#DappCon22: Day 3 - BIEN - History, Contribution To The Field, Its Future, Decentralisation Process

Transcript

uh then well actually I'm talking about this um [Laughter] it seems to be some some slight confusion over the titles on the slide that's true this is what I'm discussing with you um Universal basic income and I have some questions for you uh relating to non-solverine currencies which I'll come to in a moment um but thank you very much for the invitation it's a pleasure to have been invited here to discuss basic income with what must be an intelligent audience I don't understand cryptocurrencies I I assume you all do I do understand basic

income so that's what I'm here to talk about so when we discuss something we need to know what it is we are discussing and this is particularly important in this field because there are there's a variety of interpretations what a basic income is so we have to start somewhere and here is the definition that's published by BN the basic income Earth Network established in 1986 it is the international organization that facilitates the global debate on basic income and this is its published definition of a basic income a periodic cash payment

unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis without means test or work requirement if it helps we can simplify that it's an unconditional income for everyone that's what a basic income is it has variety of names basic income Universal basic income citizens income citizens basic income demograph social dividend they all mean the same thing a basic income a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis without means test or work requirement that is what we are discussing this morning

it's important to distinguish between the basic income and a basic income scheme a basic income is always what I've just described a basic income scheme is a basic income a genuine one with the amount specified for each age group because it can differ for each age group the funding method fully specified any changes to existing tax and benefit systems and so on all carefully specified and obviously if it's going to be paid in some different kind of currency that has to be carefully specified a basic income scheme tells us what you would actually do when you implemented your basic income

here at rbn's clarifications of that definition because a simple definition is only a starting point of course the basic income has to be periodic not just a one-off grant it's every month every week it's a genuine regular income for everyone it has to be in cash paid in an appropriate medium of exchange this is how it's defined allowing those who receive it to decide what they spend it on it's it provides Freedom that's one of the reasons it has to be a cash payment it's individual not paid to a household every individual gets it into their own bank account

it's Universal paid to all and it's unconditional there are no requirements at all there is some debate around BN and we have had a working party on the definition and how it's to be clarified in the future and one of the important issues that's been raised by that working group is whether we should add a sixth clarification that is its uniform the same amount every week it's every month because the definition itself isn't actually clear on that point this debate goes on as do many other debates about the definition of basic income it is a hot subject of debate permanently among those involved in the

global debate here are some variants of basic and I'm going to talk about variance and Alternatives it's important to distinguish between them variants of basic income mean we might pay it at different amounts so a variant would be a relatively small basic income or quite a large basic income different periods once a week once a month these are variants of basic income different funding methods and so if you were to fund a genuine basic income through a cryptocurrency mechanism then that would be a variant of basic income

as long as it fulfills the basic income definition there are different definitions of what to all means within a country there are a variety of definitions of who a citizen might be who a legal resident might be and so on this is all very country specific and so there are variants in relation to precisely who would receive it but in general we expect every legal resident in the country to receive the basic income now I'm going to discuss with you some alternatives to basic income these are not basic incomes they're alternatives they are sometimes confused with basic

income which is why I'm going to mention them to you here they are a minimum income guarantee is not a basic income it's a statement that every household will reach a particular income level at the end of the year or whatever the period might be and a number of United States and Canadian experiments going on at the moment are with minimum income guarantees and the 1970s quite well-known experiments in the United States and Canada were for a minimum income guarantee and not a basic income um we can discuss that later if you wish a recent experiment in Ontario was for a household based and income-tested

benefit not a basic income you can see that it doesn't match the definition it's unfortunate that the Ontario government called it a basic income experiment when it wasn't one now it doesn't mean we can't learn a lot from it we have it was a valuable experiment but definitions matter another alternative Is the participation income this was an idea from Professor Tony Atkinson initially back in the 1990s that is people should get their income if they participate in society in some way that's to establish a condition on the basis of which it will be paid so if you hear a participation income

mentioned it's not a basic income a negative income tax is is exactly what it says it is if you if you are paying income tax you are paying tax on any earned income above a threshold if you earn less than that threshold a negative income tax will pay you a proportion of the amount by which your earnings fall below that threshold it creates a straight line relationship between earned income and net income and therefore is sometimes confused with the basic income but this Administration is radically different and it is not a basic income

