This article is adapted from Chris’ book ’Pandemic Capitalism: From Broken Systems to Basic Incomes’ published in 2020.
With no other option, people suffering from hunger and those at risk of the same are forced to compete. Porous safety nets worsen the issue. These conditions are not due to chance.
WHERE IS THE GREENER PASTURE?
In the time of hunter-gatherers survival was the order of the day. With limited opportunities for storage and preservation, groups spent much of their time securing food for the near term. Staving off hunger was a mandatory item on the daily to-do list. If the available food sources started getting depleted, hungry people moved on before it became a problem.
In 2016, the World Food Programme estimated that 800 million people were undernourished — over 10% of humanity. But the problem is not that there is not enough food — there is more than enough — it just does not go around. The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) estimated that one-third of the food produced globally went to waste in 2011, and it might be as high as 40% in the US1.
Our systems are designed for waste. The problem stems from our collective choices. Our governments prioritised concerns around individual wealth over those of collective human needs.
The masses struggle so that a relative few can enjoy fabulous excesses. Necessities go unfulfilled while the privileged indulge in perversities. And unlike in those bygone days when hunter-gatherers could move on to greener pastures, moving is often not an option. If you cannot afford subsistence where you are, how can you move to a place where you could? And on top of the costs of migration, countries are generally making it harder in response to internal backlashes. Those with desired expertise or deep pockets can still move around, but they are not the hungry ones.
With no other option, people suffering from hunger and those at risk of the same are forced to compete. Porous safety nets worsen the issue. These conditions are not due to chance. Instead, it is part of a deliberate project. Scholars Deborah Grayson and Charlotte Millar tell us that neoliberal thinkers have long worked to transform human nature. They note that ‘early liberal thinkers in the 19th century thought that people naturally were rational economic agents and if you liberalised society enough people would’ automatically begin to compete2.
In practice, that meant deregulation, which was paired with premeditated precarity. Protections were removed, and scarcity was introduced. Rather than becoming ‘rational economic agents‘, the mass of men were taken as hostages to a system that continually robbed them of voice and choice, while it coerced them to strive ever harder just to keep their heads above water. It did so while convincing individuals that systemic problems are individual failings. Convincing us to hide our circumstances in shame was a trick worthy of supervillains.
Adherents tell us profits are the best incentive for driving progress. But what evidence do we have to support that idea? Belief is a poor substitute for proof. We know the profit motive drives some of us, and maybe all are motivated by self-interest to some degree. Even so, there are plenty of other factors driving human behaviour.
The root of our problems
A recent research of the British Journal of Social Psychology suggests that exposure to neoliberal ideology increased loneliness and decreased well-being by reducing people’s sense of connection to others and by increasing perceptions of being in competition with others. Photo: Alexis Fauvet / Unsplash
Why should we believe one takes complete precedence over the rest? We know things like the desire to foster community, help family and friends, or the compulsion to work on humanity’s problems drive some of us to do things that are not directly beneficial to ourselves. To buy into the neoliberal position, we have to accept the idea that selflessness is illogical or at least self-limiting. I’ll pass.
Each of us has a mix of forces pulling us in different directions. At best, the profit motive is an oversimplification. At worst, it can be a destructive force without equal. That force needs to be restrained.
THE ROAD NOT YET TAKEN
Satisfying our needs individually limits our ability to respond collectively. Think about climate change. The more we produce, the bigger the problem becomes. Now think about how much of the work that is performed is not beneficial in terms of satisfying human needs? It is worth considering whether we even need everyone to work. I am sure many would argue that such a notion is not true in general, but the coronavirus outbreak confirmed that at least sometimes, we are all better off if a lot of people do not go to work (and maybe we still should not). Let’s dig in on the general argument.
Our current system is based on jobs with 40-hour workweeks. The social contract it represented worked for a long time for many people, but it has become a broken promise for far too many of us. We are stuck in a system that does not adapt to the amount of work that is needed, nor the amount allotted to individuals, at a time when we need to drastically change both of those factors. In other words, if we all need to do our part, then maybe our parts all need to be smaller.
We are so used to relying on work for our economic security that the idea of not having to do so seems outlandish. Instead, we are accustomed to a system in which we play an increasingly frantic loser-take-none game of musical chairs. But it does not have to be that way. If we reframe our thinking about the economy to abandon competition for our primary needs, the solution becomes clear: a universal basic income (UBI).
Imagine how differently the millions of new unemployment claims might affect the economy if all those people could count on regular UBI payments.
