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Hi Keith,
I just consulted my dictionary to see what it says
about "status". It says two things that seem to fit what we are talking
about. One is position or rank [of a person] in the eyes of others.
The second is the position or rank [of a person] in a hierarchy of
prestige. I would agree that the first definition is universal.
Among hunters and gatherers, the most effective hunters or gatherers are
recognized and emulated by others. Among agricultural people, good farmers
are given similar recognition. No hierarchy is required. Good is
good, and that's about it.
The second definition requires a hierarchy and a
ranking system. Whether they have done something well or not, some people
are placed on prestigious pedestals while others march around them.
Perhaps there is a universal tendency toward such behaviour once a society
reaches a certain level of complexity, but there may be an almost equal tendency
to do away with rankings and hierarchies of the pedestal kind. The
discussion about Hobbes seems relevant here. People merge their interests
into societies of their own free will because it is rational to do so.
They appoint or elect people to govern because that is necessary if society is
to function. Yet the people that are appointed or elected have no special
rights under the law and can be removed if need be. Some people may still
want to put them on pedestals, but that is not the intent of the society as a
whole.
In any event, complexity seems to be the important
thing. The people I dealt with in northern Canada followed the first
definition, and did not have rankings and hierarchies until we imposed them by
making them follow our system of governance. What we did was complicate
their lives and their societies to the point that rankings and hierarchies
became a necessity. Once they were in place, status in the sense of
pedestals gradually crept in.
On the matter of a basic income, I don’t think a
government could proceed without giving a lot of thought to why it was doing it.
Would it be a mechanism to facilitate adjustment to economic change, or would it
be a universal anti-poverty measure? It would also have to take a thorough look
at the costs and benefits. On the cost side, a basic income would put an
additional strain on government finances and might require a more progressive
tax system or some reallocation of existing expenditures. The benefits could
include matters such as a healthier population, kids who are more able to cope
with school, and probably a significant reduction of the social costs associated
with crime and the need to incarcerate people. There would be problems, a major
one being that the financial costs would be perceived as being immediate while
the benefits would only accrue in the longer run. Equity would be another
problem - how to design a system that is basically fair to both those who pay
and those who receive payments. And we all know people cheat, so a policing
system would have to be devised.
Personally, I think a basic income program is feasible in
a rich country and may even be possible to initiate by reallocating existing
expenditures. In Canada we already have a variety of programs, such as
employment insurance, the Canada Pension Plan, the Child Tax Benefit, and
various Provincial welfare/workfare programs, that might be rolled into a basic
income. If the object were the facilitation of adjustment to economic change
rather than universal anti-poverty, a system of premiums scaled to salary might
be utilized. It would take a lot of work and planning, but I believe it could be
done.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday,
December 05, 2003 4:09 PM
Subject: Re: Slightly
extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern
Trade
Ed,
At 14:31 05/12/2003 -0500, you wrote:
Keith:
- A BI sounds wonderful but it is a theoretical
solution that runs absolutely counter to human nature. Human society is
about relative status. Not only human society, but primate society. And
not only primate society but any social mammalian society. We really need
to understand this first before we can suggest quite new social structures
that will satisfy our basic instincts -- and, if possible, basic incomes
also. But not before then. Extending welfarism beyond what we have now in
most developed countries, desirable though it might sound (and I don't
object to it on moral grounds), is already running itself into the ground.
Keith, sorry, but
you say the damndest things with utter certainty! Human society is
about all kinds of things, depending very much on what people want it to be
and agree that it should be. Status may be very important in American
and European society, but I've dealt with small societies in northern Canada
in which a person's importance depended on what he or she could do for the
community. There were no contests around who could do the most for the
community and therefore had the most status.
You are misinterpreting me. I didn't say there
always had to be contests! You've just admitted above that some people have
"importance". If that's not status I don't know what is.
