The Civic Dividend

An argument for the utility of a civic dividend. I was inspired by the fruitfulness of UBI, the idea that human beings should receive a small sum of currency in order to incentivize risk-taking, small business, and desires motivated by things rather than abject fear. However, this runs the risk of not making economic sense from the principle of it being divested universally, without meaningful origin. The correct answer is to understand that humans indeed are motivated by the purity of work. But people also have property rights that should be respected, both public and private.

The argument details first the philosophical origins for a civic dividend. It argues with a proposed opponent who detests the idea. The dividend is intended to be a property right originating from people's rights in the state of nature. America was founded on property rights heavily taken from English Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, where all men own the world in common in the state of nature, which is why anyone can take an apple and eat it out in nature, despite that tree belonging, seemingly, to no one. Now, there is no open natural land commonly owned for man to take his own risks and pursue property bravely and independently. Man and woman must instead pursue jobs that require human permission, but nature required no arbiter. This is a deviation from natural property rights that must be restored.

It should be given back to the people and their elected representatives in the states. A civic dividend may consist of people performing such duties as voting, volunteering, or filing some sort of declaration of fruitful desire every year, each action appropriately divesting to them some portion of a dividend taken from them from the original free state of nature that has been excessive. This will also incentivize more participation in the civic process, and also reflects the fact that all citizens in America, by the patriotic and automatic act of holding the government accountable perform work, that should be rewarded. We all, through our continued American existence, take everyday civic actions that strengthen and secure our democracy, even when we don't vote: like by talking with each other and forming clever opinions that allow us to hold politicians accountable and make them obey their people. The overt nature of these acts, like voting and volunteering, are therefore subject to the compensation that they involve, especially since the fruitfulness of America at modern large today is only made possible by the continued civic involvement, and is how the free land of nature has been so vastly appropriated beyond (such an uncompensated) justification.

The fact of the lack of a human arbiter is also retained through the dividend. Such civic duties require no human permission, just as the tree required none to pick its apple, but only the equal and impartial ability to pick. No human employer, however generous, is impartial, because by definition a human being is unnatural and partial, unlike nature. Americans have a right to all aspects of their private property.

Not only have the fruits of such nature been appropriated unrighteously, but the fulfillment of picking them has been as well. We therefore ask, demand actually, that this be given to the people and their elected representatives to make do with how it would be fitting.