UBIAutoriteit

(What does P. Verhaeghe say about a (Unconditional) Basic Income in his book about authority (Autoriteit)?)

Mentioning Basic Income

The first time he speaks about basic income, he kind of rejects it briefly, because it does not solve the actual problem he was handling in itself. He was talking about how neoliberalism is misused by governments, central banks, … which rule by the numbers: “our numbers say it is like this, so that is how we need to do it”. While saying this, they misuse their power (given by the authority of neoliberalism) because these numbers need to be made up in a certain way and interpreted as well and it is not because it is about numbers, that no democratic decisions are necessary. Decisions needing democracy are secretly put in the hands of people making up the numbers. A basic income in itself does not solve the misuse of the power put in place by neoliberalism.

The second time, he refers to the Swiss that did the calculation for a basic income and that turned out favorable. As the Swiss are very punctual people (their trains ride in time), we can trust those. As such, the problem is not the economical feasibility, but the people in charge that are afraid of losing their power (and the control over a system set up over the years). An ideal system to maintain that power (and as such the misuse of it) is to keep people in fear and stress and that is exactly what a UBI can take away.

Why UBI and authority (and other pirate subjects) are one

Throughout the book, he says that a lot of psychological problems are due to the lack or misuse of authority. (examples primarily given for family situations) Neoliberalism seems to be the most important authority these days which makes us compete with each other and try to be the happiest among our peers by comparing the numbers: our BMI, the size of our house,... On the other hand, we should not go back to the old days of paternalism stimulated by religion (catholic church, …) where the “political fathers” know better. He proposes to make more use of the authority of the group. It is an authority that can work e.g. putting children in a corner of the room (to put them out of the group) is a punishment known and used worldwide among different cultures for something, parents that negotiate with their pubering daughter/son check with other parents about which norm to apply, …

But how to bring the ideas of an entire society together like that without the risking to abuse powers? The G1000-experiment has proven successful. It brings a 1000 people together that form a representative part of society. Experts try to bring together the important arguments in the debate and explain them as clearly as possible. From this experiment a lot of ideas came forward for the government to use. The power of the Commons.

Aristocracy is not a good idea (philosophers like Blaise Pascal saw there is very little behind authority, but escaping requires an intelligent route and not everybody in society is capable of that) as this restricted group might too much defend itself.

As such, the UBI is an enabler to transform society as taking away the fear, diminishes abuse of power and can shift authorities. This is an important factor in working towards a deliberative democratic society.

This makes UBI inherently linked to the entire book. This is why it can be interesting to summarize again some important ideas in the book: (in the book, there are a lot of references to other literature)

Summary points

• Authority is not something someone has by himself, it is something someone gets through a third external entity. The typical example until the late midst of last century, was God. For a long time, kings got their authority through God.
• Authority is not the same as power. If someone puts a gun on someone else's face in order to make him do something, that does not mean he has authority. You don't have to force anyone to obey if you have the authority, otherwise it is purely by enforcing your power. Doctors have (had) authority because of our believe in science, priests for our belief in God, …
• Authority quickly becomes power and as such becomes a tool that is abused quickly.

• A lot is told about the education of children. As babies, they can be left to the mother which has caring authority. Most important there, is that they can explore the world, but know they can count on their mother. After a while, the authority of the father is needed to put the kid in its right place. These days, the father figure disappears more and more, but some still try to force it as before. One of the reasons is the Church, that does not have any authority anymore and that talked a lot about father figures (Our Father e.g.). So, forcing your authority as a father will be problematic, because the authority does not exist anymore.
• Some fathers want to take a more modern way and are not strict at all e.g. they want their children to find out for themselves. I liked the quote he mentioned of a young father: 'I am not too much into democracy with 5 year olds'. That both approaches are problematic is seen in the practice of psychotherapy all day and explains why the failures do have to do with society too.
• A solution is seen in the authority of the group: someone that falls out of the group is punished quite severely through our social nature. (e.g. the universal punishment to children by putting them in a corner) So, what happens a lot with parents these days is that they call colleague parents (parents from other children of the same class) at a moment where the son/daughter wants to go out to a certain party to a certain time. And this works as the element of belonging to a certain group is that important.

• Neoliberalism is not a good alternative authority, although it is used a lot these days to give power to the politicians. The reason is that it bases itself on numbers, but these numbers need to be calculated and interpreted too. A policy needs to start from what people think and you can not express what people think/feel in numbers (think about the many psychological surveys: do you feel … when... 1 not at all 2 ..). Using economic numbers as authority to take policy decisions is a failure as such (and then we speak about the democratic deficit in banks, but also the little difference in the programs of political parties because of the neoliberalism)
• Facebook is mentioned as a way as communicating our norms with each other and let the group have authority. It is also mentioned as not perfect and there could be made a better platform for that, but somehow it is already used like that.
• The political solution uses the authority of the group again: he refers to the G1000 as a representative part of the population, which needs to think about certain problems and get all the arguments of different interest groups (can be academics, industry, …) in an objective way by a third party. This seems to be very effective and severals proposals have been handed over to the 'real' politics already. What is called a lot: the Commons.
• He also questions how you need to decide which problems get onto the agenda as a lot of power is attributed to the person that puts the agenda together. This could be a separate entity again, but he also mentions the open-source tool of liquidfeedback.org to gather what people think is important to discuss.

Remarks

• While the book has been written as one of his questionings why psychotherapy fails a lot these days as some problems are due to society, it might be seen by some as a Pirate Manifesto in a lengthy way.
• Verhaeghe said that a basic income would not change that much to society. Most might do the same as today. That is maybe why we should not represent it as the big utopian idea, but as something that will easily be the most normal thing in the world. A most normal thing that will take away the fear.
• Why would not the Pirate Party call itself deliberative democrats (of the word deliberation)? (it is also 2 Ds like 2 Ps…)
• We could say Verhaeghe also uses his authority as a scientist/doctor to convince us about something.
• It is not saying numbers and economy are not important, just that it is far from the only thing for policy and that these need to be interpreted in a certain context.
• Some might criticize the book, maybe telling there are some other psychological methods and that his theories are mainly Freudian (mentioned quite some times in the book), but if you see the entire picture of the book, this is not a relevant criticism.