What is your contribution to the society ?
Your are reading this article on your computer, powered by alternative electricity. Nikola Tesla, the inventor of the alternator which is producing 99 % of the world electricity ended his life alone in his hotel room, almost ruined.
On the contrary, some rich heirs have a fortune, without doing anything for the society. It is not fair.
If you read the book of David Graeber, Debt the first 5000 years, you learn that the history of money is not an history of social justice.(you already knew it !)
It s very difficult to evaluate the value of any contributions you can do. Life has no price, should not have any price. If you feed an orphan somewhere in the world, you can save a life for few dollars.
The value of common goods, like fish in the Ocean or quality of the air you are breathing are also difficult to evaluate.
So, why some people earn more money than others ?
Stephane Laborde in his relative theory of money raises the conclusion that a group of people produce value, whatever they are doing and therefore, that they should all be requited the same, whatever the location or the time.
A group of programmer have developped an opensource software called Duniter that is able to produce this universal dividend for all the members of a community, from a decentralized cryptocurrency.
A first test of this so-called free money has started in September 2016, by a French NGO, Le-sou, and you are welcome to participate.
While the software still need improvements, it opens a new paradigm for the society.
Retired people will all earn the same universal dividend, but also children and adults.
What would be your dream job if you know that anyway you would be paid to do it, whatever the results ? Which new society can we build together?
A lot of discussion need to be hold to set up common goals, new rules, how government will function ? @dahaz159 explains how the governmental services could be replaced by decentralized services
The people with 50+ have an important role to play in the evolution of the society because they have experienced many situations in the real life ( I am one of them :))
Retired people have the time to educate people, to test new solutions, to collaborate to implement new things.
They can implement the universal dividend and tell us what they think about it.
Tis text will be cross-posted in the Openideo challenge “
How might we create financial services that support the dreams and obligations of those 50 and older?”
OpenIDEO is a global community working together to design solutions for the world’s biggest challenges.
You are welcome to participate and to submit your contribution.
Thanks for writing about this topic! Could you please explain if universal-dividend is the same as Universal Basic Income? I plan to start a curation trail about UBI under steemtrail, I'm not sure what the name of the tag should be yet, but I thought the best would be basicincome-trail. I will get back to you on this later, as the tag will need more writers, and we need to try yo get some system going about what tags to use.
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*A basic income is a minimum income distributed by the government to people with difficulties because it is cheaper than to pay social assistants to try to help them, with a centralized currency (euro ). A basic income can be a social improvment, or not, depending on the distribute quantity, decided by the government.(and your own philosophy).
*A universal dividend is computed from the software with parameters defined by the community so that every member of the community get the same amount of a decentralized crypto, this amount is relative, it varies in time (high inflation rate) and function of the number of members, so that each member at any time get the same amount per month. It is quite surprising and requires some thinking. Read the relative theory of money if you have some time. It is a big step further that the basic income : no more central bank, no government involved, community democracy, blockchain, with all the unknow coming with it.
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Thank you for your reply, that was very informative. I am familiar with some basic-income schemes using crypto-currencies, for instance Grantcoin. However they do not use the term universal dividend.
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You are welcome. In the past a Roman emperor was able to enforce one gold standard to collect taxes. Today, several groups are working on their own solutions and new concepts are emerging. This is a limit I see to crypto, we will have ten or twenty different currencies into our electronic wallet ! but it is a classic process used by life (see @extie-dasilva reply below) to select the best one :)
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@Kooshikoo I just sign up for Grantcoin, looks great !
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An interesting and complete basic income faq
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Actually life does have a cost. The normal assumption, one adopted by all other animals and by most human beings that have ever lived, is that a life is not infinitely valuable but rather more or less worth investing one's time and energy on. When a baby chick is tossed out of a nest, when a member of a herd with a lame leg is left behind, these are economic calculations that are cruel but necessary in a harsh world.
Having said all that, humanity has, thanks to its technological powers, achieved sufficient wealth to be able to adopt much more compassionate and inclusive ways of life. The wealthier the world becomes, the less tolerant of poverty and economic hardship we should be.
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I bought a chicken this morning for 7 € and I can look at the price of 1 bushel of wheat on the Chicago market.
But If I let my fears go away, I open my heart and the joy I feel is priceless.
I can compute the cost to equip USA with 100 % renewable energy, but I cannot compute the price of the decision to start a war in Irak.
Untill we don't know what consciousness is, it is not easy to explain what is life.
What is the price of your life and what is the meaning of your life ?
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For a deeper analyse of the relationship between work and money :
How Jobs Destroyed Work: The Complete Edition (part one)
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