UBI

UBI would provide a vital safety net. “Under capitalism, you need money to survive. It’s that simple,” says Dr Neil Howard, an international development social protection researcher at the University of Bath. 

He and his team have helped to develop basic income pilots around the world and, like Thomas Paine, he believes that a redistribution of the privatised resources of all human beings is inherently just. 

Howard likens the large language models of AI that rely on the aggregated collection of human knowledge to the enclosure of the commons, which began in the 1600s and privatised most of England’s common land. 

“The common wealth of the world and of humanity, should, by rights, belong to all of us,” says Howard. “It has been appropriated by the few – and that leads the many to either have to struggle to survive or simply not effectively do so. So there’s justice underpinning the claim of UBI.”

Contrary to expectations, he says, “It wouldn’t necessarily lead to people doing less work – it would enable them to do better work or to invest their time in more socially useful activities.”