60th edition – Meaning – Pike & Hurricane

Rights Won’t Cure a Pandemic

Maya Diekmann — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 20:55:56 +0000

In recent months, human rights have experienced a rapid proliferation in public discourse. People are unusually concerned with the status of their fundamental rights—for a good reason. Few liberal democracies have witnessed such heavy-handed state intervention and liberty rights restrictions as in 2020.

Lockdowns infringe on the right to freedom of movement, strict distancing measures and gathering regulations on the freedom of assembly. Religious service is limited, hymns of praise are a big no-no in virus containment—restricting free religious practice. Not even the right to choose one’s employment is guaranteed where restaurants, theaters, and other non-essential businesses are forced to shut down.

As much as these restrictions might feel like a dictatorial rule to those privileged enough to have grown up in a liberal democratic society—who have not the slightest of ideas of what such implications even mean—it couldn’t be further removed from rights and freedoms as they work in practice. As much as some might want to equivocate their rights with a kind of untouchable, inviolable decree—human rights were never meant to play that role in the first place.

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”

“…born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Or so the fairy tale is told, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Granting humans rights merely on the basis of their existence as a human being is a fundamental underpinning of the Declaration. It is an ideal worth striving for but in practice, it could not be more problematic. It is no surprise that critical opposition to the notion of universality of human rights did not take long to arise after the Declaration first entered into force. With her essay The Rights of Man: What Are They?, Hannah Arendt launched what would become one of the most prominent critiques against the supposedly inalienable status of human rights. At the core of her critique is the critical question of how human rights are supposed to be universal, if their enforcement is conditional on the existence, willingness, and capability of the institutions of sovereign states to do so.

In short, and without granting Arendt the attention that she deserves, the answer to said question is: They are not universal. Not simply by virtue of existing. The respect and protection of human rights directly depend on citizenship and institutions, because rights—just like people—do not exist in a socio-political vacuum. They exist in a world divided into a map of sovereign states, holding societies to which people are assigned by birth. If one is lucky enough to be born into a state where democracy, rule of law, and respect for human rights governs, one, along with everyone else born in that state, has fundamental rights.

Being a citizen of a liberal democracy is principally like being a member of an exclusive club. You pay your membership, vote for your board, and avoid violating club rules. In return you reap the benefits of being a member. As do others. This is essential to keep the club running. The problem with membership, and its connected perks and duties, is that there is a risk to forget about the conditions on which this whole association is founded in the first place: To gather together with a common purpose. In the case of liberal democratic societies this is to live together, peacefully under the law, and to equally profit from the fruits of human cooperation—including the guarantee of certain fundamental rights.

It doesn’t take much calculating to figure out that in a society where all the members lay claims to their rights, there is bound to be some conflict sooner or later. You cannot have every single member of society demanding their freedom without any external interference. The current pandemic is paradigmatic of this: Were the COVID-19 “freedom fighters” to have their way, and states were to lift all kinds of restrictions, they would infringe on the rights to life and good health—enshrined in Article 6 of the ICCPR and Article 12 of the ICESCR respectively—of other members of society. This is why the freedoms set forward in international human rights documents are usually understood as liberties. And although the terms are often used interchangeably, there exists a conceptual difference: While freedom denotes the ability to do whatever one wishes without interference, the latter refers to the ability to do something without arbitrary interference. Liberties are what is granted, guaranteed, and protected by national laws.

COVID-19 Anti-Lockdown Protest in Vancouver, May 3rd 2020

Of Lives and Livelihoods

Few human rights are absolute. Among them are the prohibition of slavery and torture. This means that these rights can never be “put on hold”. Not in war, where allegedly anything goes, not ever. Most articles in the International Bill of Human Rights, however, come with limitations. This means that in cases of national emergency, where public order or public health are threatened, these rights can be derogated from. As long as measures are based in law, are necessary and proportional to the threat, it is perfectly legitimate for a state to limit rights, such as freedom of assembly or freedom of movement.

