The Basic Income (Grundeinkommen)
Tamas Herman
just heard about this concept now (having a default income as basic
human right).
it was a great enlightenment why didn't i really understand the
current tax systems,
why do they feel so alien and why is it hard for me to fit in to this
current world.
http://dotsub.com/view/26520150-1acc-4fd0-9acd-169d95c9abe1
i know many of u have deeper insights into the economy, so i propose a
discussion
nite devoted to this topic.
--
tom
ps: i got the link from a hungarian friend. there is already a hungarian site
allocated for this topic http://www.alapjovedelem.org/ where the film
is downloadable
with hardcoded subtitles.
btw, im surprised there are chinese translations available too on this
dotsub site.
can someone pls check if it's blocked in china or not?
Harish Pillay
> guys,
>
> just heard about this concept now (having a default income as basic
> human right).
>
> it was a great enlightenment why didn't i really understand the
> current tax systems,
> why do they feel so alien and why is it hard for me to fit in to this
> current world.
>
> http://dotsub.com/view/26520150-1acc-4fd0-9acd-169d95c9abe1
>
> i know many of u have deeper insights into the economy, so i propose a
> discussion nite devoted to this topic.
Good stuff. I think good discussion would be wonderful.
Thanks for the link. It certainly changed some of my own
views.
Harish
Kevin
I for one really look forward to seeing it in this lifetime.
Kevin
Sent from my iPhone
> --
> Chat: http://hackerspace.sg/chat
Konstantin Spirin
Martin Bähr
> That's a great topic indeed!
> One question concerns me though. If there's no need to work where would all
> the "dirty" jobs go to? I'm talking about cleaning, servicing, etc.
think about who is cleaning your home?
most people don't hire someone to do that.
in germany it is custom for people living in apartments to rotate
cleaning the stairs on the floor which they live on. no cleaning servide
here.
so, we just have to share the work and make an effort to keep things
cleaner. for areas where this doesn't work it becomes a question of
supply and demand.
the supply of people willing to clean for others will be lower, the
demand therefore higher, and as a result cleaners earn more money...
picking up dirt is a hazardous job, people should be entitled to hazard
pay anyways.
greetings, martin.
--
cooperative communication with sTeam - caudium, pike, roxen and unix
services: debugging, programming, training, linux sysadmin, web development
--
pike programmer working in china community.gotpike.org
foresight developer (open-steam|caudium).org foresightlinux.org
unix sysadmin iaeste.at realss.com
Martin B�hr http://www.iaeste.at/~mbaehr/ is.schon.org
Jan Detlefsen
them, not in lack of other options. besides that, most jobs that are
regarded "dirty", are only bad because compensation is "dirty". some
can be fun actually. i did a lot of "dirty" work on a working holiday,
like farm work, dishpig or event cleaning. not as bad as they sound.
people might prefer that kind of work because it's easy to get into
and carries little responsibility.
in that utopian world like this, compensation per job doesn't have to
be higher as it is in a regular world as everything comes on top of
the basic income.
it's just a different, more logic and efficient way to distribute
social security payments and incorporate it into the taxation system.
it gets rid of forced labour and situations where it's not worth to
pick up work instead of relying completely on social security
(speaking of the german situation).
> --
> Chat: http://hackerspace.sg/chat
>
Jan Detlefsen
problem, because the person who employs them has a basic income as
well.
> Martin Bähr http://www.iaeste.at/~mbaehr/ is.schon.org
>
> --
> Chat: http://hackerspace.sg/chat
>
Patrick Haller
money from the State, the odds of governmental change are reduced.
What are the long-term interests of the People? The trade-offs at work
here seem to be:
temporary safety vs long-term political chains
most of us would need this income only occasionally
when the mode of government becomes non-competitive, the people
who stay in the country have a harder time updating the govt
support disabled vs disincentivize work
the people who work because they want an income greater than $0
but less than The Basic Income would stop working
others?
