Speech BIEN Munich 2012 - Bruna Pereira - english subtitle & portugues

I believe that with the presence of members of the government and the ruling party is no shortage here are advocates for Bolsa-Família. This makes it much easier for us, saving time and labor. Because after recognizing the merits of Bolsa-Família due immediately can go to what really matters: the proposition of a Basic Income truly unconditional and enforceable not only in the micro, where we already operate, but the macro, in this case, national. As we do not intend to deny the merit of anyone, and we want to get right to the point, we have our first words by this recognition - and to remain nonpartisan – that both the scholarship and the Bolsa-Família have for family social welfare and economics in Brazil. Thus, merit recognition, let us then criticizes, after all, is the minimum that is expected of us, because whoever takes the initiative citizen paying a Basic Income in a country with a government program of national dimensions of Bolsa-Família does not just have to see significant differences between both, after years of experience gained from the pilot project, we must have something more to say. And Yes, we have - and it is a really shame that our minister is not here to say that to her. From our point of view, the dilemma of Bolsa-Família is that he cannot stop or continue as it is. Back to the policies of the public who asks for bread baton, not even deserve mention. What should we do? Sweeten the bitter taste of the welfarism drug? No, thanks! Develop is accurate, but more than output ports, we need without mincing words, is leaving the Bolsa-Família and enter the Basic Income. How? That is the question. A gradual transition is proposed that an initial analysis seems to be the most sensible. Decrease conditionalities until a given moment they set no longer exist and behold, no one feel or perceive, painlessly, finally arrive at Basic Income. In theory this is an excellent proposal. And this is your problem, "in theory". Handles a battle, a struggle of political and economic interests as if it were likely to be faced with writing only. It is a piece of fiction, or rather bureaucratic. Then we cannot be offended when they accuse us of being advocates of Basic Income to being mad and utopians. There is no doubt that the pen is stronger than the sword, but we need less people writing and biting, and more people putting the hand in the pocket. In practice is a different story and, on that basis, we will make our proposition. If we're wrong, great, the Brazilian government finally begin the transition and we just ask why took so long. If not, again, while the buzzers sing, we will be working as a worker ant. Perhaps this discourse sounds too pragmatic. It's not. Quite the contrary. We speak very clear that the transition from Bolsa-Família to Basic Income is much more than discussing technical issues or public policy. That is why the discussion of the implementation of Basic Income cannot be closed in the transition of Bolsa-Família for Basic Income. Why reduce the issue to mere reduction or increase of conditionalities because this will not only lose in terms of propositions to not do nothing, is especially lose the libertarian and universal principal of Basic Income. Reduce the Basic Income as government program and the unconditionally that demands respect, dignity and human rights to a simple technic question, lose the action of the civil society, the most interested in nullify the conditionalities, truth be told, it is only growing. This is not strange that the civil society do the base work and put the hand in their pockets to pay solidarity the Basic Income, as the pilot project in Quatinga Velho. Above all, we must not forget that while we are discussing here, approaches, techniques, methodologies, on paper counterparts that everything is very beautiful, and sometimes even well-intentioned, in the real world, people are not numbers, accounts or votes, in remote communities, the Quatingas Velhos, Paranapiacabas and Otjiveros Omitaras forgotten life, which mainly there, any explicit or implicit conditionality will constitute pure power relations. This does not mean that in each of these places reigns accommodation, clientelism, patronage, paternalism, dependency, but it is clear that if this is not the case on the merits of the parties involved in personal relationships, and not as a result of the system. As Oscar Wilde said, "All authority is degrading. Degrades those who exercise it, as those over whom it is exercised. When used with a certain amount of kindness and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it becomes alarmingly demoralizing. Individuals in this case less aware of the horrible pressure they are subjected. So go through life in a kind of rude comfort, as domesticated animals, without ever realizing that others are thinking thoughts, living by other people's standards, wearing practically what one might call the clothes of others, without being themselves by a single moment. "Who is free," says astute thinker, "not satisfied". And authority, to entice people to conform, creates and nurtures a very crude kind of barbaric. " So, worse than the unemployment trap that closes Bolsa-Família