Over the last few days, Daily Pickings highlighted two of the fundamental flaws in the economic system, exclusive land ownership rights and interest on money. The third fundamental flaw is that the means to life is conditional on paid employment. The industrial revolution drove people from the land into factories, depriving them of the means to life provided by access to land.
As mechanisation and computerisation transformed productivity, full employment has become unnecessary, unachievable and undesirable, resulting in the creation of bullsh*t jobs. An unconditional citizens income would transform the power balance between employer and employee and liberate people to engage in politics and community activity, unfettered by the control imposed by forced employment.
CITIZEN’S INCOME TRUST provides lots of information on how an unconditional citizens income would work and its advantages. A basic income pilot scheme in India demonstrated how societies can be transformed by this simple measure.
The solutions to our problems are drawn from the lessons of history and based on principles established over a century ago but which vested interests suppressed with bogus economics created and controlled to serve the interests of the few. We now have the opportunity, given the will, to transform our civilisation.