Native
land claims negotiators were guys who had a better command of English than
most others in the community. But it wasn't a status thing. It
was because they had a better chance of understanding what the whiteman was
saying with his forked tongue. Regrettably, once a land claim had been
negotiated, those societies became stratified because people had to fill
jobs at various levels and different rates of pay. That's when status
began to move in and longstanding egalitarian principles began to come
apart.
Notions of
fairness are as deeply in our genes as notions of status. (Perhaps not quite
as deeply but certainly deeply enough to be very obvious and
useful.)
I
mentioned the cooperative movement in an earlier posting. In that
movement, people cooperated because it was in the interests of their
communities and themselves to do so. There were no contest around who
was the best cooperator.
Of course, people cooperate. It's one of the chief
characteristics of man. Have I ever written anywhere that they don't?
There
are many historic examples of people who gave away everything to
deliberately unstatisfy themselves, people like Francis of Assisi and Peter
Waldo in the 12th and 13th Centuries, who gave away everything, but for
spiritual reasons, not because they were in any kind of race to the
bottom.
I don't want
to discuss exceptional examples (sometimes of very idiosyncratic
motives). Economics is about ordinary people.
So
give us a break and allow us our complexity of
motives.
The ordinary
person also has complexity of motvies and I have never written
otherwise.
And
besides, I feel that a Basic Income is entirely feasible economically and
would probably pay off.
Well, you may do so if you wish. I have have read very few
economists who believe this. I have certainly not read any economists who can
show how it can be achieved in a practical way without a revolt from the
middle class.
Any money received by the poor would likely be spent immediately, and not be
put into long term investments. It's a question of political
will. As long as we have neo-con governments, it's far less likely to
happen than Bush's tax breaks for the rich.
Ed
I imagine that the closest any country has come
to a Basic Income has been the Soviet Union. Even the poorest could live very
cheaply indeed with very low expenditures on food, transport and houswing.
Even the poorest in Stalinist times had savings (but nothing to spend them
on). But the system collapsed nevertheless because there were no goods
available -- except status goods for the nomenclatura (the chocolatura is what
they called them when in shopping mode, I
believe).
Keith
- ----- Original Message -----
- From: Keith
Hudson
- To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 1:35 AM
- Subject: RE: Slightly extended (was Re:
[Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade
- Arthur,
- At 16:16 04/12/2003 -0500, you
wrote:
As my colleague who was born
in India says, the first picture of a Canadian child dying with a
distended belly will be the spark that ignites governments to end this
current (farcical) set of activities.
There will be no starvation in
Canada. There will be panhandlers on street corners and
panhandlers using the food banks. Dignity is lost all around:
Those who receive and those who give (although they feel mighty
righteous at the moment.)
We can end poverty.
There can be a basic income. Somehow there is little incentive to
change.
Unfortunately (or not), a Basic
Income would be impossible. All over the western world, taking all the
developed countries into account (that is, they are all welfare states now
to a greater or lesser degree), we have already reached the limits of
taxation. No government could ever be elected on this basis. And no
government could stand for a single day if it proceeded to bring it about.
Not only is there "little incentive", there would be the most almighty
outburst of anger -- not from the rich only, but the midcdle-class (who do
most of the sophisticated work that keeps the flimsy thing we call
civilisation together) and the de-skilled, badly-educated working class
who, in the last few decades, have only just started to receive an income
that satisfies them (while they're in work). (Even so, this has declined
in real terms in the last 20 years in the most developed country --
America.)
Indeed, with the declining birth rate in developed
countries, and the ageing population, we are already proceeding towards a
sort of BI and, as my piece + articles of yesterday ("The poverty of
nation-states") clearly shows, nation-states cannot afford it -- not for
more than a decade or so longer, anyway, before total collapse ensues
(unless the most amazing reforms are made very soon).
