Image: Country Life Utopia 2048, by Aerroscape

Introduction

Ideas for basic universal services (funding public / private to be determined).

Based on the idea of solving my complete problem permanently (Lean Solutions).

The blog is a bit of a ‘stream of consciousness’ for which I apologise but it was important to me to try to look at the whole problem of enabling people to live a meaningful life whilst taking the astronaut’s view of earth as a space ship which only has finite resources that must last the whole journey; if the human story on earth is to endure that means living within the constraints of nature including the ability of nature to process our waste including CO2.

Shelter

Definition

Everyone needs a place to live.  The structure and its fundamental equipment needs maintaining, repairing and upgrading over time.

Question of scope but as a minimum probably:

1. Fabric of the building
2. Maintain the inside of the building at a suitable temperature
3. Water and sewerage (although the latter may include dry toilets, grey water etc)

Current state

Too much of salary devoted to basic fabric (relative to actual housing stock, replacement rate, growth in households, maintenance required etc).  Housing not aligned to work leading to excessive commuting and individual car ownership.

Future state

Zero land cost for residential housing. Residential land community owned.  Price controls related to replacement costs.  Shelter including heating and water and sewerage to enable trade offs (e.g. insulate versus provide energy for heat).

Details to be work (e.g. exclude properties over council tax band E, only include certain amount of land and treat the remainder as potentially productive)

Health

Emphasis on maintaining health rather than addressing illness.  National Health Service rather than sickness service.  Including access to things that will maintain health.  

Might want to include basic food service to allow trade offs between food and cost of addressing illness.

Measure on both length of life and proportion of life lived in good health.

Current State

Spiral of decline as less money is directed at worst illnesses allowing more of these to develop.  

Future State

People have more ability to keep themselves healthy reducing burden on the sickness element of the system.  National basic food provision to address health issues created by food industrial complex.

Sustenance

Ability to obtain sufficient food (in terms of both calories and range of nutrients).  Again, people may be conditioned to want more than is reasonable within the constraints of climate emergency and need to reinvigorate nature.

Current State

Food industrial complex has people eating more food that is required (or healthy) and food that is unhealthy.  Much of health spending is related to poor diet.

Future State

Day to day diets are simple, consisting of less food, mostly locally grown and cooked from raw ingredients.  Food is still used for celebrations (e.g. Christmas) but less often than present.  Basic food provision as part of health provision.

Food rules – Eat food, not too much, mostly plants

Implement the recommendations in A Small Farm Future to enable UK to be largely self-sufficient in food whilst restoring 30% of UK to wilderness.

If required, ration meat.

References

Food Rules, Pollan M

A Small Farm Future, Smaje C

Mobility

Ability to travel when needed.  Problematic in climate emergency as desire and what might be considered allowable likely to conflict.  Need to look carefully at travel that adds most ‘value’ to society and people’s lives.  Need to try to reduce non-value adding travel.  Links to shelter and work.

Old Age and Disability

Ensuring that basic services are available to all independent of age and ability to work.  Neither of these conditions should negatively impact on people’s quality of life.  Work guarantee allowing people to work as much as they feel able.

Broader Context

Climate Emergency

Current number one problem.  Everything needs to be measured against this problem.  Sophisticated multi-level models to enable choices to be made as to where CO2 budget should be spent.  Focus largely on the ending of the burning of fossil fuels but also preserving forests, improving soil quality and restoring oceans (don’t know much about the last one!).  However, other measures where they aren’t too risky (e.g. painting roofs white to reflect the sun), planting trees in towns and city for shade.  Preventing spread of deserts etc.

Pressure on Nature

Only just behind climate emergency and inter-linked.  In particular, need to reforest in order to drive precipitation and cool the earth.  Emphasis on pollinators.  Wildlife corridors.  Short term aim for UK 30% wilderness.

Rise in inequality

Decoupling of rise in wellbeing from GDP as early as the 1960’s in US.  Additional decoupling through neo liberalism and post 2008 financial crisis.  Proportion of GDP in wages falling etc etc

Relationships between inequality and health and happiness.