and Basic Income overcomes, conditionalities bring in its wake a danger even more to democracy and citizenship. Every conditionality implies the suppression of the full exercise of citizenship and a vein are open to state interference in one's life, and those who think that such interference is valid under certain conditions it is because we have never seen in such a situation to suffer embarrassment and discrimination. Do not know what is being treated, screened with poor, as a people, or as livestock, or wheelchair. And I am not speaking here as a researcher, I speak now as a resident of a poor community, which not only saw, but I felt in the flesh what it describes. The true authority does not force, but give. Do not create conditionality. Create conditions and opportunities. For the authority do not be itself a problem, it is necessary a pedagogical relation and not power, but first the citizens must have the right in any moment to reject it, but from the authority this is not enough. The true authority does not wait for independency, they must work for the emancipation. It is only in your deny, and not in your affirmation, that the authority legitimate yourself. And just do your work when becomes null and set free the citizens from your dependency. Education is not this paternalism show of society. Education is the process of social transformation of dependent people in capable, people with real freedom. The authority is only valid for a free education, and the authority who doesn’t works in favor of emancipation, it is not educative and citizen, it is counter pedagogical and authoritarian. The education has your own value and can’t be reduce; or a mere conditionality’s counterpaund. Specially the citizen education that is only learned out of classrooms, it is learned in the democratic and the social transformation itself. The intention or pretension of the social programs must manifested first of all in the social program methodology itself. The program must be thinking as a pedagogical process of empowerment of the citizens, and not of doutrination or control. We must be aware that between Bolsa-Família and Basic Income are discussing much more than sketches of government programs, we are taking the direction of a true citizenship or citizenship of a paper, which in practice means moving towards a state of direct democratic or less so, civil rights and economic or not so, the end of all forms of discrimination including socioeconomic or not. No euphemisms when discussing seriously the replacement of the Bolsa-Família to Basic Income should be aware that we are pointing to two opposite directions and contradictory by definition of citizen empowerment and strengthening of state control of the state – and who think the political representative or government ignores this libertarian character of Basic Income underestimates his felling for power. The difference between Bolsa-Família and Basic Income applied at least - that has been put into practice so far - is therefore not only a right to a care insurance law, but the approach and especially principles. The Basic Income is libertarian, is democratic, is a citizen. Both aims to eradicate poverty, but the poverty Basic Income, not only economic but also political. And so much depends and the methodology with which it is put into practice. It's completely fallacious idea that we should give up our personal freedom if we have some collective security. True freedom and security are guaranteed in the state as the real freedoms. The very uncertainty about the deprivation of freedom, terror and fear arising from the constant possibility of the loss of the fundamental conditions of life and livelihood is in itself constituted an act of violence and the poverty. That's why we cannot reduce combat poverty materiality. While hunger and poverty are the most severe forms of deprivation and emergency, its eradication cannot be done at the expense of political freedoms and cultural rights of the citizen. Poverty is not only material, is the state of economic deprivation of fundamental freedoms and cultural policy not detached from each other, but integrated into one and the same capital. That is why it is mistaken who thinks that we distribute money in Quatinga Velho, we provide capital in all its forms to capitalize via Basic Income. We're not playing with words, without this capital, money is paper without this network of trust and reciprocity, the financial system itself is only a cloud of numbers on the internet. Our commitment to the libertarian spirit and social Basic Income is so deep conviction that we have in countries with authoritarian regimes to democracies in disguise, an unconditional Basic Income would be a fake, a Basic Income in name only, for conditionality in these states exception of rights would be tacit and implicit obedience to the government itself. This extreme case is important to understand that without political freedom or full citizenship to Basic Income, and generally all income transfers tend to no longer be an instrument of liberation, to become an instrument of control and may even spend the instrument of oppression to the extent that the fear of losing it is constructed in instrument maneuver dependent benefit of the