The thesis that a basic income would have a positive impact on people’s participatory opportunities has been repeatedly postulated politically and discussed scientifically for some years now. Christian Greis traces the scientific debate in his sociological monograph “Zur Zukunft eines bedingungslosen Grundeinkommens” (On the Future of an Unconditional Basic Income), published in 2021, back to Ralf Dahrendorf’s reflections on a “guaranteed minimum income” in 1986. In the field of politically engaged art (theory), the entanglement of basic income and direct democracy can be traced back to the 1970s. Compared to the consideration of the UBI from the perspective of the concept of participation, the conceptualisation and research of the UBI as an economic-political ‘narrative’ represents an even more recent phenomenon. This is to be seen in the broader context of a remarkable general boom of the concept of narrative in contemporary Western culture: In various cultural fields such as politics, economics and science, there has been increasing talk of ‘narratives’ since the turn of the millennium. This mostly refers to narratives of the future that are based on crisis scenarios from
which concrete instructions for action in the present can (or should) be derived. The constellation that exists between basic income, (political) participation and future ‘narratives’ will be thoroughly examined for the first time in the planned anthology from both a scientific and an activist perspective. But it will also look at the history and the connection of these concepts to other fields. The volume will be published within the series of the Freiburg Institute of Basic Income Studies (FRIBIS). Contributions on individual links or individual elements of this constellation are also welcome.

Extended Deadline for submission of abstracts (max. 300 words): May 31st, 2022 to leon.hartmann@philosophie.uni-freiburg.de

Weitere Info und Kontakt / Further info and contact:
Leon Hartmann, M.A. – leon.hartmann@philosophie.uni-freiburg.de
FRIBIS Team Participation & UBI

The goal of the UBIE Athens Academy from Thursday 31 March to Sunday 3 April 2022 is to share knowledge, develop campaigns and foster networking around Basic Income in Europe.

UBIE offers a 4 days mix of seminars, workshops and debates around Unconditional Basic Income. For further information, please click here. The event is organized by UBIE in cooperation with Panteion University (Department of Social Policy) in Athens (the oldest University of Social and Political Sciences in Greece) and the European Citizens’ Initiative for Unconditional Basic Income in Greece, supported by the Freiburg Institute for Basic Income Studies (FRIBIS).

This will be a live event. If you only want to follow the evening debates, at the venue or via streaming, you do not need to register in advance. Simply keep an eye on their webpage.

Discussants and contributors at UBIE Athens Academy who are associated with FRIBIS are Claudia Cornelsen (Team Sanctions-Free), Julio Linares (Team NetFi) and Joy Ponader (Team Expedition Grundeinkommen).

After such a long time of Online Events during the pandemic, we hope all the participants in Athens enjoy the in-person experience.

In November and December 2021, philosopher and political economist Otto Lehto came to Freiburg as a FRIBIS visiting scholar. We asked him how basic income research has changed in recent years, what he had gained from his time at FRIBIS and about the research topics he hopes to focus on in the future.

Where does basic income research stand today?

“Basic income research has matured into a diverse, interdisciplinary field. More people than ever are now conducting top-notch qualitative and quantitative research. And valiant efforts are being made to harmonize economic, philosophical, and political considerations with each other. However, the subject tends to attract supporters of UBI more than those are who critical or neutral towards it, so researchers should be wary of motivational bias. There is also an excessive focus on short-lived RCT experiments and other forms of discretionary policymaking that, in my mind, undermines the viability of UBI as a long-term institutional reform of the basic human rights framework.”

What did you gain from your stay at FRIBIS?

“Freiburg is a lovely city. Aside from that, I valued my time at FRIBIS for three main reasons. First, I got to conduct research on Ordoliberalism in its birthplace. Secondly, I got to meet and work with many interesting FRIBIS scholars, including the Junior Research Group, and to conduct a series of in-depth discussions with Enno Schmidt. Thirdly, thanks to a shared passion between myself and Prof. Neumärker’s for J.M. Buchanan, I got to run a workshop on constitutional approaches to UBI, which hopefully will spawn more theoretical and empirical research on constitutional UBI.”

What will be the focus of your future work on UBI?

“There are three strands to my future work on UBI: 1) To study the link between UBI, social change, and “Permissionless Innovation”, i.e. the capacity of (poor) people to experiment and innovate from the bottom up in ways that contribute to adaptation and social flourishing.

2) To explore basic income models within the various schools of liberalism: Freiburg, Virginia, Chicago, and Vienna. 3) To explore the implementation and maintenance challenges faced by constitutional vs. policymaking UBI models in order to achieve and maintain institutional stability in a complex democratic society.”