Future state

Maximum 5 to 1 earning ratio between highest paid in organization and lowest paid (including all forms of income – salary, bonus, in-kind, dividends).

Pressure on resources

A response to climate emergency (fossil fuel burning) that depletes other resources and further destroys nature is not a sustainable one.

Future state

Doughnut economics.  Right to repair.  Banning of materials that cannot be recycled.

Other fundamentals

Politics and civil society

Future State

Return of local decision making.  NOTE: with modern communications this will lead to lots of ‘postcode lottery’ stories that will have to be dealt with.  Transition was difficult due to lack of experience of the population and lack of self confidence and feeling that ‘someone else should do this’ and I have a right to expect a ‘perfect life’.

Compensation for possible failures in local decision making is layered planning models and measurements to understand which localities (at all levels) are off plan.  NOTE the plan is a democratically agreed plan (e.g. through referenda at different levels)

Reference: Half-Earth Socialism, Vettesse and Pendergrass

Equality

Future State

Modesty is valued.  People who make excess income are embarrassed and take steps to correct the situation.  

National living wage set to ensure that a family can afford to live with 2 caregivers working 120% of normal hours.  Additional help for one caregiver families with children.

Money

Future State

Money as information.  Money used to direct resources.  Money that sits still is taxed heavily so that it can be reused for the above. 

Work

Future State

Work is available for those that want it.  Those that don’t do not have to work as long as they are not engaged in activities that are detrimental to others (understand that this is really hard to police!).  Work is rationed.  Industries that are destructive are stopped (oil and gas, casino capitalism).  Minimum wage is set at a level that enables a ‘decent live’.  Industries that are not able to pay these wages are allowed to perish (e.g. excessive hospitality).  Government picks up the slack addressing social issues (insulating homes, promoting health, providing arts and culture, restoring nature, climate friendly agriculture, recycling and restoring etc etc)

Social life

Future State

Local low cost, no cost socializing is the mainstay.  Reduction in work and provision of basic services leaves people free to participate in a range of local activities (volunteering, sports, arts, social clubs, hobbies, life long education etc).  Driven by requirement for leisure industry to pay living wage.

Capitalism and Profit

Futures State

Emphasis on small and local or large and non-profit.  If something can’t be achieved by a small organization then it should be done by a purpose based social enterprise.

Government intervenes heavily in the banking sector to ensure that finance is directed towards productive enterprises.  Deconstructing of ‘money making money’ industries

Global Trade

Future State

Requirement for government to balance imports and exports.  Government decides what sectors can import based on export performance.

Very strict controls on flows of capital into and out of the country.

Profit declared and taxes paid where business is done (end to excessive IP arrangements that export profits and avoid UK tax).

End to foreign ownership of residential property (with reciprocal for UK people owning property overseas).

Root Cause Problems

Burning of fossil fuels and removal of remaining forests and other habitats that sequester carbon is making the planet uninhabitable by humans

Injection

No fossil fuels to be burnt by the UK.  Promotion of carbon sequestration overseas but not to get to ‘net zero’ but to restore CO2 levels to safe ones.

Limiting of consumption of meat, fish and dairy with immediate ban on imports of these.

Investment in UK agriculture to grow fruit, cereals, nuts and vegetables in UK using permaculture, agroforestry and high productivity agriculture (like Netherlands)

Ban on import of products that lead to loss of vital habitats (e.g. palm oil)

Current levels of consumption and waste are removing space for nature

Injection

Immediate 30% of UK left to nature

Household model of the UK Economy

Comparing the UK Economy to a household leads to poor decision making.

Injection

Move to a model of the UK Economy that recognizes:

1. Government debt is not borrowing from external third parties; it is ‘borrowing’ using its own debt instrument.
2. Focus decisions on government borrowing on the effect it will have on inflation.

Stop using Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure on performance of UK economy (society) and move the use of the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI).

Power Imbalance between Capital and Labour

When private capital has more power than workers, then workers will be forced to accept jobs at wages that make profit for private companies but do not provide the workers with an adequate life-style.

