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

[illunatic at greenpirate.org]

tl;dr - No new taxes. No new burdens on government spending. Trade all  
the black hole anti-piracy spending programs for mincome.

It's fair to say that democracy happens at elections. As far as  
embracing mincome as a platform, it still requires much due diligence  
and scrutiny.

After reading just a little about Dauphin, Manitoba's experiment with  
mincome during the 1970's, there is at least very small evidence of  
some great sociological benefits that are offered can to be tremendous  
wide and long standing. For example, students from families where  
mothers were able to spend more time at home demonstrated higher test  
scores and lower dropout rates. This is a fairly small scale study,  
but the benefits are pretty straightforward and would be a strong  
selling point if embraced as a platform.

The largest barrier that need to be overcome if there is any hope in  
making this a reality: Where does the money come from?

Increasing taxes just to pay for mincome is not a fair solution. It  
means that the people who are working will have to work more than they  
previously did to see the same net income after being taxed at a  
greater rate. You end up with working people having to work more and  
people who work less benefiting from working less. This seems to  
counter work incentive.

There is a serious problem with governments funding programs they  
can't afford. Governments funded by debt only end up decreasing the  
buying power of their respective currency. Introducing mincome as a  
new program to be entirely funded by the government is a shortsighted  
solution. Sure, the government can write checks to citizens for a  
while, but without a funding source, the currency they are writing  
checks for is going to have less and less buying power the more they  
do it. It looks like a good plan for creating a poor nation. That  
said, I can't in good conscience advocate throwing another financial  
burden on top of that pile.

However, we all know that governments are going to continue spending  
recklessly the way they tend to do. What if mincome were able to offer  
another solution by reallocating the funding of government programs  
which are not being sociologically beneficial, or maybe even prove to  
be harmful, to society?

This is where the opportunity to really make this a pirate issue is  
presented. How much does your government currently spend on funding  
the war on piracy? How much do the US, UK and French governments spend  
on invading the privacy of citizens?

There is a myriad of black hole spending programs, sucking money down  
the drain which could be better spent on helping citizens. Is  
anti-piracy for mincome a reasonable trade off? I'm sure the average  
person would rather receive financial assistance than fund a war  
against a phantom threat.

Could a mincome bill include cutting funds for "intellectual property  
enforcement" to pay for the cost of mincome?

Quoting Travis McCrea <me at travismccrea.com>:

> 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
>
> ____________________________________________________
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> pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general
>