Work Should Set You Free
Reinhard Huss (UBI Lab Leeds) recorded on 22/01/2024
Check out Work is Pushing Boundaries for Reinhard's Working Hours episode. This bonus episode focuses specifically on Reinhard's knowledge of UBI (Universal Basic Income) and his involvement with UBI Lab Leeds.
Reinhard’s master’s thesis was on ‘Economic Justice for Sustainable Health’. His thesis was based on the concept of time autonomy as an important factor of personal health. The promotion of health should consider healthy longevity of life and the ability to self-determine the use of time. Searching for relevant literature Reinhard came across Antonovsky’s theory of Salutogenesis (the causes of health) and his Sense of Coherence (SoC) concept (how groups stay together and relate to each other).
SoC includes three components which enable human beings to move towards the healthy end of the multi-dimensional health-disease continuum. The three components are: 1) Comprehensibility - cognitive component, 2) Manageability - instrumental component 3) Meaning - motivational component.
At the time Reinhard didn’t know about Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a potential tool which could enable time autonomy and could be an instrumental and motivational component of SoC.
In 1992 Reinhard Huss moved to the Central African Republic and worked for seven years in the north-west region as public health advisor. The region, the geographical size of Belgium with a population of only 600,000, (bit smaller than Leeds’s) who were, in absolute economic terms, very poor people. The health project aimed to improve the quality and coverage of health services and was mostly financed by the German Government. During this time Reinhard Huss asked himself whether the health of local people would be better served, if the German government would give the invested money directly to local people? Reinhard’s interest in governance (and corruption) arose from the experience that most development funds just seeped away, before they could reach the people in need and their health facilities.
After his return to Germany Reinhard worked at the head-office of the German Technical Cooperation (now GIZ) for a year. This experience reinforced his conviction that international development cooperation was more interested in maintaining current socio-economic systems rather than supporting people in their emancipation from an unsustainable and unfair global economic system. (I swear to you I didn’t write all of this)
Reinhard then worked as an international public health academic at the University of Heidelberg and in 2005 joined the Nuffield Centre for International Health and Development at the University of Leeds until his retirement in December 2019.
In his master thesis Reinhard Huss adapted Kant ‘Any attempt of a technical solution for the global health problems of today is likely to fail, if it avoids to address the underlying ethical challenge, whether all human beings are ‘ends’ or whether many are ‘means’ for the ‘ends’ of some’.
Reinhard Huss says, “We require UBI as a societal institution so that human beings will treat each other as ends rather than means and give practical meaning to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’.”
That’s why Reinhard joined BIEN and the UBI Lab Network and UBIE, started UBI Lab Leeds in 2019 as coordinator and has dedicated his retirement time to the promotion of a Global UBI as a foundation for freedom, justice and peace. Which I think is awesome.
Reinhard’s article ‘Can universal basic income reduce poverty and improve children’s health?’ explains how a UBI can improve our health. There’s a link in the show notes but it’s behind a pay wall.
Links:
UBI Lab Leeds: https://ubilableeds.co.uk/
https://www.ubilabnetwork.org/
Reinhard’s article: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36997294/
Antonovsky’s theory of Salutogenesis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK435860/
Sense of Coherence (SoC) concept: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK435830/