For many in the “corona-resistance” movement, these measures are neither necessary nor proportionate. Falsely claiming SARS-CoV-2 to be little more than a flu virus, which poses no serious threat to a vast majority of the population, they demand an end of the tyranny that restricts their personal freedoms and threatens their livelihoods. And while it is correct that in most cases, a COVID-19 infection takes a mild course, it is equally correct that there is a certain part of the population which is much more likely to be seriously affected by the disease. But even to those that acknowledge this fact, the equation still seems straightforward: The lives of the few do not justify risking the livelihoods of the many.

One of the great features of human rights is that they protect minorities from the will of the majority. Just because those facing a serious risk from SARS-CoV-2 are outnumbered does not mean that they do not deserve a healthy and safe life. This is part of what characterizes the liberal democratic society that so strongly protects exactly those fundamental rights that some understand as their personal trump card in the current crisis. Those same rights are designed to work as a protective shield for all the others whose lives and health endangered are endangered.

It is easy to demand something that unlikely affects oneself negatively. The vast majority of lockdown protesters in the US are white, whereas those disproportionately affected by the virus are people of color. Conversely, in Germany, 93% of those aged 60 and older, people facing higher risks from the virus, have no sympathy for anti-lockdown demonstrations. Undoubtedly, many of those demanding the end of corona-measures are negatively impacted by them, some disproportionately heavily. Their entire existence is at risk because of government restrictions. This should by no means be downplayed. Neither should human rights in times of the pandemic. The point is that there is a difference between making oneself heard by participating in a productive socio-political debate, and obstinately chanting for some sort of personal freedom which was never there in the first place.

There is no easy solution to a crisis as multifaceted as the current one. In fact, one of the greatest challenges in handling the COVID-19 pandemic is that alleviating one crisis seemingly aggravates another. Where individuals find themselves in the crossfire of government crisis-response mechanisms, it is easy to clutch onto the one tower of strength that promises protection from the great sovereign: Human rights. But once the underlying dynamic of this symbolic narrative is taken into consideration, one thing becomes painfully obvious: Insisting on your personal rights won’t heal a sick collective.

Related articles:

The Swedish COVID-19 pandemic strategy or: The Comeback of the “Ättestupa”

Back from the borderlands: taming and framing COVID-19

Socially Progressive, Economically Conservative: What Does It Mean to Be Liberal?

Human Rights Crisis

Photo credits:

“COVID-19 Anti-Lockdown Protest in Vancouver, May 3rd 2020” by GoToVan is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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The Clash of the Titans – Public Figures against the Tech Giants

Julia Kavanto — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 20:17:53 +0000

President Donald Trump of the United States of America became the first president to achieve many things. He was the first US president to be impeached twice, and his administration was the first to declare that China was committing genocide on Uighurs, but now I am talking about Trump being the first world leader to be permanently suspended from Twitter.

Trump supporters stormed the halls of the United States Capitol on January 6th, and their agenda was to stop the inauguration of Joe Biden. Soon after the coup, Trump’s Twitter account was first suspended for twelve hours, and then for good, as he continued to violate the community rules of the platform.

Multiple social media platforms followed Twitter’s example and suspended Trump’s accounts. We are having this discussion because permanently suspending a person of authority is considered a threat to the freedom of speech. The concern is valid. The common social media platforms, especially Twitter, are crucial to the hectic politics of the modern world; it is there where the political debate is the most heated. So, is it right to suspend a political leader permanently?

What is freedom of speech? What is it not?

Freedom of speech essentially means that any individual should have the right to express their thoughts and feelings without fear of sanctions. The right is universal, so it applies to everyone regardless of status, race, religion et cetera. There is a limitation to it, though. Freedom of speech should not be exercised to harm. A very important question to this is that who decides when someone or something has been harmed. One would think that the person who is harmed decides if they have been harmed, but then there is the question of people who cannot reply or, for example, non-human entities like nature. Who decides for them?

Twitter decided for the people who were injured in the coup of Capitol. Five people died in the attack, and Twitter understood President Trump’s tweet on the 8th of January about not joining President Biden’s inauguration was an invitation for his supporters to be violent. Trump’s use of words was interpreted as violating the platform’s glorification of violence policy.

