Basic Income and Global Plutarchy

The New Statesman . Morning guy, Ollie Dougmore of the New Statesman here. Hope you're well. Really looking forward to our chat later. I think it should be a lot of fun. I think your idea of the precariat has probably never been more relevant or another way of looking at it is whether or not actually it still exists and whether the the material conditions are such a large swath of people is whether uh you can sort of segment the population that way whether it's sort of just become a general status Hi Olly. Uh thanks for the message. I'm looking forward to our discussion. I think one of the issues on which we should concentrate is how the whole of the education system is being infiltrated by big finance, particularly from the United States, and is actually poisoning the very character of our education system . But I look forward to our discussion. Cheers . Standing. You might not have heard of him, but his ideas have affected your life. He coined the term precaria. His latest book is about market forces, the increasing financialization of our education system, and the terrible consequences for us as Quick bit of housekeeping before the interview starts. At the beginning of our conversation there's a little bit of noise interference, both from the builders outside and actually guys' phone. Don't worry, it does stop. Enjoy the interview. Guy Standing, author of Human Capital, the book I'm holding in my hands right now. How are you? Very well. I'm I'm enjoying the prospect of talking about a very complex subject which is which touches all of us in some way. And it's it's in a major crisis our education system. And it's part of the reason why I think we're seeing a drift to the far right uh all over the world and most of all in in the United States, where the education industry has been corrupted to a point which is uh really frightening, which is why one of the chapters of the book i is called uh the ultimate horror, uh Caligula on the Potomac . And I have this image of Trump being Caligula and he's appointing his horse uh uh in all these senior positions, including the Secretary of Education, who promptly abolishes the the Department of Educ ation. I mean, you can't make it up much of what's going on, but it does have terrifying consequences, and we're going to talk about that, I think. Absolutely we are. I mean, your your work is far reaching from the Precariat to the commons, um, to to about the education system. And I'd like to try and absorb as much of that in the space of the hour or so that we have together. But I I feel like before we do that, I would just like to get a sense of as an economist, as someone who spent a lot of time thinking about the organization, the structure of economies , how do you define what a successful economy looks like? Because particularly in national political discourse, we fixate on a number and it's generally GDP, possibly GDP per capita. Do you think that's a useful instrument? I mean No. I I the my previous book was called The Politics of Time . And the final chapter is Imagining We Have a Political Realignment on the Left for the twenty thirties . And it's an alliance which has an ecological base and it restores people's control over their time by giving everybody basic security and enabling the great traditions of the left of the commons to be revived. I think the idea of work that is not labour is part of the the future vision of a good society. But the most fundamental problem we have, I believe, is that people in masses in the procariat that I've written about and on which I get m emails every single day from all over the world, the book's been translated into twenty five languages, so I get emails from everywhere. And the constant refrain is that we're living in chronic insecurity. Faced by debt, faced by inequalities of all types, and unless we have an agenda that's offering ordinary people, pe particularly people in the precariat, basic security . We're going to see further and further erosion of civilized values, of empathy, of compassion and solidarity, and more and more neo fascist trends along what we're seeing, this country and I live in Europe and I see it all over Europe . And we're very close to being on the edge of an existential disaster, another dark night. This madman in the White House is is just an emblem of the crisis. So I think we need a new progressive politics. Courageous, transformational politics. And that in a sense is what I've been trying to do through my books The Commons, Basic Income, The Blue Commons, a book I wrote about the oceans and what's happening there. And this latest one, in a sense, is is bringing th the thoughts together about what responsibility our education system has for the dystopia that's that's arising around us. And and I think that uh one when one's written a book, which is one thinks the subject is really important, one can get carried away and think that you've written an important book and and and you have to be modest if you've got any sense. And you don't know if a book's going to it's about to come out, you don't know if it's going to have a life. I was telling the publishers yesterday. So but I do think I do think that it is a fundamental part of the existential threat that we're facing at the moment. How do you um how do you sit or where where does the precariat sit in terms of you know the sort of traditional Marxist terms, proletariat, bourgeoisie. I mean, I assume there's probably been a degree of pushback in relation to the terminology from sort of traditional Marxists themselves. I mean talk to me a little bit about what about what it means. Well when the book when the Precariat first came out, I remember being invited to Marxism today to speak, and they set me up with three people who wanted to attack me, and there were about five