Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No

Freedom is commonly understood in two different ways: the absence of restriction or interference (scalar freedom) and the absence of slavery or oppression (status freedom). Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income argues that philosophers have focused too much on scalar freedom and proposes a theory of status freedom as effective control self-ownership: the power to have or refuse active cooperation with other willing people, or simply: freedom as the power to say no. This exciting new volume argues for and explores the implications of this theory of freedom. It shows that most societies today put the poor in situations in which they lack this crucial freedom, making them vulnerable to poverty, exploitation, and injustice. Widerquist argues that the basic income guarantee is an appropriate institution to help secure status freedom in a modern industrial society.

Karl Widerquist is an associate professor in Political Philosophy at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. He holds two doctorates—one in Political Theory from Oxford University (2006) and one in Economics from the City University of New York (1996). He is coauthor of Economics for Social Workers, coeditor of The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee, coeditor of Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research, coeditor of Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend: Assessing its Suitability as a Model (Palgrave Macmillan), and coeditor of Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform around the World (Palgrave Macmillan). He is a founding editor of the journal Basic Income Studies and has published scholarly articles on economics, politics, and philosophy in journals such as Political Studies, Utilitas, E astern Economic Journal, Politics and Society, and Politics, Philosophy, and Economics.