UBS would contribute to decommodification by promoting communal organizing and puts the people in control of market forces

This does not preclude the possibility of market provision, although several arguments have been advanced as to why public provision is preferable for reasons of equity, efficiency, solidarity, and sustainability (Gough, 2019: 538–541; Coote and Percy, 2020: 32–56). This has led to the development of the concept of Universal Basic Services (UBS) as a way to move from reliance on ‘the neoliberal formula of individualised consumption within a market-based system’ (Coote and Percy, 2020: 7–8) towards a system of collective mutual interdependence through ‘sharing resources and acting together’ (Gough, 2019: 540). Coote and Percy conceive of UBS as a ‘virtual income of public services’ (2020: 3) that contributes to de-commodification by reducing people’s reliance on the market to meet essential needs. Gough argues that this in turn promotes equality since, ‘in the absence of public provision’, people on low incomes would need to spend ‘the majority of their income’ on meeting basic needs (2019: 539). Moreover, public provisioning systems may be better equipped than market systems to promote sustainable consumption and to meet needs through ‘less carbon intensive’ production, especially when anchored in localised, communal supply chains (Sayer, 2019: 45). At the heart of the concept of UBS is a mission to transform the way services are provided, to put people in control, and to build a new role for the state. Coote and Percy offer a framework that provides a set of guiding principles, and an evidence-based rationale, to prove that collective provision yields far better results than market transactions in terms of equity, efficiency, solidarity and sustainability. They offer not a guidebook, but principles or features; access to services that meet one’s needs as a matter of right, citizen participation so that services are ‘controlled by the people who need and use them’ (Coote and Percy, 2020: 5), and diverse models of ownership. The Michael McGann and Mary P. Murphy 20 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1474746421000397 Published online by Cambridge University Press state retains responsibility for ensuring equal access, collecting and distributing resources, setting and enforcing quality standards and co-ordinating services across different areas of need. Thus, the concept of UBS synergises with the concept of a foundational economy and its focus on the collective and ecological provision of services (Coote, 2000). This idea of a foundational economy of UBS recovers the importance of welfare states in securing the conditions for collective wellbeing, although Coote and Percy are careful to point out that some needs may continue to be provided for via the market and that UBS should be ‘supported rather than always directly provided by the state’ (2020: 5). Moreover, in a recent extension of their work, Coote (Coote, A, n.d.) argues that UBS requires not just the provision of services but also ‘an income guarantee to ensure that everyone has sufficient disposable cash’. The more UBS are realised through market rather than public provision the higher this income guarantee will need to be. Nonetheless, even in the context of widespread public provision, people will still need some level of disposable income if they are to enjoy central capabilities for play, senses, imagination and thought, and so on that are connected to the pursuit of varying life plans and exercise of agency and choice. Consequently, as Coote and Lawson (2021) argue, income supports and UBS are best thought of ‘as two sides of the same coin’ rather than conflicting alternatives