Climate Change, Complicity, and Compensation

Abstract

A basic income is a very good thing. If set high enough, it could help realize each person's equal right to be free. But it requires funding. And that raises significant ethical questions. How can we fund a basic income ethically? This chapter inserts itself between two judgments expressed by Karl Widerquist and Michael Howard, the editors of this volume. First they suggest we should fund basic income by taxing natural resource appropriation. They argue that "taxing natural resources is at least as good, and probably far better than the case for taxing any other source of wealth." 2 The judgment is comparative, and one reason for their preference (but perhaps not the only one) is that most forms of taxation involve morally dubious expropriations of private property. If its funding were to involve wrongful rights violations, then a basic income funded through taxation would be complicit with that wrongdoing. But doubt should emerge regarding a second judgment,-that is, the editors' endorsement of Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) as having a strong ethical footing and being a model worthy of imitation and adaptation. 3 Their endorsement may appear to follow from the first judgment. After all, funding for the PFD comes from taxing natural resource appropriation. But the particular character of the PFD suggests a reason not to confuse the two judgments. This chapter interposes itself with the following argument. The PFD makes participating recipients complicit with grave wrongdoing because of its connection to the oil industry, a practice responsible for 150,000 deaths per annum. 4 K. Widerquist et al. (eds.), Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend