Matt Javanshir

What would a 'convivial' UK public policy look like?

The UK political landscape is awash with talk of decentralisation, devolution, and hope in every heart.

It's hard not to get swept up in it all over again. On the one hand, I'm not naive to the sobering realisation that we're doing what is, by now, a well-worn song and dance by welcoming our seventh Prime Minister in a decade. There's also the same patter of reindustrialising all and sundry to cure what ails you, and promising economic growth as a panacea. On the other hand, this time it's someone who is talking about decentralising decision-making, whose first act was to instruct eradicating the scourge of rough sleeping, and who is now de facto the most senior member of the oft-overlooked Co-operative Party. It does feel different to me this time. I can feel the unbridled sense of optimism that the rhetoric is going for, and so I'm (cautiously) here for what feels as though it could be a more convivial outlook towards UK politics (...let's see if that sentence ages like milk). These recent developments tap into a sense I feel: people are looking for a different way of doing things.

But it got me thinking. What would a more Convivial/Illichian UK public policy look like? I found that Illich's arguments never did map neatly to one particular political party. It has the core critique of soul-and-planet-destroying unending economic growth for its own sake that is found in the Greens. It has the empowerment of liberty, personal autonomy, decentralisation of power, and community that would be right at home with the Lib Dems. It has the love for localism and personal aspiration that I've seen certain Conservatives display. It has progressive attitudes towards privilege, work, and power dynamics that have defined the core tenets of Labour. In other words, it is not one way of thinking, but is unabashedly drawn to an atypical form of human flourishing at its core. That is why I'm so drawn to it, despite the ways it challenges me to question entire institutional paradigms that we've lived with our whole lives.

There is a tension bordering on the oxymoronic here. Public policy is, by definition, analysing the ways we can shape and better control the institutions of our society. Illich's core critique is that it's the scaling of institutions that is the problem in the first place. I'm not as bothered about this conflict. I've never let good be the enemy of perfect, and I'd rather see a set of policy proposals out there in the world that are implementable than a perfectly written essay about a better UK that lives in a drawer because it can never actually come to pass. Pragmatism is a compliment. And in the world we live in, it's a necessity. So I don't think this article serves as what I think Illich's version of UK public policy would be, but what a pragmatic UK public policy informed by Illichian thinking could look like. Not one that starts from the ground up, but one that starts from what we have now. One that would require iteration, compromise, and a near-impossible disentanglement from the myriad tensions, rules, and norms we have in place today. But one that's worth exploring.

Let's have a go.

Governance

The first thing to note would be that all policy decisions herein would cascade from the initial push to decentralise power as far down towards the community level as you can reasonably go. Those communities could be cities, towns, districts, villages, or more. The core rationale would be that the needs, wants, challenges, and capabilities of communities differ up and down the country. Southampton is not Skegness, even if the two of us had a shared vision for what we wanted our shared UK to be. Would community-level decision-making introduce duplication of effort? Yes, but it also avoids the centralisation and concentration of institutions that underpins the need to think about an Illichian project in the first place. Instead, decentralisation opens up the potential for collaboration, contrast, competition, and a sense that there's not just one way of doing things. The same shared philosophy can be expressed in a plurality of ways, which I happen to think distinctly aligns with our identity as modern British folk today.

Economic Structure & Incentives

I think the entire philosophy of an Illichian economy would be one incentivising activity that reflects autonomy, diversity, and community while simultaneously disincentivising scale. One way to achieve that would be through a tax system that is progressive not solely towards income, but towards convivial activity.

Corporation Tax

Pragmatically, this could be achieved through existing information that is already captured in the taxation system today, such as revenue, profit margins, and payroll. High revenues with either high margins or low payroll-to-revenue ratios indicate either isolated automation or monopolistic rents, both risks under Illichian thinking. These should be taxed punitively. For example, let's say there are four companies, all of which are generating £100m in revenue:

All four have generated the same revenues. But Company A is incentivised to pump in as many cheap goods as it can to earn a profit. Company B doesn't do that, but it too strips human labour almost entirely out of the loop, ensuring that any wealth generated is concentrated with whoever owns the shares and not dispersed through the workforce and into the community. Company C, on the other hand, operates on thin margins and requires paying a local workforce to grow its activity. Company D generates revenue that is inherently tied to human expertise. Like Company C, it grows with human labour, not with a push to scale through efficient, raw, unbridled transactions. However, unlike C, D operates at high margins, which risk monopolistic rents, indicating unconvivial activity (albeit for different reasons than A and B). Under these scenarios, Companies A and B would pay a far higher rate of tax than D. Company C would pay the least of all. This could be done in a manner that's graduated and tiered relative to the thresholds, as to not incentivise gaming the system to just hit a threshold as a cliff-edge. This principle creates the conditions whereby convivial activity is rational, not just idealistic. Of course, we'd have to determine what thresholds constitute high and low, and you would have to ensure 'payroll' is appropriate in both amount and breadth to qualify. There would need to be mitigations in place to ensure firms don't hire people for payroll-padding, unconvivial work just to hit a lower tax threshold. Still, there are several pragmatic advantages: the information is already captured on tax returns today, it can't be gamed by reallocating costs or changing your listed activity, and you disincentivise monopolistic rents at the same time as you do outsourcing labour to increase profits. Most importantly, it punishes scale without people, not efficiency or ambition.

