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Re: Basic income as an option? (was: Re: [ox-en] New economic model for free technology?)



Reforms can not change the fundamental problem. In
earlier times wars
have "solved" this problem. And if I speak of wars I
mean wars between
the most industrialized countries and not these
pseudo wars as in Iraq
or this civil wars like in Somalia, ...

Was it the wars that led to the 'thirty glorious
years' or the deep welfare state reforms? I believe
the latter. While such wars are now unthinkable, major
crisis a la ARgentina are thinkable and could lead to
similar deep reforms, provided the right balance of
forces



While I'm at it: The state is already
disintegrating. In some
countries the state already withered away - to make
rooms for
warlords, tribal things and so on. To me these are
also signs that
global capitalism is less and less able to create a
viable solution.
This was different until the 1970s.

Disintegrating in Africa; being strengthened in Asia;
doing pretty well in Europe and the U.S.


Smarter currencies systems for
example.

IMHO we already have the smartest currency system
thinkable in this
historical situation. From this point on societal
progress can only be
accomplished by abandoning the exchange system -
which will surely
mean a new era in human history. IMHO all this talk
about alternative
currency systems does not understand what money is
after all. 

Again, you assume a direct leap from capitalism to
communism, i.e. a highly unlikely possibility,
discounted by Marx, who envisaged a reciprocity-based
intermediary socialist phase. Our current currency
system is not 'smart' at all, since 90% of it cannot
be used in productive endeavour, and it creates global
poverty. Different protocols are being thought of by
very smart people, such as Bernard Lietaer, who
understand money very well.



I'm open to the argument that a basic income might
weaken the capitalist productive economy, but how
and
why, that I'm not hearing, or not understanding.

It creates a new balance of forces in favour of the
workers, who are no longer forces to accept low wages
and low quality jobs.


For instance look at what in Germany happens. In
Germany in the 1970s
we created a social helping system (Sozialhilfe)
which is basically a
very low level and highly conditionalized state
based basic income.
This social helping system - like all social
security systems - is
destroyed more and more. The central "argument" is
that labor must
become cheaper and therefore social security and the
redisribution of
money from capital to labor needs to be less.

Conditional social welfare creates an unemployment
trap, since it becomes unattractive to work for
marginal gains. Unconditional basic income does not
destroy any incentive to work, only the attractivity
of  low paid/ low quality options, which must
therefore be adapted in a positive sense.

Thanks Stefan, for your interesting comments and
probing questions,

SO THE KEY QUESTION IS: apart from your germ theory
which you describe as a 'natural law', do you really
believe in a straight line from here to full peer
production. Do you not have any transitory program at
all?

Michel


		
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