that, he is easily inclined to give in to these temptations.” Hans Ruprecht, Pg. 238

Without choosing a universal livable income we may be choosing a trajectory to a permanent war-misery-illness economy (crapitalism) which not only destroys people but other living creatures AND our natural world which is the basis for all health and life. Read more: http://www.livableincome.org/agliroof.htm

anonymissexpress: RT @BruceWayneAnon: The Poorest Continent...

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:50:02 -0400

anonymissexpress:

RT @BruceWayneAnon: The Poorest Continent They Said …

Canada’s rediscovered 1970s successful social justice...

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 20:23:57 -0500

Canada’s rediscovered 1970s successful social justice experiment - The Manitoba Mincome. A December 2012 talk in Vancouver by Evelyn Forget on guaranteed income and the positive outcomes of the 1970s pilot project - The Manitoba Mincome.

Uncloaking and Spotlighting Emotion Work (and other types of...

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 21:47:00 -0500

Uncloaking and Spotlighting Emotion Work (and other types of invisible work)

by C.A. L’Hirondelle Dec.23 2012

Because many people respond to the idea of a universal livable income* by saying “but people won’t work!”, it may be important to talk about different aspects of human activities and whether we regard them as having value and whether we need to convey their value by labelling them as work.

*(aka basic income, citizen’s income, guaranteed livable income, guaranteed annual income)

One type of work that is almost invisible because it is so dominated and eclipsed by the mythology of ‘hard work’ is ‘emotion work’ (or ‘emotional labour’).

This examination of emotion work waw prompted by a twitter discussion with (KV) who recently had the intense experience of providing care to an elderly woman with a terminal illness.

KV writes: “ ‘Hard work’ (manual work, but medicine or gardening too) where the work consists in utilizing stuff to produce stuff by means of body motions, inherits the glamour / gravitas of body. ‘Hard work’ can be theoretical work too, labour involving mind, expertise (the scientist), but is often ridiculed as nerdie, out-of-touch-w/-reality. Without the body involved, the ‘hard work’ seems invisible & thus not that real. But as it has consequences in the world, it counts as real.”

For a funny example of ‘hard thinking work’, see clip (start 0.30) from Big Bang Theory.

Consider these types of activities and how they are regarded (or not) as work:

Caring for our young. If this work didn’t happen there would be no humans. How well it gets done and the priority it is given by society (how many resources are devoted to it) also determines the future well-being (or not) of our society.

Caring for others. This takes many forms, both paid and unpaid. But in general because this work is predominantly done for free as part of the non-waged economy (by kin and community), there is often difficulty to demonstrate its value (e.g. the low pay of day care workers) because ‘value’ today is measured by monetary exchange. “Did you get paid for that?” is often the yardstick used to determine the value of particular activities. (Note: Because of the joy that the arts provide to many people, artists should be seen as ‘caring for others’, as should activists, volunteers and environmentalists.)

Service sector work: Many service jobs require emotion work. For example, servers in restaurants are expected to smile and be cheerful regardless of their actual emotional state - priority must be given to the customer’s happiness. This is not to say people are never genuinely happy at their jobs; but emotional states are not set in stone, so if one’s emotional state is troubled, it takes emotion work to put that aside and convincingly act the part of the cheerful servant.

Tendering Work: Defined by KV as “the type of caregiving labour that is mostly non-manual. The manual part of this work is a vehicle to provide and exchange attention, appreciation, respect, love — all those things on the soul level that nourish us.”

KV: The quality of the care depends on the quality of the relation between caregiver and care -receiver. Often this relation entails mutuality: thanking, smiles and stories are given in return for decent and kind tendering work. Tendering work is different from the emotional work of service workers. This is due to a) the length of time that is involved (customer short-term, caregiving long-term); and b) visbility vs. invisbility of the things exchanged. Service workers usually provide ‘things’ like food or other products in addition to providing a happy experience for the customer. Tendering work involves listening, asking, noticing and the longer the duration of the mutual relation the more invisible the work gets. Sometimes service workers raise the quality of the relationship with the customer to a ‘Tendering Work’ level (e.g. having longer chats with old customers) so that the merchandise purchased becomes less important than the emotional connection.

Care for Self: The work of providing care for one’s self can be especially important for both caregivers (or they won’t be able to provide good care for others) and for people with visible / invisible health problems or disabilities. For many people with health challenges, trying to stay as well as possible is a full time job. But self-care is rarely recognized as important work.

Neverdone Work: This is work that only becomes visible when it is not done. For example, if someone keeps home and kitchen tidy, no one sees that things have been out of place and put back. This work is repetitive and after the work is done, it looks like nothing happened. Paid service work can also be in this category.

Pregnancy and Birth: This is very physical and visible work but because it is seen as being commonplace, it becomes almost invisible. And in a scarcity model view of the world, a woman giving birth is seen by many as a negative not a positive for society, even though the scarcity model was created for political purposes. Read more on this here.

Conclusion: It is artificial to divide human activities into ‘work’ and ‘non-work’. However, this seems the only way to put the spotlight on activities that are both invaluable and invisible. As opposed to ‘hard work’ they might be called ‘soft work’ or ‘heart work’ but likely these mushy ‘emotional’ terms would do nothing to change how little they are regarded by society. Not when the yardstick for valuing everything is how much cash can be exchanged for it.

And the economic theory goes that this is the only way to determine value; however, if all these supposedly non-valuable activities were to stop, the entire economy would also come to a halt because the visible economy relies totally on free or low-paid invisible work to be done first.

But as Robley George has pointed out in Socio-Economic Democracy, with a universal livable income, there would be no such thing as unpaid work. We’d then be able to give current artificial definitions about work the boot out the front door.

This is the route we humans can take if we wish to end the destructive (and stupid) practice of rewarding and punishing human activity solely through measuring short term profit while ignoring long term consequences to our health, social relationships, our natural environment, and other living creatures.

