[p2p-research] A basic income guarantee versus peer production

[Alex Rollin]

"Basic income" doesn't need to become a political football on this
list, I think.

In many places in the world the government and the people work
together to find a more dynamic and full relationship between the
income derived from employment or social welfare and the market prices
of various essential goods and services.

While many of you might guess or point to additional way in which this
can or ought be implemented, I will point out a couple of current
efforts in California.

http://www.insightcced.org/communities/cfess/ca-sss.html  - The Family
and Economic Security Initiative

Where the Federal Poverty Level fails to take into account housing and
transportation costs, the FESI contains accounting for the following:

    * Housing costs: US Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Fair
Market Rents and National Low-Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC)
    * Child care costs: California Department of Education (CDE)
    * Food costs: US Department of Agriculture (USDA) low-cost food
plan and ACCRA Cost of Living Index
    * Health insurance costs: Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS)
    * Transportation costs: U.S. Census and the National Association
of Insurance Commissioners.

Now, this tracking of costing can and does lead to the calculation of
localized "self-sufficiency" basic incomes.

So, I've been doing some highly ethical software Peer Production for
going on 5 years now.  What I am doing right now is my very best to
'transfer' some of the processes and behavior to physical
manufacturing systems.  Difficult!  But, guess what I have discovered
to be the great equalizer?

Basic Income.

I know, weird, huh?

Here's a quicky look at the issue:

In a situation where a commons 'may come soon' the general tendency is
to hold close any and all production processes, equipment, and
opportunities, and to assume that individuals are taking all the risk
on themselves.

While this is happening, some participants run into trouble here and
there funding their operations, staffing or generally resourcing them.

What I notice is that the discussion about hiring people on, with the
assumption of perpetuity, at a living wage, allows people to relax
when they consider the "loss" of their private means of production
(illusion of security) and the transfer of that property to the
'commons.'

I feel blessed to have access to local FESI calculations for the
county I'm working in at the moment: http://www.livingwagesonoma.org/

The group has played out a number of speculative narratives where
individual members entertain the notion of actually getting paid this
amount for the work they are already doing and find it sufficient.

Please forgive any terseness in this email.  I don't mean to sound
monolithic at all. This is tough work, and at the moment I am still
feeling like I am grasping at straws to communicate systems of
co-ownership, co-management, and co-exercise of commons capital.  In
the USA the legal systems are not well understood, or even clear, and
we are missing several of the legal vehicles that are loud and proud
in the UK and EU.  For example the Industrial Provident Society (IPS)
of the UK.

Basic income and self-sufficient income do not necessarily compete
with Peer Production, in my view.

I feel that many of us who have been lucky enough to engage in Peer
Production in our business and life are also lucky enough to have
reached a basic income level and that it is possible to overlook this.

I remember walking through a market in China and a young shopkeeper
struck up a conversation with me.  She asked me what I did and I told
her software.  She said "ooh ahh" and I said 'you can do it too!  I
would be happy to help you!'  She proceeded to give me a lot of reason
why she could not: no money, no time, no security at home, no
internet, no hot water in the kitchen, no computer, no experience with
a computer, inability to read complex English.

Sometimes people say that given the choice, people will gravitate
towards fulfilling pursuits, and that this is one of the may streams
that endorses the inevitability of aspects of Peer Production.

I would content that a living wage is a form of P2P accounting in
imagination, if not in actuality.  People working together to discover
what it takes to disallow our environment from tearing us away from
pursuits that are fulfilling.

I feel that the conversation, and appreciation of agreement, around
what, exactly, a living wage is, that this is a valuable effort,
regardless of your views about the nature of man or his behavioral
inclinations.  Basic income means looking, really hard, at what the
basics are.  This has, does, and will change with time.  It's an
important discussion, and it doesn't stop, no matter what the primary
mode of value production is.

Alex Rollin
http://golocal.coop
http://alexrollin.com
http://www.facebook.com/alexrollin

On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Paul D.
Fernhout<pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:
> People have mentioned a basic income here in about fifty posts, including
> six times in the last two weeks, some in relation to Ryan' theme of "Why
> Post-Capitalism is Rubbish".
>
> I was surprised the other day to learn Richard Nixon was in favor of one,
> and a version actually passed the US House of Representatives in the 1970s.
>
> From:
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Patrick_Moynihan
> "Moynihan supported Richard Nixon's idea of a Guaranteed Annual Income
> (GAI). Daniel Patrick Moynihan had significant discussions concerning a
> Basic Income Guarantee with Russell B. Long and Louis O. Kelso."
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Income_Guarantee
>
> From:
>  http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/000038.html
> "Richard Nixon presented a guaranteed income plan in 1969, and it passed in
> the House of Representatives with two-thirds of the vote. In the Senate,
> however, moderate supporters - Democrats and Republicans - were defeated by
> the combined votes of extreme conservatives who opposed any aid to the poor
> and extreme liberals who wanted more generous benefits. (Daniel Patrick
> Moynihan, the plan’s author, described it, its popular support, and the
> congressional debates and votes in a 1973 book, The Politics of a Guaranteed
> Income.) With regard to helping the poor, many people think government
> should not provide income but only food, shelter, and services. But such
> programs require large bureaucracies that own and maintain housing; buy,
> store, and transport food; and monitor recipients’ income, family size, and
> other eligibility criteria. It’s much easier, more efficient, and more
> respectful to give people a basic income and let them decide where and how
> to live, work, and so on. If someone wastes or misuses the money, there will
> always be the opportunity to make better decisions next month."
>
> I wonder if that is the real reason Nixon got impeached? :-)
>
> Could people here directly explain why peer production is better (or worse)
> than a somewhat regulated capitalism with a basic income guarantee?
>
> I can think of various points on both sides, but I'd like to see what people
> here say.
>
> Personally, I'm starting to wonder that if I had to pick one or the other in
> its pure form, maybe I'd be better of with a basic income, because not
> everyone can produce stuff or has access to the needed resources. So peer
> production may not really solve an essential issue of distributing the
> abundance technology makes possible. Peer production may still be good and
> desirable for many other reasons, of course. But, by itself, it seems to me
> it does not solve this issue of people being left out of the system. Does
> peer production just substitute for some social hierarchy that guarantees
> certain rights (a right to access food) instead a hope for general wealth
> that will lead to local charity, the same as libertarianism?
>
> Also, stereotypical women's work in society has not been valued much
> (cleaning, raising children, volunteering, helping the aged) even thought it
> cost a lot to replace such work with paid labor. So, should not people
> (whatever gender) who do such work receive public support for their
> contributions to society? Though as with anything involving feminism, there
> is controversy there: :-)
>  "Feminism and Basic Income Revisited"
>  http://crookedtimber.org/2009/02/02/feminism-and-basic-income-revisited/
>  "Debate: Should Feminists Endorse Basic Income?"
>  http://www.bepress.com/bis/
>
> Anyway, it seems like a basic income guarantee could (in theory) be passed
> into law tomorrow, without immediately changing where everyone works or how
> everything is made. It already passed the US House of Representatives once
> in some form.
>
> Anyway, comments on this would be appreciated.
>
> --Paul Fernhout
> http://www.pdfernhout.net/
>
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-- 
Alex
I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.- Socrates