hundred people in the audience, and I thought this is a bit of a setup, you know, and these were all classic traditional uh Marxists and I happened to be Marxism , so I I I know the language, I know the the concepts and everything. And what I was really ha happy about at the end is that not only did a lot of people buy my book, but I clearly had the support because the young reali ze that the old class uh distin ctions were fitted for the nineteenth century. I'm sure Marx would not have written the same things as he wrote about class today if he were writing, and it's always rem should be remembered that Capital Volume three ended with a short chapter that was incomplete about classes. And and I think what we've got today is what I call a plutarchy , where we've got what I call rentier capitalism, which is meaning that more and more of the income is flowing to the owners of property. Financial property most of all, but intellectual property and physical property, and less and less is going to those who perform labour and work, right ? And the old class stru cture of a bourgeoisie versus a proletariat is a bit stupid, right? Because the proletari at that the Social Democrats supported, the Marxists suppor ted, were expected to be in full time labor. Stable, full time labor. Okay? That's not what the procariate is experiencing. The procariate is experiencing unstable labo, shurort term labour, volatile labour, volatile earnings and for the first time in history, two things. One is this is the first mass class in history, the Precariat , whose level of education, formal level of education, is above the level of labor they can expect to get . That was never the case with the proletariat. Charlie Chaplin's case, you know, and we all know modern times. And this is also the case where they are systematically exploited by debt. Debt is an exploitative mechanism that the precariat has to live with all the time . And the third thing about the precariat is this is the first class class, mass working class, that is in the process of losing rights , losing the rights of citizenship, losing what the French called le dois acqui , okay, the acquired rights that the proletariat and the trade unions and social democrat ic parties fought to obtain , but now are being taken away, including right to due process, including right to be seeing in the political spectrum a a party, a mechanism, set of institutions that are representing their interests and aspirations. So I think it makes sense to continue to talk about class. Class hasn't gone away. What I hate about much of the popular analysis is the millennium generation or generation X, Y, whatever bloody number they can come up with. It's pathetic. It's PR stuff, okay? If you're a proper social scientist, you should be thinking about class. How does class work? Relations are production , relations of distribution, relations to the state. That is how should you define class, whether you take a Weberian approach or a Marxian approach, right? So for me, I I've seen the evolution of the debate since I first published the first edition of the Precari at. And now I get huge numbers of people writing to me from around the world understanding the Precariat and, not only understanding the Procariat, but doing so with pride. When I first wrote about it, it was a matter of shame. Oh, you know, I'm a failure I'm a failure, I'm in the Procariat, right? Today, people stand up and say, I'm part of the procariat. And I like that, because if you're going to have a class politics, then you must have a certain dignity and pride in in who what you belong to. And I think that we are we are at that stage at the moment where the biggest fear is that in a it's a class in the making, not yet a class for itself in in Marxian terms. And what that means is that they know what they're against insecurity, right? Lack of hope. But they don't know what's there for in a united sense. So you've got the less educated part of the precaria. They listen to the Donald Trumps and the Nigel Farage 's and the people in the cabinet of this government who are promising you know uh or a or a neo-fascist alternative, which is much worse, of course. Whereas the the progressive part, the educated part of the precariat, are saying, hey, we're not hearing a politics for us. A politics of paradise, as I call it. So we're at a stage where we're we're a dangerous moment, a Kalpolanian transformational moment, where we could easily go off to a another period of fascism of some sort. Some people don't like that term, but authoritarianism, or we need a progressive agenda that is hasn't been offered on the cards. Yeah, I'm um I don't know if you you've read a book by Dan Evans called Nation of Shopkeepers, which um he he he talks about sort of uh uh this this is this exactly the same sort of analysis really where he talks about sort of down to mobile graduate class and the petty bourgeoisie that that that sort of within Britain today, you know, whether I don't know, take your pick, uh hairdressers, tradies, whatever it is, and th there are these these two classes, and that I think my reading is that I think particularly on the new right, the British radical right, I think Farage has a very specific understanding of that that class and how to mobili themze electorally. And I'm not so sure about whether you can say the same about the Labour government. Um I would just I you you finished your answer there by talking about fascism and so I I I would just I'd like to probe that a little bit really because I so far I was quite reluctant to invoke that term when talking about Farage, when talking about reform, until we got this announcement about sort of um d the intention to to sort of pursue a policy of mass deportation. Um, you know, possibly even revoking the right to stay for people who don't have