Thoughts and comments welcome. Click on “Ask me anything” on top right of this page.

What's in a name: Livable or Basic Income or...?

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 14:43:00 -0400

by C.A. L’Hirondelle

(Note: this is a draft version posted here for comments. See final article at livableincome.org )

Now that the word ‘basic’ is being used as an insult, can we stop calling it “basic income”?

From the Urban Dictionary:

“Likened to children, a ‘basic’ is a term used to describe someone with attributes of idiocy, foolishness and child-like behaviour. A ‘basic’ commonly has little to no intelligence”

“A waste of time, energy, or money. The opposite of fun, intrigue, and justice.”

“Something that is uninteresting, vapid, boring, or uncool.”

From Twitter

Very glad I’m not #basic”

I refuse to be #basic.

Don’t be so basic.

being #BASIC won’t get u Nothing

In North America since at least the 1960s, the commonly used term for an unconditional universal income ( Universal Demogrant) was Guaranteed Annual Income. However, at grassroots anti-poverty meetings I attended in Victoria in the mid-1990s, people realized that technically a guaranteed ‘annual’ income could be as little as penny a year. After much thoughtful discussion ‘livable’ was chosen as a crucial descriptor because it had strong connotations to the level of income needed for dignity, health and life. There was no way to confuse Guaranteed ‘Livable’ Income with a Guaranteed ‘Starving’ Income, which is what some critics on the left were worried a Guaranteed Annual Income would become. Many other groups also started using Guaranteed Livable Income including Citizen’s for Public Justice, and it is also in the Green Party of Canada platform.

However, around the world (in the English language), Basic Income has become the name that has gained the most common usage. According to the history of the Basic Income Earth Network, the term Basic Income was chosen because it formed the acronym BIEN (first as the European Network and now as the Earth Network). BIEN is now the main international hub for international news, events and connecting groups around the world who are advocates of this initiative.

When the name Basic Income came up at our grassroots meetings (many of us knew of the 1999 Canadian book “Basic Income: Economic Security For All Canadians” ) it was strongly rejected because ‘basic’ conjured up some kind of bargain basement pittance, a crumb to be thrown to the poor saying ‘well here now, nothing to complain about, you’ve got your basic income’.

And now ‘basic’ has now morphed into being a very negative (but versatile) bit slang.

Livable is the opposite. It is used unequivocally to mean something positive:

From Twitter:

The Livable Climate Agency
Because you have to make this life livable
Making my living space livable
Workers deserve a livable wage
New Christchurch plans show ‘livable’ city
#livablecities
community safety & a livable planet.
there might be water on mars and it may be livable for the future
key to any sort of livable transition

(And the quickest way to create a livable planet is with a guaranteed livable income.)

WILL ‘BASIC’ COME BACK TO HAUNT US?

Even though support and interest for unconditional universal income is gaining year to year, continuing to call it Basic Income may come back to haunt us.

Do we really want to envision a basic future or a livable future? A basic planet or a livable planet?

Do we want to risk a dystopian future where people are expected to live basic lives? Where all the social programs have been cut? Where all the public services have been privatized ( no more public parks, housing, schools, libraries, transit)? Where people will expected to accept whatever basic healthcare their basic income can buy? This is the trajectory of a society becoming unlivable except for the very few.

Usually there is much time, effort and resources put into branding and marketing ideas, and choosing the right names, logos and descriptors. The same amount of thought needs to go into whether or not we should keep using ‘basic income’ as a name for such a freedom enhancing, green, and liberatory (for people and the planet) concept.

So isn’t it time to be more specific in the words we use to articule and envision a future that is Livable For All? … and choose more than a basic name, but one that brings forth dignity, creativity, diversity and lots of green ways of living?

*******

EXTRA NOTES

Evolving Terminology: It’s been suggested to me by a good thinker I’ve met via twitter that instead of saying “Income” we might want to say “Share” as in “universal livable share”. The reason given is that ‘income’ might imply only money but a ‘share’ is more about having a share of the resources we need to stay healthy and alive. And in the future perhaps monetary income as we currently use it might become obsolete. So ‘share’ allows for more flexibility than “income” and also has the positive connotation of ‘sharing’ and also the principle that we all have a ‘share’ in our common well-being ( a common share instead of a private share in a company). However, ‘income’ could also mean resources ‘in-coming’ and for now, ‘income’ is what people are worried about since non-market ways to meet needs are not an option for most people. But in the future that could change if, post-GLI, all those good green ideas could take root and flourish. (See Guaranteed Income Makes Fertile Ground For Green Ideas)

Other Names: Another commonly used name is Citizen’s Income, or a CBI, a Citizen’s Basic Income. The positive side of this is the focus on people’s rights and roles as citizens (another name tossed around has been Participation Income because a universal demogrant gives people the means to fully participate in their society). But on the negative side, using ‘Citizen’ might put the focus on a divisive deserving citizens vs. undeserving non-citizens.

Around the year 2002, we here on the West Coast found (online) some East Coast social justice feminists who were also talking about a Livable Income For Everyone or LIFE. Some people really liked the idea of demanding a LIFE Grants, reminiscent of Buckminster Fuller’s Lifetime Fellowships idea (Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth).

Spelling: It can be spelled both Liveable or Livable, but Livable is much more common and less awkward looking/sounding than “Liveable”. Even in Canada, where there are many British spellings, newspapers and others are using “Livable” without the extra “e”.

Another Problem with Basic: It will not work to tell people with sunset jobs: “don’t worry about losing your job because you’ll be able to get this basic income.” People would be wondering: just how basic will this basic income become… would it be a starving basic income?

History: There have been many names given to the concept of everyone having a right to a share of enough resources to stay optimally healthy and alive. Thomas Paine’s Citizen’s Dividend was based on the principle that when people are denied direct access to natural resources, they must be given a share of resources through a monetary dividend ( see his Agrarian Justice).

