Transcriber: Michele Gianella Reviewer: Ellen Maloney
Imagine a world where there are 50 per cent fewer jobs.
And now imagine a world
where robots actually do all the work and there are no jobs for humans.
Seems kind of far-fetched, but what would it mean?
What would that world look like?
Would it be a robo-dystopia, or would it be a robo-utopia?
I'd like to be frank.
These are questions that we have to consider.
Futurists are now talking to us about the potential loss
of up to two billion jobs in the next 15 to 20 years,
the hollowing out of our middle job market.
Now, on one hand, as we're seeing today, there's an an enormous amount
of disrupted technology coming down the chain:
diagnostic advances, virtual reality, 3D printing,
bio, agri, and health technologies.
They all have the ability to disrupt our current systems.
They also have the ability to bring unimaginable benefits to us.
We don't know what they'll be, hard to see what the future is.
They also all have the ability
to entrench and exacerbate existing inequalities.
We've seen that the gains have gone to the one per cent
over the last 30 years,
and that's likely to increase.
So that creates huge problems.
We're starting to see stagnant incomes
and welfare systems struggling to respond.
The traditional policy responses of the left and the right:
austerity, cheap credit,
which is the heroin of our financial system,
a welfare system which only operates if you're looking for work.
If there are no jobs, what are we going to do?
We need to start thinking about separating income from work.
To many women, this is not a new or revolutionary idea.
(Applause)
I hear you.
(Laughter)
Parenting,
looking after the sick and elderly, of whom there will be a lot more,
volunteering in the community.
A huge amount of unpaid work goes on in our society,
but also other things like arts, culture, research, innovation.
They all have a huge impact and contribution to our society,
but typically do not attract an income.
One possible solution is to think about a universal basic income.
This would be a regular monthly or annual payment
to all citizens, as of right.
It would completely eliminate the welfare system,
eliminate the processes of people
having to go to multiple agencies and fill out forms
just to get food on the table.
One of the first responses to this is,
"Well, how are we going to afford that? Where does all the money come from?"
Let's get that out of the way straight away.
In the last eight years,
global central banks have created 12 trillion dollars
out of thin air.
This is the balance sheet of all the Federal Reserve Banks in the US.
The balance sheet expanded by four trillion dollars in six years
so that they could buy bank assets
and improve the balance sheets of the banks.
Where did that money come from?
I'll tell you.
Literally, an Excel spreadsheet.
If they can create that much money to bail out the banks,
I think we can find the money to sort out a basic income.
(Applause)
There are trials going on all around the world at the moment:
in the Netherlands, in India, in Canada, in Finland.
And France just published a report last week
where they're going to propose three new trials,
taking us from Utopia to reality.
On that note, this is not a new or novel idea.
Talking of "Utopia," 500 years ago, in 1516,
Thomas More laid out his vision of Utopia,
and in his book he had the first reference to a basic income.
Fellow humanist Jean Louis Vivès, in 1526,
did some research in the city of Bruges
on why poverty was such a huge problem to eliminate.
His conclusion in his book on assistance to the poor
was the only way to eliminate poverty and crime and poor health,
was to make sure everybody had a basic standard of living.
It seems pretty sensible,
and a lot of other people thought it was pretty sensible, too.
The third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson,
Thomas Paine, who wrote the 1791 book "The Rights of Man,"
and the 16th US President, Abraham Lincoln,
were all in favor of a basic income,
whether it was in cash or whether it was in land,
to support a basic standard of living.
Henry George, in his 1879 book "Progress and Poverty"
did some research into the land piece.
He tried to work out why,
in a period of technological and social advance,
did poverty increase.
He came to the conclusion
that a lot of gains went to land owners and land prices.
He suggested a single tax on land, known as the 'land value tax,'
which would support the ability to invest in public infrastructure
and pay everybody a basic income.
Martin Luther King spent a lot of time looking at George's works,
as he researched
how he could solve poverty and exclusion in the neighborhoods that he worked in.
Again, he came to the conclusion
that an unconditional basic income for all people
would be the solution.
Richard Nixon, in 1971,
tried to get it through Congress and the Senate
in his Family Assistance Plan.
He got it through Congress, but it was stopped in the Senate.
One of the prime reasons for that
is this concern that people get something for nothing.
As we've seen already,
there's a huge amount of unpaid labor
that is not paid for in the economy,
and it is actually the backbone of our society.
There's even more.
I'm very happy to think about somebody out there
trying to climb a mountain, write poetry, create great works of art,
or even sit on the beach surfing all day.
I kind of like that.
It's part of who we are as humans.
Even two of the greatest laissez-faire Libertarian economists,
Frederick Hayek, author of "The Road to Serfdom,"
and Milton Friedman,
both understood, from a pure economic efficiency and risk perspective,
that actually, the guaranteed minimum income
was the best policy solution.
They saw that the welfare system
would not work, and was punitive and dehumanizing,
and that every citizen, as of right, should have access to a minimum income.
This aspect of rights is really important to consider.