sex status in Britain, people who we've previously said, no, it's okay, you can be here five, ten, fifteen years, whatever, say, no, no, you're out and we're gonna deport you. And I the more I thought about that idea and a actually its implementation, well, you know, the the British police force has already stretched to such an extent that m a lot a lot of sort of um it's not the right term, sort of menial crime goes unsolved, uninvestigated. So the police probably can't implement this sort of thing. The border force perhaps would want to do it but probably doesn't have the the necessary people to do it. The the the airline companies uh essentially refuse to run the deportation flights even under private charter. So you're probably going to have to use the RAF in order to run the deportation flights. And at that point I'm thinking, well, this is quite a militarised response to to to immigration, to a different ethnic makeup of the country. And I started to soften to the idea of invoking that terminology. I just I just wondered if you'd talk a little bit about what the word means to you and how applicable you think it is to the current states in in British politics. Yeah, I think I mean in a sense, we're seeing in Britain a a copying of what's happening in the United States so far in a my much milder milder way. What Trump has has done, of course, is he's created, and one shouldn't use these words too uh lightly, he's created in IC an effective potential Gestapo, equivalent to the nineteen thirties in Germany, who are outside control of civil society . And they are taking action, you know, listen to when they shot that poor woman Renee Good, yeah. Yeah, Renee Good. Of course, Vance immediately jumped up and said he has total total immunity, you know. He can do what he likes, in other words. And it's a sort of extra extra judicial process. And the fear must be that if the far right in this country were to enter government, that something equivalent like would would take place here . I I use the term that the far right is following a policy which is a a term that's not been widely circulated, but I'm I'm trying to m increase its circulation if you like, a por ophobia. Apor ophobia rather than an exenophobia . And aporophobia means fear and hatred of those without resources Because if you think about it, both Trump and Farage and Orban and and Marine Le Pen, for example, they loved rich foreigners. They love the plutocrats wherever they come from, from Saudi or the Israel or wherever. So it it's not anti foreigner per se. It's anti those who don't have resources and who may want resources. The people who have every reason to be resentful and have grievances because they're insecure, they're they're disadvantaged, etc and and it the the genius in verticomas of of Trump is that he's a Caesar. Now Caesar is identified as a genius identifying enemies, that he can mobilize enough of the plebs, enough of the populace against those enemies. So it might be women, it might be Muslims, it might be, you know, any any number and groups you can identi fy the dirties , the deplorables, whatever n m use euphemism they use. And that's what we're seeing. That's what we're seeing. And my conc ern all of our concern should be that you see social democrat governments who haven't got a solution moving to try to preempt them. Moving to the right, and therefore being dragged, not just with appeasement, but with going in the same direction, which is only helping to legitimize the next group taking it bit further. And and and that's not a solution. And that's where we are today. But I think it gets back to the the subject of our discussion, which is the role of education . Because the education system is failing to be a bulwark against this drift. It's failing to give us our values. And if you go back to the ancient hist ory, if you go back to the ancient Athenians, and that's where I start in the book, Plato under stood that you can only have democracy if you had minimal inequality and maximum public education, because otherwise the potential tyrants could mislead the people who don't have education . And the idea of education was liber ation, teaching people empathy, to be able to put oneself in the shoes of the other. May not be agree with them , you know, but to understand them and to empathize to the point where, okay, it's not my lifestyle, but it's fine, you know. And and we're losing that capacity because of what's happened to the education industry through history. And all the great educationalists, going from the ancient Athenians through Rousseau, through Hegel, through Marx, if you like, through uh Cardinal Newman's James uh John Stuart Mill, and into the twentieth century with Tawney and and Lasky and G. D. H. Cole, all these people would be horrified if they saw what the Labour government and New Labour and the Conservative have done to education in this country. And I'll give you one examp le, because it's an example that seems to have gone under the radar last year, but symboliz es an incredible development. Last July a Bolivian billionaire on the right, political right , in alliance with a Wall Street Comanyp that he helped found and an ex-employee of his runs bought the fastest growing British university . They bought a university with five campuses and over forty thousand students . What does that tell you? I was talking to some MPs, Labour MPs. I said , did you know about this? What guy you talking about? They didn't know . Here you had a university, the Arden University it's called, okay, over forty thousand students , five campuses, o taken over by a right wing Bolivian billionaire . And you don't know about it? I don't know about it, no, exactly. First I've heard about it, yeah. Exactly. Now, this is a situation where not I could give 20 examples where you're having foreign