Basic Income answers to University of Ghent

We received the questions from a researches from Sociale Welfare studies at the University of Ghent as a basis for his master’s degree. Original portuguese version here.

In current literature, Basic Income (BI) is being justified for a number of reasons. In what follows, I shall ask some questions regarding those justifications, besides asking questions about some recurring themes in contemporary research.

1. What is your point of view concerning BI being related to the freedom of people?

Fundamental. I would even say that, more than being related, BI does not even make sense, or it can be called as such, if its objective is not to guarantee the unconditional acquisition of the material means necessary to provide the people’s liberation from the conditions of deprivation, vulnerability, submission, servitude and political-economic exploitation, and the maintenance of the freedom thus gained.

2. Van Parijs (1995) uses freedom to refers to: “The freedom to do whatever one might want to do’. What do u think of his definition of freedom?

I do not know Van Parijs or his writings enough to plead either or both, but I venture to say, with what I have read, that his definition of real freedom may be slightly more complex. In any case, regarding this definition of freedom specifically in question, considering it in practice impossible. Or, more accurately, only possible for an ever smaller number of people, in the directly proportional reason of the greater the freedom of these people to do what they want, the less possibility of the others to do what they do not want, or do what they need. For even if material resources were not finite, rare or scarce, the taking of other human beings as mere resources should be the limit of this freedom as wanting-which by the way has another popular name: power. That is, it is an idea of ​​freedom from another world for another man, the subject who inhabits the centers of the world and takes the other beings and forms of being as object of their will to power, and not of the people of the classes and peripheral peoples the borders of this world-often literally on the other side of the fence and the wall, with much more modest concerns and understandings of freedom, such as surviving and perhaps even doing so with a minimum of dignity.

There are things that are so fundamental and imprescriptible that “wanting” is not exactly the word that applies or explains these conditions, but rather “need” and “lack.” Needs whose satisfaction or dearness depends not only on ownership and control over one’s own body and its most basic actions and functions, but of vital and environmental means, the natural resources needed to maintain them, such as drinking water, food, a floor to build a roof over his head or cultivate — and of course a breathable air, which should not even be a concern, since in extremely exceptional natural conditions should not be lacking to anyone. Resources that could be acquired in a natural and primitive way simply by occupying and taking possession of or disputing it through employment of violence or its threat as a deterrent to competitors. A method which, by the way, still remains the current and usual in resolving disputes over territories and resources among peoples beyond the borders of their societies and nations. However, there was another method of getting out of this situation without necessarily getting into disputes and conflicts, especially when it was known that he would get lost. To run away. Move to another place, try to find a new land, a new world where they could appropriate these resources, a territory not yet occupied, or occupied by forces that could not resist the use of their violence. The fundamental point is that even when it involves risks, between submitting oneself to the one who dominates and becomes the owner of what he also lacks, between depending on his good or bad will to gain access to what is necessary, whether it is paying, serving, asking permission, or giving whatever they demand in return, people in these conditions, supposing that they were not also taken as slaves or servants by them, had an option that we do not have today as each handful of land on the planet has a private owner or state: to find a new world to establish and found its society. To the descendants, those who are left of the expropriated, who are born without possessions of the vital means of the 3 there are 2 options: submit and work no longer for themselves, but for whoever detains and can provide what he needs, or face the monopoly that is not only vital and environmental means, but by definition of violence, robbing and eventually killing depoliticizedly as a bandit or politicizedly as an armed revolutionary.

Considering that expropriating, imprisoning or killing politicized or not, legally or illegally, is not a legitimate option nor is it legitimized by the success of the use of force in fact, either as a revolt against the monopoly of violence or as a democratic takeover of that monopoly. And considering that submitting to any order, demand, or service in exchange for subsistence, when or if it exists, is not properly free, free from fear and terrorism of famine, from vulnerability to opportunistic or systematized exploitation of deprivation vital and environmental means. In the absolute lack of peaceful options in the search for freedom from famine and social guarantee of human dignity, a third is invented: the basic income from person to person.

