Transcriber: Michele Gianella
Reviewer: Ellen Maloney Imagine a world where
there are 50 per cent fewer jobs. And now imagine a world where robots actually do all the work
and there are no jobs for humans. Seems kind of far-fetched,
but what would it mean? What would that world look like? Would it be a robo-dystopia,
or would it be a robo-utopia? I'd like to be frank. These are questions
that we have to consider. Futurists are now talking to us
about the potential loss of up to two billion jobs
in the next 15 to 20 years, the hollowing out
of our middle job market. Now, on one hand, as we're seeing today,
there's an an enormous amount of disrupted technology
coming down the chain: diagnostic advances,
virtual reality, 3D printing, bio, agri, and health technologies. They all have the ability
to disrupt our current systems. They also have the ability
to bring unimaginable benefits to us. We don't know what they'll be,
hard to see what the future is. They also all have the ability to entrench and exacerbate
existing inequalities. We've seen that the gains
have gone to the one per cent over the last 30 years, and that's likely to increase. So that creates huge problems. We're starting to see stagnant incomes and welfare systems
struggling to respond. The traditional policy responses
of the left and the right: austerity, cheap credit, which is the heroin
of our financial system, a welfare system which only operates
if you're looking for work. If there are no jobs,
what are we going to do? We need to start thinking
about separating income from work. To many women, this is not
a new or revolutionary idea. (Applause) I hear you. (Laughter) Parenting, looking after the sick and elderly,
of whom there will be a lot more, volunteering in the community. A huge amount of unpaid work
goes on in our society, but also other things
like arts, culture, research, innovation. They all have a huge impact
and contribution to our society, but typically do not attract an income. One possible solution is to think
about a universal basic income. This would be a regular
monthly or annual payment to all citizens, as of right. It would completely eliminate
the welfare system, eliminate the processes of people having to go to multiple agencies
and fill out forms just to get food on the table. One of the first responses to this is, "Well, how are we going to afford that?
Where does all the money come from?" Let's get that out
of the way straight away. In the last eight years, global central banks
have created 12 trillion dollars out of thin air. This is the balance sheet of all
the Federal Reserve Banks in the US. The balance sheet expanded
by four trillion dollars in six years so that they could buy bank assets and improve the balance
sheets of the banks. Where did that money come from? I'll tell you. Literally, an Excel spreadsheet. If they can create that much money
to bail out the banks, I think we can find the money
to sort out a basic income. (Applause) There are trials going on
all around the world at the moment: in the Netherlands, in India,
in Canada, in Finland. And France just published
a report last week where they're going to propose
three new trials, taking us from Utopia to reality. On that note, this is not
a new or novel idea. Talking of "Utopia,"
500 years ago, in 1516, Thomas More laid out
his vision of Utopia, and in his book he had
the first reference to a basic income. Fellow humanist
Jean Louis Vivès, in 1526, did some research in the city of Bruges on why poverty was such
a huge problem to eliminate. His conclusion in his book
on assistance to the poor was the only way to eliminate poverty
and crime and poor health, was to make sure everybody
had a basic standard of living. It seems pretty sensible, and a lot of other people
thought it was pretty sensible, too. The third President
of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, who wrote
the 1791 book "The Rights of Man," and the 16th US President,
Abraham Lincoln, were all in favor of a basic income, whether it was in cash
or whether it was in land, to support a basic standard of living. Henry George, in his 1879 book
"Progress and Poverty" did some research into the land piece. He tried to work out why, in a period of technological
and social advance, did poverty increase. He came to the conclusion that a lot of gains went
to land owners and land prices. He suggested a single tax on land,
known as the 'land value tax,' which would support the ability
to invest in public infrastructure and pay everybody a basic income. Martin Luther King spent a lot of time
looking at George's works, as he researched how he could solve poverty and exclusion
in the neighborhoods that he worked in. Again, he came to the conclusion that an unconditional
basic income for all people would be the solution. Richard Nixon, in 1971, tried to get it through
Congress and the Senate in his Family Assistance Plan. He got it through Congress,
but it was stopped in the Senate. One of the prime reasons for that is this concern that people
get something for nothing. As we've seen already, there's a huge amount of unpaid labor that is not paid for in the economy, and it is actually
the backbone of our society. There's even more. I'm very happy to think
about somebody out there trying to climb a mountain,
write poetry, create great works of art, or even sit on the beach surfing all day. I kind of like that. It's part of who we are as humans. Even two of the greatest
laissez-faire Libertarian economists, Frederick Hayek,
author of "The Road to Serfdom," and Milton Friedman, both understood, from a pure
economic efficiency and risk perspective, that actually, the guaranteed
minimum income was the best policy solution. They saw that the welfare system would not work, and was punitive
and dehumanizing, and that every citizen, as of right,
should have access to a minimum income. This aspect of rights
is really important to consider. It's something that we fought for
as humans for a long time. If we go back to 1215 and "Magna Carta," King John was forced to sign
this document by the barons of England. He wasn't a particularly nice guy, and they were tired of his arbitrary rule
and lack of justice. Magna Carta really
is the foundation document for many of our civil
and legal platforms and frameworks. It's set in to stage the idea that justice was something
that people could agree on and that laws could be made
by people and not kings. In the English Civil War in the 1650s, we saw further demands for the people
to be represented in a different way. To be represented at Parliament and to remove this divine right
of kings and monarchs to decide and dispense justice
on their whims. We saw this again
in the colonies in the U.S., when they declared independence, the French when they published
the "Rights of Man and the Citizen," This citizen piece was important. People were laying down the rights that they felt as humans they deserved
from the State and from each other. But it wasn't until 1919,
after the First World War, that we started to see social justice
appear on the horizon with the formation
of the International Labor Organization in the Treaty of Versailles. In this, labor exploitation,
working conditions, and for the first time, a living wage, was stated as something
that was important. This was further reinforced in the "Universal Declaration
of Human Rights" in 1948, <i>the</i> global Human Rights Charter. In it, it was made very clear that all people, as of right, were entitled
to a basic standard of living. This was something
that all nations signed up to. This was further reinforced in the 1966 "International Covenant
on Economic and Social Rights." But one thing was missing
from this conversation: The idea that all people should have
a basic standard of living, as of right, was agreed on from a rights perspective, from an economic efficiency perspective, from a risk perspective. But there's one person
missing from this conversation, and that is the citizen. "Civis romanus sum,"
I am a Roman citizen, made famous by J.F.Kennedy
in his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech. That's good, (Laughter) When we talk about rights,
we forget something. It's a contract. It's a two-way bargain, and the concept of duties is something
that has dropped out of our narrative. We never mention it, yet it's in there,
in The Universal Declaration. The problem is, when they started drafting this document, which took a long time to put together, duties was up there
right at the beginning, along with rights. Through all the arguments around religion, culture, gender,
as we've seen earlier today, the issue of duties dropped down. It was only in the last few months that they suddenly realized
they needed to put something in, and it came in in Article 29. But it's not something that we think of when we think of The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, and this is important. We need to balance our rights with duties, because that's what
being a citizen is about. That's what the Greeks and the Romans
understood citizenship to mean. The right to be a citizen
came with obligations and duties back to the community,
back to each other. In 1762, before the French Revolution
and the Rights of Man, Jean Jacques Rousseau
published "The Social Contract," and he grappled with this issue. He could see the argument for rights. He could see how important they were, but he was concerned
there wasn't a proper bargain. "What did you give up? What was your relationship
with the State? What was your relationship
with other citizens? What duties were you willing
to give up and provide?" I think the problem we have at the moment
is that instead of being citizens, we've gone back
to those days of Magna Carta where we're actually become subjects. In the economic state that we have,
there is no room for the citizen. We have somehow contracted out
our rights and our duties and have become subjects. The subject's an interesting person. The subject is passive, is a victim, is represented, is served, is a beneficiary - I don't like that word - and is, ultimately, a consumer. It's easy, "Sit back. You'll be served. You'll be given stuff,
buy stuff on credit, and you'll be fine." Even the government in its communications
talks about us as consumers. That's all we hear. The concept of the citizen has really disappeared
out of our lexicon. Yet, everything that we have is founded on that basic concept
of being active, of being responsible, of being creative, of being an agent, being a recipient - not a beneficiary - and being a participant. Yes, it's difficult. It's not easy, but it's not meant to be easy. The Greeks didn't think
it was going to be easy, neither did the Romans. This idea that we have
some kind of contract around our rights is extremely important because that's how we influence
the society that we have. When we contract out those rights
and become consumers, we create a one-way relationship. Yes, we have guarantees around that. We have guarantees around our products. We have guarantees
around the right to vote, but in between we do nothing. That's why we're disengaged. That's why we're disinterested. That's why we're disenchanted. That's why we're fatigued. We're not part of the system. It seems to me, 250 years on from
Rousseau's Social Contract, 800 years on from Magna Carta, and 2,400 years on
from the birth of Aristotle, it's time to negotiate
a new social contract. And It's likely that a basic income
will be part of that conversation. We cannot resist the trends
of technological unemployment. We have to address a financial system
that is on its last legs. We have to build a system
that is more human, that recognizes us as social creatures,
not economic creatures. In that conversation, we will have to ask ourselves
some hard questions. It won't be easy, but under those documents
and charters and declarations lie tens of millions of bodies,
maybe hundreds of millions. It's something that we've forgotten. So we have a choice. You can take the blue pill and keep going along the same path
and you'll get the same result. Or you can take the red pill and take a harder, more difficult path,
maybe the path less traveled, and become a citizen. The choice, my friends, is yours. Thank you. (Applause) (Cheers)
Pretty happy to see an increasing awareness of how important it is, for people to take themselves seriously in context with society. And for UBI to be considered by more and more people, as the method of choice, to enable people to take part in that process.
For the Doubters: Summary of 2 Pilot Studies
Commenting to watch later.
Tedx is a pile of garbage that severely damaged the rep of TED talks.
That's why global economic enfranchisement requires acceptance of an actual social contract