tax credits very similar to a negative income tax the US earned income tax credit is run on quite a complicated formula which I'll explain if anybody wants to know it's not a basic income the basic income guarantee is a bit of a problem because it can mean almost anything you will sometimes see this term used particularly in the United States if you're from there or from Canada and it's a slight problem because it can mean all of these different things this is from a an American academic who worked out how many different things are meant by the term basic income guarantee it's a vast category so you now know what a basic income is

you we've discussed some variants that is there are different ways of implementing a basic income and you've you've heard about some Alternatives that are not basic incomes so let's now return to a genuine basic income and ask if it's feasible first of all can we pay for it so that's about financial feasibility I'll come to that again in a minute there is a second Financial feasibility and that is will any low-income households lose money this is an important point if you were to fund a basic income by imposing a higher tax rate on Lower

earned incomes then and people with in poverty may end up in deeper poverty if you were to fund your basic income by abolishing existing mean sensitive benefits for instance then low-income households might end up in deeper poverty it's very important that we don't do that and so there are two separate Financial feasibility questions to be answered administrative feasibility we have to be able to provide the income to everyone and so the question is is the database available for doing that in the UK where I'm from it does not

exist at the present time we could not pay to every individual a basic income there are other countries where you can and it's always interested me that somewhere like India would actually be relative that we'd be perhaps first off the block with the basic income because it has a much better record of its citizens and other European countries do as well um foreign behavioral feasibility is with the basic income do what we hope it will do will it provide Economic Security when it provides social cohesion will it create greater equality less poverty less inequality and so on it's a test we can only pass after we've done it obviously

we have good reason for thinking it will have all those effects it'll provide the kind of Freedom that people need and so on um but will it do it we'll have to wait and see psychological feasibility do people know what it is and think it's a good idea it's a really important feasibility test and I won't go into that in great detail you can probably see how much that matters political feasibility does this fit with the political ideologies around in your countries at the time that's an important feasibility test a government would have to pass it so which one be willing to do so and even more important could it get through the policy process

this is the separate question to political feasibility does the policy process enable the idea to navigate its way through complex institutions to implementation going back to financial feasibility there is now a considerable research literature on the feasibility of basic income uh in terms of its its Financial feasibility tests both of them and this is a micro simulation program that we use called euromods you may have come across it which has coded into it all of the regulations for the tax and benefit system of a country

and we pass through it to the Family Resource survey data which is a vast data set of real world information about household finances and we can say that on the basis of our research that in the UK it will be feasible to invent a basic income scheme that would be financially feasible that would not tip lower income household entity for poverty that would reduce poverty reduce inequality take a lot of people off me necessity benefits it is feasible we could do it if a government wanted to and so if you want to have a look it's

the center for micro simulation and policy analysis at the University of Essex which does this work now here are my questions for a cryptocurrency audience now that you have seen what a basic income is and we've discussed some of the issues raised by it the I've tried to understand blockchain technology and cryptocurrency I don't well yet um I know all you do this is your world and I'm speaking into a world that is not my world um so I hope that you will evaluate these questions on that basis um but these are the questions that have been raised for me as I have attempted

to study uh your world um a basic income according to the definition is feasible if it's paid in a sovereign currency as it can be paid reliably to all within a particular jurisdiction at regular intervals in cash and so it can be spent on anything anywhere to individuals at the same amount every week or every month unconditionally and we have shown in the UK that it will be perfectly feasible to do that we could Implement a basic income in Sovereign currency in the UK that fulfill the definition and past the feasibility tests

so would it be possible to pay a basic income in an alternative currency these are the questions for you to all within a particular jurisdiction to individuals every individual not just households or just some people at regular intervals once a week or months a month able to be spent on anything anywhere at the same amount every week or every month and unconditionally those are the questions that arose for me as I was attempting to study blockchain technology and cryptocurrency um

you may want to discuss those questions whether we'll have time in five minutes I don't know um but I shall stop in a minute if anybody's interested here are some books here's the history of basic income published by Edward Elgar last year here's a a modern guide to Citizens basic incomes as Edward Elgar Publishers called it it's a multi-disciplinary approach if you're interested in feasibility there's this one published by Paul grave McMillan and there's some more books on the on the website that you can see there thank you thank you thank you that was certainly

