Basic Income discussion exerpts - On Point radio show

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2016/01/14/universal-basic-income-government-welfare

 Carl wyderequist Georgetown University school of foreign service in Qatar. 


"We need to do this because we have poverty in the richest country in the world. And all the richest countries in the world have poverty. And the ones that are closest to the basic income model, the nordic countries have the least poverty it is unnaceptable that we use destitution, and poverty and homelessness as an incentive to get people to work. If you want someone to work for you, pay them a wage that makes them want to work for you. Don't starve them to death and then say "you cannot use any of the resources of the earth to keep yourself alive tomorrow unless you do what I tell you." I'm for freedom and you have basic income if you want a society where people are free.


 Question about the work ethic based on the bible story Adam and Eve being cast out of the garden and condemned to work.

Well when Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden there was no ownership to the earth and they had to sweat and work to do it but they didn't have to take orders. They didn't have to go to a boss man and say oh I'll do whatever you tell just so I can survive to tonight-  the early humans were hunter gatherers that had the whole world out there that they could hunt, gather, collect and work with as they wanted to. And even in early societies that was not taken away from them. In the bible you have when the kingdom of Israel is established every family gets a share of the ownership of the land of Israel. And every time there's a jubilee the money goes back to every- or the land goes back to every family so you don't get landless propertiless people with no choice but to go work for somebody. But now we've created a system we're governments and private individuals own all the resources that everyone else needs to survive and those who don't have any property are put in the position where they have- not just to work but they have to work for someone -they have to take orders everyday. And forcing a person to take orders just to survive is not right - that's not what freedom is about. Freedom is about - we all share this earth. We all get something from the products of this earth. And if you want me to do something for you -pay me a wage on top of whatever else I get that makes it worth while for me to do that.


Venture Capitalist responding to a caller saying "This is disgusting...nobody owes anyone else anything...go out and make something of yourself"

Albert.  Wanger Union Square Ventures
Casey who paid, for your education? Casey where did the knowlege come from in the textbooks that you read. Where did the infrastructure come from that you make your phone calls for you business for? It's not like we are all doing this all by ourselves from zero. We have - we're standing on the shoulders of the collective innovation of humankind over thousands of years. So this idea that anybody creates anything ex nihilo.  That's the wrong idea.

Carl W.
If you really want an economy based on the work ethic you've got to take capitalism and throw it in the trash. Cause that's not what capitalism is. And I'm a capitalist too, I own 14 houses thanks to I make a good salary and I'm investing that money. A lot of lucky circumstances. I do not work for those houses I just collect money and I reinvest the money. If you have money the system will award you with more money. Now some of that money you can say is made out of your effort but the rich people of this earth did not invent the earth. They did not invent the land and the rewsources that are on that earth. Yet they own them. And they want to be paid for them. And they want - and some of them at least - some of them want something for nothing. they want to pay nothing for the duty that they impose on everyone else. Whenever you say, this is my property -this resource is my property, you're putting a duty on everyone else to respoect that, when that duty wasn't there before. For millions of years we had no such duty --
that's well -communism is the idea that we'd all be better off if one dictator owned everything. That is -this is really very far from communism. capitalism is where rich people own everything and they tell the poor what to do. Communism is when a dictator owns everything and they tell the poor what to do. Basic income society is wehr noone call tell someone else what to do. It's a society based on free -it's that we all have equal right to this earth and nobody owes anybody else anything. and if you're gonna take part of this earth then you gotta pay someone else back for it. They don't have to give you the earth for free, they don't have to give you your labor for free. If you want them to work for you -give them a good offer. give them a good job.





Neil Collins-
"For people who can't see how society helped them get what they have, it seems pretty simple to me. Just ask yourself this question: Would you have it without society? If you lived on an island all by yourself, without society, would you have been able to "create" the college degree or whatever else it is. If you could not have it without society, then society helped you to get it.

Pretty much everything we have has been made as a collaboration of vast amounts of people, hardly any of which you will ever meet and most of them are no longer alive. If you are using a pencil, the lead was mined by other people, the mining machinery was invented piece-meal, over time by many many people, the wood was logged by others, the logging equipment is made of metal which was made from ore that was mined, etc...
Go try to make a lead pencil "all by yourself" without society. And that's just a pencil.

Electronic devices that we use every day, that we are using right now, can only function by the use of mathematical equations which no one person can be given credit for, certainly not anyone who is alive today. This progress of math and science has been a collaboration of many thousands of thinkers, stretching back in time since at least the ancient Greeks. Almost none of them were 'paid', but they did what they did out of curiosity and the desire to advance and improve the human world, society as a whole.

The land that we live on was in fact stolen, usually through bloody murder and genocide. In America the land was once used by the native Americans, if you want to talk about Europe, many tribes like the Celts were killed and stolen from under the excuse of spreading "Christianity" and the loyalty of various kings. When you go to a Real-Estate agent to buy a house or land, how did they get that land? And yet somehow, cash is exchanged for these things as if some person 'created' even the land all by themselves."

New Painting Feb. 2016

                             Untitled, Oil on Masonite by Neil Collins, 24" x  24" 2016.

Some important info on basic Income

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vnB16E36EQ

http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Basic income will make people more dependent.

On the topic of Basic Income, a guy says:

"and the dependant people will become more so"

Here are my thoughts:

 Exactly the opposite.