Yes, Twitter can decide, and they did right to protect American citizens from further acts of violence. However, this does not mean that there should not be a more democratic way to decide. The board of Twitter who presumably called the shot to suspend Trump’s account was not selected democratically, and should not, therefore, have the right to take away the freedom of expression, even from Donald Trump.

On the other hand…

The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny travelled back to his home country from Berlin where he was treated after having been poisoned in August 2020. Navalny was immediately detained upon his arrival on the 17th of January, and he soon posted a video on Twitter where he urged his supporters to “take it to the streets” because of his jailing. The protests were unauthorized, but successful, as the demonstration was organized in 100 Russian cities and there were 40,000 participants only in Moscow.

It is no surprise, then, that someone got hurt in the protests; Navalny must have known that the riots were unauthorized and would be met with violence. Videos show how the police are dragging people and using batons relentlessly. For the western democrat, it seems obvious that Navalny, Putin’s arch-rival, would not be banned for social media. That would be a victory for tyranny. But essentially, Navalny and Trump used Twitter for the same: for rallying supporters to protest against the government. It can be that Navalny’s tweets were not seen “to incite violence”, as Trump’s tweets were, according to Twitter’s blog post on Trump’s suspension. That, though, is problematic, that there is no universal guideline to fall back on.

Of course, Trump was not banned solely because of the tweet to join him on the 6th, but also because of the countless times he posted fake news on the platform. A certain president of Russia would argue that Navalny has also posted fake news, as the opposition leader recently uploaded a video to Twitter exposing Putin’s palace of corruption. Putin denies that the palace is his or any of his close relatives. The media in the United States seems to have agreed that Trump often tweeted lies. The same could be said about the Russian media breaking the news of Navalny’s accusations, as Pravda and Russia Today repeat Putin denying that the palace is his. American media agrees that Trump posted lies, and Russian media that Navalny posted lies, but the reception is very different.

There needs to be a universal guideline for social media usage, which states when a person has crossed the line of what is accepted. The board of directors of tech giants should not be the ones who decide who has the right to be heard. There are many questions regarding the universal guideline for social media that I am suggesting, such as who should be trusted to tell the truth i.e. who says what is “fake news”. Russian media argues against Navalny’s allegations of Putin’s Palace, but the allegations are still not put down by Twitter as lies.

Navalny joined the suspension discussion

Navalny himself responded to the suspension of President Trump negatively by saying that it “is an unacceptable act of censorship”. He says that Twitter’s decision to suspend Trump is based on personal political views. Therefore it can be said that the decision was not democratic. But does it even have to be in a private company? I think so, as they carry so much power in the public speech arena where freedom of speech is exercised. It is a slippery slope that Twitter has entered, as with permanently suspending Trump they open the possibility to suspend other people who do not follow the prevailing ideology. Silencing people is too great a power for any company to have.

No matter how much I disagree with Trump’s views, he, too, has the right to be heard. Imagine if Navalny was suspended. How radically would the Western world react to silencing the one figure who is against the all-mighty Vladimir Putin? In a democratic world, everyone needs to be heard, regardless of views. In a democratic world, everyone is treated equally, and with the universal guideline of social media usage, the same rules would be applied to everyone, regardless of power they possess.

Related articles:

Delusive Donald

The Social Network of Ethnic Conflict

Photo credits:

Tech/Book Special NRC Handelsblad, by Jenna Arts, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Freedom of Speech, by Vladan Nikolic, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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Vaccine Diplomacy Clouds Over Southeast Asia

Carl Widegrip Dominguez — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 20:10:06 +0000

On January 20th, Thailand’s government filed criminal charges against Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, a 42-year old politician, for alleged violations of a draconian lèse-majesté law which protects the monarchy from insult or defamation. The offense carries harsh penalties of up to 15 years in prison.

What, then, did Mr. Thanathorn do to prompt such heavy-handed punishment?