Illuminating I didn't think we realized uh we had such a established published author between us um I think in blockchain as we attempt to understand basic concepts before they go on to the blockchain it's existential we get their basic definitions right and this has been a great first start so if there's any questions in the audience blockchain or not you have an OG in the house today here's my questions to ask Malcolm any questions that you may have these are questions for you not me there's a question it's all right I'll answer whatever questions you have yeah also be a discussion please I'd rather have a question to the audience and a like also the presenter

because I would wonder what's your take at um that definitions matter and how to interpret points then might not perfectly fit into The Narrative of a decentralized autonomous organization especially when talking about jurisdictions so who knows an answer it's a better way the better way to put it is who is open for discourse yes yes I'm around all day if anybody wants to carry on these discussions of course um so do please come and find me and talk to me if you'd

like to um if you want my initial answer um to that definitions really matter because if you're not all meaning the same thing by the same terms um then you're then you may not be communicating um that's why definitions matter they really do matter they matter particularly in one of the fields that I'm involved in which is the micro simulation field for proving the feasibility of proposed basic income schemes because if researchers aren't using the same definition then you're researching different things and people will not understand your research reports and so research reports really do have to start with a clear definition

now if somebody wants to mean something else by basic income from what the the end definition is in one sense of course that's fine everyone has a right to their own definition so long as they say what it is so I'm perfectly happy people want to say basic income is this not that as long as they tell me what they think it is I think we have a question I I can comment or kind of try to answer the question I would say um that's yeah totally possible all those things um and I think the the only the only part where it's maybe um yeah it differs is exactly what what you said so I mean first blockchain is is a simple technology so um if a state once wants to do it the

state can do it and there might be reasons to use uh blockchain but a state can of course do it without a blockchain I think the interesting part in in and all those things can totally be done on a blockchain absolutely I imagine that they probably could could immediately chose to yeah right so I think the the interesting part that is possible and was maybe previously not really possible is that you can now do it potentially without a state um and and and then you would probably uh at least in this definition yeah you would probably not be targeted at a particular jurisdiction but um yeah some whatever Network or

whatever way of how kind of people can join or verify that there are a big variation um of that but yeah so I would say the jurisdiction is the only thing that um it's probably really new that it could be across or or Beyond jurisdictions I can see that um maybe that's something that people want to discuss later on yeah yes I think um related to the jurisdiction I think we have a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws and uh basic income is actually a human right so if governments don't implement it we can take that responsibility for

them and um I think blockchain technology is great because we can do it now and uh we just passed the government I think um for Malcolm who's a fan of books there is also a book that was produced by biology recently the network state that basically talks about the lines of geopolitical networks nation states um coinciding in the network property and you can have an internet network of people who associate with a certain state that could derive from a certain faucet of income that does not eat into any government coffers has no politics Associated and is completely decentralized so I think there is research in this space but it is really early and so it really helps to go back to basics and understand these Concepts

yes but all I would ask is that the path of definition that says to all um is taken seriously because to take the UK as an example um most people have bank accounts some people do not most people know how to use Electronics they can use computers they can use phones quite a lot of people cannot the question is is it is it possible to use blockchain technology to ensure that the basic income is paid genuinely to all because if not then there is going to be a new Injustice and

I think that we do need to take that really seriously if you can solve that problem be terrific sounds good anybody else before we wind down and move to our next stop yeah from my point of view it's difficult to give it to oil because in blockchain you will still have to sign up you have to participate if you don't voluntarily start participating then you will also not be able to get the income from my point of view it's impossible if you don't make a wallet if you don't sign up there's no way to do it so like that's something that would have to be done otherwise it's not possible and there's other two points which I think are a little bit difficult with blockchain is like to be able to

spend it on anything anywhere oh it's the left to accept it you know if this is not possible if a shop says they don't accept it you can't change it you know like if they don't believe in it or they don't want to use it yeah I am conscious of course that's a chicken and egg problem if everybody in a jurisdiction had a a basic income in a particular currency then shops will start to take it I mean so you're looking at a circular process there aren't you I think yep yeah and the problem is with at the same amount every week or a month every month so like you would have to then keep the this token the blockchain token you have to keep it stable with a stable amount yes I'm conscious how unstable currencies currently are yeah it means you are kind

of always bound to some of the larger currencies so like if they change in value then everything changes but yeah theoretically you can do it but I think the in practice there's still a lot of these problems that you have to solve I'm hoping that you are going to solve these problems all right okay things that's all we have time for okay thank you