This principle has been around much longer than Paine and is likely a principle of every indigenous culture. “Guaranteed Adequate Income is really an Indian concept. It is the way Indians themselves ran their early communities” Loretta Domenchich, Menominee Tribe, Wisconsin, US. Fourth World: An Anthology, 1976

Communicating: As much as I don’t like the term ‘basic’, I’ve had to use it, especially on twitter, if I want to connect with others who are interested in this topic because it is more commonly known. However, in the meetings in Victoria where Guaranteed Livable Income was a frequent topic, the shortened way to refer to it was to call it a GLI. But there is not yet that level of familiarity online. Another reason why people might like using basic income, is because it is more neutral and less assertive sounding than Guaranteed Livable Income. This lack of assertion when it comes to describing a livable world vs a ‘basic’ survival world may seem easier now, but it could easily come back to haunt us in the future.

The Status Syndrome

Tue, 22 May 2012 09:36:00 -0400

- why people abuse service workers and don’t want a boring basic income

by C.A. L’Hirondelle - May 22, 2012

This is dedicated to all the frontline people who provide low-status low-pay service to others and to those who endure daily insults and joy-killing indignities as part of their job. And it is written to encourage more people to read and examine the ideas of the book Somebodies and Nobodies by Robert W. Fuller.

“The other day I had just closed my teller wicket and put up a closed sign when this lady walks up without being called. She is talking on her cell phone and doesn’t even make eye contact or notice that I just closed my section and proceeds to put her card in and pull out her wallet. I finally get her attention by saying‘sorry to interrupt your phone call but I’ve just closed this computer down’.
In an effort to be nice, I offered to help her down at the next computer even though I was on my break. She then rolls her eyes at me and let’s out a big annoyed ‘sigh’ - as if showing what an inconvenience I am causing her and continues to talk on her cell phone.
Once we’re at the next computer she puts her card in and continues to be oblivious to the fact that I’m waiting for her to get off her phone and tell me what she needs — despite that we are clearly very busy and there is a large line up of people waiting behind her. I say ‘excuse me miss’ in a very polite way and she responds with ‘what!!?’ I explain that I don’t know what she needs and she finally says ‘ya, give me $20 and pay this bill’ sounding very annoyed that I asked what she needed —as if I should have known, or how dare I interrupt her conversation— and goes back to talking on the phone. I finish the transaction and give her the cash and she then walks away without a good-bye or thank you or at the very least, eye contact.
I felt like I was being treated like a lesser human being and for the rest of the day I fantasized about smacking that cell phone off her face.” — anonymous bank teller in a large Canadian city, 2009.

STATUS SYNDROME AS PROPAGANDA

It is no secret there is growing income inequality in the world. And part of the propaganda perpetuating income inequality is the idea that income is determined by people’s individual qualities, and not the social advantage they happened to be born into, or they luck they’ve had buying or selling land (or some other commodity) at the right moment. People are encouraged to believe they are ‘Somebodies’* because they are more intelligent, harder working, better with money, or morally superior to others.

“Our current standing is measured by the rungs below and above us.” - Robert W. Fuller, *Somebodies and Nobodies, 2004

SOCIAL STATUS AS AN ADDICTION

The Status Syndrome makes people addicted to their social status — they become dependent on external validation for their imagined or actual status, and if they lose status (real or imagined) they become angry and resentful. “I’m a Somebody”, “I used to be a Somebody” or “I should be a Somebody” is the lament.

This is where we get the terrible phenomenon of people abusing service workers: retail clerks, bank tellers, café, bar, and restaurant workers. The Status Syndrome leads people to seek affirmation that they have a higher status than others and service workers make easy targets.

The dynamic of masters and serfs, of nobles and servants, still thrives in the frontline retail service sector.

STATUS SYNDROME AS ABUSE

The abuse can be subtle —treating the service workers like non-people— to overtly insulting, demanding or abusive behavior. The bad behavior flourishes as businesses fear losing customers and workers fear losing their jobs (or getting bad references).

Often there is also an unacknowledged age war. Unwise older people who cling to expectations from former glory days of being a ‘A Somebody’, and because they have regrets, pain and sadness at being at the end of their lives, may resent the youth —especially the cheery youth— of those serving them. I have twice witnessed the discomfort some people feel if they happen upon low status workers having fun on the job - they lash out with a kill-joy comment to remind the lower-downs of their inferior place in the world.

And if you feel some such tendency to engage in such petty behavior, stuff it back up where it came from, take a deep breath, and reflect on why you are being triggered.

So the service industry becomes a battle zone, the site of many tiny skirmishes. Often this can take the form of petty complaints: Too hot, too cold, too sweet, too bitter, too stale, too slow, too unfriendly, too this, too that, ad infinitum… a medieval reenactment of nobles and serfs.

HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT AND CORPORATE DUPES

Unlike family members, service workers cannot talk back or walk away from someone treating them rudely; they are slaves to economics of the times. High unemployment creates conditions for all these petty tryannies. Many people desperately chasing fewer jobs creates ripe conditions for compliance and exploitation. If service workers weren’t afraid of losing their jobs, abusive customers (and bosses) would be enticed to modify their behaviour.

To further complicate matters, there are also large powerful corporations who abuse both employees and customers. Some employees become melded to the status of their corporation, become loyal corporate dupes, abuse customers on their employers behalf, and then find out too late that their beloved corporation will not hesitate to spit them out when they have no further use for them.

STATUS DELUSIONS AS BARRIER TO ECONOMIC JUSTICE

The Status Syndrome is also a psychological reason why some people don’t support a guaranteed income. People would rather live under the false hope of being ‘A Somebody’ (and ignore the harm they would cause) than have the opportunity to live a happy Nobody life.

“When we accept the nobody within us, we lose the impulse to nobody others. When we identify the somebody inside, we tap into our capacity to make a public contribution.” —Somebodies and Nobodies

There are even some who get their identity and status from being a ‘radical’ political activist or union member and they oppose the boring adoption of a boring guaranteed income because they are addicted to having an underdog orworker-hero status (or of being a savior to ‘the poor’).