finance. Maybe maybe he's a lovely man to his dogs this believe me. I mean I don't mind. But he's never ha I've I've checked up his history. He has no experience in education whatsoever. He's never invested in he made his money on the stock exchange in Wall Street, right? Well, good luck to him. If that's how he you know, okay, that's that's not my point. My point is we're allowing foreign capital to buy up our education system . Now, can you imagine Jenny Lee or somebody like that from Tribune? I was talking to the Tribune people the other day. Jenny Lee, who founded the Open University in 1969, can you imagine how she'd react . Or can you imagine you know any of the great people on the left reacting? You're turning your education system over to foreign finance ? Answerable to a certain president? Come on. So it in a sense this isn't a matter for keeping calm, gentlemen. It's a matter for us to get onto the barricades. And I and I'm not exaggerat ing, because it goes all the way down to preschool. We have we have our schools on send being taken over by foreign private equity. What they can they go for short term profits . They can close them the facilities whenever they wish. And why would you do this to yourself as a society? Well this is this is the point, right? Is is if should education be a commodity? No. Should it not be a public good or even just something held in common? Exactly. Is do you understand it to be a part of the commons, it's not. Yeah, that's why the title of the book, The Education Commons. Because education has always been a part of the commons. It's what you share and learn and elaborate . And it's not just scientific educ scientific knowledge, it's vernacular knowledge, knowledge that's gained through community involvement. And I give examples of how the importance of having democratic control and the commons will always have stewards who are responsible for preserving the commons and gatekeepers , organiz ations, bodies that hold the stewards to account. We've lost both. She consults Jamie Diamond before she introduces her budget. Well, you know, this is undignified beyond anything else, but think what means when you have your education system at every level. I show it in the book. Every level being taken over by foreign private equity. Now private equity has a model, okay, short term profit maximization . By flip , strip, or the other way round. Okay? Asset stripping by any other name. They make their profits, they pull pile their firms with debt, and then declare bankruptcy or sell it to another private equity company , and so your schooling is turned into a commodity. It's a commodity, right? Now you go through from preschool to sem schools to uh so-called academies, which are not acad emies all the way up through universities through uh apprenticeship. Ask me about apprenticeship, I get a little angry. Okay. Tell me about apprenticeship. Well get angry. A certain Ewan Blair , the eldest son of a certain Tony Blair , took a very nice wheeze by establishing a company called Metaver se , whereby he took advantage of the apprenticeship levy. The apprenticeship levy means that firms have to pay a certain amount to have apprenticeship or they have to pay tax . So Ewan Blair becomes a broker, apprenticeship broker. He doesn't do any training himself. He doesn't do any education himself, but he puts firms gets cheap labor, they get called apprenticeships, they go on two days a month or whatever it is, week maybe , for part time training, and then they go back and they're paid lower wages than everybody else because they're apprenticeship apprentices. And then for some peculiar reason, best known to politicians . He gets $1.7 billion raised in venture capital . His firm for six years makes vast losses every single year, hasn't made any profits . And then he's allowed by the government to issue BSC degrees , apprenticeship degrees. Now what they are , heaven only knows, okay? And then, to cap the story , he is given MBE for services to education . Now one wonders what they are and one wonders why he got it . You've done more services to education. I'm sorry. I'm you can't do less. I was gonna say guy, I'm not sure, but yeah. In a sense you need Monty Python to do justice to stories like that. But I've got others in in in the book. And and and it it is it is a s a stat ement that says our education system is in disarray. And that's the that's a key theme of book, a serious theme . You write in the book, as the amount of schooling has grown, there has been a long decline in creative, imaginative, and innovative thinking. Tell me more about that, elaborate on that idea for me. Well, the extraordinary thing is that particularly since the reforms that Thatcher introduced and through the the Schooling Act of nineteen eighty eight , basically the curricula curriculum of of schools was was narrowed dramatically. She wanted all arts to be ex and humanities to be excluded from the school curriculum. Keith Joseph was similarly but he persuaded her to be a little bit m a compromise on that. And what's gradually happened s as I show is that the curriculum in schools has become narrower and narrower. Fewer and fewer students, pupils, teenagers and into on to university, are taking arts or humanities, history, philosophy, you know, that's almost they're almost threatened species . And what we're seeing is a real decline, and I give some statistics, in a number of related uh themes. One is deep reading. Deep reading is is in in deep decay, if you like. Another is creative imagination. And third that goes with it is a loss of play in schools. And I give the example of the most expensive uh academy, so called academy, and they're not really academies, but they're called academies, most expensive, c costing forty six million pounds in Peterborough . And the headmaster was