Real freedom for all turtles in Sugarscape? - Presses universitaires ...

v a n d e r V e e n – W h y a u n t i e ' s b o r i n g t e a p a r t i e s m a t t e r . . . 359specifically which part of that total rent arises from rewards to gift work. Ifthis can be worked out, then there could be a neutral reason for sharing outthe rent taxed away from gift holders in the real world according toconditionalities that reflect the auction’s comparative evaluation of the workwhich is tied to gifts.Having spelled out my intuition that ‘comparative assessments of giftwork in the auction should be tracked by a neutral scheme for sharing therent’, it should be noted that once the starting premise of the argument forbasic income is accepted, there is simply no room for this intuition. For,following the starting premise, we have to express the Euro amount of tax inthe values of the auction by means of the conversion rate of the auctionnuméraire (the gift in which prices are expressed) to the Euro. It is thenimpossible to determine what part of that value sum can be attributed to thework required by different gifts. Accordingly, the tax yield gets representedas an undifferentiated amount of gift rent, the size of which is determined bythe quantities and prices of all gifts. This naturally suggests that the neutraldistribution must grant everyone the per capita share of tax. The two-stepsreasoning of the argument merely fleshes out that suggestion.Now the challenge I have in mind is not that Van Parijs’s argument formaximum sustainable basic income is invalid. It is rather that its startingpremise construes the linkage between the tax yield and the proceeds of theauction in an arbitrary way. For one can just as well express the tax yield asa percentage of the auction proceeds measured in the currency of the realworld (here: Euro), rather than as a percentage of the proceeds measured inauction currency. As the example below will show, part of the Euro taxrevenue can then be imputed to the rewards of gift work, on the basis of theauction prices. And as I have explained above, this introduces apresumption against equal and unconditional sharing of the tax revenue.How Euros of gift work depend on auction prices: an exampleTwo inheritances of ten thousand Euro are auctioned. The benefits of thefirst - call it the F-gift - come in free, no strings attached. The F-gift figures asthe standard unit of auction prices in this example. The second inheritance isthe A-gift. It requires doing a spell of auntie work which most bidders findgenuinely boring, and would rather not do free of charge, even afterconsidering the real benefit to auntie’s well-being. The auction price a of theA-gift will then be less than unity. I spend all my tokens to buy the right toone F-gift. You are willing to engage in auntie work at the going price, andspend all your tokens on A-gifts. Having done the work, you end up with1/a times ten thousand Euro, (1/a – 1) times ten thousand Euro more than I