Friday, November 09, 2018

UBI Stokvel

I am a Soutie. That is a South African term for a person with one foot in England, and one foot in South Africa. Stokvel is a very Soutie word. It originates from the "Stock Fairs" of the English Settlers in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. After the Napoleonic Wars, the UK was suffering serious unemployment problems - sending a bunch of people off to South Africa seemed a good solution.

The English Settlers had rotating cattle auctions. The word may be Afrikaans, and the source of the word English, but the bull was taken by the horns by communities. Today there are over 800,000 Stokvels in South Africa according to the NASASA which aims to represent their combined needs.

A group of people come together, and create a community. This community forms a Constitution, which agrees on how money will be collected, what will be done with it, and how it will be dispersed. The foundation of Stokvels is trust amongst the members.  The biggest focuses are normally Savings (for something the members agree on), Burial Societies, Groceries, or Birthdays, but there are also Investment Stokvels... where the money gets put to work.

I would like to be part of building a Universal Basic Income Stokvel. The idea being that 150 of us get together with a "one for me, one for someone else" mentality. So 75 "Breadwinners" aim to build an Engine for a UBI for themselves, and one for someone else. We come together, and form a Constitution, and support each other in building a Community Wealth Fund which one day can pay 150 Universal Basic Incomes.

If 75 people contribute $8 a day, half could be "pay as you go" and half "invest for the future". So $4 would pay for two UBIs now, and $4 would build towards an Engine that can sustainably pay two UBIs later. That means 150 UBIs could be paid "hand to mouth" now, and 150 UBIs could be paid from a fully funded Community Wealth Fund (UBI Stokvel) later. I think with sound investing, that later could be about 15 years.

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