Two videos on the legacy of Götz Werner produced by Enno Schmidt have just been published on the FRIBIS YouTube channel: Prof. Bernhard Neumärker draws connections between Götz Werner’s various guiding entrepreneurial principles in his lecture “UBI & New Ordoliberalism“, while Enno Schmidt paints a vivid picture of Götz Werner as an entrepreneur and basic income advocate in his tribute film.
Bernhard Neumärker: UBI & New Ordoliberalism
In this lecture, Prof. Neumärker shows how Götz Werner’s entrepreneurial guiding principles and the academic UBI discourse are interrelated in numerous ways. These principles include Ex ante Social Contracting, Ex post stable Social Contracting, Ex post Governance and aspects of a paradigm shift in the social market economy. Prof. Neumärker shows how New Ordoliberalism and Basic Income can be derived from Werner’s principles as basic cornerstones of a just social contract.
Neumärker discusses the ‘Libertarian Trap’ in the Political Economy of Freedom as well as the ‘Authoritarian Trap’. He shows how the Participatory UBI could help to avoid the libertarian trap and to get a step out of the authoritarian trap. The paradigm shift he envisions also extends to the means-tested welfare system, the redistribution of power in labor contracts, and the potentials of a UBI, in terms of time sovereignty (multiplicative utility function) and intrinsic motivation. Finally, Neumärker argues that the consumption tax is an adequate way to finance the basic income.
An obituary for Götz W. Werner by Enno Schmidt
At the 2022 BIEN Congress in Brisbane, Australia, Enno Schmidt presented this obituary to raise Götz Werner’s international profile.
Enno Schmidt is co-founder of the popular initiative and referendum for the introduction of Unconditional Basic Income in Switzerland, author of the film “Grundeinkommen – ein Kulturimpuls” (“Basic Income – A Cultural Impulse”) and managing director of FRIBIS.
Götz Werner was a multi-award-winning entrepreneur and the most prominent proponent of an Unconditional Basic Income in Germany. In the period from 2005 until shortly before his death, Enno Schmidt conducted numerous interviews with him and examined Götz Werner’s mindset and corporate leadership as well as its actual impact on the people in his company.