Patrick
Tamas Herman
they covered this question in it too (briefly).
btw, an interesting anecdote. my father told me i was
very very interested in the work of the garbage cleaner's
job when i was 4-5yrs old. i loved the way they interacted
the slowly moving, alternately stopping-starting car.
they were signaling the rythme by audio or visual clues.
it was like a dance, especially because of the trash bins.
the trash bins were round, so u could roll on their bottom
edges, like fred aster did with when he was dancing with
a rack (from 1:35) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJvGxTKGFHA
i learnt it later how to do this when i was tall enough (like 10yrs old)
and i could easy navigate a 100+kg bin full of construction debris,
from our yard, thru the narrow passage on the bridge over
the sewer ditch avoiding scratching our car parking on it.
it was fun! especially in snow at winter. it left an interesting
trace in the snow..
and i have no recollection of smell either for example from
my childhood. so to me a little bit "dirty" or rotting smell
was normal, not disturbing. i felt stronger odors at summer
holidays at my grandparents places who were breeding
chickens and pigs... but there reason is not just that.
we hardly had any plastic crap and we didn't put the compostable
material into the trash bin. well, we did sometimes, but every
2nd 3rd month u really had to clean the bottom of the bin,
because it was full of white worms and thaaat didn't smell
well... but i had the chance to clean them and im still alive...
and actually i was cleaning the bins at nite on mayo street
too when i was living there in the massage shop, coz they
smell and had the same muddy smelly compound at their
bottom, which i already knew from my childhood. i couldn't
stand the smell...
so, no worries, ppl would do such stuff still.
they would do it for a change, for fun and for cleanliness,
but 1st of all they would not make it as dirty as now in the 1st place...
--
tom
Konstantin Spirin
yep, the classic housekeeper would get more money, but thats not a
problem, because the person who employs them has a basic income as
well.
Konstantin Spirin
On Sun, Aug 21, 2011 at 09:28:07AM +0800, Konstantin Spirin wrote:think about who is cleaning your home?
> That's a great topic indeed!
> One question concerns me though. If there's no need to work where would all
> the "dirty" jobs go to? I'm talking about cleaning, servicing, etc.
most people don't hire someone to do that.
in germany it is custom for people living in apartments to rotate
cleaning the stairs on the floor which they live on. no cleaning servide
here.
so, we just have to share the work and make an effort to keep things
cleaner. for areas where this doesn't work it becomes a question of
supply and demand.
the supply of people willing to clean for others will be lower, the
demand therefore higher, and as a result cleaners earn more money...
picking up dirt is a hazardous job, people should be entitled to hazard
pay anyways.
greetings, martin.
--
cooperative communication with sTeam - caudium, pike, roxen and unix
services: debugging, programming, training, linux sysadmin, web development
--
pike programmer working in china community.gotpike.org
foresight developer (open-steam|caudium).org foresightlinux.org
unix sysadmin iaeste.at realss.com
Martin Bähr http://www.iaeste.at/~mbaehr/ is.schon.org
Jan Detlefsen
hard to get that kind of jobs.
You can call them unqualified as well as you could call most
professional sportsmen unqualified. What more skills does a Tour de
France cyclist have that a garbage truck crew member doesn't have? Or
a 5 star hotel chef de partie that your maid doesn't have, most of
them even cook better food anyway. Don't mistake reputation with
qualification.
> --
> Chat: http://hackerspace.sg/chat
>
Konstantin Spirin
garbage truck driver/crew is a very well paid job in Germany and it's
hard to get that kind of jobs.
You can call them unqualified as well as you could call most
professional sportsmen unqualified. What more skills does a Tour de
France cyclist have that a garbage truck crew member doesn't have? Or
a 5 star hotel chef de partie that your maid doesn't have, most of
them even cook better food anyway. Don't mistake reputation with
qualification.
--
Chat: http://hackerspace.sg/chat
Kevin Lim
I very much agree with you. The trouble with the way we view money in todays society is that we mix up the practical means of exchange for physical life ( to buy food, housing etc), with sense of achievement and worth ( the " I have more money so that means I am better than you" thinking).
If we can dissociate these two human impulses (which is what the basic income boils down to), then a whole paradigm change is waiting to happen. Instead of trying to make money for its own sake, people will strive to invent, achieve more, or just serve others more simply because their souls call them to do it.
Its like when human societies shifted from hunting-gathering to agriculture. Once surplus food is possible, arts, culture and technological attainments accelerate. If we can provide the basics for physical life: food, housing, health to everyone as a basic human right a new world will happen.