Other Taxes

The core idea above is not to punish wealth creation, but to punish unconvivial wealth creation. There are some taxes, such as business rates, which can map directly to the corporation tax principle outlined above. This principle also suggests that other forms of income arising from capital and not labour, such as capital gains, dividends, and interest, should face at least parity with income tax rates.

Worker-owner Cooperatives

For an English invention, I don't think we talk about these nearly enough. Under Co-ops, businesses are owned and democratically controlled by their workers. Capital and labour are not disaggregated; this means that built into them is the freedom not to filter every decision through whether it maximises economic growth and shareholder value. They inherently tether activity to a community of people working together to grow an enterprise. To me, they therefore form a cornerstone of a Convivial economy. To incentivise their wholesale adoption, public subsidies could be utilised to offer startup loans, revenue-based financing, or convertible preferential debt, with those investments ringfenced into a Sovereign Wealth Fund for further future investment. So instead of one-off government grants, public funds become an enduring portfolio of local wealth-generating assets. Something akin to this exists in the form of Italy's Marcora Law, whereby employees of a failing company can pool their state unemployment benefits into a rescue package to turn that business into a worker-owned cooperative. It's been called for in the UK too, and I can see why. Italy also further mandates that co-operatives pay a percentage each year to fund the promotion and development of new co-operatives. There is an opportunity to adopt and adapt these ideas into a revolving, state-backed financing programme for co-operative, convivial cultivation in the UK.

Knowledge, Capability, and Access

Libraries

Conventional economic return on investment estimates put libraries at returning £5 for every £1 invested. But beyond that, I think they are a miracle, and one of the most wonderful examples of conviviality in the UK. A friend and I were discussing the other day: can you imagine the concept of a library being floated if it didn't exist today as an established norm? The idea of a public building in your local community filled with books and other media that are free to borrow for the express purpose of enriching your life? When a paid alternative exists, no less? It's wild to me. I think an investment in libraries (more buildings, more books, licensing any research behind paywalls), if paired with an economy that incentivised more free time actually to read, would benefit the proliferation of knowledge and convivial progress for generations.

Right to Repair

These are laws requiring manufacturers to make spare parts available for appliances. There is a convivial argument to expand this out to almost every major category of thing imaginable. When something is easier or necessary to throw away and replace simply because it's more convenient, not only is that no good for the planet, but it's no good for us. We normalise a culture of cheap and nasty replacability and make markets out of our own ignorance where, before long, we don't know how to be any other way. Instead, if we understood how the things in our lives actually worked and where they came from, we might value more, learn more, and restore a sense of dignity in our stewardship of the world. Not just for the planet's sake, but for our own. Related to this would be policies to mandate the standardisation of components, protocols and other specifications. While not all parts or aspects can be standardised, we should aim to operate in an ecosystem that supports a right to repair without unnecessary friction.

Schools

Illich had a lot to say on schools and society's relationship with them, with ideas such as open resources, skills exchanges, peer-matching, and skill directories as alternatives. We can see that some of these have come to pass in various forms today alongside the school system. I'm not going to critique the institution of academia (or society's relationship with it) as Illich may have done; the privilege of being back at University after decades away, learning the craft of research, and engaging in the spirit of honest and open debate has made me feel at home within myself in a way I didn't think was possible. But I also acknowledge that not everyone learns the same things in the same way. There isn't one best way to contribute to our shared understanding of the world. Capabilities and credentials are separate things. Not only does this suggest we stand to gain more in the UK from once again normalising apprenticeship schemes alongside traditional academia, but I can also see the tension of disciplinary faultlines existing in school curricula and departments as they stand now. So when I see places such as the London Interdisciplinary School frame their curricula around problems and not subjects, I see glimpses of what I think could be a genuinely convivial approach to learning in the future. Hooray for interdisciplinarity!

Shared Infrastructure and Commons

Land

To me, it doesn't matter how fancy a financial transaction is on paper, or how important something looks in the abstract; the real assets of a place boil down to a) its people, and b) its land. If UK communities were to embark on a form of de-enclosure, whereby they obtained land commercially (or under terms laid out that gave them the right to acquire if being held purely for investment or on disused commercial property), and held it as common land in a community land trust, this would ensure that future housing needs could be met without the risk of commercial exploitation or repurpose. A community's land would continue to be used in accordance with its needs. Related to land is the concept of right to roam; the legal right to access and explore natural landscapes, even if part of them are privately owned. Right now, rules vary in the UK; Scotland permits it, but much of England has restrictions. Adopting a convivial policy would empower autonomy and first-hand discovery of the wonderment of nature by expanding it to cover all areas of the UK. Incidentally, there were plans to do this until a U-turn a few years ago.

