Mr. Werner you have become famous(not to call it "infamous") through your very clear demand of an unconditional basic income
that is highly interesting because this has in the meantime  become a central demand of the Piratenpartei
So, you have been the first pirate, the first to make this topic his own. 
Sounds good, but isn't that however a very starry-eyed concept
if it doesn't have to think at all about how to finance something like that?
YOU can afford to demand that.
Let's not talk about how to finance it, but let's take these students here for instance, these young people. 
What is a fact, is that when we are in this world, we need to live. 
that is obvious, self evident, right?
Yes, we can agree to that.
And if one wants to live in THIS world,
one needs an income. Else you can't live.
you still agree to that, right?
without income, you cannot live.
So now, you want to study, and then you want to do something in the world
Do something means change the world, right? 
You can't do that, if you don't have an income.
That is why one goes to work.
I just wanted to pass the ball back to you
You work because you want to change yourself as a human being.
So it is about living and development. That is what humans are about. 
An animal e.g. only wants to live. 
But the human being wants to develop themselves.
And each one of you doesn't yet know the kind of person you will be, when you die. that is highly exciting.
Somehow. And none of you wants to stay the way you are right now. that would be a desaster. 
twenty years later someone comes to you and says: "Exactly the same as twenty years ago". that would be a desaster.
So the human beings want to develop. For developing, I need the work. 
For existing I need income. 
And then I realized, after doing hundreds of job interviews, inevitably,
that income isn't the payment for the work, but the prerequisite.
that is our mistake in thinking. 
our error in reasoning is, that we think, through the work, the income is generated. The reverse is true. 
because we have the income, we can work.
And that has changed the whole view on our company, when we realized,
the people that work in our company need an income to be able to afford working with us. 
But your life curriculum is the opposite example.
no. no. You have generated income and at the same time developed yourself. No.
That was the sequence, you have opened up your subsidiaries, with hard work. 
no, yes, no, no, no, there has always been someone, who has invested in me. 
there has always been someone, who has given me the prerequisites. 
there has always been someone, who has put trust in me, and said "Mr. Werner, show us what you can do". 
And exactly the same is what the "basic income" is saying. 
the basic income is saying: "we grant to you, that you can live humbly but with dignity, and now you can show, what you can do".
that is actually the request to you. 
So, just to reiterate shortly, basic income would mean, the state is giving to each citizen.... not the state. the community.
the community is giving to each citizen a sum... what is proposed is 1000 Euros, and you are getting that categorically always. 
because you are human, because you are a brother or a sister.
Our normal system is... up til now we are saying, one works, earns money, lives on it. 
if you can't work, for whatever reasons, if you need it, you get money by the state, welfare (Hartz IV in Germany)
you are saying, in reverse, each person first of all, gets these 1000 Euros, and then we'll see.
Then you have this grand trust ... by that we are creating this space for freedom, ... that he wants to work hard.
Schiller has expressed it differently, 1792, in the "Augustenburger Briefe", he said:
The human being isn't much yet, if he has a warm place to live, and enough to eat.  
but he needs to stay in warm shelter, and have enough to eat, (basic income)
for his better nature in him to be able to stir. 
only when I have a secured existence 
then I can ask, what do I really want. 
not, what do the other people want, but what do I want?
then I can take the risk to do something, that isn't immediately payed that well. 
to study something, that is responding to my intuition, but that isn't immediately.... that is actually the difference. 
that is the Kopernican turn around. but still....
maybe I can clarify it to you with my shop owner's or traders way of thinking.
if you, being students, .... always very critical, if you come shopping with us, 
and take a tube of toothpaste from a shelf
then you all think, when you go to the checkout, that you are paying this toothpaste. 
that is an error. 
because the tube of tothpaste, that you are taking from the shelf is already payed for, is already payed, else it couldn't be on the shelf. 
What you are paying at the checkout, is that you are enabling us, to buy another tube of toothpaste. That's how you have to see it.
Payment is never backwards oriented. payment is always forward oriented.
Payment doesn't balance out, but when you are buying with us,
you are ordering us to continue doing this
and when you are getting an income, then you are ordered, to now show us what you can do...
but Mr. Werner, you yourself haven't trusted this idea, since you have commissioned a poll,
and that is saying, that 45 percent of the people, because the human being is how he is, not what he is, ... would work less.
half of the people would work less.
What does that mean for our society?
Maybe work in the sense of work that is bound by instructions,
payed, and subject to social insurance contribution
and instead? But if the single parenting mother, in case she has a basic income, is saying, now I am not working 40 or 35 hours a week anymore, but only 25,
and take spend more time taking care of my kids, does the mother then work less?
that is our mental model of work, isn't it? We will always do for others. 
and the more we are opening up space for activity, where others are doing what they think to be meaningful or necessary, the better for society. Believe me. 
that is what I have experienced in the company. 
the more we have... In the past organisation was thought to be something stringent, limiting
that is by the way a quite simple... I had almost said "trick" but it is simply another consciousness, that I am seeing organisation as something opening not what is limiting.
but what is opening.
and then people get going and are having the most incredible ideas.
the fascinating about your idea is that you start trusting the people again and that you are saying, 
that you are giving this advance payment
and then he is developing the freedom, to behave in way, that in it's sum it will serve the common good etc. 
the routine objection is - and am admitting, that I am still not on completely on your side, and thus agree to this objection
this doesn't conform to the normal human nature. 
before you had mentioned this beautiful example, and that was right on, with the toothpaste.
with most people I would claim, that they think at the checkout, they are paying for it... yes, yes! this is a Kopernican paradigm shift
we are still far from that right now. 
development can be fast
you yourself have said that, two years ago, let's slow down with this idea, that I myself created, 
the society in this country isn't ready for it yet.