This has been discussed before in the last two centuries, and many social experiments have taken place. But this time perhaps there is a critical mass of like minded people, and available technology, and historical experience to make it happen? Is this the real significance of 2012 ?
Or have I been watching too much Star Trek?
K
garbage truck driver/crew is a very well paid job in Germany and it's
hard to get that kind of jobs.
You can call them unqualified as well as you could call most
professional sportsmen unqualified. What more skills does a Tour de
France cyclist have that a garbage truck crew member doesn't have? Or
a 5 star hotel chef de partie that your maid doesn't have, most of
them even cook better food anyway. Don't mistake reputation with
qualification.
Ivan
> from amateurs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur
> And, of course, successful and recognized professionals are result of
> natural selection.
they are often the result of professional selection - a highly biased
version of the natural one.
- Ivan
Patrick Haller
> Its like when human societies shifted from hunting-gathering to
> agriculture. Once surplus food is possible, arts, culture and
> technological attainments accelerate. If we can provide the basics for
> physical life: food, housing, health to everyone as a basic human right
> a new world will happen.
Structural unemployment is another way of saying some humans are obsolete:
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
Patrick
Jason Ong
Cheers,
JasonOng
---
web: http://bit.ly/jasonong
Tamas Herman
http://live.worldbank.org/open-forum-gender/ideas/agrees
currently by far this topic is the most popular so far...
--
tom
Benjamin Scherrey
Nice to see people pointing out the income tax for the evil thing that it is finally. Hope they can make it go away.
--
Martin Baehr
> In fact there would be such a massive number of people dropping out of
> the work force that the subsidy would quickly overwhelm the rest of
> society.
that's a fact?
i challenge you to prove it.
furthermore, i challenge you to show that people who are actually
quiting their jobs will no longer contribute anything to society.
parents raising children?
people doing volunteer work?
i'd spend my time writing free software.
some of that work can't even be measured in money. (measuring the value
of free software in that context is perhaps still the easiest)
i don't think the discussion about this topic is helped by making claims
that can't be verified.
the sales tax idea is interesting but to complicated, it would require
to track everything i buy. there goes my privacy. not something i am
interested in.
greetings, martin.
--
cooperative communication with sTeam - caudium, pike, roxen and unix
services: debugging, programming, training, linux sysadmin, web development
--
pike programmer working in china community.gotpike.org
foresight developer (open-steam|caudium).org foresightlinux.org
unix sysadmin iaeste.at realss.com
Patrick Haller
> On Mon, Sep 05, 2011 at 02:18:49PM +0700, Benjamin Scherrey wrote:
> > In fact there would be such a massive number of people dropping out of
> > the work force that the subsidy would quickly overwhelm the rest of
> > society.
>
> that's a fact?
> i challenge you to prove it.
The burden of proof for new ideas lies wholly upon the people proposing
them. A more constructive response to Ben's criticism would be to show
how this version of the Basic Income would handle that possibility.
Patrick
Tamas Herman
today's angel investors are practically ensuring with their
investments that certain people who really want to work and not
exactly for the money but for a "greater good of a community" can do
this work with a peace of mind.
in effect those people who got such funding can have a similar
experience to having a basic income. for a short period of time at
least :)
what do u think?
--
tom
Benjamin Scherrey
Martin Baehr
> > > In fact there would be such a massive number of people dropping out of
> > > the work force that the subsidy would quickly overwhelm the rest of
> > > society.
> > that's a fact?
> > i challenge you to prove it.
> The burden of proof for new ideas lies wholly upon the people proposing
> them. A more constructive response to Ben's criticism would be to show
> how this version of the Basic Income would handle that possibility.
sure, i wasn't really expecting a proof though, but merely trying to
point out that such a statement is not a fact and not very helpful for
the discussion.
but you are right, my response was not any more constructive and maybe a
bit overzealous. i'd like to apologize for that.
personally, i am not very interested in the question wether the basic
income would work financially, because there are aother factors that i
believe are much more important, namely the moral and educational
readiness of society.
i believe (no facts here :-) that a basic income system depends on an
understanding and educated society where every member is interested in
making a contribution for the progress and the unity of the society as a
whole.