Third Spaces

Community centres, youth clubs, music venues, places of worship, pubs, and cafes, provide what I call deliberative infrastructure; places where we celebrate, debate, and share our lived experience. At times, I feel as though I am a part of the last generation that can remember the vibrancy of these types of places, and in my opinion it's no coincidence that their erosion has coincided with the polarisation and toxicity that seems to typify contemporary life. Restoring these spaces to be community-owned and operated is not a nice-to-have; they are a necessity. Convivial public policy would go out of its way to support them. This could be done through mechanisms such as public subsidy, acquisition of disused commercial property (especially if the community itself owned the land!), further reduction in business rates (the levers of which already exist), and a push towards increased use of community interest corporations (CIC).

Another convivial space is the community-owned library of things. These exist as a sort-of library for tools or other specialist equipment that you need once in a blue moon. Too expensive or too infrequently used (or too big!) to have in your home, but something that can be made available to you as and when you need it. There is a growing movement for this in the UK, and I think it signals a growing desire for communities to help one another, even against the normalised consensus of consumerist ideals. A convivial public policy would adopt these and incentivise their rollout.

Utilities

How long have we got? This is one of the most pressing, talked-about, frustrating domestic topics of modern times. I don't think anybody, of any political persuasion, thinks that UK utilities are working the way they should be. The discussion is generally a binary choice between nationalisation and privatisation, but I think a pragmatic Illichian outlook here would be a programme of public ownership at the community level. The devil would be in the details of precisely how that acquisition would work, however. One option is a programme of banning bonuses and capping profits to repatriate the funds toward share buybacks, debt repayment and community ownership. Or you borrow to nationalise overnight. Or you expropriate; you take it back and live with the consequences. Given the extent to which we privatised practically all of our utilities (we're one of the only countries in the world to have privatised the act of hydrogen bonding with oxygen), dismantling this would require considered thought and a long-term view. But one where community ownership should be at the heart of it, as we see in Germany's Stadtwerke or citizen ownership in Denmark.

There's so much more to say.

I have barely scratched the surface of what's been covered here, let alone specific policy directions for transport (beyond 'more bikes, fewer cars'), pharmaceuticals, food, immigration, defence, crime, and more. We'd need a whole book to do it justice (watch this space, perhaps!). Taking this right back to the thought that started it all, a convivial UK public policy would mean that fixing a tumble dryer should be simpler, cheaper, and more convenient than buying a new one. The small business making handmade tumble dryers built to last should owe less to the state than the company mass-producing them using cheap, outsourced labour in a sealed unit for cheap consumption. Fixing it yourself should be preferable to the alternatives. Having the time to fix one for your neighbour shouldn't be a luxury. Knowing how to fix it and exactly what the components should look like should be standard. Having the equipment available to you in your local community to do that should be normalised. Apply this to everything in your life beyond tumble dryers, and this is what a convivial UK would look like to me.

One key consideration is the role of the welfare state. Its current size relies on the status quo and the notion of growing the pie to at least try and equitably balance the needs of the frail, sick, vulnerable or what we've agreed should not be up to the market to decide. And these proposals may very well bring in less tax. And debt reduction could very well be enacted alongside it. But far from a programme of austerity, the trade-off is for a society of conviviality where quality products, services and opportunities for an enriching life are abundantly available within a community that you actually feel a part of. Where the disincentive to scale untethers us from the unsustainable culture of rushing that leads to a nation of burnout. Where free time is spent caring, learning, and contributing to things that enrich our lived experience. This would be the biggest gamble in all of this, and that's a terrifying but necessary thought to consider here. Conviviality may not spread evenly in the short-term.

I'm not saying this is complete or perfect. There need to be failsafes, contingencies, and compromises. We might want industrialised medicine because the alternatives are unbearable. Communities might not form in the way this policy hopes they do. Society at large might not want to (or feel as though they can't) trade the convenience and comfort that a life of speed and scale has given them. We might not want to risk calling the bluff of "capital flight" by disincentivising scale. But look at the status quo and ask yourself: how is it working out for you? Are you happy? Are the others around you happy? I'm willing to bet that if we thought along more Illichian lines, we'd gain more than we lose. We'd feel a part of a community we had forgotten was there. We'd forge an economy that enriched people's lives, not the other way around. There would be more than hope in every heart.

These ideas are not as radical as you might think. Decentralisation has become front and centre of the current discourse. The right to repair in the UK was recently quietly expanded to include more things. A youth investment fund was recently launched to rebuild youth centres across the country. A ban on social media for children has been announced as we start to realise what a pale imitation of deliberative and convivial infrastructure it is. Music venues have seen an announced reduction in business rates. The circular economy is more popular than ever. A Labour and Co-operative Party member is Prime Minister.

I get the sense that people are yearning for a new way of being. Maybe this is it.