Two days earlier, during a Facebook livestream, he expressed concerns over what he felt was an opaque procurement and distribution vaccination scheme laid forth by the Thai government. Additionally, he questioned why the British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca had granted exclusive local production rights of their proprietary COVID-19 vaccine to Siam BioScience, a biopharmaceutical lab wholly owned and managed by the Crown Property Bureau. The bureau itself is a quasi-governmental agency dedicated to managing the assets and property of King Maha Vajiralongkorn. Like all affairs of the Thai Royal family, the bureau and its subsidiaries remains bereft of public scrutiny.

For his indiscretion, the former political opposition leader now finds himself staring down a lengthy prison-sentence, which may be compounded further if he’s found guilty of multiple counts of lèse-majesté or of the notoriously vague Computer Crime Act.

Yet Thanathorn’s case is merely the tip of the iceberg in a region-wide struggle which pits public safety against political interests.

In what can only be described as vaccine diplomacy, governments around Southeast Asia appear to be favoring unmonitored bilateral relations for political support and economic gain over effective and affordable treatment for their citizens.

Beyond the gaffe between AstraZeneca and Thailand, Southeast Asian nations have struck a string of questionable trade deals on vaccine imports and production. That the vaccines have been commodified for negotiations does little to alleviate the woes of international supply shortages and a near-complete lack of local production capabilities in a time of dire need. Of all the major vaccines available on the market, the biggest player on the Southeast Asian negotiation table is China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd.

Foreign interests and domestic oversights

The public concerns over inadequate transparency surrounding the vaccine rollouts in Thailand are not unique to the nation, but rather endemic of a larger trend of foreign appeasement present among all member states of the chief regional intergovernmental organisation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Over the past decade, growing Chinese influence in the region combined with low levels of domestic accountability has created a precarious political climate.

Prior to the pandemic, China accounted for the largest single group of international visitors to Southeast Asia. This large presence provides a substantial source of tourism revenue, which certain areas are completely reliant upon. Moreover, China has poured in foreign direct investment into Chinese tourism hotspots such as Sihanoukville in southern Cambodia and Hat Yai in southern Thailand, and a myriad of large-scale joint infrastructure developments has been initiated as part of their Belt and Road Initiative, as well as multiple massive hydropower dam constructions on the Mekong River in Laos.

This asymmetric economic dependence is reflected both in political culture and foreign policy. The negative agricultural impact and environmental degradation stemming from the Mekong River projects have been tacitly accepted. China’s expansionist ambitions in the South China Sea are mostly quietly brushed aside. And when China comes knocking for a show of public support, the ASEAN members are usually happy to oblige them.

Nam Gnouang Dam on a tributary of the Nam Theun River in Laos.

So before many prominent vaccine manufacturers had even published reliable data from their late-stage clinical trials, many Southeast Asian nations had already decided to go with Sinovac as their premier choice.

Indonesia is one such example. After vocalizing early support, authorities signed an agreement with Sinovac as far back as August 25th, 2020—just two weeks after the launch of an Indonesian clinical trial—to import three million doses from China by January 2021 and to later initiate the localized production of at least 40 million additional doses via an Indonesian biopharmaceutical company.

First in line to receive the shot was Indonesian President Joko Widodo on January 13th. In a public display of cosy Indonesia-China relations, a broadly televised event showed President Widodo receiving the initial dose live, along with close-up shots of the Sinovac boxes.

The date is of note, too; two days earlier, on January 11th, Indonesia’s Food and Drug Authority reported their interim findings of the aforementioned clinical trial and claimed the vaccine was 65.3% effective, and was granted emergency use authorization. The next day, Brazil’s local production partner of Sinovac, Butantan, determined the general efficacy of the vaccine at just 50.4% in their late-stage clinical trial.

So while still technically fulfilling the vaccine guidelines set out by the World Health Organization of minimum 50% efficacy, one might expect such low figures to cast the televised publicity stunt into question, or cause some trepidation in the subsequent mass rollout. However, the Indonesian government proceeded with their plan unaltered, and health authorities defended the move citing an urgent need to protect its health workers.