Jan Detlefsen
technology, so that unemployment is a given and we can't do anything
against it? i think we are living in those times already.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/09/07/rushkoff.jobs.obsolete/index.html
Martin Baehr
as some of the commenters on that article suggest, we need to rethink
what a job means and what kind of work should get paid.
man has been created to to carry forward an ever advancing civilization.
that means everyone should be occupied with making a contribution to the
world, and all those contributions can eventually be rewarded with an
income.
and while we are wondering how people can earn that income without any
jobs available, there are many jobs that are left undone.
teaching, child care, healthcare. many of these areas complain about
shortage of staff. but the problem is not shortage of people, is lack of
willingness to pay for education and hiring more people.
Patrick Haller
> what if there will be less and less jobs by the progress we make in
> technology, so that unemployment is a given and we can't do anything
> against it? i think we are living in those times already.
I doubt it; Rushkoff (and Jaron Lanier [1]) seem to view work as finite,
so once all work is done, then we have a big unemployment party. I can't
reconcile that with human nature, in that our wants seem infinite.
Boundless desires seem to imply an infinite amount of work. And while
more robots would be awesome, they each cost some materials and energy,
so we'll never have infinite robots.
While we may have infinite work to do, the nature of that work will
probably be changing as fast as the technology we build our societies
upon. We will probably face more uncertainty regarding career paths,
much like Toffler suggested in Future Shock [2].
However, there will always be jobs to do if we can and want to take the
time and effort to retool ourselves to do them.
Patrick
[1] http://haller.ws/logs/index.html/LanierTechnologicalUnemployment
[2] http://haller.ws/logs/index.html/FutureShock/
Benjamin Scherrey
Francis Bond
as an academic, allow me to try to respond to your argument.
On 8 September 2011 13:51, Benjamin Scherrey <prote...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It seems that academics never learn from their past mistakes.
This is the conclusion? If so, I don't see how it follows from the
propositions listed below.
> They create models that only work when you greatly simplify what they're abstracting to the point that it bears no resemblance to what they were modeling.
I am an academic and I produce models that produce testable
predictions and verify them against real-world data. So I think we
can falsify this as a universal claim.
> This "we're out of jobs" concept presumes a zero-sum game - the most common mistake I see.
There are also arguments that suggest that as an economy develops the
proportion of people who are incapable of being net producers of worth
increases --- some people can't do anything for which it is worth
paying them a wage. So the problem is rather that some people cannot
fill any available jobs, not necessarily that there are no jobs at
all.
> This can only (even possibly) happen when an actual zero-population growth is maintained
What can only happen? I couldn't successfully identify what you are
referring to with "this".
> zero-population growth is only achievable via forced sterilization or catastrophic war
Currently many parts of the world have negative population growth
(such as Japan, most of Europe). This was not achieved by either
forced sterilization or catastrophic war. So I consider this to also
be a false claim.
> - not worlds I would volunteer to participate in.
> Additionally all of these humans must achieve some consistent level of wealth which they are satisfied to maintain and not grow out of.
> Such an ideal is incomprehensible when considered against human nature.
> The alternative is that we have some source of unlimited energy in which case currencies (and therefore the need to gain currency via jobs)
> become unnecessary as everyone can manufacture whatever their heart/imagination desires.
Another alternative is that not everyone has everything that their
heart/imagination desires. As far as I can tell, this is currently
true, so it doesn't seem a valid criticism of any proposed
alternative, rather it is the baseline. In any case, the claim that
there are only two alternatives is also false.
> Sorry but anyone even looking one or two steps beyond these fantasy concepts must realize that they're looking to achieve either a fascist utopia
> (literally hell on Earth) or is willing to wait til we've reached the level of technology described in Niven's "Ringworld".
I don't quite see the intermediate steps between "academics create
overly abstract models" and "academics are looking to achieve a
fascist utopia". If your policies must achieve the ability to
manufacture everything your heart/imagination desires to be counted as
a success then I don't know of any current good suggestions except for
waiting for (and perhaps trying to hasten the speed of reaching) the
singularity. For my rather ambitious desires, I don't actually think
this is an achievable goal given any level of technology :-).
> I'm afraid only one of those is possible in our life times and it's not a pleasant thing to consider at all...
As there is no evidence that academics are in fact working to achieve
a fascist utopia (or possibly dystopia), please don't stress yourself
be considering it.
> When humans give up trying to forcibly plan everyone else's lives and stick
> to improving their own enlightened condition without imposing it on others
> the world will be a much better place.