Otto Lehto in conversation with Enno Schmidt: (Ordo-)Liberalism and Basic Income.

In an interview conducted by Enno Schmidt, Otto Lehto talks about the origins and theoretical foundations of liberalism, the Freiburg tradition of ordoliberalism and the extent to which the UBI is compatible with liberalism from today’s perspective.

Workshop on YouTube: A constitutional and contractarian perspective on Universal Basic Income

In September 2021, Otto Lehto organized a workshop for the members of the FRIBIS’ Junior Research Group, in which he discusses UBI from a constitutional perspective. (Recordings of parts of the workshop are now available on our YouTube channel.) In the first part of the video Otto Lehto talks about the importance of a constitutional and contractarian approach to the welfare state and basic income policy. In the second part, he uses James Buchanan’s constitutionalist UBI model as an example to present a constitutionalist, political economy perspective on the UBI.

We, the members of FRIBIS, would like to heartily thank Otto Lehto for his work at the Institute, from which we learned a lot, and for the wonderful time spent with him. We wish him every success on his further academic path and look forward to welcoming him back soon as a guest in Freiburg.

dm-drogerie markt founder and patron of FRIBIS, Götz Werner, has passed away

On 8 February 2022, Götz Werner passed away at the age of 78. He not only founded the Götz Werner Chair together with his wife Beatrice, but also established the dm-Werner Foundation, which makes the work of FRIBIS possible.

Towards the end of his life, Götz Werner’s efforts on behalf of Universal Basic Income increasingly focused on promoting academically sound UBI research. With the support of Freiburg University, the Götz Werner Chair of Economic Policy and Constitutional Theory, held by Prof. Dr. Bernhard Neumärker, was established at the University of Freiburg. FRIBIS was founded shortly thereafter and has since focused on the collaboration of academic research and civil society activism.

To quote Bernhard Neumärker on his very first meeting with Götz Werner and on GWP and FRIBIS:

“Götz Werner approached me in 2018 after a lecture I gave on Universal Basic Income from the perspective of “New Ordoliberalism”. At that time, the incredible momentum this was to have was neither foreseeable nor perceivable.

First, the Götz Werner Chair for Economic Policy and Constitutional Theory was established with the active support of Freiburg University. Then, in an energetic discussion between Götz Werner and the former rector, Hans-Jochen Schiewer, it was decided to establish and generously fund the Freiburg Institute for Basic Income Studies. What has emerged along the way is an interdisciplinary research institute that directly involves civil society actors around Basic Income issues. Thanks to his tireless and innovative efforts, Götz Werner achieved his life’s work, from which both FRIBIS and GWP benefit substantially and from which we all continue to learn.

Personally, I am grateful to Götz Werner for perceiving the core of basic income research from within the regulatory tradition of Freiburg University. I believe it is our task to successfully continue the academic research and socio-political work around Universal Basic Income and to commemorate Götz Werner’s memory in this way.”

Götz Werner’s Understanding of Universal Basic Income

Götz Werner’s tireless commitment to the principles and vision of Universal Basic Income and his entrepreneurial endeavours went hand in hand. His unique way of running a business has won many awards. Indeed, the German newspaper TAZ dubbed him “The Good Giant.” His words and deeds, his ideals and the way he lived his life were not at odds with each other. What he said about his view of humanity, about the task of companies and the essence of business, came alive in the “working community” among dm employees and could be experienced by customers on a daily basis.

For Götz Werner, a company was “a social-artistic cultural event”. Making a distinction between leisure and working time seemed absurd to him. For him, working time was synonymous with “life time”, which should not be turned into a commodity. The goal of the human being was “generating freedom”. For Werner, people were “never a means, but an end”. These insights stemmed from his own entrepreneurial practice and led him logically to the idea of a Universal Basic Income.

In the last years of his life, he expressed the following wish: that “my ideas will continue to have an impact as an entrepreneur and advocate of a Universal Basic Income and contribute to a world worth living in.” With the founding of the Götz Werner Chair

GWP Visiting Professor Karl Widerquist has invited some exciting guests to speak as part of his “Ethics of UBI” seminar on 2 and 9 February, 2022. The events are open to the public and will be streamed live on YouTube.

2 February 2022, 4pm-6pm:
4:00pm-5:00pm – Guy Standing: A Commons-Based Argument for Basic Income
5:00pm-6:00pm – Alexander Gourevitch: The basic income illusion
Livestream link: https://youtu.be/2Lk9lMQwTCc 

Guy Standing is an economist and professorial research associate at the SOAS University in London. He I also one of the most influential leaders in the worldwide Basic Income movement. Guy Standing will be discussing the ethical significance of the privatization of common resources and the need for Universal Basic Income.