Injection

Use a government job guarantee to establish a floor for wages in the private sector, ensuring that private companies can only make a profit whilst paying wages necessary to maintain an adequate life-style (e.g. based on the living wage foundation’s living wage)

The wealthy command too many resources

The wealthy command too many resources creating inflationary pressure before the modest needs of all workers are met.

Injection

Make income tax more progressive.  Set maximum salary multipliers within private companies.  

Asset Inflation 

Something about the ability to use scarce assets in lieu of income.

Injection

Tax unearned income (or unspent income) more heavily than income that produces an economic output.  Housing controls (see below)

Excessive household debt

Something about excessive household debt and viewing shelter (basic service) as a way to acquire wealth.

Injection

Debt jubilees

1. Housing debt (mortgages) linked with control on future prices
2. Higher education debt
3. Others to be considered

View housing as basic service.  Land designated as residential land as zero value.  Cost of housing related to build costs (or rebuild costs) at low carbon standard.  Additional land taxed at potential economic value based on surrounding land use.

Private Pensions over State Pensions

Leads to a desire to build up capital in property.  Pension companies tend to invest in financial products and assets rather than productive enterprises.

The idea that the UK cannot afford to change seems odd when you realize that there is £6Tn in UK Private Pension funds.  

By way of comparison:

• £250bn to decarbonise residential properties
• Onshore wind projects cost £1M per MW (UK needs 100GW or so of energy production)

Specialization of the Economy

Specialization makes the economy less resilient.   This will be a huge problem as climate change bites.  The country should attempt to be self-sufficient in the resources required to provide the universal basic services.  Given that the UK has few natural resources, this is likely to require the UK to need to adopt a reduce, reuse and recycle approach to key materials needed to deliver basic services.

Trade Imbalances and other capital flows

The UK economy exports productive work and pays for it by selling off assets.  Needs to stop.

Must be a balance of trade based on:

1. Maximising self-sufficiency with respect to food stuffs and raw materials 
2. Fair trade of output of UK productive resources with those of other nations

Capital flows are disallowed except in specific circumstances.

Philosophical Root Causes

Command over Nature

Humans wrongly think that they can understand and command nature.  Nature is far more complex than humans realize and actions with respect to nature have consequences, many of which come to light years after they are taken.

Injections

1. A return to a posture of awe with respect to the beauty and complexity of nature; adopting the posture that nature cannot be tamed and humans must respect and live alongside nature.
2. Presumption of harm whenever humans do anything contrary to nature (including but not limited to monoculture, releasing plastic into the environment, introducing non-native species etc)
3. Immediate commitment to 50% of the planet left to nature (undisturbed) and 30% in the UK immediately given to nature.
4. Move to agroforestry and permaculture to integrate human food production with nature (alongside things like Dutch approach to growing in glasshouses and (possibly) industrial production of protein – meat substitutes) to balance need to grow food with need to restore nature.

Take what you want

Education and marketing promotes the idea that every human can take what they want from the earth with no adverse consequences.  In this context ‘take’ include pushing the by-products out into the world (not just CO2 and other GHGs but also waste of all kinds).  It also means the depletion of nature resources that will not be renewed (metals, oil and gas etc).  

Injections

1. The default moral position should be to take as little as you can from the earth and no more than you need.
2. Modesty as the default behaviour when faced with success.
3. Education with respect to what people actually need to survive and thrive.
4. Presumption against mass travel (or at a minimum fast travel)

I have the right to be happy

The next few decades are going to be tough.  People need to be resolved to this fact.  Happiness cannot be gained through life being easy and things being achievable through the mass deployment of non-human energy.

Injection

1. Happiness will be gained through the ability to enjoy the things that people really value (e.g. when asked at the ends of their lives what made them happy), such as relationships, experiences, learning, helping others.
2. People will need to take pride in overcoming adversity together as a community

I can be happy when those around me are not

The idea that inequality does not impact on my happiness.  

Injection

1. Presumption that I will be happy when those around me are happy
2. Presumption that my well-being and happiness cannot be at the expense of that of others

Transition – The first five years

Introduction

We have five years to protect humankind from real misery due to the warming of the earth.