I don't see how this follows from anything stated above. Trying to
improve your own enlightened condition strikes me as a good thing, but
so does being concerned for the welfare of others.
--
Francis Bond <http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home/fcbond/>
Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies
Nanyang Technological University
Benjamin Scherrey
--
Francis Bond
On 8 September 2011 16:58, Benjamin Scherrey <prote...@gmail.com> wrote:
> My comment was, of course, not a universal damnation of academics. It was a
> response within a very specific context (this thread) where I think the
> scope of what I spoke of was quite clear - especially for a linguist. As
> such, however, you chose to really support my assertion and expand it's
> scope by demonstrating exactly such behaviour as I had described. I never
> said these people intended to create a fascist utopia - I merely pointed out
> it was a very likely outcome (c.f. law of intended consequences) of many of
> these proposals.
Your comment, even in context, was a universal damnation of academics.
I am completely prepared to accept that you didn't intend it to be,
but I think it is important in discussions like this to be clear. And
I don't like to be tedious but you said "they're looking to achieve a
fascist utopia", which for me is synonymous with "they're aiming to
achieve a fascist utopia". I just don't see how to get from what
you wrote to "achieving a fascist utopia is a very likely outcome".
I really don't understand what you mean by "demonstrating exactly such
behaviour as I had described" could you be more specific?
Stepping back from nit-picking, Hayek, in the "Road to Serfdom", also
claimed that economic restrictions would lead to a totalitarian state,
and as far as I can tell these claims have also been completely
falsified. European countries have managed to remain as vibrant
democracies despite regulating professions and taxing people. Current
consensus appears to be that the very high levels of tax of the 50s
and 60s were counter-productive, but there is no evidence that there
is a path that leads from "tax and some income distribution" to
"totalitarian government". Finally, if the guaranteed default income
were set low enough (which I understand is always assumed in these
proposals) I also don't see why you expect that "there would be such a
massive number of people dropping out of the work force that the
subsidy would quickly overwhelm the rest of society". Most people
want to do better than the default. I certainly didn't stop working
as soon as I reached a minimum level of income. Quoting wikipedia
(negative income tax):
----
From 1968 to 1979, the largest negative income tax social experiment
in the US was undertaken. The four experiments were in:[7]
1. Urban areas in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 1968–1972 (1375 families)
2. Rural areas in Iowa and North Carolina, 1969–1973 (809 families)
3. Gary, Indiana, 1971–1974 (1800 families)
4. Seattle and Denver, 1971–1982 (4800 families)
In general they found that workers would decrease labor supply
(employment) by two to four weeks per year because of the guarantee of
income equal to the poverty level.[8]
---
It seems to me that is an acceptable decrease.
> I understand arguments "have been made" about people not being able to fill
> an existing job but I've never seen this in the real world and wouldn't
> presume the solution is to just give them money. Furthermore, you can point
> out islands of zero (or negative) population growth but Japan is not a
> closed system. It depends greatly on the outside world and it's population
> growth in order to sustain itself and STILL have very serious problems with
> it's population situation. Imagine if that were "achieved" world wide. Not
> a desirable outcome, imho.
Have you never tried to hire someone for a job and had to turn some
applicants away because they were unsuitable? I certainly have. Have
you noticed reports of multiple applicants for entry level jobs (often
in the tens or hundreds)?
Your claim was "zero-population growth is only achievable via forced
sterilization or catastrophic war". As there is a strong and
measurable trend to increasing wealth leading to decreasing birth rate
I hold this claim to be false. If you wish to change your claim to
something else, then fine, but unless you first withdraw the false
claim there isn't much point in continuing. For what its worth, I
also think sustained negative population growth for the whole world
would be a bad thing (I like people), but I think that the population
can easily dip and recover, and I completely disagree with the
unsupported assumption that population growth is necessary for
economic growth. The areas of the world with the highest population
growth are not the areas with the highest economic growth.
> Finally, trying to improve your own enlightened condition *is* being
> concerned about the welfare of others.
Is that what you mean by enlightened? I would have thought that you
can try to improve your own condition without being concerned about
the welfare of others.
> It is not, however, claiming the
> authority to "improve" others condition whether they like it or not. There
> can be no success if there can be no failure.