Basic income is therefore a way of guaranteeing socially, that is, peacefully the exercise of the natural right of self-preservation. One way to guarantee access to basic living conditions in freedom in the world as it is. It is therefore about this natural and historical freedom that is the basic income. A freedom that is not a will or a power, but a need, a lack of a life with a minimum of dignity and freedom. It is a process of empowerment to release from famine and relations of power, not from the constitution of forces and powers to satisfy desires and manias, which we can live without, and perhaps we would live more in peace without. A fundamental freedom that is neither relative nor subjective, but natural and universal. A condition of life in freedom. Freedom that therefore has perception, conception and proper names, and is called Dignity.

3. What is your experience regarding BI and justice?

About the basic income we have 10 years of a social project. About justice absolutely none. I’ve read the essay about it, but I’ve never seen anywhere in the world, let alone in the territory I was born and live in. I know the judiciary, its laws, police, judges and courts. I know States-Nations their jurisdictions and jurisdictional disputes over territories and people, but the idea of ​​justice, at least not as experience as the basic income. The idea that I have of justice is even more a utopia, than that of basic income, because of its concreteness I know more the dystopia than the rule, than its ideals that are not the exception. In this my experience and fears about the fairness and basic income of the thesis to practices are similar. After all, there is nothing to prevent concepts and even experimental models from being appropriated and misused by taking the terms and practices to smuggle and perpetuate other ideas and practices diametrically opposed to the meaning of these theses and actions, condemned in turn, to remain where they are today and are (dis) qualified: nowhere.

4. What do u understand under a ‘just’ society?

Civil societies derive from social contracts, pacts of peace between living and free people, to keep their lives at liberty. Sounds obvious, but it’s not. Many of the social contracts we keep though were even “signed” were signed by people who have long since died, but who not only govern the lives of those who actually have the right to live but also those who are born (see Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine). It is therefore basically an agreement that instead of hitting and killing us for something we all need, but we can not divide or renounce, we can share and share this thing taken as a common good. In fact, society is more likely to be formed from the formalization of a community, the formalization of communion on a common good that is already shared in peace, than a peace agreement between belligerent people or peoples, but this is not the case. What is important here is that this social pact which implies both agreement on the renunciation of violence and the assumption of responsibility for mutual respect and assurance of possession, defense and provision of these common goods must (or should) be free, voluntary and explicit, signed people in the full exercise of their decision-making capacity. People who do not necessarily need to possess the same forces, abilities, powers or possessions, but necessarily need to be in a basic condition of equality: none of them may lack the necessary means to plead and decide the terms of their adhesion. Neither party can be in such a condition as to be obliged to accept the terms of others, either because they negotiate with arms on the table, or because he knows, as well as the others, that if he does not accept the terms he will starve to death. That is, it does not matter if the conditions that prevent him from taking part in a society where he has in fact political and economic participation are caused by his deprivations caused by himself, by nature or even by others, the fact is that this contract is not fair or unfair, it is void.

It would then be fair to say that society would guarantee equality of rights and duties both as a guarantee of equality of powers and authorities over this common good as duties, and the guarantee of equitable fundamental freedoms as usufruct of these goods and rights in fact. And considering that this common good should not be consumed and extinct but preserved, that usufruct should therefore be given on its income and not on capital. But the preservation of such terms and conditions is not only necessary to have a more just society, but before that, in order to have in fact a relation that can be properly called social, and its formalization of anything resembling a society and not a mere territory of domestication and conditioning of men over men.

The problem, or one of several, is that equality is a mere logical abstraction, as opposed to freedom, which, in addition to being a mental construct, also corresponds to elemental phenomena of life, forces, volitions and conditions corresponding to vital and environmental means. And so the possibility of peace and justice does not derive from the abstract idea of ​​absolute equality, but from the preservation of these natural properties and rights, not from imaginary values ​​or institutions.

Thus justice and peace derive not from equality, but from the broad and unrestricted distribution of security and social security, as a guarantee that any and all inequality will not be constituted as superiority of forces and authorities acquired precisely by the appropriation, control and possession of goods common and soon deprivation or concession of vital means through submission to orders or execution of services. In other words, that everyone will possess or have enough possessions and income so that no one within society is vulnerable to being submitted against their will and dignity to anyone. The assurance that no wealth will be constituted as power, or more precisely that no power will be constituted of the impoverishment and dearth of others.

