Universal Basic Ownership
By: Daniel Mackisack
Tags: Economy, Universal Basic Income, Basic Income, Cooperatives, Employment

The coronavirus pandemic has sent unemployment skyrocketing to levels unseen since the great depression. Tens of millions out of work. Hundreds of millions globally. Adding to the hundreds of millions already unemployed.

Getting people back to ‘business as usual’ seems like the obvious thing to do. But it might not be the best.

One response to the terrifying prospect of economic collapse has been to give people money. And that’s a good thing. Sure, it’s not all people and not all the time. Sometimes it’s not people at all, but large businesses. Still, some money has been given. Sort of. For now.

In the US, the federal government initially conceded to offering an extra six hundred dollars a week on top of regular unemployment payments. It was reluctantly supported at first. Though more recently it has been typified as a threat to economic security, with claims it serves to disincentivise a return to work

After reaching an impasse with those in the house wishing to maintain the current supplement, President Trump ultimately issued an executive order, continuing payments, albeit at the reduced amount of four hundred dollars, one hundred of which is to be covered by individual states.

In so doing he cited the very same logic, saying it provided “a great incentive to go back to work.” The idea that many of those on unemployment benefits were receiving more than they would at their usual jobs seems for many to be an untenable scenario. Unworkable even.

And it is, in the literal sense unworkable. But not because the supplement is too high.

Beyond the farcical tragedy that any job would pay someone less than what a comically partisan government actually managed to agree on, however briefly, the fundamental unworkableness of the scenario boils down to how we value employment figures over the actual welfare it is meant to precipitate.

The legislative backtracking which seems to be underway right now is driven by the historic fear of unemployment as a bogeyman and a deference to ‘jobs’ as the most easily marketable economic opioid. We need people doing stuff. Anything really. Whatever. Jobs. It’ll make you feel better.

But people doing stuff isn’t always so fabulous. A lot of stuff doesn’t need doing. Like the ‘Pet Rock’, some things exist, purely because the environment encourages or even demands spasmodic senseless creation. Like an economy on drugs. It sometimes makes something interesting, but often conjures up stuff that no one really needed or even asked for. Three gas stations on a single intersection. Sixteen coffee joints on a 200 meter stretch of road. Five million varieties of plastic cell phone cover.

Photo by Holger Link on Unsplash

Pet rocks essentialise the fundamental uselessness, instability and inefficiency at the heart of our economic dogma. It’s not just goods either. There’s ‘pet rock’ services, academia and even journalism. Things that only exist because the economy demands senseless labour.

We do it, not because it’s a great idea, but because we’re looking for a way to validate ourselves and make money. We need to. Or we die. In the case of the aforementioned invention and it’s creator, it was unlikely that extreme. He had a cushy not-at-all-ironic job as an advertising executive. One that he clearly found fulfilling enough to invent a rock. But for the millions working jobs that they have no connection to or interest in, it is a hard and often fast reality.

So now we’re worried about those people not going back to work, when the question we ought to ask ourselves is “why should they?”

If the jobs they return to are paying them less than a basic living wage and the work itself offers no sense of purpose and identity other than the expression of an innate material desperation shared by all, then stripping away the fleeting freedom from that desperation would seem an act of profound cruelty. One that doesn’t so much incentivise a return to economic activity, as it does punish a failure to.

Photo by Miguel Andrade on Unsplash

This sort of coercion is not just bad for people either. It’s bad for business. The motivation to make money and simply ‘be’ a businessperson so often outstrips the incentive to actually produce something good or do something better, that we’ve wound up valuing the former more than the latter. That might seem like a natural, even positive thing from within the regressive monstrosity we currently call an economy — the cynical defendants of which would claim it’s the only form of motivation that works. But it can only lead to bad business.

It also causes great loss. So often good ideas are drowned under the flotsam. A great mass of banality, kept afloat by desperation from the bottom and the self interest of wealth-addled minds at the top. They say most small businesses fail. But a lot of those never needed to start in the first place.

Into this nihilistic struggle to simply make more things to do comes the specter of automation and radically increasing efficiency. It’s a shadow that should be a blinding light. We manage to make more and do more with less labour every day. We share rides, skills, energy and information. Machine learning, intuitive software platforms, robots and ultimately AI — whatever form that takes — will and already are making a lot of jobs redundant. A billion dollar company can be run by 13 people in a single office. A youtube channel run by a handful of mates, gets more views than many TV networks run by thousands. But instead of profiting from this as a society, we are determined to just keep plowing ahead, finding increasingly petty and almost punitive tasks for people to justify their existence.

The creation of industries and supply chains to support industries and supply chains carries on. More fuel to power more cars to get more people to more jobs they probably didn’t need to leave their house for. Capitalism has a claim to efficiency that it doesn’t deserve. It wastes food. It wastes energy. It wastes time. But most importantly, it wastes people.

In our endless and shortsighted servitude of economic growth, we have offered countless lives and livelihoods up for sacrifice and even gone some way towards destroying the planet.

This is a moment to re-evaluate.

Photo by henry perks on Unsplash

Some of it is already underway. While there are those who want to retract expanded unemployment benefits, others want to extend them. The transition to a universal basic income would free people from the unethical desperation they are born into and provide a pathway to explore avenues of creative and other expression ultimately far more beneficial to themselves and everyone else by extension. It also alters the individual and collective negotiating power of the working class, by an order of magnitude.

But what of getting people back in the office. How to run a business when everyone is getting free money. How to get people to do all the things they were doing before. Well, the first step would be to pay them more. Pay them more and if it proves too much to handle, you can wrap things up, close down and take comfort in knowing you (and your former employees) will receive a basic livable income while you decide what else you want to do with yourself. Perhaps next time you start a business, it will be a good enough idea to afford paying people properly. If not, then think of something else. Supply and demand.