Emergency action needs to be taken in that time to put the brakes on and buy time for permanent solutions.

Demand Reduction

In order to stop burning fossil fuels and slow the warming of the earth activities that rely on energy must stop.  Alternatives to fossil fuels will not arrive fast enough to save humanity from the effects of warming.

Injections

1. Immediate reduction in working hours (4 days at 7.5 hours per day with an aspiration to get to 4 days at 6 hours per day)
2. 2 days per month of volunteering and 2 days per month of continuing education, sport, arts, hobbies (the one enabling the other)
3. Working from home where possible
4. Employers pay commuting costs with incentives to provide transport, enable use of public transport, including paying for commuting time over 1 hour per day (may have unintended consequences so care with this one!)
5. Return to shorter hours for shops and entertainment venues (no later than 11pm, possibly earlier in the winter)
6. Mass insulation of homes (no cost to homeowner).
7. Free public transport with vehicle scrappage schemes.  Including innovations with respect to public transport like WestLink.

Towards self-sufficiency in food

The climate crisis is ultimately a food crisis.  The more the UK can be self-sufficient with respect to the food the more others can keep the food they produce.  This is likely to be forced upon the UK anyway as governments refuse to export food when they do not have enough for their own populations.   However, this will need to be achieved without adding to climate change through the wrong kind of food production.

Injections

1. National Basic Food Service to massively increase UK production of cereals, fruit vegetables and nuts.  Balanced between agroforestry, permaculture, small farms and industrial production.

Towards self-sufficiency (or better) in energy

Whilst the focus in the first five years will be on energy reduction, there are some quick wins with respect to energy production.

Injections

1. Community energy companies with simple access to the national grid.  National grid focussing on grid balancing.
2. Add an additional layer of local grid balancing (micro-grids) around substations including energy storage.
3. Nationalise residential energy and price controls such that investments can be made in decarbonizing home energy without the homeowner needing to pay.  Ability to provide district heating schemes to whole communities.
4. Research into medium term solutions, in particular year round energy storage (at electricity, hydrogen or heat).
5. Reverse ban on onshore wind.  
6. Much faster planning permission for emergency schemes (e.g. district heating)

Discourage energy use, nature and resource depletion

Beyond energy for commuting and heating homes, other forms of energy use (and depletion of nature and finite resources) will have to be discouraged.

There are two possible mechanisms – price or rationing.  The expectation would be that during the transition, rationing would be used to ensure that (say) 80% of resources are rationed to ensure fair access for all and the remaining 20% would be priced to encourage alternatives to be found.  

This would require lots of modelling and consultation but this will have to be done in the first year of the emergency powers being granted.  Areas subject to rationing and price controls would include:

1. Air flights – priority could be given to family visits, education, government business, NGOs and (some) business use for example with presumption against pure vacations.
2. Fast fashion – priority given to sustainable clothing, limited number of new garments per person per year.
3. Meat and Dairy – ban on imports from producers that deplete nature (e.g. Brazil stock yards), rationing on limited UK production etc
4. Staples – gradual reduction in imports of staple food stuffs (e.g. cereals) and replace with UK production.  
5. Tea, coffee and chocolate – ration to encourage countries to change land use to produce food for their own populations (and as production is hit by climate change)
6. Food importing by National Basic Food Service with food re-priced to enable local food production.

How will this be paid for?

There will be a concern that this needs to be paid for.  However, it needs to be resourced, which is not the same thing.  The government (ideally all party) will have to direct resources during the critical first five years to ensure change happens fast enough.

Injections

1. All Party government for five years (led by the party that wins the next generation)
2. ‘COVID’ style committee to hold the government to account
3. Regular briefings to the country on progress
4. Adoption of emergency powers to direct production to where it is needed (safe climate factories)
5. Economic modelling to predict where money will flow and accumulate
6. Actions taken to remove money from the economy which could be inflationary (based on analysis of where money flows to)

Messaging

What we oppose 

Simple moral language to try to unite single issue campaigners under a common purpose.