Indonesia is not alone in this regard. Negotiations for the import of hundreds of millions of Sinovac vaccines in aggregate across Southeast Asia have already concluded. The Philippines committed themselves to 25 millions doses due for import in February, at allegedly dubious price mark-ups. Vietnam is primarily looking at importing the AstraZeneca vaccine, but is still in discussions regarding possible Sinovac additions. Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand each had millions of Sinovac doses slated for delivery, but all deals are currently on halt pending more clinical trial data from China after Brazil’s disappointing findings.

Laos and Myanmar, two of the region’s poorest nations, are both notable cases of vaccine diplomacy. Labelled “priority” recipients by China’s foreign minister Wang Yi, the two nations’ low bargaining power and weak international clout render them especially susceptible to foreign interests.

Laos is one of the few nations set to receive the Russian-made vaccine Sputnik V, but is concurrently in talks to supplement national rollout with Sinovac.

Local publication Myanmar Times reports that a multitude of behind-closed-doors bilateral talks between Myanmar’s Ambassador in Beijing and China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs resulted in an agreement to ship the Chinese vaccine to Myanmar by early 2021. In order to secure the deal, Wang Yi sought the support of Myanmar’s ruling military junta for the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor—a localized subsection of the larger Belt and Road Initiative.

The afflictions of politics

While negotiations for the right product at the right price occurs all over the world, Southeast Asia’s propensity for non-transparency in foreign affairs create distinctive issues. There are many economically impaired areas in the region without access to adequate healthcare and which lack a strong international voice to bring attention to any shortcomings of governance. Putting the lives and safety of these peoples and front-line workers at risk, to employ under-the-table dealings to cement diplomatic allegiances is unethical at best and possibly devastating at worst.

As mentioned at the start, not only does this secrecy create civil and legal issues for people who dare to ask the tough questions—as for Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit—but create far reaching public safety issues as well.

After being alerted of the legal charges the Thai government levied against Mr. Thanathorn, AstraZeneca may be showing signs of reconsidering their partnership with Siam BioScience, as a planned news conference on the authorization of the vaccine was abruptly cancelled on January 22nd. The fear of getting dragged into political hot waters may be an understandable disposition for AstraZeneca, but it also means that 50,000 doses that were scheduled to be administered in February might now be in jeopardy.

With the Sinovac rollout now also being temporarily suspended, uncertainty looms large over Thailand’s vaccination scheme. With a population of nearly 70 million, and with no available vaccines at the ready, more victims and economic hardships are sure to follow in the wake of callous vaccine diplomacy.

Related articles:

Unheard South Solidarity: The Asian-African Conference

One Belt, One Road – China’s Path to the West

Photo credits:

“Wat Pho. Bangkok.”, by Adaptor- Plug on flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0

“Nam Gnouang Dam (60MW), on a tributary of the Nam Theun River in Laos”, by Eric Baran, via WorldFish on flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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The Precariat – The Loss of Job Security and What To Do About It

Oliver Ösmark — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 20:00:07 +0000

Khalil Gibran’s book “The Prophet” begins with the protagonist Almustafa spotting on the horizon the ship that will take him back to the isle of his birth, and he prepares himself to leave the city of Orphalese which he has called home for 12 years. But he is struck by melancholy as his thoughts turn to the hurt he will cause the people of the city with his passing. Being a popular fellow, he is beseeched by men, women, elders, and clergy to speak to them of the truths he has learned in his time: “Now therefore, disclose us to ourselves, and tell us all that has been shown you of that which is between birth and death.” Almustafa obliges and shares his wisdom in 26 dainty morsels on the topics of love, good and evil, crime and punishment, joy and sorrow, friendship, laws, time, talking, trade, work, and so on. The word “meaning” is not used a single time in the whole book.

At this stage one might feel as though the omission of “meaning” in this context is of no significance as the narrative itself is heavily flecked with the mysticisms, superstitions, dogmas, and all the loose scales shed from the scalp of theism. After all, the ultimate meaning of religion is faith, and faith is servitude to the idea of God and all that entails; or “the gods, sprits and idols,” if you are the kind of person to diversify your spiritual portfolio. One would be forgiven for thinking so. Gibran was a Maronite flirting with Islam, Sufi mysticism, and the Bahá’í Faith. But his eclecticism also spanned into the artistic enclaves of Romanticism, and modern (at the time) symbolism and surrealism. The point here being that it is not far-fetched to claim that any artist engaging in honest dissemination of the human condition does not regard close-mindedness a virtue. “Meaning” is not God’s decree. It is a consortium of disciplines. Disciplines represented with poetic precision by Gibran in his book.

