We're taking a look at the "The Enslavement Of Labor" chapter for the book PROGRESS AND POVERY, the seminal work by an American named Henry George.
If you wanted a brief introduction into "Georgism", this is it, and, #YangGang, this can really help you sharpen your arguments.
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One of my goals in this thread is to provide both the UBI advocate and the yet-to-be converted a better answer for the "why" of universal basic income, and a justification for universalist policies in general.
#geoismpic.twitter.com/NPHbj08vPO
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George expanded on the ideas of Thomas Paine. Both men saw the Native American, wandering the land and surviving totally on his own efforts, as in a state between that of white landowners and that of white wage laborers.https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/960642908234964992?s=20 …
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But Henry George was trying to solve a deeper mystery. He was trying to determine why material and technological progress was accompanied by a growth in poverty. You could call this "wealth inequality." And he proposed a remedy.
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George did not propose a universal basic income, but he proposed something like UBI that was appropriate for his time in the late 19th Century when most people still worked - and knew how to work - the land for their own survival.
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George proposed a land-value tax, and, while I will mention that here and there throughout this thread, that isn't really the point of the thread. The point is to talk about how "the enslavement of labor" through land monopolization is the justification for UBI, as Paine argued.pic.twitter.com/SYxs3Owfwl
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This brief chapter is full of profoundly useful insights. Our current "wage slavery" - yes, you can use that term, as I hope that you learn from reading this - is merely a different and less directly violent form of slavery. Exclusively owning land makes one a slave master.pic.twitter.com/bogH6vYtOS
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This is why I so often say to anti-UBI people, "you didn't create the Earth." No person created the Earth. We must always point this out. Therefore, nobody has any authority to come between another person and needed, life-sustaining resources. That is
#geoism.#BasicIncomepic.twitter.com/mk8SCu430w
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To survive, you need food and shelter, but you do not have legal access to the land from which these materials come. A few persons own all of what only nature - or God - created. To exclusively own land is to own the people who need the land.
#BasicIncome#geoismpic.twitter.com/JFiPItCkxz
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As much as I want you to read what George says, I want you to notice what he is NOT saying. There's no mention of "capitalists." George saw the labor-vs-capital conflict as hopelessly misguided. He believed that labor and capital should be naturally allied against landowners.pic.twitter.com/RT62yhltRd
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Are you beginning to see why other arguments for universal basic income are paralytically weak? Think about what you are trying to accomplish - and why you're trying to accomplish it - by enacting UBI.https://twitter.com/JamesRobichaux/status/1201605702218928128?s=20 …
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Understand, please, the insight here. At one time, if you could not live freely because others already controlled the land where you were, you could just go to where there were no or fewer people. George was writing at a time when this option was quickly disappearing.
#geoismpic.twitter.com/AxOr71uJwn
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Today, I am a wage slave. (Again, yes, you can use that term.) However, at the time that George was writing this, most of my ancestors were not wage slaves. Most of them owned land from which they subsisted. Please read this little thread.https://twitter.com/JamesRobichaux/status/1155488350226341889?s=20 …
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It's very simple. Universal basic income is merely the modern equivalent of the "free land" that so many of our (white) ancestors were legally allowed to own, because modern technology means that it no longer makes sense to live and PRODUCE that way.https://twitter.com/JamesRobichaux/status/1155501069276983296?s=20 …
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"Owning the land on which - and from which - people must live is virtually the same as owning the people themselves." - Henry George This is why universal basic income is a matter of JUSTICE. It's NOT a "gift" or a "handout."
#ThisIsWhyUBI#geoism#BasicIncomepic.twitter.com/2oCaWFQZy4
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Our current slavery "originates in the appropriate of land." Want food and shelter? You're not allowed to do that yourself. You have to "get a job." "Ownership of land gives absolute power over people who cannot live except by using it."
#BasicIncomepic.twitter.com/puCEYLRQZo
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There are a few insights here. The first is that "ownership" and "property" is *supposed to* refer to things that one has created, produced, or earned. But no human being created or produced land; therefore, no human being can earn land.
#geoism#BasicIncomepic.twitter.com/bBJFCMZIIy
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The second is right in the middle of the paragraph. Success and freedom - and access to life's necessities - does not go to who actually works more, produces more, or behaves better. Success goes to who is best at muscling others out of what NATURE created.
#BasicIncomepic.twitter.com/kVZGhg5ZIL
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What is described here, then, is the Malthusian "survival of the fittest" argument. You hear this as a common defense of the status quo, of poverty. But "survival of the fittest" doesn't justify taking for everyone else what no person created in the first place.
#geoismpic.twitter.com/z64Xz6XgHS
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"For it is to be had, not by production, but by appropriation." There are, today, scads of professional workers - like some attorneys and property managers - whose job is not to create or produce things but MAINTAIN control of nature for its exclusive owners.
#BasicIncomepic.twitter.com/2coUfz6gjy
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This is rent. Today, the most privileged people in our society get paid - and live by - not by producing things but by owning things and charging access to them. This is why we say . . . .
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Henry George understood that the "vices" that were associated with poor people were effects, not causes, of their poverty.pic.twitter.com/UVKEkEhchd
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Clearly, you are better off than a chattel slave, because, for one thing, a chattel slave couldn't leave the property - the "freedom to move about" mentioned here - and take a weekend road trip out of state, or leave one job in one area for another job in another area. but . . .pic.twitter.com/KcqJ2wHqpt
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how free are you when you must submit to the demands of those who stand between you and the material that you need to survive? especially in times when they don't? George was suggesting that traditional legal rights were not enough to qualify us as truly being free.pic.twitter.com/dLQTMpgFgP
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"except enough to support a bare existence." This was written in the 1870s. Do you see why a narrow focus on raising the minimum wage to a "living wage" but not being for EMANCIPATION of the wage earner in the 21st Century is so repugnant?
#MinWage#basicincome#LVTpic.twitter.com/bMaGksRyfg
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There is PLENTY to discuss with this excerpt. First, note that owners of chattel slaves had a far greater incentive to ensure that their slaves' basic needs were met than modern employers, who can more easily shed unwanted laborers and find new ones, have. Think about that.pic.twitter.com/6DqqzBjKVk
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More deeply . . . "It does not seem to be one human being who drives another," and "for this, no one in particular is responsible." Recognize the profound meaning there? how it explains our present powerlessness and self-blame? because we have no clearly-defined oppressor?pic.twitter.com/vwrO1doLoY
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It's the invisible nature of the way that the oppressive hands of the system works that leads so many of us to accept the idea that, if we would like food and shelter, "well, then, go get a job!" as if it were like going to kill a deer and cut down trees to make homes.pic.twitter.com/oCc30Ls15P
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We accept this as the natural state, that we should be out "in the streets" if we fail to comply, even though there is nothing at all natural or just about it, as the owners of the land - and, again, land is created by no person - are under no such obligations.
#BasicIncomepic.twitter.com/lBgewfGBMt
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That is why universal basic income is everyone's birthright. Universal basic income is reparations for land enclosure, which was deliberately done in order to compel the dispossessed to do powerful people's bidding. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/mar/04/basic-income-birthright-eliminating-poverty …
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