The future of politics

Donald Trump’s presidency appears to have left political observers around the world without a clue. I would like to convey my basic ideas to this in a picture:

As one can easily see, this is a world view at the beginning of the third millennium from an Austrian perspective. It tries to capture what I believe is going on right now:

Right now, in front of our eyes, the ideals of the French Revolution are being completed on a global scale. This development can be dangerous if we look at our history. However, if we act wisely, what is going on can become the peaceful base for the centuries to come.

What is happening symptomatically? To put it in traditional terms, the far right of our society is uniting with the radical left. To put it bluntly, the Donald Trump fans begin to meet with the Bernie Sanders disciples. They still do this in their criticism of the ruling system. We see its most recent outcome in the group of “Corona deniers”. Here those people who are fed up with the bourgeois consensus of brotherhood and solidarity are meeting because they have never experienced it themselves on their respective fringes of society.

This development, the alliance between extreme freedom (“right”) and extreme equality (“left”), can be dangerous if you think back to national (“right”) socialism (“left”). The union of freedom and equality at the expense of brotherhood led to Auschwitz. This development doesn’t need to be repeated once we have learned the lesson of history.

To make a long story short: This sketch has a small question mark ❓. It stands for the “radical left” wing that strives for freedom. It is the only missing piece of the puzzle that we still need. It is the party of the Unconditional Basic Income, the radical left answer to the undermining of brotherhood by “neoliberal” capitalism.

This unconditional basic income has to come. It will first have to be introduced on a national basis and, to quote our Federal Chancellor, “no matter the cost”. What luck that the UBI was originally a liberal idea of the Chicago boys around Milton Friedman. And what luck that we have negative interest rates meanwhile, “whatever it takes” (Mario Draghi). And what luck that the corona pandemic is currently showing us the inadequacy of all other financial solidarity measures.

What luck that the UBI is thus paid by itself.

The Universal Basic Income (UBI)

Thanks!

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