New Left Review - NLR 77, September-October 2012 BASIC INCOME: A new universal right? As a brief intro and due to the first responses on the original Spanish post on my blog I want to clarify that I do think the Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a good idea; however, I think that if we emphasize one single approach, I would not choose this one, and what follows is why. Nevertheless the intention here is to start a dialog on the proposals and how we can expand on them. A few days ago, Peter Joseph, founder of the Zeitgeist Movement, posted on his Facebook page: "Here is a practical (transition) idea worth knowing about/helping out" And right after we can find a link about Universal Basic Income -- in Ecuador, we could translate that as "Universal Minimum Wage". Whether connected or not to this phenomenon, something else has become increasingly obvious: the inequality of incomes. "If you were born poor today, you have less chance than ever to get out of poverty than to die poor, or for your children to get out of poverty. Friends of the world, support copyleft!
Unconditional Basic Income Details Written by Johannes Himmelreich E&M recently conducted a survey called "Social Justice in Europe - the Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) as a model of the future?", aiming to find out young European's opinions on the idea. Certainly, the results are quite polarised and the topic remains controversial. E&M: So, you would buy me a free lunch? Van Parijs: In the sense that I would take you out for lunch today? E&M: No, not just today, every month. Why not, yeah. E&M: You in fact argue that the state should provide something like a free lunch, an unconditional basic income – for everybody every month. But that is a wrong way of framing it. E&M: What do you mean? Take for example my salary, or much higher salaries. The American Nobel laureate in economics, Herbert Simon, wrote that to be optimistic we deserve 10% of our standard of living. E&M: So there is an imbalance between effort and reward. What took me to [the idea of] Basic Income in fact is the convergence of two things in the 80s.
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Universal Basic Income: The trojan horse I should have written this article about 6 months ago, when I finished my thesis on a Resource Based Economy, but this could not be a better occasion. Due to various circumstances, we find a key to the expansion of an idea whose time has come now. Unlink employment, in the minds of people, from the right to exist. Most of the Zeitgeist Movement's activists will have encountered countless critics to the RBE model we propose, and there is a simple reason: To a mind that has been prepared to take a job for life, the separation between job and right-to-life is inconceivable. This is the main purpose of the basic income. Why should we be concerned with this idea as TZM activists? Because most people are willing to discuss when you speak their own language, money. - Who will do the unpleasant jobs? But this is not important. These are some of the most obvious points, but of course there will be many other consequences that we may fail to see today.
Will Switzerland trigger the basic income revolution? With the success of the federal initiative for unconditional basic income, Switzerland may accelerate the worldwide debate on basic income for all. Launched one year ago by two basic income groups from Basel and Zurich, the swiss initiative for basic income still has until august to make sure it has the 100.000 signatures to succeed and trigger a referendum, as specified under the Swiss law. Yet, basic income activists were happy and smiling when welcoming me at the train station in Geneva two weeks ago. With more than 110.000 signatures collected so far, much of the job has been done already. A referendum within two years? But even though the press is now unanimous that they are on the verge to succeed, the activists now aim at collecting 130k signatures by august, just to make sure they reach the quotum. In general, such a refrendum is organize within two years after the success of the initiative has been recognized by the authorities. But the activists are not too much in a hurry.
TomDispatch Seasteading Seasteading is the concept of creating permanent dwellings at sea, called seasteads, outside the territory claimed by the government of any standing nation. Most proposed seasteads have been modified cruising vessels. Other proposed structures have included a refitted oil platform, a decommissioned anti-aircraft platform, and custom-built floating islands.[1] No one has created a state on the high seas that has been recognized as a sovereign nation, although the Principality of Sealand is a disputed micronation formed on a discarded sea fort near Suffolk, England.[2] The closest things to a seastead that have been built so far are large ocean-going ships sometimes called "floating cities", and smaller floating islands. The term combines the words sea and homesteading. Legal issues[edit] The Seasteading Institute[edit] The Seasteading Institute's "ClubStead" On July 31, 2011, Friedman stepped down from the role of executive director, and became chairman of the board. Designs[edit] Other[edit]
Reddito Minimo Garantito per tutte e tutti. All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis (9781591843634): Bethany McLean, Joe Nocera Biomimetics Velcro tape mimics biological examples of multiple hooked structures such as burs. Biomimetics or biomimicry is the imitation of the models, systems, and elements of nature for the purpose of solving complex human problems.[1] The terms biomimetics and biomimicry come from Ancient Greek: βίος (bios), life, and μίμησις (mīmēsis), imitation, from μιμεῖσθαι (mīmeisthai), to imitate, from μῖμος (mimos), actor. A closely related field is bionics.[2] Possible applications[edit] Biomimetics could in principle be applied in many fields. Because of the complexity of biological systems, the number of features that might be imitated is large. Aircraft wing design[4] and flight techniques[5] inspired by birds and bats History[edit] One of the early examples of biomimicry was the study of birds to enable human flight. Biophysics is not so much a subject matter as it is a point of view. Nanobiomimetics or Nanobiomimicry[edit] Fabrication[edit] Biomedicine[edit] Nanowires, nanotubes, and quantum dots[edit]
Switzerland: Initiative to establish a basic income for all In April, Switzerland formally presented an initiative to establish a new federal law known as " For a basic income "[fr]. The idea, which is simply to give a monthly income to all citizens regardless of resource conditions and the work has generated comments throughout the blogosphere Switzerland. The Swiss referendum process [fr] is a system of direct democracy that allows citizens to request a legislative change at the federal or constitutional. If the initiative to establish a basic income has more than 100,000 signatures before 11 October 2013, the Federal Assembly must examine and call a referendum if the initiative is considered credible. Swiss francs, Jim user photo from Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). In his blog, Pascal Holenweg explains what it is [fr]: The popular initiative "for a basic income" suggests that "the establishment of a universal unconditional benefit" go to the Federal Constitution, which "would allow all people to lead a dignified life and participate in public life."
Occupy the London Stock Exchange Capitalism simply isn't working and here are the reasons why | Will Hutton | Comment is free | The Observer Suddenly, there is a new economist making waves – and he is not on the right. At the conference of the Institute of New Economic Thinking in Toronto last week, Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the Twenty-First Century got at least one mention at every session I attended. You have to go back to the 1970s and Milton Friedman for a single economist to have had such an impact. Like Friedman, Piketty is a man for the times. It is a startling thesis and one extraordinarily unwelcome to those who think capitalism and inequality need each other. Piketty deploys 200 years of data to prove them wrong. The process is made worse by inheritance and, in the US and UK, by the rise of extravagantly paid "super managers". Inequality of wealth in Europe and US is broadly twice the inequality of income – the top 10% have between 60% and 70% of all wealth but merely 25% to 35% of all income. Capitalist dynamism is undermined, but other forces join to wreck the system.