The Case for Feeding the Surfers
Philippe Van Parijs’s Argument for Universal Basic Income
Universal Basic Income, or UBI, has been a long-standing, long-defended idea of wealth redistribution in society. While its pre-industrial ancestors were more concerned with an equal sharing of fertile land or territory, the idea has since evolved to be the redistribution of the communal wealth generated and owned by society at large.
Also found under the labels of ‘social dividend’ or ‘national dividend,’ the main premise on which this idea rests is the productive capacity of a large group of people, most commonly a state or the world. Seeing as the production of value is a shared, communal effort across all layers of activity, advocates argue that the value produced, to some extent, is also communal and belongs to everyone equally.
In light of this premise, the model implies the regular, universal, unconditional transfer of an equal sum of money to all eligible citizens, regardless of their employment status or other factors.
Of course, most of the work supporting the implementation of UBI or one of its many variations comes from the left side of the political spectrum. Building on the basis laid by Karl Marx about the injustices of capitalism, UBI follows as a rather logical course of action.
However, there is no shortage of support for UBI coming from pro-capitalist schools of thought. Austrian school philosopher Friedrich Hayek famously saw a dire necessity for the existence of some form of social minimum guarantee for those members of society who couldn’t escape poverty by their own means.
Hayek never really shaped a structured case for UBI or anything similar, and all of his remarks on this matter were taken out from some of his lectures. His system did leave sufficient room for the idea, though.
But perhaps one of the most well-articulated liberal cases in favor of UBI comes from the Belgian philosopher Philippe Van Parijs. In his “Why Surfers Should Be Fed: The Liberal Case for an Unconditional Basic Income," he starts with a news announcement from 1991 concerning welfare allocation in Hawaii.
At that time, Hawaii introduced a one-year residency requirement for people who wanted to access welfare benefits. This was done in order to discourage so-called welfare hippies, surfers who would come to Malibu to live off of welfare and surf all day.
This initiative was saluted by both Senator Wadsworth Yee, a prominent Republican figure from Hawaii, and John Rawls, the author of the revolutionary Theory of Justice that has set the grounds for most of the liberal political philosophy work following its publication.
The antagonizing attitude against the surfers prompted Van Parijs to wonder whether such actions against them were justified. At the end of his research, the answer was a firm no. In this article, I will explore the liberal argument made by Van Parijs in favor of a UBI.
Source: Pexels
A World of Crazies and Lazies
Van Parijs starts his inquiry by setting the moral framework of the discussion. Ironically, he builds on John Rawls’s Theory of Justice, saying that all members of society must have sufficient freedom to pursue their conception of a good life. In other words, all must have enough access to resources, means, and capacities to do what they want to do. This is the moral direction that his argument will follow.
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Further, to simplify his thoughts, he used a model of society that saw all constituents split into two categories: Crazies and Lazies. The Crazies were those who saw working and earning money as a fundamental necessity for achieving their conception of a good life. Their work-life balance scale is heavily tilted towards the ‘work’ side.
On the other hand, Lazies are those who saw little to no fulfillment in work and a large income, instead preferring to do the bare minimum to survive and pursue the good life through leisure activities. Here, the work-life balance scale is disproportionately tilted towards ‘life.’
The real world presents us with varying degrees of these categories, but the purpose of the polarization is not necessarily to be accurate. Rather, he tries to illustrate the relationship between those who work hard and those who do not, in order to find justifying grounds for a UBI.
After laying this foundation, it was necessary that any form of UBI would require some form of value appropriation from the first category to the second. Seeing as Crazies would do most of the work, hence creating most of the wealth, a UBI would require a transfer of wealth to the Lazies. Such a transfer would need to be legitimate for the UBI’s foundations to be solid.
Here, Van Parijs argued that there is a trade-off happening between Crazies and Lazies to facilitate this transfer. Instead of saying that those who don’t work simply receive money for free, he argued that they do give those who work something in return. That ‘something’ must be a share of a common external resource that all members of society are entitled to.
We’ll use a descriptive analogy of plots of land to convey this idea better. Imagine that both Crazy and Lazy are entitled to a plot of land by right, land being, in this case, the common resource owned by all. In order for Crazy to achieve her desired level of productivity, in pursuit of what she would call a good life, she would need to produce more than her current plot of land allows.
Given that climate change is, quite literally, an existential problem, it’s strange that we’re not all rushing to solve it.
Thus, she makes a deal with Lazy, who is not so interested in fully utilizing his land, to let her work his plot of land as well, in exchange for rent paid at market value. Paying the rent at market value would ensure that the transaction is fair and reasonable across multiple variants of needs and wants. This exchange, then, would represent the basis for the UBI.
