Madeira Consorcio

108th Madeira Consorcio Meeting 14.9.2019

Sep 15, 2019 at 11:01 am | Posted in Posts | Leave a comment

We met in RESTOCK, again with a small group because some of our members couldn’t come.

The video we saw:

Universal Basic Income (UBI) Raf Manji

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EluxCgnQVzg  16 min, from Dec 2016

Raf is for the Universal income and thinks it can be financed through financial tools which are used to create more money for the economy by accounting.

He says that with a UBI, we could eliminate the entire Government welfare administration.

Several trials have been run in some European countries:

https://interestingengineering.com/the-15-most-promising-universal-basic-income-trials

Finland has stopped it.

Some arguments in the group for it:

it gives poor people the possibility to partake in society and in culture, to go to cinema or visit a museum. If the basic needs are met, people have the opportunity to express themselves as human beings.

Cl. suggested, that with the money drawn from buying back bonds, the German Government could support 100.000 people with a basic income of 2000€ net/month. They could be chosen by lottery, and as part of an experiment, the test would show what they would do with the opportunity.

Microloans in Bangladesh, India and Africa, show that money given to poor people results in a higher income not only for them but also for the whole community where the loans were received.

The discussion then veered off to the bigger problems of the world:

• consumption has to be lower than now, to lower CO2 and promote sustainability
• with automation, there should be less production of goods that are now foisted upon the consumer by marketing
• citizens are not aware that they, when buying a cheap product, are buying a product that cannot be repaired later
• producers build in break-point weaknesses into the products to ensure that consumers need to replace broken items later.
• industrial design should aim at sustainability and recycling from the start
• toasters, for example, should be built from a few, easily replaceable part

Japan has collected millions of unused mobile phones from its citizens and retrieved around 2 tons of gold and 400 tons of silver from them for re-utilization.

Cl. said that the western world, citizens are now producing an average of 11 tons of CO2, this needs to go down to 4 tons, if we want to stop climate change. Technology can produce goods with less CO2 output.

 

What we can do :

Following the discussion, here are two Repair/Maker contacts:

Repair guys (TV, Videos, household items)
in Arco da Calheta:

Electroeste , Sr. Antonio

ER 225, Estrada do Arco 17

Tel 291 822072, email somimagemcalheta@gmail.com

In Funchal

VideoMad ,Sr. Rodrigues

Rua da Velha Ajuda 47 (or in the bar next door, Sr. Rodrigues runs that as well)

Tel 291 761186, no email, people

In social Media, such info about Repairs/Makers, should be permanently available, and should not be swept away be the daily input of new info.

The good news is that citizens are waking up to the fact that consumption has to be lowered. Some big companies want to exploit the Lithium deposits in Portugal and public opinion is starting to be against it. Even the Portuguese are learning how to protest. If a petition is ignored – as can easily be the case – the protest organisations have to insist (as in the case of the fishermen’s houses on Culatra island). But some protests fail, such as the ones Gil Canha made against Quinta do Lorde and the destruction of Minas Gerais for the La Vie shopping complex.

Back to the UBI:

It should be accompanying, as said, in the video, by duties.

One proposal was to oblige recipients to do (and be able to prove) volunteer work for the society, as many women are going already for the family and elders. Such volunteering is an expression of the self and might lead to more work for others, restoring the “we” feeling.

K. found a good link which explains it well, by an association that advocates for it:

Unconditional Basic Income Europe (UBIE) is an international network of activists and initiatives.

https://www.ubie.org/who-we-are/

 

There are two other talks about it:

Marin Ford  – how we‘ll earn money

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swB7Ivct8d8 15 min

The Trojan Horse – by ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7sgv1VCRSs  12 min

We also briefly touched on Brexit – no surprise – and we did not talk about Trump – big surprise!