Therefore, I consider a just society that establishes itself on the social pact of guaranteeing equality of these concrete fundamental freedoms as vital and environmental means that allow both the renunciation of violence and the participation of political and economic fact in public and social life, both in the form of basic income as direct democracy, complementary forms of guarantee of fundamental freedoms like equal participation and authority on the common good; without the subsidy of violence and as prevention and protection against such conditions of vulnerability that enable the use of such violence and violations: deprivation of vital resources. And consequent inequality of power and relations — constituted and maintained not only of such privations, but never without their control, regulation and conditioning.

5. Does BI help in achieving this just society? Why?

Basic income is not the only way to create just societies or specifically the just society described above. However, in capitalized and monetized societies, where both private and public property comprises all of the common goods, and thus access to vital resources, this is the only way to ensure the just more sustainable balance of such socioeconomic systems. Since the share corresponds to the sharing of the usufruct of the common good, it is only possible through the guarantee of corresponding social dividends at least to the minimum necessary to subsistence with dignity and renounces violence. And without the possibility of this guarantee of subsistence and freedom, the social pact and state of peace lose their raison d’être to those who are increasingly marginalized.

There are also other ways of building societies, but they are neither fair nor properly social, and indeed not even human, at least not to the margin of them, it is the object and not the subject of this architecture. It is possible, for example, to incarcerate populations who, faced with possible choices, make the wrong choices, that is, instead of working or even killing and legally looting those who have the license to do, work, kill and steal from them. But that aside the humanitarian objections in addition to being monstrous is stupid (which is also redundant) given that the cost with such a “solution” in addition to being greater, and always escalate as the tendency of people born with an even more delimited options than inherited from parents and society only increases with these prisoners as well as society costs.

Of course we could come out of less soft and disguised punitivism and eugenics, and kill and apply death sentences as broadly as possible. But even if the cost of extermination is less than incarceration, there is a serious logistical problem: if we kill all the donkeys who will pull the cart? As long as she does not walk alone, the machines of capitalism and nazifascism though they continue to love each other, will have to postpone their long-awaited marriage. Of course, it is perfectly possible to kill the Indian and to kidnap the black man and, above all, to profit from this trade of labor. But this profit is made not only at the expense of exploiting these people, but by externalizing the costs of their consequences to society, costs that will inevitably have to be paid but pushed into the future, such as debts and losses that are assumed or not , are in one form or another paid for by the next generations.

So it is quite possible to maintain unjust or extremely unjust societies for long periods of time as long as the resources available to maintain injustice and repression are plentiful. But they inevitably are extinguished by the very nature of consumption and exploitation of both natural and human resources, that is, for the same reason that people have nowhere to run, empires can not expand as well, there are no more territories and people to are simply colonized, at least not on Earth. So that between changing the pattern of exploration of nature and the living ones including their fellows, the most sensible option is for this man to colonize Mars.

So the current social pact so as not to collapse politically and economically by the social tension that it produces has only two options to go on extending its settlement and final end: to continue plundering and exploiting other peoples and lands indefinitely and in periods of lean cattle reintroducing the segregation and brutal and tyrannical exploitation within the social classes of its own population, returning to crap where it eats as a medieval feudal lord or the ruling class of the underdeveloped world. Or else balancing minimally their relations of dominance and power.

Thus, the same basic income that represents the chance to live with more dignity for those who do not even have this freedom in a more just society, is for those who do not need one, thank you, a way to save an unjust society, turning it into something less monstrous and unsustainable, before it again decays into another barbarism, with its commercial, economic wars, and of course if indeed in fact, armed. Two ways of preserving his system of exploitation and administration of privileges and domains of man over man with distinct risks and costs, and justice remains just a piece of propaganda.

So, by constituting a new social pact and state-nation model or going to war against each other to preserve the old, two things are certain: there will be no justice with basic income, but on the other hand, many people would kill themselves and die, or simply die for the stupid reason of not having how to simply live. Not having enough reason to move us to prevent this from happening. I honestly do not care what those are, why they are just or unfair or whether they need to be or not. Since we have come out of inertia and put an end to it, any society is a good start for justice.