On the flip side are people who berate themselves for being ‘losers’, even though they are caught in a system that requires high unemployment to function.

REAL MEANING VS. FAKE STATUS

It is cause for optimism that there are many people who have avoided the Status Syndrome. Their sense of well-being is not status dependent. If they are externally successful, they have a sense of luck and gratefulness. Many people (both with and without status) are driven by a bigger purpose. Often this involves creating some form of art, inventing things to help others, providing unpaid care, or working to create positive social change… regardless of whether they get any appreciation or financial reward. They get value from doing, not from ‘having’. (See Eric Fromm’s To Have or To Be.)

But those in the ‘passionate but poor’ category have to put up with being put down by those who only view success through a lense of status. The intrinsically motivated will share something about their passion and will be met with the question: “But did you make any money from that?” There is sometimes a high price to pay for being internally motivated: social stigma, isolation and poverty. Naturally getting some kind of acceptance for one’s art is preferable to being poor and ostracized.

The Status Syndrome is entrenched but it has no future it doesn’t make anyone happy except sadists. It also creates a pressure cooker situation with unpredictable outcomes.

“The past is filled with examples of revolts and revolutions through which nobodies have managed to curtail the prerogatives of the somebodies.” —Somebodies and Nobodies

“A rank-based strategy aimed at equalizing dignity stands in sharp contrast to the class-based Marxist strategy aimed at equalizing wealth. In practice, communism merely created a new elite, which arrogated wealth to itself. A rank-based strategy anticipates rather the redistribution of recognition and respect in the wake of a dispelled somebody mystique.” — Somebodies and Nobodies

Further reading:
The Status Seekers
The Theory of the Leisure Class
Somebodies and Nobodies
To Have or To Be

This is a series of articles on guaranteed income, redefining work and productivity. See also:

Tweets from Basic Income Congress Toronto 2012 May...

Thu, 03 May 2012 12:08:00 -0400

Tweets from Basic Income Congress Toronto 2012 May 3-5

(disclaimer- this post was to help people who could not attend the congress get information via twitter, and is not in any official way associated with the Congress or with NABIEN or any of the organizers.).

UPDATE - TR’s reports ( @yaxl_to )

Part 1 Hennesey and Pasma http://www.blog.citizensincome.ca/BI-1.html

Part 2 Healey and Reynolds http://www.blog.citizensincome.ca/BI-2.html

Part 3 Karelis http://www.blog.citizensincome.ca/BI-3.html

Part 4 Eggleton and Meades http://www.blog.citizensincome.ca/BI-4.html

Part 5 Yalnizian and Widerquist http://www.blog.citizensincome.ca/BI-5.html

Part 6 Rook and Raphael http://www.blog.citizensincome.ca/BI-6.html

Hashtag for conference #BI2012

(other key words to search for: “basic income” or #basicincome )

Some people who attended the congress:

@yaxl_to (TR of Citizen’s Income Toronto)

@CWP_CSP (Canada Without Poverty)

@Gary_Bloch (family doctor in Toronto trying to improve health by treating poverty, homelessness and other social disease)

@VibrantCalgary (Vibrant Communities Calgary)

@pfthurley (on Board of Directors at Canada Without Poverty)

@jesse_helmer (political activist, Toronto and London Ont)

@jenneferlaidley (policy analyst)

and follow @Livable4All for tweets on economic justice

posted by C.A.L’Hirondelle @Livable4all in Victoria BC (did not attend the congress)

updated May 8, 2012

CRAPITALISM - iatrogenic vs livable economics; sick world vs....

Thu, 03 May 2012 10:52:00 -0400

CRAPITALISM - iatrogenic vs livable economics; sick world vs. healthy world

Full text

1. WHAT IS CRAPITALISM

Crapitalism takes good natural resources and turns them into crap products in order to keep consumptio /jobs cycle going.

Crap products are harmful, wasteful or designed to break. Crap services waste resources and undermine the health of individuals and society.

e.g using up water to produce liquid candy (soft drinks)

Crapitalism is “iatrogenic economics” because it makes people, environments and society sick while posing as the cure.

Crapitalism tips the scale from positive economic activities (including informal unpaid care work) to negative economic activities (causing harm but counted as goods in GDP).

(See book “Made to Break” by Giles Slade)

The vested interests of the crap production/consumption system means jobs trump all other considerations – including health, happiness and environment.

2. SOLUTION? A UNIVERSAL LIVABLE INCOME (SHARE)

It would be universal and unconditional – goes to everyone, no means test; Livable – to ensure no person’s income falls below what is necessary for Health, Life and Dignity; Income – currently cash income, but could mean something else in the future.

Principle – people’s inherent right to a share of resources; constitutionally guaranteed.

3. THE PRIMACY OF CONSUMPTION

The current economy cannot function without high levels of consumption. Consumption, not production, is key. Economic production without consumption is bankruptcy.

From donut makers to public service —all depend on having customers, clients, students, patients, inmates etc.

Proposing to cut consumption without proposing another way for people to get money (or resources) unworkable and unethical.

4. A CRAPITALIST CRITIQUE

A Crapitalist Critique recognizes consumption is a systemic issue. It is not a moral ‘good/bad’’ issue because current society relies on crapitalism to function.

Telling people to ‘buy nothing’ or ‘stop consuming’ means crashing the economy onto those on the bottom of the income pyramid; onto those who have least choice about saying ‘no’ to harmful products or processes.

Without a universal income, people cannot easily say ‘no’ to crapitalism. It is pointless to demonize people for their consumption or for taking harmful jobs.

5. MONEY FOR ALL OR MONEY FOR NONE

Two ways to escape the crapitalist economy: money for all, or money for none.

Perhaps in the future we won’t use money.

