[pp.int.general] Basic income - how does that fit into the pirate ideology?

[Travis McCrea]

I am going back a little bit because this thread moves like crazy:

When something is right, then it doesn't matter what the people of their country think -- the democracy happens at elections, not in our platform. We create our ideal society as platform points, and then people vote for us based on their support of those platforms. If we do all our internal development based on the desires of the populace, all we have is a meta parliament (or insert your decision making body here). 

Basic income works, it has at least two real life examples of working, it provides an amazing social safety net, it actually saves money, it increases GPD, decreases workplace injuries, etc. If something that comes along later is better, we will use that but we can't constantly be waiting for a better system to come around… adapt to what we have or die. 

To be honest, every pirate should be in favour of basic income -- if they are not, they are drinking the anti-socialist koolaid thinking that anytime you distribute money, you have communism or that people will not work as hard (when this has been proven false). The pirate movement is about using what works and what /empowers/ people and has the greatest impact on helping humans. 

btw next month I will be giving a TEDx talk on Mincome

On 2013-07-12, at 4:31 PM, Zbigniew Łukasiak wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 10:15 PM,  <illunatic at greenpirate.org> wrote:
>> Instead of imposing it as a platform, a given party should get an idea of
>> whether people in their country support basic income. Get the public
>> discussion going before coming to a conclusion one way or the other. If that
>> is what your people want, especially party members and supporters, then that
>> is a good time for party leaders to talk about making it a platform.
>> 
>> Consider the the following:
>> - Is there adequate awareness and open discussion of this issue in your
>> country?
>> - Do current members of your party support this?
>> - Do enough citizens in your nation support this position that it would
>> increase overall support for your party?
>> 
>> If the answer is none/not much/not many, it may not be a good time to firmly
>> embrace this as a platform. The exception to this, of course, is if you run
>> a very authoritarian party in which you are prepared to dictate and proceed
>> with any given platform, regardless of what your peers think.
> 
> Oh - discussion is fine with me and I fully support the democratic
> process you describe - but at some point we need to come out with a
> platform common to all the pirate parties.  So far what we have on
> that platform is just the name - but that is not enough to have any
> coherent movement.  I am testing where there can be some kind of
> consensus at least between the people on this list.  That consensus
> does not need to be perfect in everything - but at least most of us
> need to agree on every point and no one should disagree on more than a
> couple of points.  And those points also need to be meaningful as a
> political program - that is they need to be something that there are
> people that disagree with them - they need to be divisible - otherwise
> we should not call ourselves the pirate parties but maybe the human
> parties or something.
> 
> Z.
> 
>> 
>> Quoting Zbigniew ?ukasiak <zzbbyy at gmail.com>:
>> 
>>> Basic income is often mentioned as point of the pirates program.  Do
>>> you think it is a universal thing across all pirate parties - or is it
>>> just the German pirates that stand strongly behind it?
>>> 
>>> Do you think it is leftist?
>>> 
>>> Personally I support Basic Income.  It might be viewed as slightly
>>> leftist - but if it is introduced together with a linear taxation
>>> scale and getting rid of unemployment benefits - then it is not
>>> leftist at all.  For me the most important aspect of this whole
>>> package is that it makes governance simpler.  Taxation is decoupled
>>> and can be payed independently for all income sources and the state is
>>> not forced to do things that depend too much on personal circumstances
>>> (like checking if the person is really unemployed and if he really
>>> tries to find a job etc) - state is not good in these - people quickly
>>> learn how to fool it and that is demoralizing.  But state is good for
>>> universal services - like paying everyone the same amount.  So let the
>>> state do what it is good at and let other, smaller organizations do
>>> other things.
>>> 
>>> There are of course many other benefits as well - but this is what
>>> moves me personally.
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Zbigniew Lukasiak
>>> http://brudnopis.blogspot.com/
>>> http://perlalchemy.blogspot.com/
>>> ____________________________________________________
>>> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
>>> pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
>>> http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ____________________________________________________
>> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
>> pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
>> http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Zbigniew Lukasiak
> http://brudnopis.blogspot.com/
> http://perlalchemy.blogspot.com/
> ____________________________________________________
> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
> pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general