Basic Income and Beyond

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


Last update April 2023
Email: goodfutures@mail.com to contact organisers
Background philosophy A big picture

This meetup changes periodically according the interest of people who attend the meetups regularly. 
Currently we are switching focus to Universal/Unconditional Basic income (UBI)
This topic is quite fundamental in view of the increasing role of automation in the economic sphere. Employment opportunities that pay a living wage are being decimated by semi-intelligent production systems. In consequence demand for human work is rapidly diminishing.
An income stream independent of employment status is a necessary addition to the income distribution mechanism of the economic system.
----------------------------- Arguments for/against UBI fall into three categories: Economic, Legal, Moral. The economic part is actually in two parts 1). how Supply/Demand of goods and services is affected and 2). is it affordable? -----------------------------------
The history below is packed with intriguing ideas, all relating to thinking about the possible Better World.
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In the past we have explored the principles of a Good Society with the help of Kenneth Galbraith's book in informal dialogue.
(Related meetups 
http://www.meetup.com/goodworldmovement/
https://www.meetup.com/good-world/events/243342015/ )

A wide range of other topics can also feature on our interest list. For example, recently we discussed the book "Metaphors We Live By" by G Lackoff and M Johnson, "Organic Universe" by Italian astrophysicist Giuliana Conforto.
During 2011 a serious proposal for a Global Cooperative Forum, as outlined in Not-two Is Peace formed the guiding theme.
Currently (Spring 2012) we engage with the rising importance of commons in public awareness due to the economic and financial crisis and the emerging Occupy movement as a response.
In addition to these monthly meetings, there are weekly meetings elsewhere under slightly "different management". You are welcome to join them. A shared vision and common enterprise is deeply rooted in talk about things that matter.
The cartoon caption at the top left symbolizes the idea that our world is in the midst of an evolutionary paradigm shift.
A world, we can barely imagine*, is possible; but like any birth, there is no guarantee that it will be successful without assistance.
It can be the birth of a new species---a fully human species---or the death of
us (NOT the death of Earth)
In other words, it is Utopia or Oblivion, as one of the prophets of this possible world summed up the future of our species.
*How can a caterpillar imagine being a butterfly; how can a choking, cramped chick-embryo think of being a breathing, running, flying chicken?
These thoughts have something or a lot to do with the **future** of human evolution---hopefully we are going to be around for thousands, even billions of years (unless we refuse to be part of the evolutionary process).
Current topics have centred around a movement that brashly/boldly claims to be a science of getting Humankind ready for its next evolutionary quantum leap. It is the 60 year old internationally present project known as scientology. It claims to be about the science of "knowing how to know".

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