We Oppose	Can cover and unit the following
Greed	Desire for excessive wealth Land reform
Exploitation	Diversity, gender, race, sexual orientation Of natural resources and nature  Of the poor by the rich Of the global south by the global north Power imbalances in decision making Of wealth and assets (rent seeking)
Want	Homelessness / poor housing, food and energy poverty, low wages, health, disadvantage through disability
Idleness	Lack of opportunities to work, learn, and enjoy leisure, sport and culture

…and therefore what we stand for

We stand for	Which can cover
Restraint	Modesty, restraint, rebalancing (of prior greed), reduce, reuse, recycle
Courage	Fairness, courage (to oppose exploitation), reparations (prior exploitation), participatory justice
Support	Enough, self-sufficiency, resilience
Meaning	Meaningful work, educational opportunities, leisure, sport and cultural opportunities, 4 day week, decentralisation away from South East, reshoring, self-sufficiency, resilience, participatory democracy

… Expressed as rights and obligations

I have the right…

To expect a life filled with meaningful opportunities to work on behalf of my community, learn knowledge and life skills, enjoy time with friends and family and participate in sports and cultural activities.

To be supported in meeting my basic needs for shelter (including warmth), food, travel and wellbeing (including physical and mental health)

In return I will…

Show restraint in everything I do, in particular only taking from the earth that which can be replaced to ensure that future generations are able to thrive.

Show courage ensuring fairness in all my dealing with others in my community and across the globe and participating on decision making and the delivery of justice in my community and across the globe

I regularly re-read Full Employment in a Free Society written by William Beveridge during the Second World War.  Beveridge’s contention was that a government should ensure that there is sufficient total outlay (consumption) in the economy to provide full employment where full employment refers to freedom from both Want (material needs not being met) and Idleness (psychological needs not being met).  In this short paper I attempt to synthesise his ideas with those of Modern Monetary Theory to provide a blueprint for a post- Neo Liberal world in which the government generates full employment by addressing the crisis facing the human race due man-made global warming.

BACKGROUND

1. Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production
2. All members of the community shall be free from Want; that is they should have an income sufficient for a healthy subsistence – adequate, food, shelter, clothing and warmth along with opportunities for leisure and personal growth
3. Idleness is not the same as Want, but a separate evil, which men[sic] do not escape by having an income
4. For those who are capable, employment provides the means by which production is achieved which in turn supports consumption including consumption which ensures freedom from Want; employment also provides freedom from Idleness
5. Money serves as a medium of exchange, as a store of value, and as a unit of account.
6. As productivity increases the volume of production required to deliver the consumption necessary to provide freedom from Want no longer provides sufficient employment to prevent Idleness
7. As productivity and idleness increases labour’s share of GDP decreases leading to an accumulation of wealth by asset owners (money as a store of value) and increased income inequality
8. A government that issues its own money can pay for goods, services, and financial assets without a need to collect money in the form of taxes or debt issuance in advance of such purchases.
9. A government that issues its own money is only limited in its money creation and purchases by inflation, which accelerates once the real resources (labor, capital and natural resources) of the economy are utilized at full employment;  this demand-pull inflation can be controlled by taxation and bond issuance, which remove excess money from circulation
10. The emphasis since the 1970’s on shareholder primacy has led to a culture which prizes short term financial results and production over consumption and drives companies to sabotage customers, employees and the community
11. To avoid catastrophe countries must drive to zero (or negative) carbon emissions as quickly as possible (10 – 20 years and not 30 – 40 years) and must make immediate progress not back end targets
12. The technology solutions required to drive to zero or negative carbon emissions are known but not economic in the short run

