Build It

The global population is due to tick up to 8 billion. So in reality, any practical implementation of a Universal Basic Income is going to have to have simplifying assumptions. “Human Rights” are a goal... an agreement of how we should live. We then need to build that reality. 

I prefer the model of bottom-up collaborative savings vehicles, or “Community Wealth Funds”. A Stokvel 2.0 or a “Stokvel that went to Harvard”. England was in a bad way after the Napoleonic Wars. One of the ways we used to deal with hard times was to head to frontiers. We don’t really have the ability to head somewhere with nothing but a strong backbone and willingness to work. The area the 1820 Settlers arrived in had been a warzone between the isiXhosa and Dutch settlers for more than a hundred years. They had cattle markets, and that was where the word Stokvel came from. An Afrikaans name given by isiXhosa people to an English market, and made their own. 

“Collective Savings Vehicles” are not uniquely South African, and the mixed-kitchen origin of the idea would have come from and gone all over. There are growing Sovereign Wealth Funds, like Norway’s Oil Fund. Australia has changed the countries savings culture over time through the gradual introduction of powerful Superannuation Funds. 

Wealth needs to be built over time. It is a slow process that has to start somewhere, and with protection, can slowly gather increasing momentum. The key question is “how do you sustainably pay for a good idea?”

Nguni Cattle

Agreements and Action

A Community Wealth Fund is analogous to a Sovereign Wealth Fund. A Stokvel is a savings or investment society to which members regularly contribute an agreed amount, and agree to a constitution which controls how the money is dispersed. A Community Wealth Fund is a form of Stokvel. A group of people can come together and build an Engine which could pay the whole Community a Basic Income. This could start Pay-As-You-Go redistribution (while the Engine is being built), and part investment (then fully Capital funded when the Engine is big enough). The difference between a Community and Sovereign Wealth Fund is that “The People” isn’t abstract. It starts from the bottom up with names and faces. It starts with agreements. Agreements to build, and agreements to support each other. Agreements followed by action.

Get Started

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.

Community Wealth