masses, and that in any regime, even in a democracy, after all, nothing as strong economic fear or anxiety in times of military or election campaigns. This does not mean that we should adopt the neoliberal posture of live and let die. On the contrary. We must convert the boon in law and adopt the redistribution of the common good based on the new social contract. More than contemporary surveillance state must guarantee real freedom as the basis for a true state of peace, not only in his letters magna, but the systematization of new institutions devoted to the emerging political paradigm that requires the empowerment of the citizen and not the other. In this sense, Basic Income inspires new indicators for measuring the performance of government social policies mainly. This evaluation involves two basic questions: 1) as the raised back in fact to the hands of the citizen without getting lost its way. 2) what goes into the hand of those in need. These efficiency rates both operationally and redistribution should be compared with the rates of social inequality to determine the efficacy and effectiveness not only of public policy, but the legitimacy of the institution itself. Contemporary States not producing reduction of social inequality have no morality to tax, because the tax that effectively does not reduce social inequality is nothing but institutionalized theft. On this subject we have an even more suigeneres position: advocate a Basic Income maintained by voluntary contributions, which does not mean defending the ingenuity to survive with any donations, but any form of association or social contract between free and voluntary personal who are not obliged or forced even if coerced by legal means to finance a Basic Income each other. Specially because, between traditional philanthropy and taxes, there are other forms of intelligent life possible. Other forms of systematized more efficient economic and legal action are possible and should be experienced by a lab to develop new public policies. And this is what we are currently doing in ReCivitas and this is on these experiments we propose to talk now, because it is very easy to criticize; create workable proposition from this criticism, this is the real challenge. Our pilot project of Quatinga Velho has been criticized for being ridiculously small. Yet it is precisely in their diminutive dimension that lays its greatest strength and potential to design a strategic plan for implementation of the Basic Income scale either in Brazil or international. Why not? The need for adaptation gave Quatinga Velho very interesting features. Their model of networked community with low operational cost makes it not only extremely cheap but highly replicable and much easier to become self-sustaining. It’s return unobtrusive but significant in terms of human development and microeconomic makes it attractive for social investment especially for not being inserted into the logic of social assistance programs, but within the solidary economy and financial associativism. It was this line that we now work shortly after the first results that pointed to the path of microfinance and culminated with the Basic Income Bank, the Social Bank first presented at Ritsumeikan University at Japan on November 2010. Nowadays, if there is something less well-liked that governments are the banks, but the creation of a social bank tool is important for three reasons: first, that the idea of a compulsory contribution is a contradiction with the principles of Basic Income. Second is perfectly possible to eliminate bureaucratic costs when we associate financially through contracts where we assume the commitments of our income contributed, and pay equal for all members of this community. And third, it gives financial inclusion, as economic right, i.e. the social character that it must have, and the social character the banks own us. The social bank proposal can be put in practice by any community independently the commom good that constitute herself, as soon as they have the social capital and wish aplicate the principle of equitative contribution and equal redistribution. Supposing wish and social capital we could, for example, make from BIEN the principle of this community and make a mutual security network through this Congress. But this mutual security network wouldn’t has sense, after all, for the universal spirit of Basic Income better will be construct a this network through the mutuality borders, as a Foundation designed to finance Basic Income experiences all over the world. All of you, specially the institution, government as brasilians, could make some contributions. If there is no conditionality into what they put to sociabilizy the lost in banks during the financial crise. Actually, they are too big to broke, and society even bigger, and they are putting a bank router in the world. But this is obviously utopic. Even finance freedom and liberty in international territory is always easier than your own. Sorry for the representants here, I also representing a juridical person, a solidarity network it is not a job for juridical person, with a fake personality, but with natural person with real character. That is why i want back for the small world, but real and replicable. For