was asked by some when they were opening this school, um, where are the playgrounds? We don't have any playgrounds in this school. No playgrounds. The children don't need to play. They've got to concentrate in class. We don't want waste time and play . Now , any psychologist, child psychologist, or educational play is a vital part of learning. It's where you have your creativity, your empathy. It's the that is the zone of learning learning to be a human being. Learning how to relate to other people . And along with what I call the AI paradox, which come to perhaps later, we're we're seeing a diminishing amount of artistic , ethical, philosophical histor ical ask ask children, ask students about our history . You'll be horrified. They're not teaching it. I mean I I I think they are vital parts of a good education system. And yet our Prime Minister says we've got to make the schooling system more oriented to jobs . No, no, no, no, no . I would say the opposite. You gotta rescue. Of course we I'm not being unrealistic, of course you need to learn skills so that you can get a career, blah, blah, blah. But you've got to get a balance . And I don't hear that balance or see the evidence of that balance over the last 30 years. On the contrary, the sort of instrumentalism of human capital, this horrible term that I hate, which is driving people into a neoliberal mentality and orientation is diminishing our critical thinking . Now I wherever I go, and I've given talks I I I did a calculation, I couldn't believe the number of presentations at universities I've given, but I've spoken at a hundred and fifty five universities in forty nine countries, and everywhere people , the academic s, the teachers, the students are saying roughly the same thing, right? They are they are angry. I was talking to a couple last night 'cause they were asking my my book. I say, yeah, yes, true. You know, but I I have a section there on Xaminitus . Examinitus, right? It's a pandemic. It's a pandemic. I mean, I give some statistics . I mean, people from from age three in some countries, all the way up, are taking an incredible number of exams . And there's no evidence that this does does people good. Okay ? The best best system in Finland, they don't have any exams until they leave school. And then it's voluntary almost. And and and they they do much better . So so it's no evidence that uh that examinitis is a desirable thing. Yeah, I think I think it's not it's not to do do down or traduce in any way vocational training or or or indeed not to, you know, do down higher education. But I I I've come across this most specifically in uh in Jonathan Haidt's work around social media, smartphones, and consequences for for teenagers at the moment. But I mean there's just reams and reams of evidence that a play based childhood, um particularly one that involves copious amounts of time in the outdoors and indeed I mean you mentioned Finland, you know, some Nordic countries, you you don't really start education in the way that we understand it. Until you're seven years old. Your your your the early years, infant years, are based around social relationships, interact creative play. And I just I wonder I I I what is the incentive or what is the cause of look of of looking at that and going, no, actually we should financialise the educate, you know, we should marketise the educator. It just it just seems the evidence base is there and you turn your head and go, no, I'm not- I'm just going to ignore it. I'm going to I'm going to focus a system that either allows for rentier capitalism, allows for an extracted market. Like w uh is it is it simply that the sort of it's driven by the internal logic of capitalism that there's a profit to be derived there and if and if it it's to the detriment of our future generations, then so be it? Well no I I think that the first the first point that I'm going to be emphasising again and again and again I think is we need much greater awareness of the crisis, of the of the depth of the threat to real education. The second is thing I think we need to regain democratic commons control over every level of of learning. You've just mentioned Scandinavia. One of the the tragedies, and I've worked in Scandinavia and and written even written a book on Sweden . The Swedish system has gone has gone bad. It's really bad. They they introduced privatized schooling and uh highly standardized and the the CEO of the biggest um privatized schooling chain in in in Sweden said, We don't care if we're con t compared to McDonald's, but we believe in standardization. And and they the the system is really creepy. And they've pushed up that they've they've lowered the age of going to school now to six. Whereas in Finland they're still holding the line a bit. Um but but uh the the the trend um sorry, the trend in Sweden has been worrying b at the same time as inequality has increased dramatically in Sweden. You know, when I worked there in the in the e ighties , uh the the old ethos was there, but it's gone. Talk to me about the AI paradox . The AI paradox is this that the idea in Silicon Valley , and I have been invited to talk in Silicon Valley at the Singularity University and Mountain View, is that uh the Singularity thesis is that as artificial intelligence rises, it will rise to equal human intelligence. The AI paradox that I've put forward in the book is that as AI rises , HI, human intelligence, goes down . And there is there is a worrying possibility that this paradox is being played out because Because there there are lots of associations. You mentioned Hate's book and screen and stuff. As far as his thesis, which I discuss in the book, it the the decline of uh mental intelligence and the rest of it and the stresses that that he's talking about, the anxious tech began before the the the iPhone, right? It began before. But that was accentuated. It was this intensification of schooling and the whole orientation that preceded the the fur. But the the paradox is that all the time we're seeing AI increase, it's reducing the scope for critical thinking, it's increasing standardization . I discuss the biggest uh system con migo, it's called, of electronic tutor ing. Okay ? And people are turning more and more we we're we are're all ha all responsible for doing it. So whatever you know, even when you get to a a cooking recipe you turn to AI you can get anything. And it's creepy that your your emails where I get e many ema ils and then AI has drafted a response at the bottom. I mean it's really creepy. Really creepy. But but but think about it, it's making more of us lazy, more of us uh thinking well, if AI says that it must be right. All right, now the the diminishing of critical thinking is not just linked to one phenomenon , it's linked to a a process and a fact that we're not learning from a young age and through our lives , the ability to be critical and the ability to exercise what I've called in the book Pahysia, it is an ancient Greek, the ability to speak what we really think because we are fearful of the consequences . And and we're having the advancing of a panoptican state where the surveillance is incredibly powerful, and not only powerful today, but what you or I say today could be used against us in twenty years' time. You know, that's why you should erase this this interview immediately, please. But the the the the simple issue is that all of this AI, which some people in my view quite correctly call an alien intelligence rather than artificial, because it is alien to us, is reducing our critical capacities and reducing our sense of being ab le to exercise Pahisya . You know? And and this is a part of the challenge and why I say in the final chapter we need, as a matter of urgency, to set up a national commission for education, which looks at the fundamentals and says we need a we need a a fresh start. Okay? And that that use thinking about AI, and it and we shouldn't only think of AI. We but it is a very fundamental part of what's taking place. And thinking of the musks and the Larry Ellisons and the Tony Blair as their agent taking over more and more of access to our data and data on you and me that can be used I don't know. Right? We don't know. And and this is this is the sort of society which is going to inhibit critical thinking and And the example of of uh a number of examples that I give in the book of where self censorship is the first thing that happens. I um I heard a Jimmy Carr joke recently where he said, you know, student a student uses AI to write an essay, the the lecturer uses AI to market, and in the end AI gets the job. And you get to the point where you eliminate your critical faculty to be quite dangerous. I f we've spoken about height, we've referenced height a couple of times here, and I slightly tangential, but I just uh ask your perspective 'cause I think it's relevant. I mean, where what are your thoughts on um you know the pro 's ideas around either a social media ban or a smartphone ban for uh adolescents, young teenagers. I mean how how do you think about something like that? I think it's um a no-brainer. I think that given the current uh public education or what capacity is for it. And given the vulnerabilities that we're all experiencing, the insecurities, I think there's got m we've got to have much stronger safeguards, especially as the uh influ encers of the world, the dominant influencers are some very unsavoury people who can use misinformation and disinformation and all these sexual imagery. I think I think it's a no-brainer that they've got to be str onger safeguards. But ultimately, ultimately, we need to build safeguards in ourselves and in our children and in our in our friends and in ourselves and uh gib to be able to withstand this stuff. We uh regulations are needed, but regulations by themselves will not achieve a limited I've um just to return to the AI point, I've uh I've read interviews you've given where you've spoken about uh emergency basic income, i.e., in you know, in response to a natural disaster, famine, war, uh look at what's happening in Gaza now, look what's happening in Ukraine, whereby in terms of aid efforts, relief efforts, that we may be better to sort of just provide the population with cash, basic income, right? Rather than other other attempts at aid, which have the possibility of, well, don't stimulate the local economy. There's a possibility for a greater possibility for corrup tion. Um how do you sit the sort of conversation around AI, the way we've been talking about decreased to human intelligence and then your ideas around basic income? How do they connect to each other? They ca they're very strongly and and I discuss the connections in the in the final chapter. I mean I believe we need basic income as a matter of justice and a matter of freedom but but justice . But I think one of the strongest arguments about moving in a direction of a basic income, and we've now got hundreds of experiments and pilots to back this up, is that it le ads to people having greater sense of control of their time and greater sense of being able to spend more time learning, putting that learning into effect, and with standing the pressures that come from insecurity . And the evidence is very strong in my view. If we don't have an agenda that gives people basic security, they will be susceptible to this populist stuff and be suicidal or stressed out or suffer from addictions of some sort. If if you or I were chronically insecure and you don't know how you're gonna m meet your food pill and whatever it is , you're gonna drift that way. I mean let's not pretend otherwise. And I hate the judgmental sort of uh