In August, “Schumacher Conversations: Envisioning the Next 50 Years” continues with a spotlight on the transformational potential of Universal Basic Income. Video of “Implementing U.B.I.: Meeting Needs Unconditionally” is now available on our website and YouTube.
In this month’s conversation, author Peter Barnes joined Herb Stephens of Democracy Earth Foundation and Professor Robert C. Hockett of Cornell Law School. Agatha Bacelar, member of the Schumacher Center’s Board of Directors, hosts this visionary panel.
The participants made the case for direct cash payments to all, discussing modes of distribution and comparing respective theories of change for system-wide adoption. While differences emerge, the group agreed on the moral imperative for a fair redistribution of our human inheritance: the shared foundations on which today’s new wealth is created.
The first task of any society is surely to avoid the extremes of misery and frustration
— E.F. Schumacher
Highlights from our August Conversation
Peter Barnes’ Schumacherian proposal for common wealth dividends
Peter Barnes’ thinking on basic income is rooted in the ideas of E.F. Schumacher. Back in the 70s, he says, reading Small is Beautiful “changed my life.” Across an eight-year stint as a solar energy entrepreneur, Peter never lost sight of the bigger picture. Later on, he set himself to his intellectual challenge: addressing the flaws Schumacher recognized as inherent to industrial capitalism, namely, the “constant destruction of nature and constant increase of inequality.”
In his resulting books, including Who Owns the Sky? (2001) and Ours (2021), Peter proposes a novel solution to this longstanding quandary. Creating Universal Property Assets, Peter argues, can adequately represent externalized costs (such as atmospheric quality) and neglected interests (including future generations) otherwise ignored by markets. By assigning property rights around our common wealth, and trustees to protect it, rents can be paid to those who own the common wealth (everyone) by those who use it.
Common wealth is not just gifts of nature, but gifts of society that we have built together– financial and legal infrastructure, transport, communications. They add immense value to our economy, but that added value, if it goes anywhere, goes to banks and corporations… there is a massive potential for capturing some of that wealth and sharing it equally via a basic income.
Successful examples of such systems include the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend, distributed to residents based on petroleum revenues.
Herb Stephens on decentralized UBI infrastructure
“We have tools, in our smartphones, to conduct democracy locally, and to build local currencies,” says Herb Stephens, Co-Founder of Democracy Earth Foundation. This global group of “hacktivist” software developers, as he calls them, builds digital tools to improve local democracy—and, to distribute a global universal basic income. “Modern democracy,” Herb asserts, “does not function without UBI.”
Unlike national or state policy proposals for UBI, Democracy Earth is pioneering a new digital cryptocurrency, making UBI tokens available to all registered users via blockchain. Without the established value of a fiat currency behind it, the purchasing power these UBI tokens represent is not fixed, but is determined by the price buyers and sellers set through cryptocurrency exchanges. (A blog post by design partner Kleros states that, as “a verified human can accrue 1 UBI per hour = 720 UBI per month,” the “aim is that the ticker price… becomes synonymous with a global consensus regarding how much is a human’s time worth being supported with Universal Basic Income.”)
According to Herb, this simple, voluntary model has already inspired some 20,000 users to complete the Proof of Humanity protocol, required to receive the UBI token distribution into a digital wallet. While the real-world acceptability and purchasing power of this “programmable currency” remains to be seen, Herb notes the initiative is complementary to basic income programs in more established monetary systems.
Currency needs to flow… [Because] money supply has been kept artificially low, every currency would benefit from UBI as a system of distributive equity.
Robert Hockett on the best means to bring about just distribution
Rounding out the conversation, Professor Robert Hockett expounds his own mini-dissertation, starting with political economy. “Small is Beautiful struck me as a lovely contemporary update, in some ways, to Marx’ Capital…stepping outside something to analyze it critically with a view to: what are the underlying assumptions?”
Within this long view, Professor Hockett takes up the question of “a just distribution of benefits and burdens.” Like Peter, he draws a line between “ethically exogenous” wealth, which nobody now living can claim responsibility for, and “ethically endogenous” wealth that individuals can claim by right of having created it. Certain conclusions, he says, “follow very directly from that.”
Like Herb, Robert also has practice in designing “modes of distribution” that can make equitable systems more imaginable for people at large. He points to a proposal crafted with State Assemblyman Ron Kim of New York, for an “Inclusive Value Ledger” via which the state could disburse digital payments. Designing such ‘plumbing,’ Hockett suggests, is necessary to spur widespread adoption.
Once the pragmatics…are clearer to one’s imagination, suddenly justice no longer seems like something abstract, but an imperative. ‘Why aren’t we doing it right now?’
These highlights merely skim the surface of this discussion, which is full of informative nuggets and provocative ideas.
*****
The next 2023 Schumacher Conversation, “Democratizing Monetary Issue: Tools for Resilience,” will take place Thursday, September 21st at 2:00 PM Eastern time. Featuring:
- Christine Desan, Harvard Law Professor and author of Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism.
- Susana Martín Belmonte, independent economist and project leader on the REC citizen currency in Barcelona.
- Will Ruddick of Grassroots Economics, designer of the Sarafu Network platform in Kenya.
The Conversation will be hosted by Eric Harris-Braun, Co-Founder of Holochain and Advisor to BerkShares local currency.