But suddenly ending money today would have a violent impact on those without access to resources or without ability to access resources.

A universal livable income for all creates a practical way to move from a crapitalist ‘death-cycle’ economy (sickness creating) to a livable ‘life-cycle’ economy (health creating)

6. WHERE WOULD THE MONEY COME FROM?

A universal livable income is not an additional cost. It is a subtraction of the massive costs of having a system that needs waste to function.

e.g. All the squandered resources: waste, pollution, ill health, lost human potential, lost innovation, wasted human lives… due to jobs-based vested interests.

3 ways to assess an economic activity: Positive activity = helpful; Negative activity = harmful; No activity = neutral.

Ergo…. A ‘lazy’ person is preferable to someone actively causing harm to others or the planet.

7. SUMMARY

CRAPITALISM wastes resources: time, energy & natural resources on unnecessary or harmful work.

CRAPITALISM wastes people: intellect, imagination, problem-solving and creativity.

CRAPITALISM diverts resources from real needs.

CRAPITALISM harms the health of people, the environment and other living creatures.

A Livable Income Share mends the rift between life and work and between economy and environment.

A Livable Income Share tips the scale towards positive or neutral activities and away from negative activities.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair

Further Reading:

Buckminster Fuller – Critical Path

J.W. Smith – World’s Wasted Wealth

Robley E. George – SocioEconomic Democracy

Written by C.A. L’Hirondelle with collaboration of J.S. Larochelle

Long version - full article with links here: www.livableincome.org

starfish

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 17:37:14 -0400

starfish

Failsafe Humanity

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 10:22:11 -0400

Letters to LIFE
reprinted with permission

FailSafe Humanity
by Sharon Lee Robertson - April 2005

For the past year or so I have been working on a book with the working title of “FailSafe Humanity”. The basic assumption of the book is that 1st & 2nd world nations may well be facing a future characterised by severe economic and therefore social dislocation resulting from any one of several ‘causes’ or combination of ‘causes’.

These ‘causes’ include: climate change and effects on agriculture and water supplies; problems with oil supply, financial chaos, war and the political environment that supports it.

One basic historical reference is the Great Depression in the United States following the stockmarket crash and the withdrawal of ‘cashflow’ from society. I use it as an example as it is one in which all the human misery that resulted from ‘the crash’ derived from the simple lack of ‘cashflow’ within the society. All the factories, all the raw resources, all the human skills were intact.

So, logically, the misery was occasioned by nothing more than hubris and stupidity on the part of a small section of the elites - the misery was not the result of some ‘act of God’ like flood or the potato famine in Ireland - no - it was the product of social organisation including it’s ‘organising narrative’.

It is my feeling and judgement that something similar to the Great Depression may well confront us within the next 10-30 years. As a ‘failsafe provision’, I suggest in my book that it be written into Law that if certain ‘trigger’ events take place, that there should be an immediate creation and distribution of what is essentially a ‘basic income’ to every person living within the domestic territory governed by a national government.

In effect, it shifts the ‘value base’ of the currency in circulation from a ‘capital goods’ basis to a ‘social capital’ basis so that it is, in effect, a ‘free money’ - at least from the point of view of ‘the worker’! The purpose of such a distribution would be to conserve as much of the basic social organisation of production and distribution of essential goods and services as might be possible.

Sometimes some people say things like welfare payments being like ‘money down the toilet’ - but nothing could be further from the truth! Welfare payments where they are made are, in effect, ‘transfer’ payments. Governments make the payments to individuals out of tax revenue (received from businesses and the workers), but the individuals then ‘transfer’ that money back to the larger community: rents, food, power, schools, transport, etc. which then forms part of the ‘income’ of the recipient and helps pay for the provision of the service, whatever it might be.

A fair proportion of that ‘transfer’ income also goes to the banks in the form of ‘interest’. If the financial institutions collapse for whatever reason, then in effect the whole system is at risk of collapse UNNECESSARILY! Maintenance of society wide ‘cashflow’ sufficient to sustain the lives of individuals has to be a key ‘failsafe provision’.

It is not ‘money’ that creates anything real - it is the investment of the time and energy of the people that ‘creates’ everything real. We have all been ‘conditioned’ to the value of money, psychologically. That has to change. Most Basic Income groups seem - still - to assume that any ‘basic income’ has to be derived from some form of re-distribution of taxation revenues. But should those revenues diminish significantly…? Doomed to failure, sooner or later. Best bite the revolutionary bullet of ‘overturning the tables of the moneychangers’.

“FailSafe” is sort of a ‘backdoor’ approach such a revolutionary ‘overturning’ - by posing the possibility in a hypothetical way in an ‘if/the’ context. Except, of course, the context isn’t all that ‘hypothetical’.

If ‘Point A’ is the present, and ‘Point B’ is some future point in time, with transit between being rather difficult, it seems to me that the kind of ‘basic income’ I suggest might - at least- ‘buy some time’, that is - maintain the continuity of life(time) through the difficult times.

I’d be interested in ‘talking’ to anyone who thinks along the same lines?. So far, I’m the only one I know who thinks as I do.

***

Note: there is no longer a working address for Sharon Lee Robinson, only a mailing address from 2005 — PO Box 36, Koolunga SA 5464, Australia.

Reflections on 2002 BC fight back coalitions: the great divide

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 19:10:00 -0400

Written in 2002 BC, Canada after the newly elected Liberals (neo-liberal or neo-conservative) came to power and began making large budget cuts.

author anonymous for now

The Great Divide (alt title, Towards a Principled Resistance)

Many of coalition meetings with community groups, grassroots activists and union members meetings were held around after the Liberals were elected in 2002 that emphasized “unity” and “solidarity” but without ever defining what this would mean; and what we were uniting for.

Finding a basis of unity might involve three things: agreement on a problem or problems; why there is a problem; what are some solutions.

