Varoufakis: «Vote yes!» / Swiss basic income referendum

Economist and former Greek minister of finance Yanis Varoufakis will speak at the conference «Future of Work» on 3 May 2016 at the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute in Ruschlikon/Zurich, Switzerland.

Further top-class speakers:
- former US minister of work Robert Reich
- Natalie Foster (former advisor to Barack Obama)
- MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson.

The technological revolution
that is taking place

is threatening us
with a unique phenomenon.

So far every time we had
technological innovations,

they destroyed many jobs,

but they created more jobs
than they destroyed.

This is the Schumpeterian process,

which overall had net winners,
even though there were many losers.

Now there is the first juncture
since the 18th century

when it is highly likely

that technological innovation
is going to destroy

a lot more positions for waged labor
than it will create,

which I think puts us
on a course of a major dilemma.

There will be a juncture,
and we'll have to choose.

We'll have to choose
politically and democratically

between a world in which
the concentration of ownership

over the newfangled means of production

leads to a stagnating capitalism,

with intense inequality
and huge quantity of income

for a decreasing, shrinking
percentage of the population,

that lives behind barriers, fences,

electrified fences
in privately policed communities

and the rest in a cesspool
of volatility, uncertainty,

and social misery.

Let me put it in science fiction terms,

this is a parable that I think
is quite instructive, and I use it often.

There's no doubt we are moving
towards a science fiction world

that will become nonfiction,

but remember, science fiction
has two possibilities.

One is the "Star Trek" society
where we are all equals

and we all benefit from the technology.

We don't have to work.

There's a hole in the wall.
You go to it.

You get anything you want from it.

Nobody has been exploited.
Nobody has worked for it.

The machines do it for you.

So the machinery, the technology,
is humanity's servant,

and then we can sit around
and explore the universe.

We can have philosophical discussions
about the meaning of life,

which is wonderful.

That is the good scenario.

Then there's "The Matrix," too,

where the artifacts
that we have created enslave us.

And then we become caught up

in an illusion of freedom,
rather than the real thing.

Whether we go to a Star Trek
or to a Matrix-like outcome

as a result of technological innovation,

is the result of politics.

If it's not democratic,
it will be a Matrix-like world.

Or we are going to move
in another direction

where we are going
to go post-capitalist,

indeed, post-social democracy.

Social democracy was based on the idea

that the working class
insures itself

through taxation, and through national
insurance contributions.

Remember the reforms in Britain
after 1945 and the Attlee government.

If paid work shrinks

democracy must, in order to survive,
generate a new model

where the ownership
of means of production,

to use an old Marxist term,
is redistributed,

or at least the claims to the income
from the means of production

is redistributed in such a way

as to effectively guarantee freedom.

Freedom does not manifest itself
in simply saying yes to an offer,

because the mafia is very good
at making you an offer you can't resist.

Freedom manifests itself
in being able to say no

and still survive, and still prosper.

If you say yes under those circumstances,
then it is a genuinely free choice.

This requires a basic income,
which is essential

for the outside options
that bolster freedom.

So the question is,
do we consider our community

to be an extended family
of humanity or not?

Whether this is going to happen
through the state,

or whether this will happen
through a new social market

where, for instance,
we all have capital that we inherit,

not just by birth,
from our particular parent

that has ownership
of means of production.

Simply be endowed
with capital from society.

That capital is utilized in such a way

that we are all guaranteed
that which Paris Hilton is guaranteed.

That is a trust fund that allows her,

whatever silly things she does
in her life, to have a good life.

I'm not saying that we should all
be Paris Hilton,

but I believe
that every child that gets born

should have a minimum trust fund

that allows the child to live
in freedom, in dignity,

and then to do what they can
with their talents, if they want more.

You cannot ask a poor country, a country
in a great depression, like Greece,

to provide guaranteed minimum income

when it can't even provide
drugs for cancer patients.

A rich country like Switzerland
has the great opportunity

to try out this wonderful experiment.

Vote yes!