The other thing you could try and do though is cut them in on the deal. Give them a piece of the pie. Acknowledge that success is a team effort, not just your individual brilliance.

One of the great corrupting forces in Capitalism is the inexorable bent towards concentration. Certainly of wealth. But perhaps just as destructive in the overall social landscape is a concentration of conceit.

A history of simple stories to explain complex phenomena has predisposed us towards convenient explanations. As a general rule, people offer themselves far greater latitude than others. When you hear someone saying they “pulled themselves up by their bootstraps”, what they’re actually saying is “I lack the cognitive faculties to recognize the circumstances that lead to my success”. When you hear them saying so and so is “lazy”, what they’re actually saying is “I can’t be bothered understanding”. When we fail, we are able to explain why in great detail. The ingredients are numerous. But when others do, it’s a simple matter. The inverse applies with success.

The history of this cognitive disposition and information processing more broadly, is deeply entwined with that of economic arrangements. Despite ‘sharing’ proving it’s worth as the governing component of our material success and survival, literally ages ago, people still find ways to justify hoarding as though the universe begins when they enter it and the only expression of will is their own. We can all nod and agree it’s not true and yet economic solipsism still governs the world. Somehow, we never grew up.

The fact is society is built on the work of millions over generations and every economic entity depends on that work. It seems obvious to accept that an individual owes the comforts and privileges of a present reality to the efforts and sacrifices of their forebears. It is weaponized and drilled into everyone in the form of patriotic loyalty and duty. But the moment one becomes a company, that seems to fly out the window. The warm embrace of incorporation provides insulation against the duty of sacrifice, while everyone else is expected to die for their country.

There is an obvious solution to all this. Give everyone the same rights. No exceptions. No special privileges.

Photo by Michaela Baum on Unsplash

If we want to incentivise private industry that genuinely needs doing — and there is certainly no shortage of it — we should appreciate that people build businesses together and then materialise that appreciation in the form of shared ownership.

Spend 3 years making coffee? Great! You own part of that coffee shop. Work in Construction? You’re building something for yourself, not just someone else. Devote 37 years of your life to a multinational consumer electronics firm? Congratulations, you retire with more than a pat on the back. Stock shelves for 8 months after high school? Good for you, you now own stock in a supermarket chain. Better yet, you can take comfort in the security of that stock as well, because all the employees are committed team members, who are actually working in their own interest, and the threshold to running an effective business is higher. No cost and corner cutting. Everyone is held to a higher standard and everyone is rewarded.

The cooperative movement had the right idea. But rather than starting from scratch, we can make a transition. Every single private employment contract with every single private company should include an allotment or accrual of shares. And not just tiny, tokenistic amounts either. Enough to matter.

Call it a UBO. Universal. Basic. Ownership.

The result would be that everyone who chooses to take employment in the private sector would build a portfolio, not just of jobs they worked, but institutions they helped build. There is a reason more and more companies are offering stock options as part of standard employment packages already. It improves morale. It gets people involved and passionate in a way that a base salary simply doesn’t.

Creating a guaranteed minimum space for partial worker ownership, would’t mean a total socialised takeover of every private company. In the same way that having a socialised healthcare system doesn’t define an entire economy.

Nor would it significantly alter management structures, at least at first. It would however represent a fundamental shift in thinking. Many companies may ultimately find that productivity scales the more they allocate and would chose to move towards more equitable distribution on it’s own merit.

Having a minimum, just like a minimum wage, establishes some ground rules between economic forces. A basic income together with basic ownership would encourage a productive competition fueled by innovation over abuse.

Photo by Keighla Exum on Unsplash

Beyond providing real wealth to hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of individuals, a policy of mandatory universal share allocation or stock options means an overall reduction in wealth inequality and that companies compete more fairly for people as well as market share. It would also improve diversity in ownership and wealth distribution, leading to significant changes in other areas. Ultimately it would improve the way we look at, explain and justify success and failure to ourselves and each other. We work as a team. We win and lose as a team.

Outside of the private sector, for those working in civil society and government departments and the like, financial remuneration would have to be significantly scaled in order to compensate. That would mean a number of things. Public and civil jobs would be highly competitive and well paying. Meaning greater service, efficacy and expectation. Teachers and police officers would be held to exceptional standards and rewarded accordingly. Meanwhile government departments, as well as non-profits would dramatically reduce overheads in an effort to reduce spending. Tax dollars and donations would be spent more efficiently, either on highly trained staff or towards their stated and often undeserved objective.

The net effect would be a revaluation of employment more generally and an improvement in almost all sectors of the economy. If you work for a business, you make money and collect part ownership in the places you work for. If you work in the public or civil sectors, you get a high and reliable wage. The competitive market in which the private sector operates incentivises a far greater number of people, free of coercion, to genuinely engage and compete, meaning better businesses and greater competition. While the civil and public sectors are subject to far higher compensation and far higher accountability. All while inequality and poverty and countless other related social ills are reduced.

There is something very wrong with both ‘how’ and ‘why’ we work and there’s never been a better, nor more critical time to fix those problems. A Universal Basic Income is one part of the solution, alleviating desperation and allowing people to make real economic choices. But there’s another question left over — when we do work, what do we work for?

If we want to create meaningful change, the answer to that needs to be more than just money. Any equitable rejigging of economic standards must include, in some form, equity.

When people aren’t working, give them money. When they do, give them money and shares

A career, whether in supermarket checkout operating or digital app marketing should build more than a CV. It should build a livelihood. A list of accomplishments that grows and provides. Something to be proud of. Something to be a part of.

Something to make work worth doing.