Thus, in the next part of his argument, Van Parijs sets off to find that external common pool resource that would be substantial enough to offer a good UBI, but which is also coherent with what was said above.
In Search of a Taxation Base
For the taxation base to be coherent with the argument so far, it has to be something that influences all of society, and that is also built by all of society. As such, Van Parijs looks at inheritance as a possible source of income.
Inheritance represents the total created value that is passed from one generation to the next. While our current practices see it as a personal gift granted to certain people, the created value per se is indeed transferred to all of society. Our day-to-day life is built on the achievements of the previous generations, and so will be the lives of those that are to come in the future. Thus, inheritance could constitute a solid ground for the taxation base of a UBI.
However, even though this idea remains unaltered by the end of his study, Van Parijs does not see a tax on all gifts and bequests as sufficient to raise a notable sum of money for the UBI. He believed that it needed to be at least complemented by something else.
Technology was brought up as a suitable common pool resource, especially seeing as it builds on top of itself as society progresses and reaps the benefits. However, patents or intellectual rights are both unfit to serve as a placeholder for all of technology, and they are also not substantial enough to matter.
As such, Van Parijs turns his attention to a more peculiar, yet ultimately satisfactory common pool resource: jobs. We do not live in a society where anyone with good enough skills can start working at any moment. Holding a job, that is, a position that allows you to work in exchange for a wage, is an asset in and of itself, and not one that everyone has.
Thus, we can equate holding a job with holding a plot of land. Everyone is entitled to one, as everyone should be granted the means to create value, part of the pursuit of a good life. However, certain jobs, especially those that are well-paid, may metaphorically require 2 or more plots of land, and they are exclusive to other job-seekers through their inherent scarcity.
That goes to say that, whenever a person gets a job, they appropriate a share of the common resource of work that should be available to all. In this case, an economic rent is owed to those people with similar skills, yet who remain unemployed. This would justify the issuance of UBI from the employed towards the unemployed.
Source: Pexels.
Moreover, some people may only work one plot of land, when in reality, they would desire to work 3 or more. Such situations do happen in the contemporary job market and they prevent people from receiving their fair share of value created by society. Individuals with equal skills and equal abilities can be employed in better or worse positions respectively, and not by their own doing. In such a case, job holders with high positions would also owe job holders with lower positions an economic rent.
In addition, although not explicitly mentioned in Van Parijs’s work, the same rationale could be applied to high-level job holders and companies. As companies are the ones who appropriate the resource of work availability, they do owe these job holders an economic rent, as they do for all workers, due to limiting the supply of work available.
The Principle of Double Effect
Should we teach philosophy to young people when accounting would be better for them? Is driving a car morally bad? Meet the doctrine of Double Effect.
Lastly, by the rule of supply and demand, the fewer the people who willingly enter employment, the higher the wages companies need to pay. In other words, the unemployed grant a service to the employed, by means of a wage increase that is never paid back, save for a UBI.
All of these instances of monetary transfers represent a justified base to fund a UBI. Of course, to remove the bureaucratic burden of independently analyzing each type of job, along with each type of want, Van Parijs argues that a blanket tax solution on all work-related transfers would be a ‘second-best’ option.
Final Remarks
UBI is a wealth redistribution idea that is highly dependent on how society is structured, in regards to communal value produced, as well as its ownership. Following the argument made above, it becomes clear that, even if we do not assume a position of an originally unjust allocation of resources, liberal economic principles, as outlined by John Rawls, still call for a solution to tackle unequal opportunities.
UBI as a blanket policy is precisely what can solve these problems from their roots, and it needn’t be correlated with a specific political agenda.
As such, Van Parijs concludes, any liberal society that wants to offer equal opportunities to pursue the good life, whatever that may be, has an inherent responsibility to feed the surfers, no matter how little work they may do.
References
Van Parijs, Philippe (1991). Why Surfers Should Be Fed: The Liberal Case for an Unconditional Basic Income. Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 20, no. 2, 1991, pp. 101–31. JSTOR. Accessed 24 Nov 2023.
Zwolinski, Matt (2023). Why Did Hayek Support a Basic Income? Retrieved from Libertarianism.org.
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Stephan Renart is a creative writer and Philosophy enthusiast. Ever since having discovered the ideas of Plato and Aristotle sometime in his teenage years, he has been rigorously studying and writing about various bodies of Philosophy from across the world.
Stephan is the founder and main writer of the Power/Knowledge Substack newsletter. His essays, articles, and aphorisms revolve around re-imagining key concepts of human thought, such as human nature, social structures, and knowledge, through the lenses of Science, Art, and Philosophy.
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