6. What is your opinion on BI related to the labour market?

Basic income is a fundamental condition for the labor market to be, in fact, a labor market and not a trafficking of wage workers. Or more precisely, so that we can distinguish which markets are honestly and legitimately used by the voluntary work of people who sell their productive force, and who use or even promote the creation and exploitation of armies of cheap labor incapable of refuse to provide the services provided to them for lack of means of subsistence or to pay the accounts and debts with the capital that employs them.

7. What can a BI mean for people currently working?

“Working” is a purposely generic and vague term, encompassing people who both enjoy possibilities of choices and those who are subjected to conditions so close to servitude, slavery, and reification, both the primitive beasts and the automata of the machines that others preferred stealing, killing or begging than to submit to them. A term as generic as “people.” Since by “people” we take the idea of ​​all of us who are equal, when in practice the absolute majority of us do not consider ourselves equal to each other, even if we do not confess, and differentiate the category of people not only gene … gene, but by class that derives essentially from employment and social function, that is work.

In particular, I understand work as synonymous with free labor as opposed to servile work or thanks. So what many people call work I would call modern or wage slavery. To the extent that this person is compelled not to work to support themselves, because we all need to, but to work for another person to be able to survive without resorting to violence, doing not only what she does not want to do, but obeying orders and doing actions which he would never do if he did not have the means to support himself without necessarily having to eat from someone else’s hand.

Just as, in particular, I mean basic income as a practical rather than a theory. So this response depends on both what is referred to as work as well as what is presented as basic income to those who are working in it, whether the basic income as a discursive proposal or act and actualized action. Not only does the meaning vary from thesis to practice, but positions and oppositions as well as the way people go about making it clear what exactly this other basic income means to them.

So their meaning of basic income varies very little from the variants of their theses, but between basic income as a discursive and practical proposal as act and action, this completely changes the view not only of basic income but of world and social relations , not only of who is receiving, but of who is working to make it happen.

That is why basic income is not preached, it is given. Those who need it know why they need it and why they agree, all it takes is to be free to receive. Just as anyone who does not agree does not need, doubt or know exactly why the others who need should not receive one, so is one. What basic income means refers to things so basic and evident that not only does it not make the least sense of the pretension of symbolic transmission of its meaning without the act, as its meaning of discourse itself and of basic income itself loses all meaning without the deeds it actually constitutes. You have to be very self-centered or have a captive audience to believe that arguments can produce meanings that the empathic sensitivity of the person itself or the lack thereof can not.

Can you give an example?

I can give 4 very practical examples of lived and living experiences that the basic income meant for three different people that I had the opportunity to meet.

For one politician, it meant the threat of his capital and electoral corral, the theft of his piece of demagogy. The arrival of what should remain as eternal promise.

For the businessman, its meaning was summed up in a simple question: who will clean my latrine?

For a resident of Quatinga Velho, at least once, when all the money was gone, it was the only meal she had at her table.

Finally, for those who work 40 hours of work, 10 to 20 hours of public transportation that is not carried or animals. There is no greater wealth than your little free time, and so when you go to him to talk about basic income, this sounds like a goddamned preaching of a Jehovah’s Witness on Sundays, a madman preaching about more free time, to a person who does not has free time to dream of free time in his only unfortunate hour that he would have some free time to be in peace. More boring and pathetic than that, just even try to convince a hungry person that a banquet is something good.

8. Opponents of a BI say that the economic reality isn’t questioned enough with a BI, what do you think of this critique?

If these opponents had remembered to be realistic when the invention of capitalism, socialism or more recently of the derivatives during the crisis of 2008, certainly we would have other realities and mainly a little more of notion on her. The problem is not what the opponents say, they are opponents and that says it all. The problem is to swallow up the assumptions of your opposition as if they were anything but a criticism. To be critical, there must be intellectual honesty or intelligence. Either one or the other is not present when one approaches the question of economic experimentation on the prism of a realism, which does not exist for a field of knowledge that is a product of industry and human artificiality.