At the coalition meetings the unity was only found in uniting against cuts and the party in power: some only wanted to get rid of the BC Liberals and get the NDP in power; some were only concerned about decimation of union jobs; or higher tuition fees; or environmental degradation; and a few who brought up draconian cuts to welfare.

But welfare cuts were regarded as just one of many issues; poverty was not seen as a broad issue underlying the other issues. The role of the unions is to protect their members from poverty and to improve their wages and working conditions. Unions whether they like to admit it or not are in fact anti-poverty organizations.

As public services are cut, those who have money will not be directly affected. The less money you have the more you are impacted and vice versa. And regarding the role of poverty on the environment — ecological devastation can be driven by economic desperation.

Poverty is not just one of many issues; it is a pivotal, foundational issue that affects over half the world’s population and is the biggest threat to people’s health and well-being. Yet most people at these coalitions did not see poverty as a priority issue. Some specifically said that it would not generate support from the public.

There was no concept in using the term solidarity that people on the edge of the economic cliff would be pushed off first. The stress of resisting the constant increasing pressure will become too much for some, especially those who are isolated. This was rarely acknowledged in broad based coalitions and those who did talk about the urgency ended up alienating others.

So people begin to self-censor; they don’t want to be considered difficult. But to speak urgently and not have that reflected back in any way is disheartening to say the least.

Imagine running for help to tell others that someone is stuck in a burning building. You run to a social justice meeting and everyone seems concerned but then it gets ‘tabled’ to the next meeting. Or you tell poverty researchers and they decide to study the building to see how long it takes for it to burn and how loudly the person trapped inside is screaming. Or counselors show up to ask the person how they are feeling about being roasted alive. Or a job club coach shows up and scolds the person for not changing their bad attitude and that there are lots of non-advertised ‘hidden’ ways out of the building. Or some charity workers will show up to throw some bottles of water into the burning building so the person can have a drink before they die.

Coalitions dynamics mirror society dynamics. The same measuring sticks are used to determine the status of participants; more money and resources have more say than those with low status and low resources.

For example people often voiced worry about offending union leadership or the middle class of the general public. However, nobody worried about offending the poor or unemployed.

Yet to have an broad understanding of the problems society faces, as well as why and how these problems arose, we need a bottom up analysis that includes everybody. Deeper discussions at these coalitions were avoided because of how quickly things would break apart as the depth of the divide was revealed. So divisions just simmered below the surface.

Placing poverty as just one of the many issues denies the primacy of need. No one can survive without each day getting food, sleep and warmth. Saying poverty is just one of many issues denies that there is a baseline of basic needs.

An Atlanta Labour Council president (Stewart Acuff Labour Studies Journal, Spring 2000) identified implications of lack of unity: “When we as a labor movement refuse to confront injustice, we lose our moral authority to lead…”

We all gather around the ill patient (our society, our culture, our earth) and never try to find out the cause of the illness. How can we have a cure when we have no diagnosis?

The solutions advocated by the coalitions against cuts could be summed up as economic growth, good jobs, generous public services and charity to fill in the gaps.

Yet advocating economic growth and jobs for all is a death wish. It means we must:

1) Use up finite natural resources in a quest for infinite economic growth. Basically destroy the planet as fast as we can for short term riches.

2) Increase consumption regardless of health or environmental consequences in order to give people jobs (more junk food eaten, means more jobs selling/making junk food. It also means more jobs for the medical/pharmaceutical industry when more people and children get sick. What is good for the economy is bad for our health.

3) Continually drive to replace people with machines to become more profitable, productive for more economic growth. However this means less jobs, while pretending that growth is healthy and that everyone is free to compete for nonexistent jobs.

4) Deny natural resource limits. If everyone in the world were to live like the typical north american suburban ideal, we would need 7 more planets.

5) Recognize that our hard work is killing the planet. The more we develop and produce the faster we destroy resources that took millions of years to form.

To have a principled resistance we must understand the roots of our current economic system. We must understand that:

1) All hoarding systems including our present form of capitalism create poverty. This is because wealth is actual control over natural resources, the products made from natural resources, and people’s labour. These things are all finite. When the few amass wealth, they take it from the many. (See Dirty Secrets by Michael Parenti)

2) Those wielding economic power got their power wealth by taking indigenous people’s land from all over the world.

3) Those wielding economic power got their power and wealth by enclosing the commons and privatising as much as they could get away with. Nature’s free gifts were taken away from common people, fenced off and used for private gain. This not only steals access to natural resources that people need to live, but it then steals people’s lives as they are forced to work for others in order to get the things they need to live. Before they could go directly to the land and get/grow what they needed. Now they must sell their labour at a loss to meet their needs.

4) All economic power is based on getting (taking/using) women’s labour for free. There would be no consumers and no workers and no society if women did not do the work of creating and nurturing the next generation. This is a precondition for all other economic activity. This type of work, and in fact all types of unpaid work of benefit to the community is deemed “non-productive.”

A principled resistance would strive to create a world were everyone can live happy, healthy lives within natures limits.

We would redefine work

We would share equally all necessary work and do away with work for work’s sake.

We would share equally in nature’s free gifts.

We would strive for full lives not full employment. In the short run this would mean implementing/creating a universal income benefit, guaranteed basic income at a livable level (aka basic income, citizen’s income or guaranteed annual income).

***

3 DONKEYS OF THE APOCALYPSE - Right Jobs; Left Jobs; Green...

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:36:00 -0400

3 DONKEYS OF THE APOCALYPSE - Right Jobs; Left Jobs; Green Jobs

****** Right Jobs - Work or Die ******

First, the political right has the idea that people will only work when forced to and that a guaranteed income would destroy the work ethic and this would destroy society. In fact the opposite is true: fervent loyalty to an ***undifferentiated*** work ethic means people can no longer differentiate between work that is harmful and work that is beneficial. This non-differentiation of activities will destroy the planet, people, families and communities as they are chewed up and spat out by a death-cycle economic machine.