Isn't this an example of the zero-sum thinking you rejected earlier?
Of course, if you define failure as not doing as well as everyone
else, then some people will always fail. But if you define failure
as not having the basic necessities to survive then I think our goal
should be to completely eliminate failure, even at the cost of some
winners having a slightly worse life than they would otherwise have.
> This is better done by setting a good example. Please try not to confuse the two.
I don't think that these are the only two possibilities, nor do I
think that they are mutually exclusive, nor am I confused by the two.
I believe that for a functioning society, we all need to share some
responsibility. Because not all individuals/members of society are
perfect this includes some distribution of authority (the classic
cases being police, army, safety regulations and the money to support
these (tax)). Most people also agree that this should include such
things as education, border control, health care and so on. If you
completely reject this premise, then I am afraid we will have to agree
to disagree. If you are prepared to accept some shared
responsibility, then I hope we can have an interesting discussion
(perhaps with less hyperbole) about how much should be shared ---
obviously you think less and I think more :-). In actual fact I think
one of the attractive things of a default income is that it probably
wouldn't cost much more than current support for the poor in many
places (such as Japan or Australia, where I know most about the
economy). I am completely prepared to fund it by eliminating many
corporate tax subsidies :-) and all government support for agriculture
and sport, as well as, if necessary, a slightly higher income tax.
Wille Faler
> This "we're out of jobs" concept presumes a zero-sum game - the most common mistake I see.There are also arguments that suggest that as an economy develops the
proportion of people who are incapable of being net producers of worth
increases --- some people can't do anything for which it is worth
paying them a wage. So the problem is rather that some people cannot
fill any available jobs, not necessarily that there are no jobs at
all.
Benjamin Scherrey
I am completely prepared to accept that you didn't intend it to be,
but I think it is important in discussions like this to be clear. And
I don't like to be tedious but you said "they're looking to achieve a
fascist utopia", which for me is synonymous with "they're aiming to
achieve a fascist utopia".
Francis Bond
> I think the main point to be made is that I don't accept any solution that
> involves the initiation of force - taking things from others without their
> permission or making others do things they would not voluntarily do. Any
> system workable to me must first protect the rights of the individual and
> operate in a voluntary manner. All force must be restrained to only
> protecting those rights and ensuring that participation can remain
> voluntary. That is the only moral society that can be. If we cannot agree on
> this point (which no proposal for a universal salary can pass muster that
> I've seen) then there's no point in debating speculative points.
> Hope you find this clear enough.
Very clear. I agree that, if this is your starting position, then no
proposal for a universal salary will pass muster, and there is indeed
no point in further discussion.
Tamas Herman
towards this model.
we can read more about the related news on it's own new site; here is
a recent example:
http://binews.org/2011/09/india-basic-income-pilot-projects-are-underway/
--
tom
Benjamin Scherrey
Tamas Herman
one of their program points is the basic income:
http://www.heute.de/ZDFheute/inhalt/29/0,3672,8352765,00.html
On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 11:19 AM, Benjamin Scherrey
<prote...@gmail.com> wrote:
> So you think $22/mo anywhere in the world is a viable "basic income"? This
according to preetam, it's enough in a small village where u can get
some of your food from the nature. 22usd is enough to have sufficient
nutrition in such a village.
--
tom
Martin Baehr
> the pirate party got into the parliment in germany with almost 9%.
> one of their program points is the basic income:
>
> http://www.heute.de/ZDFheute/inhalt/29/0,3672,8352765,00.html
just for clarification:
it is only the regional parliament in berlin, not the national one.
Martin Baehr
> On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 12:50:57AM +0800, Tamas Herman wrote:
> > the pirate party got into the parliment in germany with almost 9%.
> > one of their program points is the basic income:
> >
> > http://www.heute.de/ZDFheute/inhalt/29/0,3672,8352765,00.html
>
> just for clarification:
> it is only the regional parliament in berlin, not the national one.
it should also be noted that according to the article most people voted
for the pirates because they didn't want the other parties, not because
they looked at the program of the pirates.
so this result is not necesarily an indication that people are
interested in the basic income.
also an interesting bit is that in east berlin the voter participation
is 4 %-points higher than 5 years ago, and that overall votes for other
alternative parties were reduced by 5.4 %-points.
so it looks like the pirates were able to motivate non-voters and
collect other protest-voters.
to me this just demonstrates the failure of multi-party democratic
systems. it is not a success of the pirate party program.
