The Fifth Wave of Basic Income
Hypothesis about the fifth wave
The fifth Wave of Basic Income
The roots of basic income:
In ancient Athens in 461 BC, Epictetus led a democratic reform called the citizen's allowance.
In 1516, Sir Thomas More first envisioned a society with a basic income in his novel Utopia.
The first wave: 18th and 19th centuries: response to the rise of industrial capitalism
In 1795, Thomas Paine, author of The Justice of the Land, proposed a basic income for the elderly and an adult capital allowance.
In 1879, Henry George, author of Progress and Poverty, proposed a land-sharing system that would benefit all classes by making land common property.
The Second Wave: Social Justice & Working Class Responses to the Sacrifices of WarBertrand Russell, Mabel and Dennis Milner, Cole, and Henry George's disciples advocated for basic income in their writings. Basic income advocates and thinkers emerged in the 1920s, with Russell declaring that the goal of basic income should be that no one would be forced to work, but would be guaranteed a minimum living wage and freedom.
Third wave: [1960s US] Reflecting concerns about structural and technological unemploymentIn 1972, President Richard Nixon proposed a “family support plan in the form of a negative income tax.” In 1967, Martin Luther King said that poverty could be directly eliminated through a guaranteed income and that individual dignity would flourish.
Fourth wave: <1986 onwards> Concerns about labor substitution such as AI, market instability, and inequalityIn 1986, BIEN (Basic Income Europe Network) was founded. Momentum grew through the 2007 global financial crisis.
Supported by Guy Standing, Philippe van Parijs, etc.
The fourth wave is described by Guy Standing in his book (2018), and he includes Silicon Valley's gifted & venture capitalists in the fourth wave. However, I would like to make a distinction and argue for a fifth wave.
The Fifth Wave: 21st Century, 2020 and Beyond is being driven by the struggle between the emerging big tech wealth class and the old wealth class.
In 2021, Sam Altman launched a blockchain project to guarantee universal basic income through WorldCoin.
Hypothesis: Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and other Silicon Valley geniuses and venture capitalists are challenging the ruling class in new relations of production through the Fourth Industrial Revolution. They will wield unprecedented global political power beyond the borders of a single country and implement a basic income with public support.
In a post-capitalist society, where value added is greater than in capitalism, the contradictions of capitalism demand new relations of production. The development of a new productive force, 'information', through AI will contradict the existing old production relationship, 'capitalist-worker', and the emerging big tech capitalists will cause class conflict with the existing ruling class. Workers, who have nothing but labor power, will be reduced to a useless class by automation. It is important for the emerging big-tech capitalists who do not need labor to quickly collect more big data, which plays a key role in capital accumulation, to make all 8 billion people in the world act as prosumers in virtual space. Therefore, they will want a basic income system, a system that allows the public to have consumption power without labor, as an economic foundation.