It's something that we fought for as humans for a long time.
If we go back to 1215 and "Magna Carta,"
King John was forced to sign this document by the barons of England.
He wasn't a particularly nice guy,
and they were tired
of his arbitrary rule and lack of justice.
Magna Carta really is the foundation document
for many of our civil and legal platforms and frameworks.
It's set in to stage the idea
that justice was something that people could agree on
and that laws could be made by people and not kings.
In the English Civil War in the 1650s,
we saw further demands for the people to be represented in a different way.
To be represented at Parliament
and to remove this divine right of kings and monarchs
to decide and dispense justice on their whims.
We saw this again in the colonies in the U.S.,
when they declared independence,
the French when they published the "Rights of Man and the Citizen,"
This citizen piece was important.
People were laying down the rights
that they felt as humans they deserved from the State and from each other.
But it wasn't until 1919, after the First World War,
that we started to see social justice appear on the horizon
with the formation of the International Labor Organization
in the Treaty of Versailles.
In this, labor exploitation, working conditions,
and for the first time, a living wage,
was stated as something that was important.
This was further reinforced
in the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" in 1948,
the
In it, it was made very clear
that all people, as of right,
were entitled to a basic standard of living.
This was something that all nations signed up to.
This was further reinforced
in the 1966 "International Covenant on Economic and Social Rights."
But one thing was missing from this conversation:
The idea that all people should have a basic standard of living, as of right,
was agreed on from a rights perspective,
from an economic efficiency perspective,
from a risk perspective.
But there's one person missing from this conversation,
and that is the citizen.
"Civis romanus sum," I am a Roman citizen,
made famous by J.F.Kennedy in his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.
That's good,
(Laughter)
When we talk about rights, we forget something.
It's a contract.
It's a two-way bargain,
and the concept of duties is something that has dropped out of our narrative.
We never mention it,
yet it's in there, in The Universal Declaration.
The problem is,
when they started drafting this document,
which took a long time to put together,
duties was up there right at the beginning,
along with rights.
Through all the arguments
around religion, culture, gender, as we've seen earlier today,
the issue of duties dropped down.
It was only in the last few months
that they suddenly realized they needed to put something in,
and it came in in Article 29.
But it's not something that we think of
when we think of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
and this is important.
We need to balance our rights with duties,
because that's what being a citizen is about.
That's what the Greeks and the Romans understood citizenship to mean.
The right to be a citizen came with obligations and duties
back to the community, back to each other.
In 1762, before the French Revolution and the Rights of Man,
Jean Jacques Rousseau published "The Social Contract,"
and he grappled with this issue.
He could see the argument for rights.
He could see how important they were,
but he was concerned there wasn't a proper bargain.
"What did you give up?
What was your relationship with the State?
What was your relationship with other citizens?
What duties were you willing to give up and provide?"
I think the problem we have at the moment is that instead of being citizens,
we've gone back to those days of Magna Carta
where we're actually become subjects.
In the economic state that we have, there is no room for the citizen.
We have somehow contracted out our rights and our duties
and have become subjects.
The subject's an interesting person.
The subject is passive,
is a victim,
is represented,
is served,
is a beneficiary
- I don't like that word -
and is, ultimately, a consumer.
It's easy,
"Sit back. You'll be served.
You'll be given stuff, buy stuff on credit,
and you'll be fine."
Even the government in its communications talks about us as consumers.
That's all we hear.
The concept of the citizen
has really disappeared out of our lexicon.
Yet, everything that we have
is founded on that basic concept of being active, of being responsible,
of being creative,
of being an agent,
being a recipient - not a beneficiary -
and being a participant.
Yes, it's difficult.
It's not easy,
but it's not meant to be easy.
The Greeks didn't think it was going to be easy,
neither did the Romans.
This idea that we have some kind of contract around our rights
is extremely important
because that's how we influence the society that we have.
When we contract out those rights and become consumers,
we create a one-way relationship.
Yes, we have guarantees around that.
We have guarantees around our products.
We have guarantees around the right to vote,
but in between we do nothing.
That's why we're disengaged.
That's why we're disinterested.
That's why we're disenchanted.
That's why we're fatigued.
We're not part of the system.
It seems to me,
250 years on from Rousseau's Social Contract,
800 years on from Magna Carta,
and 2,400 years on from the birth of Aristotle,
it's time to negotiate a new social contract.
And It's likely that a basic income will be part of that conversation.
We cannot resist the trends of technological unemployment.
We have to address a financial system that is on its last legs.
We have to build a system that is more human,
that recognizes us as social creatures, not economic creatures.
In that conversation,
we will have to ask ourselves some hard questions.
It won't be easy,
but under those documents and charters and declarations
lie tens of millions of bodies, maybe hundreds of millions.
It's something that we've forgotten.
So we have a choice.
You can take the blue pill
and keep going along the same path and you'll get the same result.
Or you can take the red pill
and take a harder, more difficult path, maybe the path less traveled,
and become a citizen.
The choice, my friends, is yours.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)