The administration of the rarity or rarification of resources, the object of the economic though it tries to sell itself as if it were a science made of laws as universal as Newtonian gravitation, are not. The accounting principle that leads and explains an entire population to death is not the same kind of mathematical principle that “leads” and explains why an apple falls from the tree. And maybe that’s why we can reasonably calculate where it will hit when we kick a rock, but not where it will hit when we kick another person. So I keep the same appreciation for surgical medicine in the nineteenth century for the opinion of political economy, even in favor of BI, when they operated with the same instruments that dissected corpses, and would continue to do so until prove the opposite. In other words, a good economist or a good economic critic is one who recognizes that economics as science just crawls. And it soon serves and reproduces like all science, especially before it can properly be called cultural prejudices and interests that sustain it both culturally and economically, not only as the basis of its world view, but not infrequently as the hand that feeds it.

Comparison with medical knowledge is not free. Procedures are often established using force as a given reality, without any other test or experimentation other than practice itself as experience. Then it is questioned and it is demanded the verification and validation of any alternative that does not fit in these preconceptions. It is therefore more than natural for the basic income economy to be doubted and disqualified by those who have the role, or rather the job, of just not questioning, but validating without questioning the precariousness of work to the scrapping of social security until the active toxicants and financial derivatives that guarantee the perpetuation of the invisible hand that feeds them as the only possible reality, not because it has been exhaustively studied and tested and questioned as a hypothesis before being proved as absolute truth, but simply because it was imposed as a criterion of truth to judge with all force that the persuasion that only the power of political-economic fact can provide as subsidy to a field of knowledge and its guard dogs.

For example, I consider that military industry, especially nuclear, is not only economically much more unrealistic but also dangerously destructive. However, my opposition is irrelevant. Because it does not matter what I think or want about industry or arms policy, but who invests, time, money and labor (especially of others) to manufacture them. And I say this, because the same goes for BI. Except for obstruction or sabotage, I do not care what opponents think or intend about BI. I worry, yes, what do people who want to invest time, money and work — think of them and not of others? Out of these intentions, against or in favor, criticism does not make hair grow or fall. It’s “philosoboll”. And philosoboll is not going to bring a basic income to anyone who needs it. At most you can get in the way of omission or loss of precious time who you want to do, since you can not obstruct projects and achievements, at least not those that do not depend on your authority, authorization, work or money.

9. What can BI mean in the debate about feminism?

A tool to be appropriate as an instrument of emancipation and reduction of vulnerability to power relations. Considering that the majority of power relationships, especially those of parental power, are based on the relation of ownership and control of people through the threat and primitive deprivation of vital and environmental means. Societies where all people possess the vital means, one can not extract a relation of power and possession of the other to object of possession, employment, use and consumption with blackmail and barter by the provision of alienated subsistence. A person who possesses without having to sell his labor, possessions, or whatever he wants to earn his living, does not have the power to do what he wants, but has the freedom to refuse to do what others impose on him.

Of course, this basic income can not therefore be a governmental concession and a citizen obligation, but rather a mutual or citizen responsibility and government obligation, or otherwise the relations of inequality of authority remain and the state remains what it is, the artificial body that incarnates the father-power to all who are historically from their genesis submitted to it, starting with women.

10. Why would BI help emancipating women?

Because it would reduce one of the instruments used by people who exploit other human beings and reduce them to objects and goods to be used and used as they wish. The poor. Poverty not only as a costly but as vulnerability and insecurity about the possibilities of subsistence independent of the specific submission to another person or group of people with more possessions and powers. Emancipation of power relations established by lack of basic resources for survival. A condition that does not affect women alone, but affects all groups excluded from equal opportunities for capital accumulation.

Could you give an example?

A woman who is beaten by her husband, but who does not leave her because she has kept her throughout her life as her slave and maid under the terrorism of “as long as I provide you will do what I tell you”, could have a wider range of options than sticking a knife into the bastard’s neck while they’re asleep. Run away and look for a job, probably as a maid in exchange for the equivalent of home and food without a beating-at the risk of not being able to find it. And so many other options, all of which escape the dignified condition of someone who is not subject to a condition because he does not have a material or psychological condition of security of how to sustain himself if he leaves the previous one.

11. Opponents of a BI claim that BI would confirm current stereotypes about current gender roles, what is your view on this claim?

