A world in which everyone has…

Ten basic rights

There are ten basic rights that everyone should enjoy from the day they are born to the day they die – the right to:

a secure and comfortable place to live
affordable access to healthy, nutritious food
free access to modern healthcare and medicine
free access to childcare and care in old age
free schooling, higher education, and vocational training
free use of the internet and public transport
free and easy access to peaceful, unpolluted green spaces
the guarantee of a paid job doing meaningful work
sufficient income when they retire or cannot work
time to relax, socialize, and pursue hobbies

These rights should take centre stage

They should be central to our movement for the following reasons:

They are relatively uncontroversial – most people would agree that they are desirable goals for themselves and for others
If these rights are prioritised, other important rights and goals relating to the environment and individual freedoms could be achieved more easily and with greater public support
Given the current state of technology, the ten basic rights are both achievable and sustainable
It would be relatively easy to monitor progress towards them so that governments can be held to account
Once these rights are a reality, the enormous conflicts that currently plague our societies will diminish

It is important above all, that these rights are secure, that once achieved, people won’t need to worry about losing them. The enjoyment of these rights needs to become a permanent feature of our global society, to be enjoyed by our children and all the generations that follow.

Are these rights affordable?

Yes! Many will argue that these rights are unaffordable -that there are too many people in the world and not enough money. But this is wrong for the following reasons:

Money does not build houses, produce food, or provide health care – people do, and there is no shortage of people.
There is more money in the world than at any previous point in human history, yet for many the right to a home and other basic needs are more out of reach now than they were a generation ago – money is not the problem!
What is affordable for us as a society is a political choice – it is limited by the laws of nature and by technology but not by money.

So who decides what is affordable?

Under the rules that currently govern our economy, it is the rich who decide what is affordable. The explanation for this is as follows:

What, and for whom, to produce is dictated by how individuals, companies, and organisations, spend their money.
Those with the most money to spend and invest have a disproportionate ability to determine what goods and services society produces and who can afford to buy them.
In a market-based system money acts like a voting system in which every dollar you possess is equivalent to one vote.
Those with the most dollars have the most purchasing power and therefore, in effect, the most votes when it comes to deciding what jobs people do and what land, water, energy and other natural resources are used for.

|n a world of huge economic inequality, it is therefore not surprising that the market produces private jets and luxury yachts, yet fails to deliver decent housing and healthcare for all. In our current system luxury goods are affordable, whilst basic needs are often not.

Increasing concentration of wealth

For reasons given below, the governments and politicians who are supposed to represent our interests have lost their ability to do so:

They have allowed an increasing proportion of a nation’s money and wealth to accumulate in the hands of a relatively small number of private individuals and companies.
This has left our public sectors with a shrinking share of national wealth and a reduced capacity to invest in the things we need.
The unprecedented wealth of some private individuals and companies has given them increasing control over public policy, investment decisions, and the media.
This has allowed them to control the economy and shape public beliefs about what is affordable and what is not.

Ordinary people and workers have a much smaller percentage of their country’s wealth and income than they used to. Although they are able to elect governments on the basis of one-person-one-vote every few years, real political and economic decisions are made by an increasingly small, self-interested minority on the basis of one-dollar-one-vote.

So what should we do?

To ensure that the ten basic rights can be achieved, we as a society need to empower our governments to do the following:

to act on our behalf – in the interests of the majority rather than those of a rich minority
to take much greater responsibility for our wealth as a nation and how the benefits from it are distributed
to change the rules that govern markets, money and property
to give the public much greater influence over decision-making
to make full use of the public sector’s powers to tax, subsidise and regulate

Policy instruments

Once empowered by the people, rather than by wealthy private interests, governments will be able to use the following policy instruments to much greater effect than they currently do:

Taxes – these include taxes on income, on wealth, on the consumption of luxury goods, and on environmentally damaging activities.
Subsidies – these include investments in activities that promote the ten basic rights and are environmentally sustainable.
Regulations – these include rules that prohibit certain activities or require certain conditions to be met in order to carry out a particular activity.

None of these policy instruments are new or radical. They just need to be applied in a way that benefits the majority and not just the few, and in a manner that protects the planet rather than accelerating its destruction.

Will anyone have an incentive to work?

A common argument against the rights listed above is that it would reduce the incentive to work. Should an individual’s rights be contingent upon them working, or are the ten basic rights unconditional? The argument being made here is that they should be unconditional for the following reasons:

Conditions dilute the value of the right and can be hard to administer.
Nobody deserves to be homeless and hungry
Many of the rights, such as those relating to housing, health, education, and work should make people more productive and more willing to work rather than less so.
Financial or material incentives to work can still be created, since the rights represent a minimum standard of living, not a maximum – money will still be required to purchase the extras.
For most people engaging in meaningful work will still be much better than having no money and doing nothing.

An important part of the argument being made above rests on the belief that once society is organised around a rights-based approach, the meaning of work will change. Rather than being something that people are forced to do in order to survive or buy more stuff, it will become something that gives people a greater sense of community, belonging and purpose – something they do for its own sake and not just for the money.