I arrived in the town of Man, Ivory Coast, in July 1983 to study the genetic relationship between the different species of coffe tree.
I was working on a research station which belong a French research institute today renamed Institute for Research and Development.
The salary of the local workers on the station was 40 USD (paid in FR CFA), at this time. The first of the month, the workers where buying a bag of 50 kg of rice, a pair of shoes for one of their child and then came back to us to ask for more money. We had to explain to them that they just get their salary for a whole month.
Quite a strange situation where you are doing theoritical research in a country where people who has the chance to have a job earn the equivalent of 40 USD per month.
What was the fairness of this system ? What is fairness ?
Today, I am studying three different kind of basic incomes :
- The Grantcoin basic income is the simplest to understood, you register on ekata.social and you receive a basic income every 3 months. In January 2017, Grantcoin distributed a basic income to 1 132 people in 79 countries. This is the most advance project. Still, people need to have a computer , to download a wallet and to understand what is a currency. How long time will it take to understand that it could be a better system than euro or usd, it is not possible to tell.
- The second basic income I know is paid by the duniter software which is producing the Ğ1 currency. This currency is based on Stéphane Laborde 's relative theory of money. Each people is receiving the save amount of money, with a controlled inflation rate around 9-10 %. The inflation rate motivates you to circulate the money in the economy. The quantitative amount you are receiving each month is correlated with the number of people who are using the process. Only the relative amount is fixed. You are receiving one universal dividend for each period. The authors of this system are proudly calling it a free currency.
Rudolp Steiner is the only other person I know which have studied the relationship between agriculture, finance and spirituality. He wrote a book : The philosophy of freedom. I see many people who want to get rich, but it is more important to know what you will do once you will be rich and start to do this thing right now.
The VIVaconomy is proposing different way to earn money to improve the society and is building a team of people to think about it. I think this is really the best approach.
Invented by a team of talented people, the VIVAcoin ICO is starting next monday, May 1st. Their are still many question to be answered and all the details are not finalized yet. This why ICO ( Initial Coin Offering) has been invented. To finance the making of innovative systems. I do recommand to participate to the ICO. You can download the white paper here.
We are many to recognize that the capitalism is no longer the proper system to use to thrive. Last week, 11 candidates proposed various models of society to the election for the French President. The candidate who has proposed a basic income get 6,7 % of the votes, only. That is showing the tremendous effort we have to do to explain the advantage of a basic effort in our fast evolving world. The good point is that at least one candidate speak about this solution and that almost 6 millions of people heard about it.
Anselm Jappe thinks that the end of capitalism will not be quiet. (we have to get out of this place) and the recent events may prove him to be right. The refugees crisis, the end of cheap oil and the climate change urges us to act.
I do believe that we have to work to propose a better solution that people will spontaneously adopt when they understand it is a better choice.