what we are doing to multiply the real experience with Basic Income, like in Quatinga Velho worldwide. However for the sake of bureaucracy, we gave priority to development of the Investment Fund of Basic Income Guarantee. This is a simple idea, the income from these investments rather than being pocketed by executives, goes to the payment of Basic Income in pilot projects such as Quatinga Velho. The Fund is currently in phase of fundraising and already has more than half a million Reais in signed commitments deposits, and as the fund is officially constituted, which will require a little more bureaucracy and resources, will already be a more than enough capital to sustain Quatinga Velho and other community. That is why today we are announcing with great happiness that in January 2013 we will open officially “call for funding” of new communities of Basic Income for NGOs and municipalities. And we invite everybody to take part of the foundation of this solidarity network borderless to join us. Some people think that this is not a Basic Income, that a Basic Income can only be paid by governments, we are running the original conception of the idea. Quite the contrary, as Tomas Paine said: "Much of that order a reign in mankind is not the effect of government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. (...) The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest of every man to respect others, and that all parts of a civilized community has some relationships to the other creates a great thread that holds it together. (...) It is the great and fundamental principles of society and civilization - the common usage universally consented to, and mutually and reciprocally maintained, the incessant flow of interest passing through a million channels, strengthens the total mass of civilized men - is all these things, infinitely more than to anything that can make even the best instituted governments, which depend the security and prosperity of the individual and the whole. (...) With regard to all these matters, man is a creature more consistent than he knows or than governments would wish him to believe. " The spirit of a Basic Income has always been libertarian and walked towards universalization, Basic Income closes a freedom and equality so real that even the nationality should lose their tacit condition for unconditional communion between people voluntarily willing to guarantee this right universally, without intermediaries or impediments in a borderless of a solidarity network. That's why the Basic Income should be an international initiative, because human rights and freedom of the magnitude of Basic Income cannot know borders or discrimination between peoples and territories. Especially because, if there is something we learned, not with the project, but with the invisible and silent struggle that keeped a community standing virtually alone for 4 years, is that the Basic Income will never, never be given, for a very simple reason, it is not a blessing it is a law, and fundamental rights and freedoms historically is not granted, but acquired! And what does this have to do with the specific proposal for the transition from Bolsa-Família to Basic Income? Everything. There is no transition. They are two separate programs on purposes and principles. The best strategy to stimulate with tax incentives for investors, or even allocation of resources for these investment funds from the third sector to deliver in Basic Income communities strategically prioritizing the poorest locations according to the maps of poverty, which the government has anyway. NGOs have the reach. Since the Basic Income resources is funded directly by private enterprise and the government’s Bolsa-Família, the two would act in a cooperative manner. The output of the Bolsa-Família would then be natural, with its own exit from the poverty line, the first condition for it to start receiving the benefit. The Bolsa-Família doesn’t cease until it is no longer, and falls naturally into obsolescence if or when the Basic Income performs its intended effect. We particularly not only bet, but work for this moment. And we can say that this process of supplanting the natural Basic Income on the Bolsa-Família will occur, mainly because Basic Income is not a program but the foundation of a new economy. Soon we will publish the data on a new experience that will complete two years with a new type of microcredit factored in Basic Income and by the special characteristics of profitability and reliability that gives Basic Income can recapitalize themselves without interest. Another tiny small revolution within the revolution Basic Income applied and that this strengthens our proposal: the Basic Income is just the beginning. 4 years ago we were just 2 person. Today we are a small movement. Open to everybody who want to take part of it. Being as volunteer, as social investor. Getting together with the pioneers who are open this Investment Fund. This is basically our proposal to the Brazilian government representatives. We’ll respectfully await for the answer, but working out in the meantime. Like a wise Brazilian singer once sad, “Come one, let’s go, because waiting is not knowing; who knows make it happened, doesn’t wait for it to happened”