An undifferentiated work ethic encourages humans to work hard even if it means working hard to destroy everything: polluting air, land, water and food because it is more profitable, squandering and wasting natural resources (in “primitive” societies this would be considered a sin), ruining people’s health by pushing disease producing products to feed the insatiable salivating maw of consumption — all from the bizarrely delusional goal of achieving perpetual economic growth no matter what the cost. So encourage people to open their beaks and dump in millions of gallons of bubbly death-syrup; greasy buckets of cancer-causing chemical-soaked meat-globs; mountains of shiny white sugar mixed with glutenous white-flour globs. And let’s not even mention the tobacco industry, or pumping city air full of auto exhaust because one in ten jobs depend on the auto-industry which makes being a pedestrian a hazardous sport both from breathing and from the risk of being run down by some stressed out human who’s either rushing to work after not getting enough sleep or nutrition, or rushing away from work to bar (or liquor store) in a vain attempt to get a glimmer of the euphoria tantalizingly displayed in beer commercials.

But hey, any death, disease, destruction and mayhem is healthy for profit and makes the GDP go up meaning - hurray!!! the country is “richer”. (Thank you Marilyn Waring and E.F.Schumacher for writing about the economics of destruction)

This is not a diatribe against people who consume those products – far from it. It is a diatribe against an economic system that makes this type and level of consumption compulsory in order to keep the jobs and economic growth system going.

Second: What is the purpose of labour saving technology if the meaning of life is a moral desire to force humans to work as much as possible? What is the logic of increasing efficiency with technology? Should we tell engineers to design things as ***inefficiently*** as possible, and designed to break as quickly as possible, because that will create more jobs? Should we do away with all labour saving technology so that people can prove how hard they can work?

“Embrace the End of Work: Unless we send humanity on a permanent paid vacation, the future could get very bleak” - James Hughes

“…the economic goal of any nation as of any individual, is to get the greatest results with the least effort…It is for this reason that men use their ingenuity to develop 100,000 labour saving inventions… The progress of civilization has meant the reduction of its employment not its increase.”
Henry Hazlett, Economics in One Lesson

Left Jobs - Work for Work’s Sake

A nostalgic cultural addiction to the noble worker is part of the reason why the left has not moved to a vision beyond jobs. People exist as workers, as working families, as working people thus setting up divisions between morally good people who work, and morally bad people who don’t work. The poor are to be saved by a job or better welfare while they wait for one of those good livable wage jobs. Work for Work sake denies a world beyond the current economic system. It denies any work done outside of that system. It denies the need to create a vision where there is no division between work and life. Jobism is a sadistic corset on our ability to envision a livable future for this planet since it constricts and mangles this vision within very narrow parameters of traditional paid employment that excludes most of the meaningful and necessary activities that go on in the world. Read more here.

Green Jobs - Not Green for Green but Green for Work’s Sake

Let’s get this straight - GREEN INITIATIVES ARE LOVELY AND VITAL - however, to tie them to the idea of “A JOB” is like tying this lovely green bouquet of livable ideas to the lurching monstrous decaying zombie corpse of a collapsing industrial system. Why oh why, would we want to do that??

However, there are more and more visionary green-oriented people who do embrace the positive effects that a universal income benefit would have on the health of the environment, on people and on communities because all kinds of work that is necessary but not currently ‘profitable’ under the death-cycle zombie corpse economy, would be able to be done. With a universal guaranteed income there is no unpaid work.

Read more in Robley George’s SocioEconomic Democracy

FINALLY - Yes, the Three Donkeys of the Apocalypse are cute…. But if we don’t get off them, and turn them around, they will leap with us over the Jobs Cliff of No Return, and then will probably trample us with their tiny hooves for being so stupid.

July 21, C.A.L’Hirondelle

In a post-GLI world, people might do more of all the currently usually unpaid but essential "work" (often considered "women's work") like raising children well, comforting the sick and dying, telling local stories and contemplating the universe, being a good friend, making the world a more interesting and friendly place including by dancing, preserving local history, creating locally useful tools, studying and practicing to be a kinder person, helping make peace, writing good essays, thinking deeply about science and religion, advising people on how to stay well cheaply by eating more vegetables, fruits, and beans, and getting their vitamin D, giving more gifts specific to localities and individuals, and so on. (pdfernhout)

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:00:00 -0400

———-

Thanks PDFernhout

I guess the question is not whether people in a GUI-world would stop working. quite the contrary, they would do what they feel urged to do. But perhaps more important is whether these occupations would be occupations also directed to the benefit of the community or in connection with others. Perhaps this is what lies in the background of those admonitions that with a GUI everyone would live in a private hammock. At least, one could argue, current work-organization seems to be also a way to organize collaboration that is not about oneself and one's own interests.

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 20:27:00 -0400

—- Response—-

Note: Guaranteed universal income - GUI or Guaranteed Livable Income GLI - Introduction and list of other names here.

Anonymous question: Would essential necessary work still get done and organized if there were a guaranteed income?

Many notable thinkers have estimated that 50-80 percent of current economic activity is not actually productive, but is part of a system that needs a lot of busywork and waste to keep it functioning. See J.W. Smith’s The World’s Wasted Wealth. See also Buckminster Fuller’s Critical Path.

“We find all the no-life-support-wealth-producing people going to their 1980 jobs in their cars or buses, spending trillions of dollar’s worth of petroleum daily to get to their no-wealth-producing jobs. It doesn’t take a computer to tell you that it will save both Universe and humanity trillions of dollars a day to pay them handsomely to stay at home.” BF Critical Path

Questions need to be asked to determine what work is essential, what work is necessary and what work is beneficial.

For example, see the essay: What is Productive? and Questions on Work

Responses to "What work would you do in post-GLI world?"

