Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.01.2018, Síða 17

Bishop Agnes Sigurðardóttir.
When historians look back at 2017
many years from now, they will
see Agnes’s tenure as one that pre-
sided over the beginning of the
end for the Church of Iceland. Sup-
posedly the spiritual leader of the
country, she only seems to speak
up whenever the status quo is be-
ing questioned. She actually spoke
up against the media reporting
from leaked documents, as just
one example of many, and has de-
fended the idea of police carrying
guns. She has attributed decline
in church registration to immi-
grants, and fought to get a pay rise
at a time when she was already
earning 1.2 million ISK per month
while only paying 90,000 ISK in
rent. Even prominent members of
National Church clergy have been
baffled by her remarks. She is, in
other words, the walking embodi-
ment of every argument in favour
of separation of church and state.
Sema Erla Serdar. There is no
social strata in Iceland as margin-
alised as asylum seekers are. They
don’t even have the right to work,
let alone live where they want, and
their access to basic goods and
services that the rest of us take for
granted is severely restricted or
blocked altogether. Plenty of poli-
ticians pay lip service to improv-
ing their conditions, but nothing
really substantial has been done;
not least of all under a Minister of
Justice who seems to actively hate
foreigners. Fortunately, there’s
Sema. Not only has she has worked
tirelessly to bring individual asy-
lum seeker cases to national at-
tention, but she also took matters
into her own hands and formed
Solaris, a volunteer NGO that col-
lects donations of clothing, furni-
ture, books and other essentials
from the general public to donate
to asylum seekers. She has been in-
strumental in shifting the conver-
sation about this sector of the pop-
ulation, despite being a lightning
rod for some of the ugliest racism
in Iceland. No matter what threats
are thrown her way, she continues
to soldier on. She can’t be praised
enough.
Literally everyone who spoke
up as a part of the MeToo cam-
paign. We often forget that here
in Iceland, The Feminist Paradise,
some awful examples of misogyny
still exist. This fact was under-
scored by those who came forward
as a part of international #MeToo
campaign. Two very important el-
ements of the Icelandic campaign:
seldom was any one man singled
out by name, and not all of the ex-
amples of misogyny were brutally
violent. These two elements are
crucial in working towards a more
tolerant society, and everyone
who took part in this campaign is
thanked for their courageous ef-
forts.
System Reboot:
Universal Basic
Income And
Iceland
Pirate MP Halldóra Mogensen dispels the myths
Words: Paul Fontaine Photo: Art Bicnick
Halldóra Mogensen, an MP for the
Pirate Party and the chair of the
Welfare Committee, is not the kind
of politician who speaks in dry,
vague terms about the “importance
of stability” and
strengthening
the status quo.
Rather, she be-
lieves the sta-
tus quo needs a
complete over-
haul, and one
of the central
elements of that
goal is universal
basic income,
or UBI. There
are profound
phi losophical
reasons for her
support of UBI,
and she deftly
shoots down the
major criticisms
of this radical
concept, from
both the left and the right, while
emphasising that the underlying
principles behind UBI mean chang-
ing everything about the way we do
economics.
"I was always really interested in
finding a way to change the incen-
tives in society, because I'm a big
believer that most of the stuff we
do stems from human behaviour
but not necessarily human nature,”
she says. “I don't think that it's in
our 'nature' to be the way that we
are. I think it has more to do with
behaviour that is learned and in-
centivised in our systems, due to
the ideology that
drives our society.
I've always had this
view that human be-
ings could be doing
much more amazing
things than we're
doing right now. So
I did a lot of reading
into the ideologies
behind our systems."
Freedom and
compassion
There are two run-
ning themes that
persist when Hall-
dóra talks about UBI:
freedom and com-
passion. She ques-
tions how free we
actually are in a capitalist society.
“You can't really talk about freedom
when people are making desperate
decisions just to survive,” she says.
“That's not freedom, and you're
not making a free choice when it's
a question of surviving. So I asked
myself, how do you give people that
freedom?”
Halldóra believes that this des-
peration impairs our ability to
tackle larger issues, such as climate
change. She points out, “When
you're struggling, day to day and
month to month, just to make ends
meet, then you don't have the capac-
ity to think long term. I think that's
incredibly dangerous for all of us.”
