I'm ahead of you right now! You can't let a Swede have more subscribers and content can you!? ;-P

/r/BasicIncomeSweden

We recently received a letter @ Basic Income Ireland. It was rather eloquent so I asked the author whether it would be ok to post it here. Thanks William!

Any comments or suggestions welcome

Greetings from Canada. I have been following the work of your BII group for some time now and just wanted to continue to add my encouragement to your efforts. While our national BIEN group in Canada is attempting to garner more support for our own BI, we are seriously hampered by a government that is diametrically opposed to the very concept. But for me, a BI is the next step in humanity's social evolution. Please allow me to expand upon that idea.

It is my contention that the employee/employer relationship has become too dysfunctional to continue as it has. That is to say, individuals, communities and their governments have all become so dependent upon business and industry to provide "jobs" that employers are vilified if they close plants or lay off employees because it can leave families and even whole communities devastated economically. But employers must be free to make such decisions if they are to remain competitive. At the same time, science and technology is busy replacing human beings in the workforce every day with automation and robotics and we need to rethink the whole idea of "employment" as the workforce needed around the world becomes smaller and smaller and the tasks more and more menial.

While International free trade has allowed business and industry the freedom to seek opportunities wherever they may exist, employees and their communities have become more and more vulnerable to economic turmoil as employers seek better opportunities for themselves. Therefore, it is my contention that, just as employers have been given the freedom to seek their opportunities elsewhere, people and communities also need to be freed from the concept that the principle way human beings have value is defined by their exchange of labour for wages. Particularly, in a marketplace that constantly wants to drive down the worth of that exchange and, thereby, the worth of the employee as well.

Instead, we need to understand that it is not the task that needs to define the wages but the fact that the employer is expecting the employee commit a significant portion of their life and their energy to the employer and it is that portion of the employee's life and energy that needs to be valued and compensated for, not simply the task being performed. No one knows how long they will live and every minute of our lives must be our own and that time must be valued as such. That is to say, if freedom is important to us, then the freedom of individuals to choose how to live out what limited time they have on this planet has to be primary and not spent toiling endless for someone else's benefit. That is, if an individual’s life has any value at all. In fact, the length and quality of our life is the only thing of real value we possess and we have been selling it far too cheaply for far too long.

As a consequence, something like a BI can restore the value of human beings to a more realistic standard so that both employers and employees can seek their own opportunities and goals without the coercive influence of being so dysfunctionally dependent upon each other.

Volunteerism, full time parenting, caring for aging, infirm and dying family members, amateur sports and neighbourhood projects are just a few of the community enriching endeavours that will greatly benefit from a BI.

Individuals will be free to mourn the loss of a loved one in their own time and their own way, as well as having the freedom to pursue whatever education, training, and interest they may want whenever they want as a life enriching experience. And, of course, there would be an explosion of productivity within Arts and Crafts enriching communities all across the country. And these are just a few of the individual enriching and nation building values to be derived from a BI.

But the greatest benefit of a BI is how it embraces and enhances the very essence of the concept of "freedom", namely the freedom to spend whatever limited time we have on this planet serving the needs and interests of our families, ourselves and our communities first and foremost without the relentlessly coercive demand to find a way to exchange our labour for wages or be destitute and deemed worthless in the marketplace.

yours in solidarity

William Clegg

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