A BI sounds wonderful but it is a theoretical
solution that runs absolutely counter to human nature. Human society is
about relative status. Not only human society, but primate society. And
not only primate society but any social mammalian society. We really need
to understand this first before we can suggest quite new social structures
that will satisfy our basic instincts -- and, if possible, basic incomes
also. But not before then. Extending welfarism beyond what we have now in
most developed countries, desirable though it might sound (and I don't
object to it on moral grounds), is already running itself into the ground.
Keith
We live in a democracy.
As Amartya Sen said, there is no history of starvation in
democracies.
As I said in my earlier
posting, the current system may be remarkably stable.
arthur
-----Original
Message-----
From: Ed Weick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 1:12 PM
To: Cordell, Arthur: ECOM;
[EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re:
[Futurework] David Ricardo, Caveman Trade vs. Modern
Trade
So what if all the righteous
middle class people stopped sending their unused canned goods to the
food banks? Well the hungry people might just vote in a government
that promises radical change. Right now everyone wins:
political parties promise change and don't; middle class feels good
about sending food to the food bank; working poor can supplement their
foodstock by heading to the food bank. The system may be quite
stable. Maybe there really is no wish to change.
arthur
I'm on the Board of a downtown foodbank
and have spent a little time there. The people who came to pick up
food fell into several groups. There were older men, fifty plus,
who had migrated to Ottawa because there was nothing for them in the
valley communities. Their education and skills were limited, so
there was nothing in Ottawa either. There were young mothers, some
with children, who gave you every impression that they didn't want to be
there; they hurried in and they hurried out. There were a number
of cocky young people, some perhaps students, some living at the "Y",
who acted as though they were indulging the foodbank with their
presence. None of these people acted as though they wanted to
change the system. All they wanted was the food - except for the
older guys who also seemed to want to hang around and talk a
little.
There's an aura of powerlessness about
it. The churches that operate the foodbank know that if they
didn't do it, nobody would. So they keep doing it and their
members keep bringing the cans of tuna and the packages of pasta.
The churches might want to take an advocacy position, but that might
infringe on their charitable status. The politicians get
themselves elected and their promises become mere promises, not
commitments. Most of the people who use the foodbank hate doing
it, but they need to eat. Watching it without having to depend on
it, I wish it would all go away. But it won't. It's what the
world is like and how it will stay. Perhaps Canadians, as people
who live in the developed world, should feel fortunate that they can
afford foodbanks. Ever so many parts of the world can't, and
people starve.
Ed
-----Original
Message-----
From: Ed Weick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, December 4, 2003 9:08 AM
To: Thomas Lunde; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re:
[Futurework] David Ricardo, Caveman Trade vs. Modern
Trade
Thomas, very good posting. Ontario
has just raised the minimum wage from peanuts to peanuts. Many of
the poor are working full time and even double time, but are still
unable to meet the rent or buy enough food, let alone get their kids the
kinds of in toys ("status goods") that are going around. They can
try eating freedom and justice, but they don't taste very good when you
can't make ends meet.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Thomas
Lunde
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 3:36 AM
Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re:
[Futurework] David Ricardo, Caveman Trade vs. Modern Trade
They don't need money, Thomas. They need
justice and the freedom to enjoy it.
Harry
Thomas:
In a way, you are right. Being poor and
working with the poor as customers and neighbours let's me see the many
ways the poor are lacking justice. A recent article in the paper
made the outstanding statement that 37% of workers in Canada are not
covered by the Labour Code and laws. When wages for the poor are
kept artificially low, then the only way to compensate to maintain a
survival standard is to work more. Of course, there are about 4 to
5% who are mentally incapable, or physically disabled or in the case of
single mothers, family challenged. However, the work more solution
has only produced the working poor, who still have to use food banks and
subsidized housing, if thet can get it. Not only that, as you
suggest, they do not even have the freedom to enjoy what little they
have. I would agree, that justice and freedom would go a long way
to compensating for money - or as you might suggest, make the earning
and spending of money a by product of an effective system of justice and
the freedom and thereby create a surplus to enjoy.
Respectfully,
Thomas
Lunde
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
Keith
Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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