Effects of a UBI during the pandemic
Amongst all the UBI experiments around the world, the longest-running and most ambitious attempt is currently underway in Kenya. Since 2016, nonprofit GiveDirectly has been sending direct cash payments to more than 14,000 Kenyan rural households. A study shows that Kenyans who received a daily UBI equivalent to USD 0.75 were less likely to go hungry, suggesting how a UBI may help the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations survive crises. Photo: Joerg Boethling / Alamy
Let us imagine a monthly payment that provided a moderate income floor but did not remove the support provided by existing safety net programmes. With a regular stipend of sorts, all would have an easier time making ends meet in an increasingly uncertain economy. Such a programme might simplify matters by reducing the total amount of programmes necessary while reducing the administrative burden. Such changes could also remove the need for wasteful, destructive efforts like means-testing. Everyone gets a regular deposit from the basic income programme. Rich or poor, sick or well, young or old, it does not matter. If you are alive, you qualify.
Basic incomes would also provide a bit of financial padding for future downturns. Those who lost their work income would still have something coming in each month. This money would have the added benefit of reducing any loss of spending and thereby lessening the negative demand shock of the downturn. Imagine how differently the millions of new unemployment claims might affect the economy if all those people could count on regular UBI payments, rather than be stuck hoping for help from their government.
Such a programme could circumvent the problems with our current approach, as safety nets are often targeted for cuts. Conditions limit the number of recipients and sliding scales reduce the amount distributed. With those it is easy to continually cut benefits. Alternatively, a universal programme limits the opportunity for the erosion of benefits — the ongoing death by a thousand cuts. A UBI would also open the door to shifting away from our job-based economy wherein benefits like health insurance are tied to full-time jobs, a historical accident that fosters insecurity in the best of times and risks catastrophe during a pandemic. Under such a system some people might choose to squeak by on their basic incomes. Although the usual reaction to that is often negative, the rich already get to live well off the income from their holdings. Why should the poor be demonised for not ‘earning their keep’?
Before adopting a new idea, it is important to think about what the impact might be. The question is not whether a UBI scheme would help those who are struggling to make ends meet (it would), but whether it might create any undesirable effects.
If we cut the dependency on work for economic security, would we risk not being able to meet society’s needs? The production of necessary goods and services is already occurring and although it will continue to evolve, it seems unlikely that this would suddenly unwind with the introduction of a basic income. Some people might choose to work less, but those who were struggling would be able to consume more, thereby reducing precarity and the resulting anxiety. Prior experiments, like the one run in Canada during the 1970s, have not uncovered problems along these lines.
That said, we probably need more experiments and research around those tests to better understand macroeconomic impacts. Doing so is vital to understanding systems that are both complicated and complex (as human societies are). We would learn through trying and we would have the chance to make mid-course corrections if needed.
The Swiss basic income vote
On 4 October 2013, Swiss activists dumped 8 million 5-cent coins (one per inhabitant) on the Bundesplatz in Bern as a celebration of the successful collection of more than 125,000 signatures for their federal popular initiative, which forced the government to hold a referendum on whether or not to incorporate the concept of basic income in the Swiss Federal Constitution. In 2016, however, the referendum was rejected with a vote by 77% to 23%. Source: Stefan Bohrer / https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41384146
Experiment in Finland
The findings from Finland’s 2-year UBI experiement are intriguing: the basic income in Finland led to a small increase in employment, significantly boosted multiple measures of the recipients’ well-being, and reinforced positive individual and societal feedback loops. Photo: Tapio Haaja / Unsplash
What about its social impact? Some will look at a UBI as an undeserved handout that would detract from social cohesion. We should take such concerns seriously and work to understand them. Doing otherwise would likely reduce support for its inception. Having a better understanding of the concerns would enable us to study the effects of UBI tests with the goal of proving or invalidating such concerns. If the concerns were proven, such findings should be shared, and the programme should be rethought. If not, we would have evidence to help relieve the related anxiety. We will not get past the idea that basic incomes turn us into a lazy society without addressing the concern directly.
Others will likely see it as a path to stronger bonds through the reduction of precarity and the increased opportunity for connection through the reduced need for paid work. Volunteering and helping are much easier when you are not working multiple jobs just to pay the rent.
What would the world look like if we enabled people to choose a collaborative orientation, rather than being forced into a competitive one?
Basic incomes offer us the opportunity to slow down and rethink society. They could offer us lives with far less striving by giving us a modest level of security. Young adults might not have to worry about limiting their career choices to paths offering security alone. They also might avoid gambling on future earnings with student loans. A basic income scheme would also support artists and journalists, something that is dearly needed as their industries continue to struggle.