The Prophet Almustafa says of work:

“You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth […]

You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.

And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,

And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge.

And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,

And all work is empty save when there is love;

And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.”

Love for one’s trade is the flower borne from the seed of urge. Yet, the realities of the day—underemployment, redundancies, glass ceilings, manufactured impediments to accessing education, etc.—leave many scrambling in for options. Any options. And even though a small—plausibly non-existent—minority of people would make the claim that their gig as a human billboard brings them closer to God, work satisfaction falls by the wayside with little or no long-term job security. Darkness abounds, and this is the precarious circumstance a growing portion of the labor force find themselves in. But before we explore this phenomenon any further, first we must address some common suppositions.

The usual suspects

Economic inequality is a prompt for social mobilization on the regular. “The 1%” have been the punching bags of the discontent and disempowered since the invention of value itself. These days that practice is perfectly understandable. In 2018, the 26 richest people in the world held as much wealth as half of the global population (3.8 billion at the time), a change from 43 people the preceding year. Yet, it is a mistake to think that inequality is rising everywhere. It is not all-pervasive, nor an inescapable symptom of globalization. Neither has the average level of inequality changed much. In countries like China, India, Indonesia, and the U.S., which together account for 45% of the world population, the Gini index—the go-to barometer of wealth inequality—saw an increase of about 4 points. Hence, while the average country saw little variation of the Gini index, the average person lived in a country that saw rising income inequality.

Unemployment numbers do not tell the whole story either. These have more or less followed a stable flat trend within the 3-7% range, alongside with a steady increase in GDP per capita, since the ILO began recording unemployment data per state. Extreme outliers like Spain and Greece in 2013—which peaked at 27% and 25% respectively—led to much civil unrest as austerity measures inflamed an already volatile situation. Youth unemployment in these countries was more than twice as high as the country average, as is often the case in most countries on average. High rates of underemployment compound this issue. Underemployed workers may be able to find work, but their income may not be sufficient for meeting basic needs. Youths are overrepresented in this category. Hence, unemployment rates alone are inadequate measures of labor market slack.

Indeed, labor underutilization affects 473 million workers worldwide, which is more than double the number of unemployed people considered separately, and 61% of workers worldwide are in informal employment. Significant inequalities in access to decent work opportunities has become an increasing trend and feature of current labor markets.

The precariat

Guy Standing is an economist and professor at the University of London who has worked extensively on economic inequality and written two book on a new social class dubbed the “precariat”; the word itself is a portmanteau of “precarious” and “proletariat”. Unlike the latter characterized as exchanging labor for livelihood yet deprived of the “means of production”—raw material, facilities, machines, capital—the precariat are only partially involved in labor and must take on extensive amounts of uncompensated “work”—e.g. updating CV’s and sending out job applications, attending job interviews, being “on call” for “gig” work—to have access to decent earnings. Emblematic of this class is a lack of job security, benefits, or union protection. The precariat also spans the income and education spectrums: from illegal migrant work to highly educated but freelance-dependent industries.

Workers of a Mexican textile plant or “maquila”. Most workers work 11 hours a day, 6 to 7 days a week, for less than the legal minimum wage. Industries in the US and elsewhere make heavy use of Mexico’s and other Central American countries’ low-cost labor.

Standing says that this phenomenon really took off after 2008 in the aftermath of the 2007–2008 financial crisis. In his book “A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens” he outlines 29 “demands” aimed at providing the precariat both economic stability and empowerment to live in comfort and participate in society—these range from rehauling unions, reforming migration policies, ending means testing. A central demand is the establishment of a universal basic income, an idea that has been courted by the international labor and economic mammoths ILO, OECD, the World Bank—especially in the wake of the Great Recession—but never consummated.