No, that isn't what I said, that would have been authoritarian.
no, you always have to .... yes, you have said it. You even have written it. then I take it back. or commissioned it to be written. 
then I take it back. no an idea has to become epidemic. 
if more and more people.... So, if of the students here afterwards some are leaving and say: i am going to research this, 
meaning, in the sense of an exploratory question independent of result 
then it is furthering the idea
menaing if the people wouldn't have been able to dream and think, how it is, when a person is flying, 
we wouldn't have a single airplane today.
or ship. touché. And now we are having a party, it has been said already, the pirate party, that has included your idea in their program,  
as far as one talk about program in this case
that makes you feel recognized of course. no, not at all. Did you already join?
no, for god's sake. Why not? No, that is'nt my thing. 
for me that is a subject of research. A polar star, something to orient myself towards.
the more people... but when the first party is.... yes, yes, 
that is why I am glad about it, because more and more people are coming and identifying with this. 
if a party, and additionally one which is having an amazing success, is putting this into their program, 
then this triggers that other parties have to say: Oops! Why are they so successful? This could be caused by the basic income. 
So we have to start debating this.
the more people are starting to think about it...
nothing's as powerful as an idea, whose time has come. Victur Hugo has said that.
and if other people start engaging with that, then this idea is becoming epidemic.
and if the idea is becoming epidemic, I.e. if the idea becomes imaginable for enough people in a society,   
that a human being is able to fly, right?
or that a human is growing wings, if he has a basic income,
then it is going to be realized, believe me.
then people will be quite rushing to realize that.
ok, then at the latest by now we have to get to the topic that you don't like that much, meaning, financing. 
earlier you said, let's not talk about the money. Insanely expensive. Right at the beginning. So now we can do it.
now have spent 10 minutes about the matter, now we will talk about the disdainful topic, how to finance it. 
It is a very expensive model, naturally, 1000 Euros for everybody
How do you finance it?
This is a problem of our understanding of money
The biggest problem, that we think money would have a value as such.
and that we don't realize, why we are calling it a "Geldschein"(money bill). (germ. Geld = money, schein = "seems")
because it is only an illusionary value. The value are the produced and delivered goods and services, that we live on. 
So when if we want to finance something, we don't have to ask, where is the money, but where are the goods.
and when you look at our society, and ask, where are the goods, 
then you will see, that we have never been as rich as today.
we have never been as rich as today.
we have enough goods and services, for each person in our society to live a humble but dignified life.
in the sense of article one of our constitution, the dignity of a human being is unbreachable, to garantee that, by constitutional law. 
we have enough goods and services. I haven't found anyone to tell me, no, no, no Mr. Werner, listen...
that is the shortage. 
so, when we have these goods and services, we have to ask ourselves, then why are we affording ourselves poverty?
How come we are affording ourselves child poverty? which is stupid, right?
How come we are affording ourselves old age poverty? Which is ungrateful, right?
how come we are affording ourselves fear of survival?
why are we putting people under pressure, resulting in hindering them to develop their "better nature", in the sense of Schiller.
that is our... that is a purely conceptual problem, really. 
It isn't a problem of financing. once you have immersed yourself into this matter, I recommend it to everybody, 
but convince, you can only do that to yourself. 
the more you... you will see the money doesn't matter....
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money you can print. we have experienced that in this financial crisis.
you can arbitrarily increase it. 
the question is, whether the corresponding goods are present.
so, that have been a lot of basic thoughts. It hasn't been the finalized financing model, 
I would have liked to give you the recipe with success garantee..
connected with one or the other approach.
Mr. Werner, much of what you are saying, is also implying a piece of criticism of our elites. 
Which is closely connected with an increasing loss of trust, whether it is justified or not, 
but there exists a big loss of trust towards our elites, be it politics, managers, even scientists.
much of it is connected to the debt crisis, and I am saking myself sometimes, if we are not making it too easy for ourselves, as observers, in this excercising of criticism. 
whether the world already has become so complex, in this globalization, and the speed of this digitalization, 
that elites too got to be completely overwhelmed, and that for you it has to be a blessing with being that far, in the early sixties.
maybe today, that wouldn't be possible anymore. I wanted to give a little compliment. Thank you. 
Well, I would have to answer that from my humbly entrepreneurial perspective, 
In a company it is exactly the same. If the people in our company, the collegues in our subsidiaries get the impression, 
that we are doing things, that are not sensible, we losing trust. Then they will look for a different employer, job
And if they are under the impression, here is happening something that is making sense to me, and is making sense to the customer, that is measuring tool.
it has to make sense to me, as a co-worker, since I am dedicating my biography into this enterprise.
and for the customer it has to be understable. 
and if this isn't the case, then the customers run away, then the co-workers run away, and the enterprise is going to perish.
you mentioned a point here: being understandable. means, explain. One has to explain, what is happening. 
One has to make those being affected into participators. That is the point. 
and you can experience that everywhere in our society, we need... and that is a problem for the elites. 
Meaning the poverty in our society isn't a precariat problem.
but it is an elite problem. because the elites in our society, meaning the intelligent people,
and also those, who have the respective resources available, 
since they don't succeed to balance society. 
which is the same situation, as on the eve of the French revolution. 
I have described this in one of my books, with great joy, because that was when I myself really realized it, 
this is a purely conceptual problem, that one looses track of the whole. 
When I loose track of the whole as an entrepreneur, then the company perishes sooner or later. The question is, 
how big are the forces of inertia still innate to it, 
then it is coming apart. 
with each one of us, if we are loosing track of our own organism
and think, it doesn't matter, if we are getting drunk each night
then at some point one gets presented with the bill.