Instead, people might choose to carve out new paths wherein a balance between work and other efforts come together as parts of a whole life. That, rather than bits of a life squeezed in at the margins, sounds nice. Maybe then we could shift our focus from measures like return on investment (ROI) to something like a return to community (RTC). Tracking social, environmental and economic benefits against their associated costs, including qualitative measures, could help guide us towards a virtuous cycle.
Combat youth homelessness
Santa Clara County in California, US will soon launch a pilot programme to send out unconditional payments of USD 1,000 a month from April to August 2023 to homeless students in their final year of high school in an effort to ease their transition into higher education or work opportunities. There are roughly 15,000 unhoused high school seniors in California. Photo: Dorothy Alexander / Alamy
If you know what it is like to live with insecure work or income and the sorts of power imbalances that it leads to, please believe better is possible — that humanity is not destined to be a laboratory for wickedness. What would the world look like if we enabled people to choose a collaborative orientation, rather than being forced into a competitive one? Imagine a future in which the masses have their basic needs fulfilled by a reliable basic income system. In that future, service towards others might fill the hole left by the evaporating disquiet of precarity.
SHARING THE BOUNTY
Inequality, disease and climate change—these are just a few of the wicked problems facing humanity. What we are doing is not working. You know it. I know it. Those receiving the blunt end of the economy know it. The few doing fabulously know it. Anyone who is being honest knows we cannot go on like this. As Herbert Stein’s Law states, ‘If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.’
If we are going to change the economy so that it might begin to work for all, we first need to change how we think about it. Doing so requires us to think through fundamental questions, such as the origin and nature of wealth. Let’s do that together.
Categorically, humanity benefits from three things: (1) the bounty that is afforded to us by nature, (2) our social inheritance — everything humanity has learned, created and otherwise accomplished in the past, and (3) everything productive that we do in the present.
Nature’s bounty gives us many benefits, including the habitat that affords our existence. The sun provides us with warmth and photosynthesis and drives the water cycle. Its light is increasingly converted directly into electricity that powers our homes, businesses and a growing number of our vehicles. It also provides us with the energy stored in fossil fuels that have long powered our societies.
Next are the benefits passed down by our forebears, which are the combined knowledge and wisdom gained from the sum of human experience. To harness the sun’s energy we needed thousands of years of scientific and technological progress — from wheels, writing and mathematics to engineering, code and material sciences. Individuals provided pieces throughout many lifetimes. Progress was collective.
We all stand on the shoulders of giants today — albeit unevenly. The chart below shows the hours required to match the output of a UK worker’s 45-hour workweek in 1930. The effort needed to get the same productivity today runs between seven and 11 hours. Think about that. A little overtime on Monday could net the same output today as a workweek gave us 90 years ago. Back in 1900, the same level of productivity took 90 hours in the US.
Source: Toby Phillips, “We Have the Tools and Technology to Work Less and Live Better,” Aeon, October 23, 2019, https://aeon.co/ideas/we-have-the-tools-and-technology-to-work-less-and-live-better.
Imagine telling your great-grandparents that progress helped you match their output in about 10% of the time. Then imagine their response if you told them people still work 40-hour workweeks while many struggle to get by.
The third category looks at the gains from what we do now. These include all the fishing and farming, building and buying, creating and consulting, and everything else that benefits humanity. I think it should also include childcare and housework, lending a helping hand to our neighbours and visiting people who are alone. Everything that matters should count.
Take a step back again. What does modern society value? Few societies pay people to take care of their children or to do their laundry, but society benefits from children being well cared for and everyone wearing clean clothes. And what of our wage earners? As the pandemic took root in New York, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) urged people to cease non-essential domestic travel. At the same time, the Department of Homeland Security made exceptions that allowed people who worked in trucking, public health, financial services and food supply to continue working. In other words, those whom received exceptions were considered essential. However, the compensation that these essential workers receive often does not match their vital role in the economy. For example, in Washington state, out of the 36,000 workers who received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits (formerly known as food stamps) in 2018, more than 10% were Wal-Mart employees. Amazon, Safeway and McDonald’s employed over 1,000 claimants each. The economy could not function without these workers, but they were not paid a living wage.
What truly matters becomes clear in a time of crisis.
We should consider why so many of the people providing critical services struggle to get by as well as what we might do to correct that problem3.
If we look at the three categories, the first two were given to us: our natural income and our societal inheritance. In another world the gains from them might be spread around equally via a progressive taxation system. But that is not how it works here. Instead we have laws and rights that allow us to make claims on places, things and ideas. In theory, these rights enable us to prevent theft (or at least deal with it). In reality, what we have now is an antiquated mess that fosters inequality. If we can agree on that, what should we be able to claim, and what resources should be shared?