But won’t basic income dissuade people from working and bleed government of tax revenue? Cool your boots, prolepsis. Let us entertain the side of the argument where one aspires for universal access to opportunity and decent standards of living. Take the Swedish unemployment fund (arbetslöshetskassa or “a-kassa”) which, ideally, pays up to 80% of your salary—though there are many fine print provisos to resign the newly dispossessed to feeling more fleeced than golden. To retain unemployment benefits, one must be active in looking for jobs; you must be able to prove that you are active in looking for jobs (the specifics of this are ad hoc and negotiated with the Swedish Public Employment Service); and you cannot decline any job offers—even ones that offer unstable hours and temporary employment. Receiving a limited yet regular amount in benefits from the government makes far more sense than sporadic and unreliable employment. As Standing says: “In effect, the system for the precariat has a huge disincentive for people taking low-wage jobs and punishes them for doing so. That is thoroughly unfair.”

So foul a sky clears not without a storm

Universal basic income is not a new idea. The social philosopher/lawyer/humanist Thomas More wrote about it in 1516, followed by corsetmaker/journalist/revolutionary Thomas Paine in 1719. Still, what the two Thomases were suggesting has never sifted into the mainstream of real-world policy. The 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang proposed that every American adult receive a monthly check of $1,000 as a solution to structural unemployment caused by automation. This “Freedom Dividend” only got him 2.8% of the votes in the primaries and he subsequently dropped out of the race. Then came the pandemic, which revealed the degree to which unemployment insurance had come up short in keeping up with the labor market. The welfare systems were overwhelmed, and people were desperate. Suddenly government started experimenting with forms of basic income.

Libertarians, austerity buffs, and Ayn Rand fans have long touted that welfare programs are much too expensive to fund and complicated to manage, but this was not the case. For example, Canada’s response program covered not only those who lost their jobs, or suffered reduced hours, but also those unable to work due to quarantine and childcare. The gig-workers and self-employed qualified. It was easy to apply for and payments were received within days. But the programs employed around the world were not true systems for basic income. They were expedient and temporary. Real universal basic income is a permanent program with consistent payments.

A guaranteed minimum income does not stop people from working and makes for a healthier and less unequal society. In Finland and the Netherlands, evidence found that basic income helped people who had been chronically unemployed for years. In both scenarios, recipients were more likely to find full-time jobs than control groups stuck with the traditional approach of mandated job searches, job-readiness programs, and regular contact case workers. Rather than having to settle for temporary gigs, people had more time to look for better jobs without bureaucratic trials and tribulations in the way. Studies in Canada and Malawi showed similar positive effects.

Taken at face value, the costs for universal basic income are colossal. The price tag for Yang’s “Freedom Dividend” was estimated at $2.8 trillion. Yet, this initiative would significantly reduce poverty and inequality and according to a study by the Roosevelt institute the economy would “grow by approximately $2.5 trillion and create 4.6 million new jobs” generating around $800–900 billion in new revenue from economic growth and activity. Such a strategy coupled with more progressive tax systems more than make up for the expenses. Costs are minimized by returns in taxes, targeted to low-income recipients, and is likely lower than what governments spend on pensions.

However, thinking about universal basic income only in monetary terms is an error of judgement. Universal basic income is an investment in society, not a cost. It is not an expenditure, but the means of which communities that value health, education, and security are made manifest. The returns come in terms of higher standards of living as well as from taking the pressure of other social programs treating symptoms of poverty, like poor health.

For long, implementing universal basic income has been considered unconventional, even outright inconceivable. But, as the pandemic has revealed the glaring holes in the safety net, it is a humane alternative to the classical model. It allows for purpose to be rediscovered. To “keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth” and a decent life disposed of darkness. And yes, even encourage love for one’s work. Let the solid surfaces deal with the billboards.

Related articles:

Nowhere to Stay Home

An Insecure Future

Who brings the food to your table?

Photo credits:

Job Satisfaction, by It’s No Game on flickr, CC BY 2.0

Maquiladora, Free for commercial use, DMCA

Home is Where the Fun Is. The Irony, by Andreea Popa on Unsplash

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