The plans leximining of purchasing power is key to obtain real freedom
Parijs 95 {“Real Freedom for All : What (if Anything) Can Justify Capitalism?” Philippe Van Parijs (Studied philosophy, law, political economy, sociology and linguistics at the Facultés universitaires Saint Louis (Brussels) and the Universities of Louvain, Oxford, Bielefeld and California (Berkeley). He holds doctorates in the social sciences (Louvain, 1977) and in philosophy (Oxford, 1980). He is Professor at the Faculty of economic, social and political sciences of the University of Louvain (UCL), where he has directed the Hoover Chair of economic and social ethics since its creation in 1991. He has also been a special guest professor at the KuLeuven's Higher Institute for Philosophy since 2006. From 2004 onwards he was for several years a Regular Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University). Oxford Political Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Published 1995, Accessed June 23, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1093/0198293577.001.0001.} //Livshits
*Second half of the card is also good for universal solves better than means tested for a BI
What, then, is the best institutional expression of the ideal captured by the slogan ‘real-freedom-for-all’? One is really free, as opposed to just formally free, to the extent that one possesses the means, not just the right, to do whatever one might want to do. When arguing against this conception of freedom, Hayek and Buchanan, as we have seen (§ 1.7), were more specific: if one abandons their own, narrower, definition of freedom, one is bound to slip into equating the latter with wealth or the budget-set. This prompts the suggestion that real-freedom-for-all requires us to leximin people's purchasing power, subject of course to respecting everyone's formal freedom. Put bluntly, our ideal requires us to raise the lowest incomes as much as is compatible with a ban on forced labour. But let us be very careful here. The real freedom we need to be concerned with is not just the real freedom to choose among the various bundles of goods one might wish to consume. It is the real freedom to choose among the various lives one might wish to lead. Stressing this distinction does not deprive income, or the budget-set, of its importance. But it makes it crucially important that the income should be given unconditionally to each citizen, no strings attached, that is, without any constraint other than her budget on not only what she may buy, but also on how she may use her time. Hence the following, far more radical suggestion. If we are serious about pursuing real-freedom-for-all —and if we are willing to abstract for the moment both from dynamic considerations and from interpersonal differences in abilities—what we have to go for is the highest unconditional income for all consistent with security and self-ownership. This is a radical suggestion indeed, not only relative to the libertarians' and their close kin's desperate groping for a narrow concept of freedom, but also relative to the standard social-democratic stance, so concerned with the real freedom to consume as abundantly as one might wish that they lose sight of the real freedom to live as unconventionally as one might fancy. In other quarters, the suggestion may be found more congenial. For example, it can be viewed as reflecting in the most straightforward fashion a key component of the old critique of capitalism by ‘scientific’ and ‘utopian’ socialism alike: the revolt against proletarian subjection to the wage relationship, and hence to the capitalists' rule. And it is also in tune with the more recent ‘green’ and ‘alternative’ movements' emphasis on quality of life, self-realization, and the preservation of inter-personal relations free of monetary considerations, in contrast to the satisfaction of material desires thanks to a career geared to making as much money as possible. It only encompasses these concerns, however, to the extent compatible with a liberal or anti-perfectionistic standpoint (see § 1.8). What the suggested institutional set-up is intended to do is not to discourage as much as possible waged labour or a career-dominated existence, but to do as much as can be done in order to provide everyone with a genuine opportunity to make different choices.