Revista (PDF) - Universidade do Minho

224
DIACRÍTICA
of their joint stake of $160,000 into a small house and use the rest of
the money to reduce their work commitments out of the home and
share child-rearing responsibilities. Suppose they can’t do this on
$8,800 a year. Why stop them?
More broadly: basic income encourages a short-term consumerist
perspective, but stakeholding invites young adults to take the longer
view. Most people in their twenties are crushed by the vast gap between
adult responsibilities and small financial resources. Although their
future is still ahead of them, they live lives of quiet desperation –
trying to make ends meet from month to month. Although $400 a
month will ease short-term financial crises, it is too small a sum to give
them real freedom to look decades ahead and appreciate the life-shaping
choices they are making, often by default. Stakeholding, by contrast,
invites them to take charge of their lives. With $80,000 in the
bank, young adults may pause and consider how their aims and abilities
are likely to unfold over time, and whether a short-term perspective
will lead them down paths that they will later bitterly regret.
Basic income will also turn out to be a bureaucratic nightmare.
Suppose that John Citizen is grimly determined to become an auto
mechanic. Since legitimate banks won’t let him capitalize his monthly
payments into $20,000, he goes to a friendly member of the neighborhood
Mafia and borrows the money, promising to use his $4,800
a year as collateral. Since this deal is illegal, the mafiaso won’t be able
to go to court to enforce it – but he will hire thugs, at his own expense,
if John refuses to pay when the time comes. All this expense and
uncertainty will greatly increase the interest that the mafioso will
charge his customer. But John is willing to pay the price to begin
executing his life plan.
How does the proponent of basic income to respond to this development?
Do we really want to transform John into a criminal – simply
because he wants to make an investment in his future? What kind of
crime is that?
Whatever the law may say, it is virtually certain that it won’t be
enforced by draconian sanctions. The black-market option not only
lets the mafia appropriate the lion’s share of John’s economic
birthright, but it will also reorient his relationship to the entire program.
Under stakeholding, John could proudly come forward and
claim his stake as a free citizen; now the state’s efforts to restrain his
freedom has turned him into a devious thief. When John finally
becomes a skilled mechanic, he will not remember the stakeholding
experience with pride, and seek to reciprocate by acts of loyal citizen-