Fragments of an Ecology of Care: Basic Income Beyond the Nation-State

Summary

The present paper proposes the creation of a basic income system that is constituted outside of and beyond the realm of the nation-state, as a means of changing humanity’s relationship to itself, inside the sphere of the commons. It argues for a dis-embedding of work (time) from wages, through a reformulation of the production of money in the form of an income that is distributed as an equal share to all those who are part of the global commons, unconditionally and universally.

The monetary system for this basic income is designed in a way where money is created constantly and equally among all but decays when it is not used as a means of preventing accumulation (demurrage). Through a reformation on the structures that create money, the paper sets out to draw the ‘fragments of an ecology of care’, which rests on an argument that the establishment of free relationships is underpinned by a flourishing of relationships that foster mutual care and that these practices of caring are a precondition to the creation, expansion and maintaining of the commons, which are mediated through money.