To kick off 2021, we discuss basic income's effect on the agency of individual people to live their lives how they choose.  We've previously talked about how basic income gives people the power to say no.  Consenting power is the power to say yes.



When society is structured such that people have no choice but to work a job, to what extent is this analogous to slavery?  Can we say that basic income gives people more consenting power without also arguing that the absence of basic income reduces labor-market efficiency?



The reading this week is a chapter from Henry George's Progress and Poverty: "The Enslavement of Laborers the Ultimate Result of Private Property in Land."



Henry George said that whoever owned the land also effectively owned the people who lived on/from the land.  But George also lived in a time when it was easier to draw a connection between land, labor, and the product of the economy.  To what extent do his arguments still make sense today?  In our modern world, what kinds of things serve as "land" in the Henry George sense?



Previous related Boston Basic Income topics have included:

BBI #78: Land Value Tax

BBI #86: Thomas Paine

BBI #116: Power to Say No



Original YouTube Recording



Image Source: Queen Mary Psalter