WEBVTT

00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:11.170
Welcome to the journey
of freedom and a healthy life.

00:00:11.870 --> 00:00:13.920
Before we start,
let me ask you a question:

00:00:14.640 --> 00:00:16.880
if you take a scale from one to ten,

00:00:16.880 --> 00:00:19.300
like one being the lowest,
ten being the highest,

00:00:20.040 --> 00:00:23.240
how stressed are you today, or this week?

00:00:30.920 --> 00:00:32.860
And in your life in general?

00:00:33.530 --> 00:00:35.440
(Laughter)

00:00:38.080 --> 00:00:39.960
And how do you feel with this number?

00:00:43.560 --> 00:00:48.480
When I talk to people about this,
usually they say, like an eight or higher.

00:00:49.710 --> 00:00:51.740
And when I ask them what it's all about

00:00:51.740 --> 00:00:55.160
they usually say, well,
I feel like I'm not good enough.

00:00:56.960 --> 00:01:02.220
They tend to want to be faster and better
and even perfect, in every sense.

00:01:04.800 --> 00:01:06.440
And what we notice is,

00:01:06.440 --> 00:01:12.480
stress is one of the most risky
disease symptoms

00:01:13.110 --> 00:01:14.990
or causes for diseases.

00:01:16.560 --> 00:01:17.520
That means,

00:01:17.520 --> 00:01:20.760
we can have physical diseases
from that, heart attacks.

00:01:20.760 --> 00:01:22.080
We even age faster.

00:01:23.560 --> 00:01:26.460
Or we can have psychological diseases,

00:01:29.600 --> 00:01:32.040
and depression is one of this.

00:01:33.520 --> 00:01:36.480
The World Health Organization told us

00:01:36.480 --> 00:01:42.680
that 300 million people
are affected by depression.

00:01:44.680 --> 00:01:46.770
300 million people

00:01:46.770 --> 00:01:50.990
is the whole population
of the United States!

00:01:52.600 --> 00:01:54.320
This is enormous!

00:01:56.560 --> 00:02:00.460
When I started my first job,
I noticed that I was stressed,

00:02:02.800 --> 00:02:06.560
and when I talked to people
they just said, yeah well, me too.

00:02:07.480 --> 00:02:11.520
And it was like a status:
here's my job, my car and my stress level.

00:02:14.480 --> 00:02:15.960
And I wondered why is that,

00:02:16.720 --> 00:02:19.570
and at some point I realized for myself,

00:02:19.570 --> 00:02:24.030
my stress came from my current situation,
where I am right now,

00:02:24.030 --> 00:02:25.720
and where I wanted to be.

00:02:27.400 --> 00:02:33.280
Because I had so many dreams
and I didn't know how to follow them.

00:02:36.120 --> 00:02:39.440
And when I pictured myself,
in this job that I had taken,

00:02:39.440 --> 00:02:45.360
and I was where I just got promoted
and thought, the next three years?

00:02:46.640 --> 00:02:47.920
The next five years?

00:02:49.240 --> 00:02:50.600
Or the next ten years?

00:02:52.360 --> 00:02:54.440
It just didn't feel right to stay.

00:02:56.960 --> 00:02:59.630
And at the same time
they promised all the right things:

00:03:00.440 --> 00:03:05.840
a good salary, an excellent career,
security, all for the future,

00:03:05.840 --> 00:03:08.659
everything your parents want for you.

00:03:10.249 --> 00:03:12.440
And it's a really tough decision:

00:03:14.080 --> 00:03:17.640
do I go for the safety
or do I go for the 100%?

00:03:23.280 --> 00:03:29.040
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute
found out that we are empathetic beings.

00:03:30.240 --> 00:03:31.360
That's pretty cool.

00:03:32.160 --> 00:03:37.120
So when I'm stressed, and you watch me,
you have the same stress symptoms as me,

00:03:38.240 --> 00:03:39.760
and the same stress hormones.

00:03:41.840 --> 00:03:46.960
But the good news about it is,
that if we infect each other with stress,

00:03:47.720 --> 00:03:51.000
we can also infect each other
with happiness and freedom.

00:03:53.360 --> 00:03:56.800
And I wanted to get to the root cause
of this happiness and freedom,

00:03:58.520 --> 00:04:02.240
and I found a solution
in a really unexpected area.

00:04:05.680 --> 00:04:07.480
This is Mark.

00:04:10.280 --> 00:04:13.720
He has a chronical disease:
morbus crohn, it's a stomach disease.

00:04:14.560 --> 00:04:18.040
His blood inflammation rate
was 20 times higher than normal.

00:04:21.839 --> 00:04:23.920
I don't know if you know
what it feels like:

00:04:23.920 --> 00:04:28.560
he can't eat a lot of stuff anymore,
he feels weak, sometimes it even hurts.

00:04:29.520 --> 00:04:33.280
I mean, food that's supposed
to be good for your body and vitalize

00:04:34.920 --> 00:04:37.200
now destroys your intestines.

