This is a sequel to this story, https://medium.com/@velara3/planet-quasar-3afa78a52d31 (and a rough draft)
Paal went up to the stand. He looked at the few of government members.
“Hi, I’m Paal”, Paal said confidently. “I’m homeless. I’ve been homeless for 3 years. It’s a long story but I’ll get right to the point.”
“I need your help. I need some changes. Let’s be honest for a minute. No one is going to hire me. Forget all the exceptions and stories.”
“No one is going to hire me. No one is hiring graduates straight out of college. What that means to me is that without steady, consistent work I won’t have income for food or shelter. As you already know, people need food and shelter everyday to survive.”
The cabinet members didn’t say anything. One sniffed.
“Without paid work for food and shelter my survival is at risk.”
“For me to survive in this type of society, a society that requires money to live, a society that you didn’t design but you inherited, I need a certain amount of income every month to cover basic expenses. That’s a basic necessities income.”
The cabinet members didn’t say anything.
“I’m requesting a basic income.” he said and then paused again.
“What is a basic income?” one member said.
“It’s a payment paid to every citizen every month typically set at an amount to cover a citizens basic necessities.” replied Paal.
Again, they looked on with a mild curiosity. Paal continued.
“If you can’t do that or are unwilling to do that then grant me what was available to my grandparents, a plot a land from the commons for me to build a shelter on, to grow food on and to hunt, fish or farm for the resources I need to survive.”
The cabinet members didn’t say anything. A few looked up from their phones.
“If I can’t get income from the job market and if you don’t permit me to access to the natural resources the Earth provides then you are participating in blocking me from the basic necessities of life. You’re putting me in reckless endangerment and committing social neglect.”
A few members frowned.
“If I don’t survive I will hold you accountable. God will hold you accountable.”
One of the members pulled up his glasses and spoke, “What was your name? …Paal? What kind of name is that? Never mind that. What do you mean by blocking? What do you mean hold us accountable?”
“We can’t allow just anyone to go out to and build homes from trees.” another one named Bertrand said.
“Why not? The natives of North America made homes from trees they called them tipis. The natives of North Pole make homes from snow called igloos. The native Central Americans make homes from clay and mud called adobes. The Amish put up homes themselves over the course of a few days. Are you saying saying I have no right to make a shed, shack or a hut myself on the Earth that God or Mother nature gave all us?”
“If we gave you land then we’d have to give everyone land. The natural resources would be plundered.”
“You are talking about the tragedy of the unregulated commons. That’s already happening in our society by profit motivated companies. It’s been unsustainable by corporations but when managed by local communities those commons have been sustainable. They’ve created sustainable communities in Hawaii called Ahupuaa.”
“Ghandi said, there is enough for every mans need, not every mans greed. I believe the same is true for the commons.”
“People have the right to exist whether you accept them or not and whether they are perfect to you or not and to do that they must have access to the resources of the Earth to survive. If the job market is unstable or inconsistent and someone is unable to do that work and at the same time you block people from food and shelter then you are killing them.”
“You’re mad.” one member scoffed. “Everyone has to work forever. That’s the way it is.”
“Now hold on,” one named Will said, “We know that automation is replacing workers everyday. My wife is a cashier at the grocery store up the street. They’ve installed self checkout lines, they have inventory bots running up the isles and self driving zambonies. We ordered a pizza that night and a self driving car delivered it to us.”
“We are at a point in history where technology is making work itself obsolete. We can’t stick our heads in the sand. We need to find compassionate, intelligent forward thinking solutions to this.”
End part I (to be continued)
The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth. These resources are held in common, not owned privately. Commons can also be understood as natural resources that groups of people (communities, user groups) manage for individual and collective benefit. Characteristically, this involves a variety of informal norms and values (social practice) employed for a governance mechanism.[1] Commons can be also defined as a social practice of governing a resource not by state or market but by a community of users that self-governs the resource through institutions that it creates . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons
Reckless endangerment: A person commits the crime of reckless endangerment if the person recklessly engages in conduct which creates substantial jeopardy of severe corporeal trauma to another person. “Reckless” conduct is conduct that exhibits a culpable disregard of foreseeable consequences to others from the act or omission involved. The accused need not intentionally cause resulting harm. The ultimate question is whether, under all of the circumstances, the accused’s demeanor was of that heedless nature that made it actually or imminently dangerous to the rights or safety of others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reckless_endangerment
Neglect is a form of abuse where the perpetrator, who is responsible for caring for someone who is unable to care for themselves, fails to do so. It can be a result of carelessness, indifference, or unwillingness.
Neglect may include the failure to provide sufficient supervision, nourishment, or medical care, or the failure to fulfill other needs for which the victim cannot provide themselves. The term is also applied when necessary care is withheld by those responsible for providing it from animals, plants, and even inanimate objects. Neglect can carry on in a child’s life falling into many long-term side effects such as: physical injuries, developmental trauma disorder, low self-esteem, attention disorders, violent behavior, and can even cause death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neglect
In English law, an estover is an allowance made to a person out of an estate, or other thing, for his or her support. Estovers are wood, that a tenant is allowed to take, for life or a period of years, from the commons, the implements of husbandry, hedges and fences, and for firewood.[1]
The word derives from the French estover, estovoir, a verb used as a substantive meaning “that which is necessary”.
The tragedy of the commons is a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users, acting independently according to their own self-interest, behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the shared resource through their collective action. The theory originated in an essay written in 1833 by the British economist William Forster Lloyd, who used a hypothetical example of the effects of unregulated grazing on common land (also known as a “common”) in Great Britain and Ireland.[1]
Although common resource systems have been known to collapse due to overuse (such as in over-fishing), many examples have existed and still do exist where members of a community with access to a common resource co-operate or regulate to exploit those resources prudently without collapse.[3][4] Elinor Ostrom was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics for demonstrating exactly this concept in her book Governing the Commons, which included examples of how local communities were able to do this without top-down regulations or privatization.[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
Ahupuaʻa is a Hawaiian term for a large traditional socioeconomic, geologic, and climatic subdivision of land (comparable to the tapere in the Southern Cook Islands). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahupuaa
Eminent domain, land acquisition, compulsory purchase, resumption, resumption/compulsory acquisition, or expropriation is the power of a state, provincial, or national government to take private property for public use. It doesn’t include the power to take and transfer ownership of private property from one property owner to another private property owner without a valid public purpose.[3]
However, this power can be legislatively delegated by the state to municipalities, government subdivisions, or even to private persons or corporations, when they are authorized by the legislature to exercise the functions of public character.[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain
