The technological revolution that is taking place is threatening us with a unique phenomenon.
When robots and artificial intelligence-empowered machines pass the Turing Test -
that is we reach a stage where you pick up the phone and call a restaurant
and you cannot distinguish whether this is a machine speaking to you or a human being.
Suddenly, you can imagine the impact this is going to have on employment throughout capitalism.
For the first time in the history of capitalism, technology is destroying a lot more jobs than it is creating.
So you can have a massive reduction in aggregate demand.
Income will become even more concentrated in the hands of those who own the machines,
but even they will suffer in the long term because the demand will not be there for the product of their machines.
We need to take the returns to capital, the returns to automation
and spread them throughout society.
We need a universal basic income but not one funded by taxation.
Because if you tax workers so that other workers don't work,
it is going to turn one segment of the working class against another.
So this is the fundamental distinction: fund a universal basic dividend
but not from taxation but from the returns of capital.
We must overturn the current narrative of life under capitalism.
The current narrative that we have private production of wealth
which is then appropriated by the state for social purposes.
In reality, our wealth production is collective. It is social
and it is only then privately appropriated.
Take an iPhone. Open it. What do you find in it?
You find a variety of technologies.
Most of the technologies in there were provided by public funding.
Every time you search on a search engine, you contribute to the capital of Google.
Their customers are producing value which is being sold to advertisers
for exchange value to be returned directly to these corporations.
So basic income is a very simple way of ensuring that those who produce the value get a larger share of it.
If you start thinking of it that way, then it's very easy to start thinking of basic income
as a dividend - a dividend that goes to the collective that was responsible for producing the wealth
The struggle we are going to have to carry hearts and minds will be an ethical one
from those whose own sense of dignity responds against the idea of "something for nothing."
We have to attack the narrative head-on.
Basic income is about giving money to the undeserving.
It is about giving money to the rich.
It is about giving money to the surfers,
the beach bums,
the ones that we dislike, the ones that we would not like to be our children
We must not get sidetracked by simply talking about good people getting money that they deserve.
We should talk about undeserving people that get money courtesy of the fact
that they are members of a society that is collectively producing wealth.
We will have to choose politically and democratically
between a world which the concentration of ownership over the new found means of production
is going to lead to a stagnating capitalism
with intense inequality
and a huge quantity of income for a decreasing, shrinking percentage of the population
that lives behind electrified fences in privately policed communities
and the rest in a cesspool of volatility, uncertainty, and social misery.
I have a very deep belief in the capacity of human minds to work things out for themselves
if they don't have to live in terror.
Social democracy put forward the idea of a social safety net
Nets are very good for catching you when you're falling
But when you are caught in them, it is sometimes very easy to be trapped.
Think of basic income as a foundation -
a floor on which to stand solidly
and to be able to reach for the sky.