The Citizen’s Stake and Paternalism

The introduction of a generous stakeholding or capital grant scheme promises to secure the material conditions of freedom for all citizens. But if citizens “blow†their initial capital grants, as seems possible, they put this freedom in jeopardy. The paper argues that such “stakeblowing†is a genuine cause of concern with the proposal and defends two responses to it: an “educational response†that combines grants with training in asset management and a “paternalist response†that limits how grants can be used. The latter response provides some support for the alternative basic income proposal, for the idea of a development grant (a capital grant that may be used only for approved investment purposes), and, perhaps most plausibly, for a hybrid of the two.