Alex Gourevitch is an associate professor of political science at Brown University. He will discuss whether it is correct to talk about a Universal Basic Income as a way of emancipating people from being forced to work.

9 February, 2022, 4pm-6pm:
4:00pm-5:00pm – Louise Haagh: Developmental Freedom and Social Order
5:00pm-6:00pm – Otto Lehto: Libertarian perspectives on Basic Income
Livestream link: https://youtu.be/2SphVrI3QDQ

Louise Haagh is professor of politics at the University of York (UK) and a former chair of the Basic Income Earth Network. She will argue that the influence of the atomistic account of human nature on liberal egalitarian thought has produced an unambitious, imprecise, and sometimes coercive account of individual freedom and social community.

Otto Lehto is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at New York University’s School of Law (2022-2023) and a former guest scholar at the Götz Werner Chair, Freiburg University. He will be discussing the wide range of “libertarian” arguments for (and against) Universal Basic Income.

The Götz Werner Chair (GWP) will be hosting the internationally renowned philosopher and economist Karl Widerquist as a visiting professor in the first half of 2022. Prof. Widerquist has made a name for himself as a researcher and advocate of basic income, not only within the academic world but also among the general public. We are therefore delighted to be have the opportunity to welcome him to Freiburg.

We asked Karl Widerquist what he hopes to gain from his time in Freiburg on both a private and academic level:

“Academically, I’m looking forward to visiting Freiburg, where I can meet and interact with colleagues in the UBI movement and in the broader academic community. I’m looking forward to presenting two classes based on my research to graduate students who are interested in politics, philosophy and UBI. I’m also looking forward to having a lot of time to work on my latest research and writing. And, Covid permitting, I’m looking forward to going to conferences and visiting other colleagues and UBI projects around Germany and Central Europe.

On a personal level, I’m always interested in meeting new people and going to new places.  My apartment will be near the Black Forest and not far from the center of town. So, I’m looking forward to exploring both. If Omicron dies down, I’m hoping to take the train to nearby parts of Switzerland and France and explore the region.”

We also wanted to know if there are any writing projects he wants to focus on during his stay:

“Right now I’m working mostly on three projects: (1) Universal Basic Income: Essential Knowledge is a short introduction to UBI for MIT University Press’s “Essential Knowledge” Series. I’ve never written an introductory book before and I’m learning how hard it is. After reading about UBI for 40 years and writing about it for 25, it’s not easy to ask myself which parts of my knowledge are essential?

(2) Property and the Power to Say No: Five Arguments for Universal Basic Income will update my doctoral dissertation and publish it for the first time as a complete work. I’ve published chapters as articles, and I expanded one part of the thesis into a book of its own, but this will be the first time I’ll publish my dissertation as a unified, complete work. It will include chapters that have never been published before and that make most sense in this context.

(3) Georg Arndt and I are revising our paper “The Cost of Basic Income in the United Kingdom” for publication. We’ve been working on it for a while, so it’ll be great to finally get it out.”

If you want to learn more about Karl Widerquist and his stance on basic income on the FRIBIS YouTube channel, watch an interview with him that Enno Schmidt conducted at the end of 2021. In this interview, Karl Widerquist talks about the advantages and disadvantages of UBI test projects, the possible influence of a UBI on real wages, UBI financing via (resource) taxes, the Alaska Permanent Fund, the development of the UBI debate over the last four decades and the question of the extent to which some kind of UBI is already in place in some of the rich oil states of the Persian Gulf.

On 2 December 2021 Expedition Grundeinkommen was awarded this year’s German Commitment Award (“Deutscher Engagementpreis”). With the backing of FRIBIS, the Expedition is campaigning for the UBI by means of referendums to launch state-funded pilot projects in various cities and municipalities throughout the country.

In this video, Valentin Schagerl and Joy Ponader, activists of the Expedition, explain what their project is all about.

What is the German Commitment Award?

The jury of the “Deutscher Engagementpreis” awards the prestigious prize each year for exceptional civic commitment. What is special about the prize is that it is awarded by the public and not a jury. This year, more than 12,000 people voted for Expedition Grundeinkommen to be the winner.

What the prize means for the Basic Income movement and for FRIBIS

Awarding the prize to Expedition Basic Income is a clear demonstration of the growing popularity of UBI. FRIBIS, in particular, has good reason to be happy about the Expedition’s award: Since the founding of Expedition Basic Income in 2019, we have supported the activists with technical and theoretical advice as well as financial back up. In the FRIBIS Expedition Basic Income team (XUBI), scholarship and activism go hand in hand. Together we are committed to turning Basic Income into reality – in the form of nationwide pilot projects throughout Germany.