approach to welfare and things. I think it's disgraceful, disgusting, unnecessary. I think we've got to rescu e this sense of time and And that's why I believe in it. As it happens, I'm working with the Palestinians at the moment on an emergency basic income, supposedly for Gaza, but nothing is feasible in that genocidal uh uh situation, but also in the occupied West Bank. And an emergency basic income, at least 's not a panacea, but it's it has to be part of the apparatus. You have to give people the possibility of getting control a little bit of control in their lives . And I think the same with basic income in Britain. I bel I strongly believe in it. I was involved in the Welsh basic income pilot. I've been involved in other other schemes. And everywhere we have seen the biggest improvement is on mental health. And you need mental health to be learning. You need mental health to be responsible citizen and you shouldn't disparage that. I mean, you know, this government is offering security to finance. Stability. Security. Guarantee. But they're not offering ordinary people in the precariat anything approaching security, okay? And as long as that happens, their voting share will collapse. They're dead men walking. Unless we have a progressive agenda which says that everybody in our society has the right to basic security. Not you don't have to do X, Y, and Z. You have a right as a human be ing. And and I think that is so fundamental that that I get annoyed when I hear sophisticated arguments. Suppose it won't reduce the labor. Suppose it will be made people lazy. Well the when let's stop b abolishing inheritance, shall we? Because they're getting a lot of basic income for doing n nothing. Let's put it that way. So I mean I mean in a sense the the the rhetoric of opponents of giving people basic security is hypocritical to the nth degree and if we don't wake up and give people bas ic security so they can have some dignity, have some prospects, then we'll deserve to be moving in the direction we talked about earlier. Yeah, I was um I was on the radio with the Shadow Home Secretary a while ago and I got his eyes bulging out of his head when I said it might be meritocratic for um an inheritance tax of a hundred percent on you know on inc on wealth over let's say five or ten million quid and he absolutely lost it. Um that's the Conservative Party. But the the the the the But yeah but but but I would say I would say let's not be party political because I I could I could name you some members of this government who would say probably the same. Which is exactly where I was going to to move to move to Guy because um the watchword in in within the government and particularly as it relates to welfare at the moment is is about contribution. It's about the contributory principle, a contributory society. And I just wonder well I'll sort of I'll just tear it up for you, for you to talk about how you think about that and and the conflict it has with the version of uh a sort of uh altruistic, empathetic welfare system that you've just described. Well in the in the book Politics of Time, I've got an append ix where I say what is the most valuable form of work in the British economy and British society? Most valuable easily. Okay ? And of course the answer is unpaid care. Okay? Unpaid care mainly done by women is far more valuable, yet it is regarded as non work . It is regarded in GNP measures as zero. Zero, okay? So if I spend more time looking after my elderly mother, GNP goes down. Poor old Rachel Reeves pulls her hair out, so does so does Starmer, etc. Which is ridiculous. Come on, we we should we should mock it. We sh really should mock it. It's about time we if a Martian came down, they think you're mad, okay. So the work that is done by more people that has more value is given zero. And of course, if you do such work you're said you're you're called lazy because you're not contributing to GDP and y you don't get access to proper benefits, universal credit or whatever it might be, okay? And you get disparaged as a a s a skyver or or whatever. Now we need to get out of that mentality. I don't know whether you are contributing more to society than I am. Probably you are. But but it doesn't we w we cannot say that I mean Michelangelo spent a lot of time not doing anything . He would have been called lazy and he would have been he would have sanctioned he would have been sanctioned . I mean, this is this is how silly we have got into a state of a sort of dualistic utilitarian thinking which leads in in very bad directions because it leads directions okay, how do we make the work shy ? Get on with it, you know? So so various ministers can get up and jump and down there and you should ask them I bet you got a lot of pocket money when you were a boy . You know, I bet you got inheritance. You know, and you went to public school or whatever it might be, right? So I mean, we have to get back from that . Many people s have I mean I've just passed some people lying in the street, right? In the tube station . And those people have probably had a series of accidents, a series of things that have happened in their liv es. I don't know. I don't know. But I'm not going to rush to judgment . And nor should anybody else. Okay? Now, of course one should help those people. One should help everybody, help you and me as well. But the the essence of our judgmental society has to be challenged. And that I think is what education is about. Education is teaching people that we've all had a different experience. We've all had uh mishaps or whatever, but I don't know. I don't know what yours are or what mine are, and therefore you don't build a system that is judgmental on a statistical average. That's what algorithms are doing today, more and more. We're seeing categorization which leads to discrimination and