In all honesty of the world, I reflected a lot on this question but I can not imagine how anyone could do it on a basic income. I understand that between the thesis of the universality of classical basic income and its application there is in fact an infinite difference. But the basis of the tacit discrimination inherent in these basic income models is generally directed at the formation of non-gender-based target groups, but in population groups, that is, territories or nationalities that ultimately refer to issues of race, origin and social classes to the extent that populations tend to urbanistically distribute their housing by setting the margin or ghettos the lower classes, but I do not understand how the design of an applied project of a basic income could discriminate against people based on gender. There are designs of social projects of income transfer directed to family nuclei where the woman is responsible for receiving money, such as the Brazilian family grant. In this case, I understand that the critic, who at the same time seeks or seems to empower the woman by ensuring that she has a prevalence in controlling this receipt, at the same time creates a condition where the woman needs to be inside a family nucleus to receive it. But precisely for this reason, for creating such tacit conditions, among others that are explicit not only as preconditions of dearth, but also as counterparts to be fulfilled in order to receive the appeal, that programs such as the family grant are not basic income programs, unless for conditional or unconditional basic income. That takes away all the force and libertarian distinction of the concept. Anyway, as you can see I can not find a genuine model of basic, unconditional income, it could be discriminatory by gender.

12. When would someone get a BI in your opinion?

I consider this the biggest mistake of all, in the approach of BI theorists. The question is not when or who could receive a basic income. The question is where, how much and for how many people can we afford a basic income with what we have or are we willing to use. And we are not as indeterminate subjects, but we are as much as we are willing to join in this endeavor. The ethical and theoretical approach of applied basic income is another. Like the doctor or firefighter, the social agent of basic income does not ask himself who should answer, or asks himself if he should do it. It does, and does so with the resource it has to do within reach of its action and resources. He does not expect or transfer responsibility, he assumes it.

In general, we autocratically attribute the jurisdiction to advocate, and the prerogative to define who, how, where, how and how much would be equivalent to the subsistence of the other, discriminating and segregating who could or should receive, even when we do not have no explicit or we are not even aware of these tacit and implicit conditions (and conditionalities). But while we call this prerogative, we conveniently and conveniently omit to take any responsibility for the duties necessary to pull out these paper rights assurances — this is when we do not explicitly transfer responsibilities in the proposition as obligations to another undetermined subject, physical or legal persons wealthier or more powerful.

It must be assumed that whoever has more resources should take responsibility and there is no legal person with more resources than the State. However, between duty and duty there is an abyss of distinct interests and purposes, which, returning to the example of vocational professions, if these professionals waited for goodwill who could or would have the duty of, people would die without care and buildings would burn to the ground, with everyone inside, waiting for others who can or should do more. In addition, state and private individuals and entities do not accumulate amounts of resources that they hold by distributing, but fairly retaining.

Therefore, the response of who, when, how, where and how much could-should be received is an answer that becomes extremely simple when one changes the normalization approach of the life of others, to that of solidarity with the life of others. It is a very simple matter to solve when we leave the will to predetermine what should be done and move on to the will to do what we can. Who, how, when, when, all this is no longer preconceived by arbitrary variables and is governed by a single simple principle, which is not an answer but a question:

How much do I have free time and money that I am willing to share with people that these resources can make a difference and that are within my reach? How much of this capital am I willing to share as income? Where can it be meant as basic? And if I divide, for how many would I continue to have literally the same minimum value converted into monetary value, not for me, but for them? Who are they? It does not matter, we do not need to know anything about them except they exist. And that is something that matters to them to tell us, not us, because the resources to be divided remain the same.

These formulations and calculations are the product of this other predisposition. And not the other way round. It is the metis producing the teckne, not the inverse and perverse. So in this search, in this empirical investigation to realize basic income as a practice, the subject who is responsible for the architecture of the project may discover that there are places and people so poor and needy that with the money we spend sometimes in a day, families live weeks. And that therefore no one, or almost no one is so poor and impotent that their meager resources can not mean the realization of the freedom of one who has even less. He will discover that Amartya Sen’s approach to freedom as capabillities, such as “being free from” makes more sense than power, although he never advocated basic income. Because the dearth, the need to be free from some deprivation is the real freedom that we have no sense of its importance and presence for not being able to even imagine how a person can live without it. And in some ways we’re right. You can not. They are just trying, just postponing a premature death rather than living properly or enjoying life.

