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

[Nathan Cravens]

Basic Income and Peer Production are complimentary. A Basic Income will
encourage people to work collaboratively. I liken it to an umbilical cord,
nurturing highly coordinated modern-day gift economies. Of course, it may
add to the many umbilical cords presently developing the community
environment of the commons.

Why do we need a Basic Income? Its only necessary when depending on markets.
Labor is decreasing in exchange value expressed as income. Less income means
less profits. This has finally affected the market macrosystem after decades
of real income decreases in "developed countries." There's just not enough
negative reciprocity or market compromise to go around. The market can only
function so long as market compromise circulates with some measure of equal
negative reciprocity. We can view BI as a soft form of positive reciprocity
used to transform the exchange/property driven model to a gift/commons
approach. We might view BI as a link between the nodes of scarcity and
abundance, leaving the propulsion of artificial scarcity behind with room to
embrace more non-commercial self organizing and regenerative methods; to
know better what scarcities exist. Processes become public domain in this
spirit and everything becomes an accessible collaborative design. Here we
can expect incomes to diminish and eventually disappear as market exchange
systems become unnecessary.

The over-saturation of the centralized mass production model has left an
entrepreneurial gap in its wake, so now a final window remains for
increasing labor value by paying people to help communities build materially
autonomous local infrastructures in basic needs terms worldwide. Open Source
Ecology is an example of the first developments in this direction,
yet--rightly in my view--this community discourages paid labor. For some
historical background in this area, we might want to address the pros and
cons of the Paris Commune as to better understand how to approach community
living within crumbling institutions of the market and state. Another
approach is to encourage the most materially autonomous intentional
communities to document how they live so we might apply these techniques to
the common wealth.

A basic income will allow for enjoyable work done by those following
curiosities, leaving only the most time consuming, repetitive, or high
skilled tasks as paid. IBM recently announced a system, Deepqa, soon able to
compete on the television show, Jeopardy. (Who watches TV anymore?!) Tech
like this may dissolve labor capital rapidly, including the toilsome efforts
that may have required the extrinsic stimulation of monetary metrics, the
cheese at the end of the rat maze.

Basic Income is a form of post-capitalism in that it replaces weakened labor
capital. That view is an isolated systemic approach to compensate for a
decidedly reductive process, but when we consider the ability to do work
that gives meaning to our lives, we can better view the world in positive or
holistic terms as a reductive compliment. We can view our basic income as a
gift; and the spirit of the gift is to pass it on. Gender, racial, and other
cultural categoric issues will diminish further as we no longer must propel
the artificial scarcity of the ego for a once internalized profit
maximization. Cynicism will fade with the boundaries flexible, enabling
personal insights from curiosity in novelty or uncertainty. We're already
seeing rapid growth in the common wealth created by individuals within niche
interest communities, like hackerspaces.

You can see a grounded optimism clearly from this interview with Bre Pettis:

Video: Rapid-Prototyping - Interview mit Bre Pettis
http://video.golem.de/software-entwicklung/1791/rapid-prototyping-interview-mit-bre-pettis.html

Basic Income is the simplest way to compensate labor capital's conversion
into the commons. It can also reduce transaction costs considerably of
lumbering and hazardous state bureaucracies like the ones Alex mentioned,
while conveniently giving a means of support to those put out of work within
these defunct institutions:

   * 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.



-- 
Nathan Cravens
Effortless Economy

PUBLIC DOMAIN >> GIFT ECONOMY >> AGGREGATE >> INTEREST >> DISCUSSION >>
DESIGN OUTLINE >> DESIGN >> MATERIALS REQUEST >> FABRICATE PROTOTYPE >>
OPTIMIZE
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