THEREFORE

1. A primary responsibility of government shall be to ensure that all members of the community are free from both Want and Idleness (full employment)
2. For those able to work employment shall be the primary way to ensure freedom from Want and Idleness
3. When the employment required to ensure freedom from Want is not sufficient to ensure freedom from Idleness, the government shall generate additional consumption of products and services that provide benefit to the whole community sufficient to ensure freedom from Want and Idleness 
4. The government shall issue its own money to fund the consumption required to ensure freedom from Want and Idleness
5. The government shall use taxation and the issuing of bonds to prevent demand-pull inflation resulting from excess money circulating after the real resources of the economy are fully employed
6. The government shall ensure that the consumption it funds through the issue of its own money shall be purposeful leading to a) freedom from Idleness, b) an increase in labour share of GDP and c) a reduction in income inequality; the consumption funded by the government shall include the provision of lifelong education, health and social care 
7. The government shall use taxation and robust legislation to ensure that shareholders and executives are not incentivised to maximise profits at the expense of consumers or the community at large
8. The government shall use the reversal of the growth of carbon and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to provide the consumption required to provide freedom from Want and Idleness; directly, through subsidies or by funding the learning necessary to allow alternative zero carbon technologies to displace existing carbon emitting technologies

Curing our addiction to house price inflation is the key to solving so many of the problems that we face as a society.

An average three bedroom house costs £125,000 to build and will last 90 years. Most people who own their own home will do so from the age of around 30 and average life expectancy is 80 years. On this basis each generation should to sustain the nation’s housing stock each household should need to invest £78,000 on average. And yet the average price of a house is £228,000.

The median disposable household income in the UK is £28000. If the household have a mortgage with a loan to value ratio of 90% then they would need to take a mortgage that is nine times the household’s disposable income. If the members household were able to get to a mortgage at an interest rate of 3% per annum they would be paying 50% of their disposable income in mortgage payments.

And in spite of this we manage to convince ourselves that ever growing house prices are making us richer.

What if we approach the whole thing with a different mind set. Shelter is only one of a number of fundamental needs that we have as humans and as such allocating 20% of our income to it seems to be a reasonable goal to aim for.

On this basis, and assuming long run interest rates of 4% per annum an average house would need to cost £110,000 or approximately half of the current average. How could this be achieved?

1. Half the value of every residential property in the UK
2. Get UK financial institutions to write off half of all mortgage debt
3. Compensate householders by issuing sovereign money (free of debt) to compensate for the loss in asset value with a re-imposition of limits on what this money can be used for
4. Control prices and rents from that point onward.

This would represent about a 10% write down in the balance sheets of UK financial institutions but allowing interest rates to rise would compensate them and lead to improved savings rates.

House holders could apply for a revaluation of their properties but only if genuine value has been added (e.g. building an extension); normal decoration or replacing a bathroom or kitchen would not attract a revaluation.

The revaluation might not be uniform across the country as the goal would be to eliminate situations where local people cannot afford to buy locally.

Going forward all house prices would advance in line with the increase in median earnings. When a house is sold the house holder would get the current valuation for the house, any excess paid by the buyer would go to the government as stamp duty.

The main drawback is how to continue to encourage house building when the scheme would effectively lead to negative land prices. Therefore, residential land prices would also need to be controlled so that they never exceeded that price that would be paid for the alternative non-residential housing uses possible in the area (be that industrial, retail or agricultural). Where necessary the government would step in to subsidise the acquisition on land for residential house building. This would be funded through the savings in housing benefit that would result from the resetting and controlling of housing prices. By my reckoning the £10B required to acquire land would no exceed the savings in housing benefit currently paid to people in work who would now be able to afford decent housing without the support of the government.

One addition idea which I need to spend more time on would be to look at the Danish mortgage bond system; this would potentially provide a suitable investment for the current house holders who are issued with sovereign money leading to a long term housing market where house purchases are financed using money that has been saved in pension pots rather than created by financial institution as debt.

There is definitely more work to be done on the detail of the scheme but for me, reform of housing is the key that unlocks so many other policies, particularly in this time of climate crisis. With the population less dependent on either large employers or the government to be able to put even an inadequate roof over their heads:

1. People will have better choices with respect to taking time out from work to bring up their own children;
2. People will be able to live and work locally; reducing the number of cars and the number of miles travelled reducing emissions of CO2;
3. People will be able to make better provision for their old age which in turn will produce funds for investment in UK industry and provide the basis for a stable housing market in the long run.