(Pardon me for reposting this.Simplest way to correct a technical problem)

I just put out the last chapter of my draft of my mighty novel about Basic Incomes. Opens from the mail lists on both WordPress and substack have been slow. I suspect that, as to the warnings these systems generated about its length, the software knows what its talking about.

I think, for many readers, it got caught in filters because of its length, and so did not get to them. So I decided, as soon as I could get around to it, to write this comment and make sure people know about it. Also, that they know what it is about.

Internet people tend to be reluctant to read something that long. It is sizeable, 26000 words. Substack’s algorithm pronounces it to be exactly a 119 minute read.

The entire work is 110 000 words, which the net advisors say is about the limit of what you should do for a first novel. It is somewhat lengthy. I never thought, when I set out to do it, that it would be this long.

I still believe that the best way to explain a complex topic is to make a story out of it. However, I have discovered that these kinds of illustrative stories need a lot of space to work their way through their topics. I spent a lot of space on the personal stories and plotlines which hold the work together.

I was unable to get into all the topics I would have liked to. The book had three basic themes to be worked out. I had to stay close to them while keeping things interesting and entertaining.

First was the theme that a basic income was simply not going to work under capitalism. Second, once the wealth suckers were out of the way, a basic income would become a very useful central organizing principle for a new economy. Third, the old Leninist types were correct that achieving real socialism will require a protracted class war, global in scale, with the old elite waging a total struggle right to the end.

There are so many subtopics within these that I could write a dozen of these books to illustrate them all. There are all the charlatanistic ideas about how a basic income could be funded. There are the liberal ideas about what a democracy is, and that we would even have one under capitalism.

In the real world, neither democracy, socialism, nor a basic income are going to happen without revolutions. A big thing holding that back is the ideas of various “revolutionary” types of people about how a real revolution and overthrow of capitalism would happen, and what post capitalism would look like. Usually, these people’s idea is that thinking about how post capitalism would work is ‘utopian’ and we should just storm the palaces and then work it out from there.

I disagree with that. Thus, a big subtheme of my work is the laying out of what a real post capitalist society would look like, how it would work. However, I wanted to avoid being too prescriptive about it. Any new system would have to experiment and evolve.

So, I took on a pretty big task. I did not originally intend it to become a full out novel. I began it back in 2018 when the Basic Income guarantee people held a short story contest. I started writing what became chapter one, but I did not get it in before the deadline.

There has never been another basic income short story contest. I do not think the true believers in the cause liked the kind of stories they got. These were mostly critical of, or cautious about, the concept.

The joint winner was written by somebody called Melisa Fall. She has never taken any further part in the BI debate, her story is not found on the net anymore, and she seems to have retreated from social media. I tried unsuccessfully to contact her.

I borrowed several themes from her story. It is called “The Floor”. It refers to the line of some BI advocates that it will ‘build a floor under everyone”. Says Fall; “You can’t lay a floor until you have built a foundation.”

This is exactly the problem with the approach of these BICN, USBIG, and BIEN people. They will not recognize the great economic reorganization which will be required to make a UBI work.

Other useful lines from Fall are; “BI does not eliminate capitalism and does not change human nature.” As well; “they said it would solve all our problems. Instead it just solved theirs.”

This of course is the objection I have long had for most advocates of BI. They do not recognize that it could be a good thing or a bad thing. They are advocating the billionaire’s version of a BI, which will solve the billionaire’s problem, not ours.

Bad BI will be a quick fix for a failing economic system. This was the point which seemed to be made by another entry into the BI story contest in 2018. This was called “Burned Over Lands”.

I do not have a copy of this and cannot remember the author’s name. I was somewhat dismissive of it at the time, but it has influenced my thinking in some of the situations in “Basic Outcome Story.”

In it, there was a dystopian setting in which there had been an economic collapse. The ruling elite had no solutions and merely retreated out of sight, and paid everyone a basic Income. This was, of course, not enough to really survive on. It only passivized people enough so that they caused little trouble as they slowly died out.

Most of the story involved these groups of people who formed networks of communes or collectives to combine the resources they got from the BI. It worked somewhat, but these communes themselves became oppressive. People were tied to one commune, and the politics within them prevented people from organizing to deal with the oppressive system. “Santenland” in Basic Outcome Story is a bit like that.

I will probably put Melissa’s work up in my blog sites, as a kind of ‘reblog’. I put it up before, on the old personal web site I had before I opened this blog site and tore most of that down. She seems to have abandoned her work.

So I began writing my own story. I created planet Nearth and tried to give it a “Dingbat Land ” kind of feel, so it is not taken too seriously. I tried getting it presented at the BICN congress in Hamilton in 2018, but it seems it did not fit some “theme” they had.

I found it enjoyable to write this stuff. I soon had a sequel, and realized this could be turned into a novel. I developed a plan for six chapters and kept working away over the years.

There are two basic story lines within it. First, there is the great geopolitical struggle on Nearth following the great breakdown and disruption. The breakdown was caused by the Blazeebian fellowship and its determination to maintain their personal control and form of capitalism all over the planet, through the League of Nearthly nations.

After the breakdown, independent states emerged and tried different ways of running things. The “D” zone implemented a direct grant form of Basic Income with a social economy and industrial strategy. They were very successful and became the driver of the Nearth economy.

The Blazeebians regrouped and tried to revive The League and reestablish control over Nearth. This resulted in PanNearthian conflict. Many states tried to adopt a Basic Income, but many chose the wrong model. They followed what the Blazeebians prescribe, not the “D” zone successful example.

Other ways the Blazeebians waged war on the people of Nearth were to create designer viruses and spread them, claiming the D zoners did it. Finally the ‘five states alliance’ emerged to force the Blazeebian “League legacy” states to stop their aggressive behaviour.

Within this frame are the personal stories. The main one revolves around Ruthie Kazurdle, who was orphaned during the chaotic time after the great breakdown. She is not very bright but very good natured.

Ruthie puts her life back together after escaping into the “D” zone and marrying Angie Bajanji, an economist for the “D” zone government. She travels to various parts of Nearth and reconnects with some of her scattered family. She adopts her niece, rescuing her from her crazy libertarian half sister. She helps to locate and free her other half sister, a scientist kidnapped by the Blazeebian secret service because of her knowledge of aspects of hyperspace physics which could be used to create world destroying weapons.

Dreaming this stuff up has been lots of fun. But now it is done. All it needs now is to correct some details and inconsistencies, and some mechanical problems with the earlier chapters.

Now to figure out some way to publish it and get people to read it. Especially, people who really should be reading it. I am dubious about using traditional publishers, unless they can commit to getting it out quickly, and not sitting on it.

It seems to be almost impossible to make any money writing books now. I am not worried about money, as long as I get back any costs of putting it out. I just want people to read it. 


The other five chapters are on my WordPress site, for all to read if they know it is there. Spread the word. tr