The Nea Guinea NPO is a member of the international network Wind Empowerment which promotes locally manufactured open source hardware small wind turbines for rural electrification. In November 2014, Nea Guinea in collaboration with the Rural Electrification Research Group (RurERG) of the National Technical university of Athens (NTUA), co-organized the 2nd biannual meeting of the Wind Empowerment network in Athens. The Wind Empowerment network consists of more than 40 organizations from more than 20 different countries, spanning on most of the continents. These organizations are active in different sectors of small wind turbine technological applications, like education and technology transfer, manufacturing of products and provision of renewable energy services, technology research and development, and are always cooperating in a peer to peer network of users/designers of locally manufactured small wind turbines. The first international project of Wind Empowerment will be presented, where a small wind turbine was constructed locally in Ethiopia with the students of a rural technical college with the assistance of three Wind Empowerment organizations, namely Nea Guinea, V3 Power and RurERG. The wind turbine was installed in a small community to cover the basic electricity needs of the village, such as lighting and refrigeration. The goal of this presentation is to highlight the activity and structure of the Wind Empowerment network as a contemporary example of a peer to peer process which develops the energy and knowledge commons.

A basic income is an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement. It is a form of minimum income guarantee that differs from those that now exist in various European countries in three important ways:

● it is being paid to individuals rather than households;

● it is paid irrespective of any income from other sources;

● it is paid without requiring the performance of any work or the illingness to accept a job if offered.

Liberty and equality, efficiency and community, common ownership of the Earth and equal sharing in the benefits of technical progress, the flexibility of the labour market and the dignity of the poor, the fight against inhumane working conditions, against the desertification of the countryside and against interregional inequalities, the viability of cooperatives and the promotion of adult education, autonomy from bosses, husbands and bureaucrats, have all been invoked in its favour.

But it is the inability to tackle unemployment with conventional means that has led in the last decade or so to the idea being taken seriously throughout Europe by a growing number of scholars and organizations. Social policy and economic policy can no longer be conceived separately, and basic income is increasingly viewed as the only viable way of reconciling two of their respective central objectives: poverty relief and full employment.

There is a wide variety of proposals around. They differ according to the amounts involved, the source of funding, the nature and size of the reductions in other transfers, and along many other dimensions. As far as short-term proposals are concerned, however, the current discussion is focusing increasingly on so-called partial basic income schemes which would not be full substitutes for present guaranteed income schemes but would provide a low – and slowly increasing – basis to which other incomes, including the remainingsocial security benefits and means-tested guaranteed income supplements,could be added.

Many prominent European social scientists have now come out in favour of basic income – among them two Nobel laureates in economics. In a few countries some major politicians, including from parties in government, are lso beginning to stick their necks out in support of it. At the same time, the relevant literature – on the economic, ethical, political and legal aspects – is gradually expanding and those promoting the idea, or just interested in it, in various European countries and across the world have started organizing into an active network.

Presentation points

● Money should be a Tool, not a purpose.

● What do we believe a Basic Income will do?

○ Make extreme poverty a thing of the past

○ Emancipate workers, artists, volunteers.

● 2 example proposals for financing a Basic Income

○ VAT 19% for an income of 200Euro per European Citizen

○ Quantitive easing for the people, not the banks

● Reactions to proposal from Politicians

○ Some believe people will not work if there is a basic income.

○ Some progressive parties have incorporated in their proposals

● What does practice tell us?

○ People do not stop working but they might change profession or

hours of work if they have a family

○ Anxiety related illness become fewer

If you have any question, do not hesitate to ask. The speaker speaks fluent

presentation of hackerspace in pdf:
hsgr-commonsfest2015

CUK – Money as a Commons – Athens 16May15