In an interesting contribution for Re-Public, the premier political journal on the internet, Vasilis Kostakis makes a link that I had never so clearly seen before, so reading the article was a real “aha” moment.
It is the Commons itself, as an institutional form, that is the best possible solution and way forward to achieve a basic income for the world’s citizens and thereby eliminate povery.
We quote the essential paragraph by Vasilis:
“Based on all the above hypotheses, I argue that a new environmental policy that will include the institutionalization of the field of the Commons, can contribute to the fight against local and world poverty, through the establishment of a universal income. Enterprises, states, and even individuals, that pollute the environment through various ways (waste, nuclear tests, etc.) or television stations and telephone companies that use the air (the air consists a means of production for them) for the transmission of their signals, will pay a large amount of money to a Commons fund, as they use or affect, directly or indirectly, part of our common wealth. The money that will be raised through this process, will create a reserve fund, which will support the distribution of the basic universal income targeting poorer social groups. An example of environmental protection (it has to do with the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions) and, at the same time, of fundraising for the universal income is the cap and dividend system, that is being developed by the Onthecommons Organization. The idea behind this method is relatively simple: a limited number of pollution licences is issued (according to official reduction objectives), and then sold through auction to the pollutants through, while the money raised are not spent by governments, but distributed equally to all citizens. As the poorer social groups are those who pollute less, they benefit more by such a policy measure, according to Barnes. In a few words, the cap and dividend system is a way for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and protecting household incomes with one stroke. The pillar of this system is the creation of a trust that can be run either by the government, or by a non-profit company. This trust will issue pollution licences and will distribute the money raised through their auction to all citizens.”
I asked Kevin Carson for a comment on the land commons idea.
> Kevin: would you have anything to say about the potential of land as a
> commons, in the context below?
Kevin replied via email:
It strikes me as very similar to what geolibertarians call for: a
citizen’s basic income funded by taxes on land value, resource
consumption and negative externalities.
As a property rights matter, I’m an agnostic. I’m not persuaded by
Georgist and geolib arguments that property in the land is collective
to the extent of an individual obligation to pay rent to the
community, but I also don’t see any objective basis on which such a
property rights regime can be opposed. Aside from the basic
prohibition on property in vacant and unimproved land, and the belief
that it should be open for homesteading (which is shared by all
principled property rights systems), I tend to evaluate property
rights systems on consequentialist grounds. Which means I would be
glad to peacefully coexist with localities or regions that adopted
such a system, and would oppose efforts by any (like right-wing
Lockean libertarians) to overturn it on their own principled grounds.
Something like a basic income from a land commons is exactly what I’m trying to do with United Diversity.
I often change my mind about the specifics, but the current deal collective members have signed up for is that collective land is rented out with 50% surplus rent getting redistributed to members as a basic income paid in a community currency, redeemable for rent (and most likely other stuff too, especially renewable energy) and 50% reinvested in further land and shared infrastructure.
Actually the community currency part isn’t part of the current deal, but people are aware its on the roadmap…
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