“And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely” — Lord Acton (The corrupted thinking that follows the concentration of power has since been backed up by neuroscience studies).
After the (binary economics) BE loan is paid off, the productive property ownership provides a dividend income stream to every individual, much as it works for the wealthier today. The tax-sheltered, full payout dividends would grow with the economy. Each and every individual will have the ability to obtain an income from the increasing automated machines. This will encourage many to do more meaningful volunteer work on things that really matter to them.
The citizen dividends obtained through binary economics could be termed a Universal Basic Ownership income (UBO). UBO is fundamentally different from the Universal Basic Income (UBI) being pushed by those who want a disempowered population. From trust fund recipients to welfare cases, many people suffer from a ‘crisis of meaning’ with the passivity and detachment inherent in not being actively involved in the economic activity of a community. A UBI would make this social debilitation endemic. With UBO, citizens are active, involved participants in the larger economy, creating a sense of belonging and interest in governance.
A UBO also puts more power in the hands of the individual. Rather than faceless bureaucrats of a UBI determining a citizen’s income level, the individual has significant input into choosing their investments. As shareholders, they can also vote for company direction or even serve on boards to have input into their income level. In the Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP) legislation invented by binary economists, the connection between worker inputs and rewards are of course obvious. All this tends away from the ‘learned helplessness’ that accompanies ‘a crisis of meaning’ wherein healthy, adult individuals become passive recipients of sufficient incomes to exist. As one philosopher put it, the surest way to destroy a people is to make them helpless dependents.
The binary economics aspect of the UBO means the labor work you do is not deducted or otherwise affected by your investment income. Binary means two, as in two separate streams of income, should you choose to engage in paid work after your dividends income can supply you with your needs and wants. Prying bureaucrats will have no say in the matter.
With UBI, power is centralized in a small governing body, and so invites corruption. A political party can promise a big raise to get elected, regardless if the real economy is producing the necessary goods and services. This leads to inflation. They can also cut off someone’s UBI income for not bowing down to those doling it out. Already the World Economic Forum (WEF) has an article on their website praising UBI, but suggest restrictions for such things as not having the proper vaccine status, thereby redefining what the Universal in UBI means. This means the UBI is essentially a recipe for tyranny. In a UBO, power is decentralized and a truly free market handles funds distribution; in tandem with the production of marketable goods and services.
And finally, in the unlikely event, all carefully vetted investments fail for a citizen, and they are also unemployed due to automation or the elimination of ‘busy work’, the UBI concept can still come into play; but as a last resort, for a small minority. The government-administered guaranteed income would also be temporary, as each year new interest-free loans to invest become available for each person. The negative income tax (NIT) proposed by Milton Friedman is the way to go for this small part of the economy. The process respects privacy and is harder to cut off due to its tie-in with income tax. You just send in your tax form like always, and your tax refund can be disbursed in monthly installments sufficient to provide the basics of food, shelter, and clothing.
This also makes this method very efficient. No new bureaucracy is required. Existing government tax agencies could administer it through their normal procedures. Friedman was correct that the tax burden for such a system would be a less than that of the myriad social programs set up today. Because binary economics was stalled for a few decades by the power addicts, some UBO might have to be reverse engineered through the NIT, paid for by eliminating existing government support programs. Regardless, abject poverty, in the midst of plenty, would become a thing of the past. And, as stated, it would be done with a clear path forward out of subsistence, dependent living due to the yearly interest-free loans for the purchase of productive property. The individuals would be pushed out of helplessness and back into the UBO of binary economics, to have meaningful economic engagement with the larger community and their governments.
Those concerned about limits to growth have a stunted view of what growth is. Increases in quality rather than quantity is a form of growth that enhances sustainability. Economic growth could comprise growth in more green space, given value by a populace with increasing leisure time, or in low or no impact digital educational and entertainment products, or in the not too distant future, growth in extraterrestrial ventures. Doing more with less in a hallmark of progress. Environmentally friendly growth possibilities are virtually limitless. Structurally, UBO loans could tilt towards greening, and such credit vehicles as the Cooperative Land Development Corporation could easily be tailored to revolve around sustainability.
What is more, eliminating compounding interest from the productive property loans will remove the mindless churning and burning of resources that currently takes place simply to try to pay off the ever increasing interest charges in an economy awash in debt. The current money system also creates a scarcity mentality and all the greed, hoarding and unnecessary resource conversion that comes with that. Reformed banker and financier the late Bernard Lietaer has an excellent analysis on this in his book Beyond Greed and Scarcity. In short, during the money supply contractions that occur during the ‘business cycle’, there is a mad scramble for all to obtain enough money to pay their debts and interest. It is like a game of musical chairs, only if you are left standing when the music stops, you don’t lose a game, you and your family lose your house. This has a significant deleterious impact on morality in the economy.