At the same time, this despera-
tion erodes our sense of caring for
the marginalised and less fortu-
nate, breaking down our sense of
belonging to a larger community.
"When you're living in a scar-
city mindframe, then you don't
have the same capacity for com-
passion,” she says. “I think that's
another part of what's causing
all these problems in society; the
hatred, the anger. I think a lot of
that stems from scarcity. Why
is there so much hatred towards
immigrants? Because people are
afraid they're coming to dip into
your limited resources. I think UBI
would be an amazing social experi-
ment to see how people’s attitudes
would change."
How can UBI work?
Criticism of UBI has come from
the left and the right. A common
refrain from the left is that UBI
would erode the social welfare
system, and would be too costly.
But Halldóra has no designs to
privatise the social welfare sys-
tem. She emphasises that health
care “should be free for every-
one” regardless of income level.
In addition, she believes the cost
could be covered in part by re-
placing the pension fund and
the per-child allowances paid
by the government with UBI.
Halldóra sees room for other
revenue streams as well.
"As one example, I always
thought it was a good idea to start
with our tax credit system, to raise
it up in steps, and then pay it out to
those who aren't using it.,” she says.
She adds that revenue could also
be generated from possibly raising
taxes on heavy industry, the fishing
giants and wealthy land owners.
One of the most persistent
memes from the right wing about
UBI is that it would eliminate the
incentive to work. Halldóra’s re-
sponse is to question the concept
of work itself, and the inconsistent
levels of value society places on dif-
ferent activities.
"We judge someone based on
how someone chooses to spend
their time,” she says. “If someone
wants to spend their days playing
video games, who am I to judge that
that's a bad use of their time? Why
does society decide what work is?
Why do I get paid to watch some-
one else's kid, but I don't get paid
to watch my own kid? I think it's
really strange how we define this
stuff. But on the experiments that
have been done with UBI thus far,
one of the main things they wanted
to see is if it had a negative effect
on the job market, and it did not.
So I think this has been debunked."
On the subject of incentives, she
also points out the open source
software community and volunteer
charities. “They're not getting paid
for that. It gives them a sense of
purpose and belonging."
Halldóra doesn’t pretend to have
UBI completely mapped out. She
does, however, believe it is essential
for our survival to at least experi-
ment with the idea.
"I think it would be a good test
just to see what effect it would
have,” she says. “Because one of the
biggest fears people have with UBI
is that people will stop working,
and that it will be too costly. What's
more difficult to foresee is the sav-
ings that you will make, where we
will save it, and how much is com-
ing back. That's just one of those
things that you can't figure out un-
til you try it."
The whole system
needs to change
Halldóra does not believe that you
can simply inject UBI into a capital-
ist system and solve all of society’s
ills. Rather, the entire system needs
to be upended, if only in steps.
"This is not one change,” she
says. “We're not going to take UBI
and install it in an unchanged sys-
tem. It won't work. The basis be-
hind this is we have to rethink our
economic system. The way that
our system functions, the ideology
behind it, is just not serving us in
the future. Maximal growth of the
economy in perpetuity, maximal
production and consumption on a
finite planet, is insanity. UBI will
never function in this system. We
need to rethink the whole thing."
A major part of this is educa-
tion. She believes children need to
be taught from an early age to have
a say in their environment, so that
they will grow into people who will
see themselves as stake-holders in
their communities.
In short, a combination of con-
ditioning newer generations for
direct democracy, while building
an economic system that leaves
no one struggling, will bolster a
healthier, more democratic society.
"For this to happen, you have to
have a certain level of compassion
in society,” she says. “You have to
have people who are living com-
fortably enough for that compas-
sion to exist. As soon as we get to
a point where there are too many
people struggling to make ends
meet, who are angry and resent-
ful, that compassion disappears.
I wouldn't want Iceland to go
that way. I would like to keep us a
compassionate nation. It's ridicu-
lous that we even have poverty in
this country. Poverty is obviously
built into the system, so we just
need to change the system."
Halldóra Mogensen, a Pirate Party MP
“When you're
struggling,
day to day
and month to
month, just
to make ends
meet, then
you don't have
the capacity
to think long
term.”