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 11:42:00 -0400

antihuman_c I would write comedy, fix computer & broadband issues and plant trees (while planning the extinction of mankind obviously) (via Twitter)

_hazrul The same job I’m doing now. More willing to take risk though. (via Twitter)

trapdinawrpool I’d burn all the studies on poverty and hunger that I have accumulated but then that would greatly increase the threat of AGW

djhanks I would read and write and make and dig and think and learn and dance and sing and play and sleep.

perkinstony Youth football coach

What 'work' would you do in a post GLI world?

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 09:58:00 -0400

On July 15th tweep @joepdx wrote: “OMG If I had a minimum basic income I would WORK so much: at the (tool) library, on the radio, writing news, landscape maintenance.”

Which leads to the question, if there were a minimum basic income, or guaranteed livable income, guaranteed annual income, citizen’s dividend, lifetime fellowship, or whatever we choose to call it…. What activities would you choose to do?

The idea that people are inherently lazy and would sit around doing nothing is improbable. The idea that people do however, reject soul-sucking work is apparent and could be considered a natural response to an unnatural structure imposed on humans as described in Ivan Illich’s “The Right To Useful Unemployment” and in The Unemployed Self .

In addition, what looks to others like ‘doing nothing’ can be part of a creative process. Pierre Berton in The Smug Minority wrote about famed Canadian writer W.O. Mitchell:

“For years my friend W.O. Mitchell has been wandering about the streets and fields of High River, Alberta, thinking about his work, which is creative writing. For a long time Mitchell puzzled and baffled his neighbors. “When are you going to work, Bill?” they’d ask him, and it was useless for him to try and explain that in his terms he was working. Work to them was ‘a job’ and one of the problems we face in an automated world of the future is this dangerous confusion of terms. “

People like doing activities that are meaningful; they don’t like doing things that seem to be draining their life away moment by painful moment with no meaning, or with a side effect of causing damage to other people or to the environment.

So if there were a guaranteed livable income, what things would you want to be doing? (Keeping in mind, people might need time to ‘do nothing’ before figuring out who they were before they became their job. Conversely, some people might need structure provided by a formally organized volunteer initiative.)

Respond via this blog (click on ‘ask me anything’ and will be posted asap, not automatic) or through twitter to @livable4all (You can also post a photo reply.)

In the struggle for equality and social justice people often forget that a falling population means the remainder get a bigger share of the pie. I wonder how this has changed over the past century?
punkscience

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 23:54:23 -0400

If you look at the book For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women by Barbara Ehrenreich, Deirdre English, you’ll see historically women were mostly in charge of reproduction and fertility, until women were banned from being healers. (This is also an excellent book revealing the early history of the medical industry)

Not exactly a direct answer to your question, but I think going back one century isn’t far enough to get a perspective of the whole issue.

And there have been waves of pro-natal policies and anti-natal depending. The audio with Michelle Goldberg, link at the bottom of the article, has a lot of information about this history (and probably her book also).

simsa0 : I haven't read Vine Deloria's book yet, but this take of the "pie in the sky" seems a bit overstreched. Ruining the earth _because_ in heaven everything will be fine (as I take your paraphrase) ignores that for 2.000 years Chistian societies have always lived in the permanent expectation of Christ's Second Coming, announced by the reign of the Anti-Christ, the Riders of the Apocalypse, & the opening of the earth on the Day of Judgement.

For Christianity the end was always "near", and the problem was not that it was "near" but that it rather didn't happen at the awaited times and seemed always being postponed. So Christianity always lived within a "story" whose end was a climactic catastrophe. (Accordingly, even in secular times people still expect dooms-day just around, but being secular, in the guise of a environmental catastrophes or something else)

The postponement of the Second Coming rather urged people to settle for an unspecified time on earth and in this life. The longing for the Second Coming was not an invitation to ruin the planet, it just helped to create a sense of history as goal-oriented at whose end lies a catastrophe and a resurrection (if lucky).

On the other hand one main difference betwen Catholicism and Protestantism is the understanding of the Sacraments, being a literal presence of the Deity in Catholicism and a mere symbol of its presences in Protestantism. Until the 17th century the Sacred was always present in the Christian mundus, the landscape was sacral, time was circular, structured around the events of the Church year. As the Deity could interfere in the world at any given moment as its will, there really was no sense of being free to ruin or exploit the earth.

So I guess Deloria would need some more arguments to make this point.

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 23:44:00 -0400

Thanks for writing. Definitely check out the book, think it’s also available as an e-book too.

punkscience comment

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 23:41:13 -0400

In the struggle for equality and social justice people often forget that a falling population means the remainder get a bigger share of the pie. I wonder how this has changed over the past century?
punkscience

To post comments responding to the article Guaranteed Livable...

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 19:55:00 -0400

To post comments responding to the article Guaranteed Livable Income and Population (on topics of basic income, population, overpopulation and the environment) click on - Ask Me Anything.

Livable4All

“Just Doing My Job” Blinkers We urgently need a...

anonymissexpress: RT @BruceWayneAnon: The Poorest Continent...

Canada’s rediscovered 1970s successful social justice...

Uncloaking and Spotlighting Emotion Work (and other types of...

What's in a name: Livable or Basic Income or...?

The Status Syndrome

Tweets from Basic Income Congress Toronto 2012 May...

CRAPITALISM - iatrogenic vs livable economics; sick world vs....

starfish

Failsafe Humanity

Reflections on 2002 BC fight back coalitions: the great divide

3 DONKEYS OF THE APOCALYPSE - Right Jobs; Left Jobs; Green...

Responses to "What work would you do in post-GLI world?"

What 'work' would you do in a post GLI world?

In the struggle for equality and social justice people often forget that a falling population means the remainder get a bigger share of the pie. I wonder how this has changed over the past century? punkscience

punkscience comment

To post comments responding to the article Guaranteed Livable...

In the struggle for equality and social justice people often forget that a falling population means the remainder get a bigger share of the pie. I wonder how this has changed over the past century?
punkscience