Skip to main content
Contribution to Book
Why We Demand an Unconditional Basic Income: the ECSO Freedom Case
Arguing about Justice. Essays for Philippe Van Parijs (2011)
  • Karl Widerquist
Abstract
Philippe Van Parijs’s (1995) Real Freedom for All: What (If Anything) Can Justify Capitalism makes a very thorough and challenging philosophical argument for basic income. But I believe that it has two important limitations that inhibit it from giving a compelling explanation why basic income supporters believe that support for the disadvantage must be not only universal but also unconditional and enough to meet an individual’s basic needs. This essay briefly discusses those limitations and then proposes an alternative argument for basic income that I believe relies on a more compelling concept of freedom, defined below as “Freedom as Effective Control Self-Ownership” (ECSO freedom). This concept of freedom provides a stronger explanation why basic income must be universal, unconditional, and large enough to meet a person’s basic needs.
Keywords
  • Basic Income,
  • Effective Control Self-Ownership,
  • ECSO Freedom,
  • Real Freedom,
  • Real Libertarianism,
  • Indepentarianism,
  • Justice as the Pursuit of Accord
Publication Date
2011
Editor
Axel Gosseries and Yannick Vanderborght
Publisher
Presses universitaires de Louvain
Citation Information
Karl Widerquist. "Why We Demand an Unconditional Basic Income: the ECSO Freedom Case" Louvain-la-Neuve, BelgiumArguing about Justice. Essays for Philippe Van Parijs (2011)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/widerquist/33/