So the answer is not who you could get, because it does not exist by definition, but how much you are willing to give. Based on this, it is possible to calculate where and for how many people this available resource could constitute a basic income regardless of whether it is significant or falls within the presets of having sufficient resources and time to judge this, but caring and listening (and much ) if it is important to these people.

There are not a few places in the world where the cost of living is small, and they are small and not infrequently precisely because people do not inherit or own property, so no guaranteed income of their own. So setting the guarantee of the vital minimum through the booking of the possible is easy. It is difficult to want to take responsibility for doing so. Transferring income is easy, difficult is not wanting to transfer that responsibility. Finding who wants and needs to receive is not lacking, or even who wants to force the other to pay, it is rare to find who wants to pay. Primarily without discriminating who will receive even tacitly and unconfessively because it does not belong to its society, territoriality or nationality, because it does not fit in the identity and preconceptions of its similar.

It is not a question of political will or definition of the “target audience”. There is a complete reversal of the mentality of the preset and dictate what the rights and duties are to the other, to hear what the needs are, and to assume the responsibilities according to the possibilities before the fellow — however diverse it may be. A practice that demands not only a whole new theory, but a whole new method of producing theses within another ethical and experimental paradigm of the human sciences. A paradigm where the subject who projects knowledge does not take the other as a reified object of study, employment or experimentation of his projects and projections, but as the subject of the production of both his own self and world, as well as the pretension of the other to know him, and know it. Another mentality in which this knowledge is not predisposed to dictate and govern their lives, but to dispose of them in the service of their free and sovereign will — which, even if it did not exist or not, should be recreated, revitalized and fully developed throughout OUR human potential.

13. What is your opinion on BI (as being given individually to each person) related to social cohesion in society?

Basic income, as I said, is fundamental to the maintenance of social peace in societies that can no longer extract their gains from the plunder of other classes or other peoples. But more than another stage required the civility of mankind. The distribution of basic resources so that no one stupidly dies, deters or is obliged to submit to anyone within the territory under the jurisdiction of that society, be it an imprisoned criminal, or an unemployed worker, or the child, daughter of any of them is more than that an element of increasing social cohesion and then reducing stress, is a humanizing element. Living in communist or capitalist societies where those who do not work do not eat, or work but do not earn enough, eating is dehumanizing. And to make this commitment that before being social is humanitarian, it is fundamental in the exact measure that the preservation of the gregarious sense and empathic feeling are not rationalizations, but the essence forming the ethos of our human condition as people and species, not only intelligent but conscious .

14. What do you think of BI regarding exclusion in society?

Prevention of exclusion. It is a means of social inclusion of the population in society. There is a mistake in thinking of the whole population as a society. The society is formed by the elements that participate politically and economically of the decision making. Although high society has greater influence and subsidy from the government classes, and the lower social classes are literally the margin, at the periphery of the centers of political-economic power. And this if not by categories and classes, but by gradations within this pyramidal architecture, society by definition is not part of the government, nor the people, the population that is at the base of the system is part of one or the other. Their equal rights exist on paper, but in practice they are others. In thesis and magnitude letters are all the same, in practice they are still the plebs, that the further away from the upper, lower, rude, ignorant society is looked at and kept preferably away from the eyes and the distance.

Politico-legal rights are fictions of very bad taste to those who do not enjoy the socioeconomic means to effect them. In fact, where political-legal rights are not effective as de facto provisions or as socio-economic guarantees, there remain only obligations such as impositions and goods and services as mere concessions, if not, as compensation for a poorly disguised public service pillage and Social.

Societies that speak of a guarantee of life and freedom, and freedom as human rights, are like cities and nations that write in their constitutions that everyone should have access to water and electric light. And they do not build distribution systems of either one or the other. In fact they speak of the provision of light without even having invented or at least reproduced the invention of the lamp in scale of its pretensions or supposed pretensions.

Basic income is that. It is social inclusion, in a social pact where the protection and provision of a social security network, where the guarantee of fundamental rights as freely choosing their office according to their vocation does not come after old, sick or injured, but during the moment in that these choices can and should be made. One of the fundamental characteristics was born and enjoys the protection of a society or belongs to a plebe predestined to support it. How do you choose your job and profession? According to the opportunities or according to the needs? The answer, even where education is free, defines the category of citizenship, and the degree of certainty, the degree of social security itself.