Also, it is a good thing to point out that tradition "welfare" does cause a depressing poverty trap. So it's easy to see why people would think that this would make people even more 'dependent'. The thing is though, that Universal Basic Income does not have these same flaws as welfare and actually empowers people to become self sufficient, active and contribute to the world rather than getting stuck in the stereo-type lifestyle of sitting on a couch all day in some slum, watching daytime TV.

My point is that (the guy) has a valid concern. But there are large and important differences between typical welfare as we know it and a UBI.

One major difference is that it is UNIVERSAL, meaning that everyone gets it. This escapes the problem of stigmatizing people who need help. With UBI, everyone gets it, so there won't be the need to look down on a certain group of people, or for those people to feel like they are 'losers' or something.

Another reason it avoids the typical 'poverty trap' of welfare is that it is a BASIC income. This means that the amount of money people get has to be high enough to empower them, not make them dependent. Typical welfare is designed specifically the opposite, giving people so little that they can't get "too comfortable", or this is atleast the rational. This comes from an outdated idea that people can only prosper if they have the 'fire under their ass'. But this isn't actually true. People tend to get in a trap of depression and hopelessness when they are overwhelmed by struggle. If you only have let's say $100 or $200 per week then the stress can be very crushing. Making even the simplest chores like grocery shopping sometimes turn into a 2 hour hassle on city buses, etc..

Imagine it in your own life. When have you felt capable and inspired? Was it when you had the means to go and do your ideas or was it when nothing seemed to be working, you were broke and under threat of eviction? Yes, fear can make you knuckle down and hustle to take any old shitty opportunity which comes along, but nothing more, certainly not pursuing creative ideas that make life worthwhile. I happen to think that the couch potato culture is actually a direct result of this 'survival-mode' lifestyle. People get locked in to a habit of trying to rest every chance they get and having a desire to do nothing extra, even for themselves because they feel attacked from every side by poverty. Its also important to poiunt out that some of the most entrepenurial "go-getters" in our society were well off enough so that they didn't have to worry about where their next groceries were coming from, etc...

One of the great success stories of the do it yourself culture is always told of "2 guys in a garage" who changed the world. This cliche is used over and over to try and say that 'anyone' can make a multibillion dollar bussiness and change the world if they just try hard enoug. But I would ask some questions first. Who's 'garage' was it that Steve Jobs and his friends were working out of when they built Apple Computers? It was his parent's garage. He wasn't out working 50 hours a week washing dishes to stress about the rent for the garage, food, car insurance, etc... He had some time free from those worries in order to be inspired to create something new and take a risk. He is also famous for saying how lucky he was to 'quit college' after about a year so he could go try his ideas out. I wonder who was paying for the college though? I doubt he was busting his ass doing construction or landscaping 40-50 hours a week so he could afford classes. I'm willing to bet that his parents were helping him out so that he could pursue something more. Not all of us are so lucky though.

One more reason that the UBI escapes the poverty trap of typical welfare programs is that it is UNCONDITIONAL. Meaning that there is no counselor or social worker checking up on you to make sure you pass certain requirements to get it or keep getting it. This can be a terrible problem not to mention requiring an unnecessary bureaurocracy to maintain. If a person is given help only IF they are unemployed, or fall below some income level, or some other stipulation, there is actually an incentive for them to not try too hard to do better, make more money, or such and such because they may lose the help. The UBI actually allows people to do what they want and take risks. The ability to take risks like spending time with children, spending time leaning and taking classes, or pursuing art, music and writing are the things which make for a better more fullfilled society. Many of these things are currently a pipe-dream for a large section of the population who has to always say "yes" to meaningless jobs, overtime and any other demand put on them.

Mckenna Question About Singularity

From The Psychedelic Salon, Episode #221: Evolving Times.

Audience question begins at 1:42:26

Q: "What if.... Dr. Buckminster Fuller often spoke of the ephemeraliztion of technology. Do you think there will come a time when we are indistinguishable from our technology and would that the be the sort of apotheosis that you speak about?"

Terence: "No, I think that it would go the other way. That We're moving toward a time when our technology is indistinguishable from us. In other words I don't want us to all turn into 7100 ADAV. That doesn't seem like a good idea. But on the other hand I could imagine as a hopeful scenario, a future world of let's say 500 or a billion healthy, happy, well-fed people of all races, political affiliations, gender persuasions and so forth and so on, And those people would live essentially as our archaic ancestors did. Very little material culture, very nomadic. But if you could transport yourself into the body of one of these people you would discover that when they closed their eyes, there are menus hanging in space. In other words, the computer that was on the back of the thumbnail... five years later, that computer moves into being a kind of an implant, a black contact-lense that is sown into your eyelids at age 6. So that when you close your eyes, you're actually looking at an interface, and the entire database of the culture could be placed there. You see really what computers are doing is they're making what we call the collective-unconscious, conscious. All data, all images are potentially accessible through the network.

And, you know, I'm still getting used to the idea of the network myself. Like I keep thinking, 'oh, I have this timeline. I could get somebody's chronology and put it at my website.' And then I remember, 'no, no' all I have to do is point to their website. I don't have to copy or move anything. If there is one list, that's all the world needs. Anybody else who needs that list can point to it from their website. The speed at which new structures can be created is astonishing. I mean almost literally overnight you can build a website and begin to point at other websites and bring resources into yours.

This is a technology which is gonna turn out to be not what people think it is. Its gonna be a technology for showing each other the inside of our heads For showing each other our dreams.