Why no one in Spain wants to be a waiter anymore
There are 50,000 job vacancies for waiters in Spain despite a national unemployment rate that still hovers around 13%. Spain’s hospitality workers have for years been complaining about long hours, night shifts that go unpaid, wage cuts, job instability, unpaid holidays and employers paying them under the table to avoid having to pay tax and social security. Están hartos as they say in Spanish, they’re fed up. Photo: Jesus Merida / SOPA Images / ZUMA Wire / Alamy Live News
In an age of inequality, many must continually strive harder and harder just to keep their families fed, clothed and sheltered. They do so on a planet where much of the food that is grown goes to waste, where we destroy unsold garments and homes sit empty. On top of this the climate is careening towards catastrophe. Maybe it is time to rethink the rules and give everyone a chance to have a decent life without all the strife?
Humanity has abundant resources available. We are just not very good at sharing them. It is time to find better ways to organise our societies that recognise our circumstances and deliver broadly beneficial outcomes.
In an age of inequality, many must continually strive harder and harder just to keep their families fed, clothed and sheltered. They do so on a planet where much of the food that is grown goes to waste, where we destroy unsold garments and homes sit empty. On top of this the climate is careening towards catastrophe. Maybe it is time to rethink the rules and give everyone a chance to have a decent life without all the strife?
Humanity has abundant resources available. We are just not very good at sharing them. It is time to find better ways to organise our societies that recognise our circumstances and deliver broadly beneficial outcomes. If you look at the categories laid out here, it is possible to see the opening for basic incomes to flow out of the things our forebears and nature gave us. By how much is an open question. For now we need to reframe the possible, to look at society with new eyes and think about what we might do to make it civil once more.
If you take another look at the graph in this article, you will see the dotted green line that represents a point where the average British worker’s output for a 45-hour workweek in 1930 could be matched by a 15-hour workweek in a variety of places. Japan was the last to do so of those included in the graph, and they did it around three decades ago. With that in mind I will suggest that the prospect of a two-day workweek is not an absurd notion.
TOWARDS A BETTER NORMAL
While the coronavirus pandemic is wreaking havoc, it also affords us something precious — a moment to think. This is something the systems we live in have long robbed us of. We should not waste the opportunity.
To start with we need to question our fundamental assumptions about how to organise the economy and society in general. We should think about what we could change and what the effects might be. With that I will give you a few questions to chew on:
- What if we had a different system, one that took care of the primary needs of a majority rather than the greed of a few? What might that system look like?
- How could a UBI help support that system?
- Whose support would we need to make it happen?
- How could we get more experiments going?
- What can we do with the data we have from existing experiments?
- How can we tell the stories of the positive impacts on real human lives in ways that will compel others to support such change?
- What are you willing to do to help make it real?
- What are you willing to accept if we do not?
When we poke and prod complex emergent systems the outcomes are often not what we expect. That is okay. We live and learn and try again with the new knowledge in tow.
CHRIS OESTEREICH
Chris Oestereich is the publisher of the Wicked Problems Collaborative, an independent press that focuses on humanity’s biggest challenges. He formerly led zero waste programmes in the grocery industry and he now helps communities and organisations shift towards the circular economy via his firm, Linear to Circular. He is currently developing Morph Bags, a brand that will work directly with informal workers to upcycle waste materials into high-quality, useful products like totes, handbags and cases. Chris is a co-founder of the Circular Design Lab, an effort that teaches design and systems thinking to community members who want to foster positive change to systems challenges. He is also a lecturer and former faculty member in the social enterprise programme at Thammasat University’s School of Global Studies, where he teaches courses on social innovation and advocacy.
SEPTEMBER 2022 | ISSUE 10
Reorganising the Future of Work
“Hunger,” World Food Programme, 2016, accessed March 21, 2020, https://www.wfp.org/hunger; “Food Loss and Food Waste,” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), accessed March 21, 2020, http://www.fao.org/food-loss-and-food-waste/en/; Office of the Chief Economist, “Food Waste FAQs,” US Department of Agriculture (USDA), accessed March 21, 2020, https://www.usda.gov/oce/foodwaste/faqs.htm.
Deborah Grayson and Charlotte Millar, “How to Stay Human,” openDemocracy, May 23, 2016, https://opendemocracy.net/transformation/charlotte-millar-deborah-grayson/how-to-stay-human.
Neil McNamara, “Wealthiest Companies In WA Employ Thousands On Food Stamps: DSHS,” Patch, September 9, 2018, https://patch.com/washington/bellevue/s/giamm/wealthiest-companies-in-wa-employ-thousands-on-food-stamps-dshs.