Tamas Herman
i couldn't read the german article, i just heard about it thru
hungarian channels.
--
tom
Jan Detlefsen
blogger and other hipsters so i think their strong online presence and
how they plan to deal with internet issues helped them to win 9%. They
do have a program where people can agree with. It is focused to
protect the internet as a new cultural space and also not to give up
privacy and personal freedom in sake of a security theater. also the
way they plan to organize themselves, they got ideas to implement more
transparency in their organization and finance and how they make
decisions. they plan to incorporate "liquid democracy".They do adress
some burning issues for those who care about it.
of course you could call it a protest vote if all other parties suck
in that regard and they promis to do it better. depends on your point
of view.
> to me this just demonstrates the failure of multi-party democratic...
opposed to one party democracy?
Martin Baehr
> of course you could call it a protest vote if all other parties suck
> in that regard and they promis to do it better. depends on your point
> of view.
i called it a protest vote only because the article claims that only 10%
of the pirate party voters chose them because of their program. which
means that the other 90% didn't care what the program is.
> > to me this just demonstrates the failure of multi-party democratic...
> opposed to one party democracy?
as opposed to zero-party democracy where every candidate stands for him
or herself only, and the voters choose individuals only.
in a party the program is controlled by people i didn't vote for. all i
get to say as a voter is yes or no to the whole program.
if instead i could choose 10 or so individuals (out of the hundreds that
get elected) then i can hand pick the 10 people that i believe really
focus on the issues i care about. each elected member of parliament then
has a chance to pursue these issues and is not forced to follow the
party line.
Benjamin Scherrey
Martin Baehr
> A better test for that theory would be if they had "None of the Above"
> always listed as a candidate and anyone receiving votes below that amount
> would not be put in office.
that might work if individuals are elected, but not for current party
systems as it would make it hard for small parties to get in.
> My preference would be to not have any political parties but it
> doesn't seem a practically viable option.
why do you think it is not viable?
> The elimination of this leads to the kind of deadlock you find in the
> USA where the two parties differ in only small respects but manage to
> keep a stranglehold on all access to representation so they are
> forever in power.
worse, they waste a lot of resources fighting each other instead of
working for the greater good of their country.
the fact that there are still two parties in the US system obviously
shows that parties have not been eliminated from the system.
the whole notion of a candidate belonging to one or another party must
disappear if it is to be called a non-party system.
voters need to be motivated to investigate the actual candidates and not
just look at a party label they are carrying.
greetings, martin.
--
cooperative communication with sTeam - caudium, pike, roxen and unix
services: debugging, programming, training, linux sysadmin, web development
--
pike programmer working in china community.gotpike.org
foresight developer (open-steam|caudium).org foresightlinux.org
unix sysadmin iaeste.at realss.com
Patrick Haller
> We must work hard enough to get that Basic Income Garantee.
Why not just vote for lower taxes and fewer job/work restrictions?
Stefan van der Bijl
I admire the passion but is this the right place to post this?
We must work hard enough to get that Basic Income Garantee.
Next week in Germany/near Munich is the 14th. World Congress BIEN.On Facebook You can found a very-very big community in germanlanguage, but sure in english too.We are a group from Hungary, we want to get BIG too.Lets connect all around the Globe for a better life to everyone!evamaria*******************************************************
On Friday, August 19, 2011 1:55:36 PM UTC+2, onetom wrote:guys,--just heard about this concept now (having a default income as basic
human right).it was a great enlightenment why didn't i really understand the
current tax systems,
why do they feel so alien and why is it hard for me to fit in to this
current world.http://dotsub.com/view/26520150-1acc-4fd0-9acd-169d95c9abe1
i know many of u have deeper insights into the economy, so i propose a
discussion
nite devoted to this topic.--
tom
ps: i got the link from a hungarian friend. there is already a hungarian site
allocated for this topic http://www.alapjovedelem.org/ where the film
is downloadable
with hardcoded subtitles.btw, im surprised there are chinese translations available too on this
dotsub site.
can someone pls check if it's blocked in china or not?
--
Chat: http://hackerspace.sg/chat