Therefore, it can be said not only to what basic income includes a people apart from a society, it includes a whole society as part of a true social contract and a people, not in the Law of paper, but in the Law in fact, while social reality.

15. What is your stance on the idea that certain people with a BI would spend their money in a way that is not socially accepted?

I consider the assumption of such a possibility to be absolutely correct, and this possibility as an objection to BI is completely unreasonable. People will eventually spend the money they receive as these or those people would not like. And while this is not a crime — as it could be used the money acquired by any means — it is not theirs what others do or will do with their money. The problem is that we do not think of basic income as income from a property that belongs as part of an estate that also belongs to the other, but as charity, whether private or nationalized as social assistance. And it’s not. Even because even if it were social assistance, and it is not, it would still be a right. And not charity.

The problem is people do not think of basic income as a right of the person about what is hers, but still as a right of it as a member of society or government authority over the person. And it’s not. Even if it were, once instituted as a tribute would not be restitution of what is owed, but theft subsidized by the State. And, in fact, if the basic income were not the part of the income of all patrimony that corresponds to the share of each person in the participation in the common good, it is distributed as private or state property, if that tax and income redistributed went beyond those values which constitute worthy subsistence, would be a robbery. The same as robbery, the invasion of a house of another person, regardless of the fact that we contribute socially that this property exists simply by renouncing violence and living in society.

Holders of property and capital have already done absolutely monstrous and criminal things with the amount of capital they hold, and no one has ever argued for the possibility of eliminating ownership of all of them or private property itself by instituting public and social control of private possessions, no one except the (authoritarian) communists of course. So that what A does with what is her does not imply B’s right to what is hers.

All society, even those that are based on minimum states of patrimonial protection, imply in distribution of costs and benefits. So that those who have no possession pay taxes also to protect the properties of those who have possessions, to keep and circulate goods and vehicles that do not walk or carry their goods; but even so, wanting or not, they bear the costs and maintenance and protection of what they do not have, sometimes protection where they as expropriated are the main suspects. Thus, apart from those living in a cave, there is no one who in any way participates in the cost-benefit relationship of society. What varies is the cost and benefits for each person to the extent that, the more inversely proportional is the contribution given in relation to capacity and need, the more unjust society will be and the greater the tension and risk of rupture of the social fabric especially in moments of systemic political-economic crisis.

So we can say that a person who has no income from property and private funds, nor from public property and funds, is bearing the costs of many benefits, allowances, and services that he does not receive, or from which he receives or know how much it costs him only in monetary value that varies according to the market, but in working life time. It is a social contract of a lion, which is no wonder that it has only been maintained until today as the subsidy of the “legitimate” monopoly of violence and without anyone being able to sign it. Because while the costs are socialized, profits are privatized. In other words, “society” is again asking the wrong questions about the people. The question is not what they will do with the money if they receive a basic income. Is it what society will do to protect itself from its plebs if the monopoly of violence is not enough to contain those who no longer have the power to support a swollen and bankrupt state in the back? Because who does not have bread eats brioche and who does not have bread nor brioche eats aristocracies. For it is a mistake to think that those people who lack the most basic income belong to a society, they are part of the people, which by definition compose neither the governmental nor the social class. It is not therefore a question of what this or that does with its social dividends, either as income from its private assets, from the public that is also absolutely and exclusively its share, while the use of this possession or income does not put at risk and harasses or deprives others, the right of intervention of society is exactly the same as any other property of the person, none.

Could you give an example?

No. There are infinite ways and wants that a person may want to make use of the means he possesses to determine his life, and then infinite forms and wants of others instead of caring for his, if he devotes himself to watching over others. But as a basis for this principle, it is possible to say that one of the forms of use of the basic income that would allow the intervention of the others, would be precisely if people alone or in associations with as many as used this income precisely to control and monitor the life and usufruct of possessions and income from others.

Basic income before being a libertarian practice is a libertarian ideal and idea which, if devoid of its spirit and principles, are no longer libertarian and no basic income. And if this were to happen, even before it would spread, we would no longer need a basic income, but to invent another practice to give body and place to this ideal.