Universal Basic ***

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Universal health care, universal basic income, Mr Universe, etc. How are all these tied together with the OneSchool Project? I am of the opinion that with appropriate allocation and environmental sustainability we can provide something similar to a western 1st world material lifestyle to everyone on earth and a few more (even prior to asteroid mining).

As Carl Sagan once said “In order to create an apple pie from scratch, first you need to make the universe“. So at the risk of writing what might seem to be meandering ramble, I’d like to do a bit of context setting.

Humans aren’t intrinsically / inherently good / evil; selfish/selfless. We’re capable of all manner of behavior depending on personal neurology and the environment in which we develop. No amount of school reform is going to advance test scores if we don’t consider the “soup” in which we all swim and stew, and the economy is the soup of soups. I like to think of the “Economy” (in scare quotes) as the sum total of human endeavors, not just GDP (think unpaid caregiving). Capitalism and socialism are human constructions for ways of allocating resources. As far as I’m aware, there’s no economy policy written into the quarks nor our collective social nervous system.

I think it’s valuable to consider that no form of human social organization is purely capitalism nor socialism, and we get to choose which aspects of the collective human project are structured more as one or the other. For example, it’s pretty darn useful to have a market for consumer goods and many (but perhaps not all commodities). We get great feedback about goods and services the public wants and what the market can support. Though, certainly it has it’s drawbacks and misaligned incentives (ie, creating needs to fill through unrealistic advertising and short investment cycles leading to robbing our future Peter to pay today’s Paul). On the flip side the human brain wasn’t evolutionarily well set up to consider certain long term investments (see “Nudge” and opt out retirement plans). Socialistic organizing for things like roads, schools, and public health have repeatedly been shown have lower costs. So, it’s not about socialism VERSUS capitalism, BUT more about which one to use where and when, strategically and intelligently. However, many will still balk, either because *gasp* socialism, or “how dare you use markets to solve social issues?!?!”

In addition, it’s important to understand where money comes from. Basically, all money is created by the US treasury in the form of a Treasury Bill, which is a collateral for the Federal Reserve to create money out of thin air and loan it to the US Treasury AT INTEREST! Then the treasury can print bills and circulate cash. It’s a bit cartoonish, but correct in the fundamentals of how money is circulated. In short, if all debt were to be paid back, there wouldn’t be any money in circulation AND there would still be the interest left to pay back. “Where do we get the money to pay back the interest?”, an astute mind my inquire. It is also borrowed at interest. Thus the pyramid scheme of fiat currency based on fractional reserve banking.

What if instead, money was created out of thin air and distributed to the citizens directly, in the form of a universal basic income? More people would have liquid assets to meet immediate needs and begin to make longer term investments. It’s really expensive to be poor. Plus, the robots are coming, and many of the ways that people spend their days to avoid starving will no longer be around, and it’s somewhat insulting to suggest they should just learn to code.

If more of the currently unpaid caregivers had an income, wouldn’t that improve the lives of not only them, but the people they’re caring for, a big chunk of which are kids, who should be in school (a school like the one here….)?

  1. great reference! the great carl is almost always appropriate. thanks for reading. any place this doesn’t jive with your understandings,…

  2. “If you want to bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe” Thanks for this Keevin!