we're seeing the consequences of that. If you have this characteristic, this character, this characteristic, you're more likely to be doing a criminal act, and therefore we'll go and raid your home. Mm-hmority report. Yeah, I think it's it's one of the um the greatest thefts of our modern time, to my mind, other than perhaps that of the commons, is that of idle time. Because when when you think about the sort of paradigm shift ing moments of divine inspiration. Where's uh where's Isaac Newton when when he develops his his his laws of physics? Well he's he's sat beneath an apple tree and something hits him on the head. Where's where's Archimedes at the m uh uh when he shouts Eureka? He's sat in the bath. You know, we we don't we don't get that anymore. And I and I think uh we're we're much poorer for it. Uh we're coming to the end of our time together guy and I sort of again slightly slightly off the subject matter of the book, but I just as a as a as a former as a man who's worked for the UN, I just I need to start to talk to you about this sort of um uh parallel bodies that the American administration appears to be trying to set up whilst it withdraws from various international agencies, uh a lot of them based around the UN and establishing this board of peace that on the face of it appears to include Vladimir Putin, Tony Blair, and s and some other figures. And I I uh I would just invite your comments about a world that appears to be moving from the multilateral, the supranational , um one based on international law to one that appears to be much more governed by private interest I think this is the the big issue of the moment because what I'm calling a plutarchy has arisen in the world. Plutarchy is defined as uh ruled by the super wealthy in the interests of the super wealthy. And of course, all of the people around uh Mus k and Peter Teal and Larry Ellison, they don't believe in democracy. They I mean I spent three days for my pains uh sitting next to Peter Teal talking to him. And uh here is the man who was the primary funder of Trump in 2016. I also spent uh had a breakfast discussion with Lindsey Gra ham. And these types are really really the people running the show. And they are quite open that they don't believe in democracy. And the main reason they don't believe in democracy is that if you have d genuine democracy , those who don't have resources will vote for redistribution , which would affect them. Can't have that. We must have rule by the elite , who are going to have a technological efficiency . And it really worries me that the Plutarchy is using people like Tony Blair to infiltrate our governance process and using these people to destroy a complex imperfect system of multilateralism. I thought uh Gordon Brown's article yesterday was was a good one. Destroying it without any pretense that they're doing it for altruistic reasons. They're not. Okay ? So Trump's just withdrawn from sixty-six international organizations. I mean, oh no, just spiteful nonsense. Okay? But we in Britain should be extremely worried that Larry Ellison, Larry Ellison, a close friend of Trump , the second wealthiest man in the world, has given Tony Bl air £257 million for his in Tony Blair Institute. And basically they are lobbyists for this technological apparatus of Palantir and Oracle to influence the British government. So when Starmer goes to the United States, he gets taken round the headquarters of Palantir . The biggest arms people now . So we're seeing a dismantling of an imperfect multilateralism with a deliberate creation of a vacuum in which the plut ocrats can come in and this this border peace i is something that Bertalbrecht needed to address . I mean it's beyond Monty Python, it's Bert or Brecht . Because i it it's an odious cre ation. They've got to pay a billion dollars each, you know. I don't know where Tony Bray well he'll get it. Ellison will help him, no doubt. And I mean the this is it and the people they're putting on it almost symbolize in a in a an incredible way. What's happening? I mean, it's beyond parody. It's beyond parody. Except, of course, that if you have anything to do with what's happened in Gaza , you know that this is beyond tragedy. This this is m this is genocide visible genocide in the twenty first century. And anybody who pretends otherwise is either a fool or deliberately on the side of that, right ? That's why I'm s furious with Lamy for never doing it. Lamy was a discussant for one of my books, and I've been so disappointed the fact that he did nothing to stop the arms going t to what's been going on. But I think to go back to your question, we we are at a terrible point where I agreed with Gordon Brown was that, okay, if we have the Emperor going away , you know, then the rest of us should fill the gap and create some alternative dem,ocratic val,ue driven set of institutions. I've been in Brazil recently where Lula is is a is is a voice of sanity and we have other voices of sanity in in the so-called South . We have also ogres like Hmod i and so therefore. But the the point is we need a rec alibration of globalis m. And that was, of course, the left were always meant to be uh internationalists, right? So we we must avoid going back into retreating into uh enclaves and become more nationalistic because everybody else is going national. We've got to be brave at this point. So I I and I I've have many, many friends in senior positions in UN bodies, and they're all so incredibly depressed at the moment. Guy Standing, thank you so much for giving us your time. Thank you for speaking to me. I'm very grateful. You've been listening to the Exchange from the New Statesman. With me, Ollie Dugmore. If you've enjoyed this episode, please do leave us a review. This episode was produced by Catherine Hughes. The exchange will be back next Wednesday.