00:04:40.800 --> 00:04:45.000
In 2014, he participated in an experiment

00:04:45.760 --> 00:04:52.440
and he won [a] basic income,
that is 1000 euros for 12 months.

00:04:54.560 --> 00:04:58.320
And at the time he realized
he had won this money

00:04:58.320 --> 00:05:02.080
and there were no strings attached,
he didn't owe anyone anything,

00:05:03.560 --> 00:05:05.400
he could watch his body heal.

00:05:07.880 --> 00:05:10.880
And from week to week, within seven weeks

00:05:10.880 --> 00:05:14.560
his blood inflammation
dropped to a normal level.

00:05:18.080 --> 00:05:21.440
And it's not just about the money:
the money didn't heal him.

00:05:23.120 --> 00:05:27.920
But what he experienced
was dropping his existential fear

00:05:29.360 --> 00:05:33.120
and experiencing existential relaxation.

00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:44.840
"Mein Grundeinkommen",
or "My basic income" is this experiment:

00:05:45.920 --> 00:05:50.400
we collect from almost
half a million people money,

00:05:50.400 --> 00:05:52.520
and then as long -

00:05:56.560 --> 00:05:59.640
until we have 12,000 euros,

00:05:59.640 --> 00:06:01.720
and then we just give it out to someone.

00:06:02.800 --> 00:06:07.840
With that we have distributed
or raffled out money

00:06:07.840 --> 00:06:10.320
to over 100 people so far.

00:06:12.120 --> 00:06:14.280
And we learned a lot about these stories.

00:06:18.360 --> 00:06:23.280
This young man of nine years is Robin,
and he won a basic income as well.

00:06:25.040 --> 00:06:27.900
And I don't know
if you can imagine what happened,

00:06:27.900 --> 00:06:30.170
but this boy -

00:06:30.660 --> 00:06:35.400
became from one day to another
a major earner in his family,

00:06:36.720 --> 00:06:38.360
and it changed the whole dynamic:

00:06:41.520 --> 00:06:44.640
the family said,
they didn't fight this much,

00:06:45.280 --> 00:06:47.640
they spend more time,
they made a lot of trips,

00:06:49.000 --> 00:06:52.800
even though Robin just wanted
one book every month from this money.

00:06:56.560 --> 00:07:00.520
And what his mom said well,
what changed for us is not what we did:

00:07:00.520 --> 00:07:01.720
it's how we did it.

00:07:03.040 --> 00:07:05.040
We just spent our time more consciously.

00:07:07.240 --> 00:07:10.720
We see how basic income,
or this feeling of freedom,

00:07:11.240 --> 00:07:15.400
can ripple out to a lot more people,
for example our family.

00:07:19.040 --> 00:07:21.680
And Robin put it just that like, well,

00:07:22.280 --> 00:07:25.880
basic income just makes us
better feelings, that's what he said.

00:07:30.240 --> 00:07:31.960
The third story is Jesta.

00:07:33.080 --> 00:07:36.479
She is a self-employed woman with a kid.

00:07:37.920 --> 00:07:40.640
And the worst nightmare
she could experience is,

00:07:40.640 --> 00:07:41.840
if her kid got sick.

00:07:43.520 --> 00:07:46.300
Because if she doesn't work,
she doesn't earn money,

00:07:47.520 --> 00:07:50.640
and if the kid is sick
she can't work, and can't earn money.

00:07:51.840 --> 00:07:54.240
And she came back
to this existential fear,

00:07:55.480 --> 00:07:58.010
and she suffered from giving her child

00:07:58.010 --> 00:08:01.840
the impression that sick
is like doing something wrong.

00:08:05.320 --> 00:08:08.880
When she won a basic income,
she not only could stay at home,

00:08:09.960 --> 00:08:13.080
she also rippled it out
to a lot of other people,

00:08:13.080 --> 00:08:16.480
because she thought,
they should experience the same thing.

00:08:19.240 --> 00:08:20.640
And she decided to make

00:08:21.400 --> 00:08:23.680
a "Pay what you want"
concept with her clients,

00:08:25.360 --> 00:08:31.920
because she wanted everyone to realize
what it's worth what they're doing

00:08:31.920 --> 00:08:35.280
based on quality and sympathy,
and not on a price tag.

00:08:37.039 --> 00:08:39.440
And we're so known, and so -

00:08:40.039 --> 00:08:44.550
it's so common for us
to be worth what we earn,

00:08:45.670 --> 00:08:48.760
and to work really hard
to be worth something.

00:08:51.080 --> 00:08:54.800
And she wanted to destroy this cycle,
and make it to something bigger.

00:08:57.480 --> 00:09:01.600
What we learned from these stories
and like all the different other stories

00:09:01.600 --> 00:09:04.980
is this ripple from me

00:09:06.060 --> 00:09:08.600
to my close surrounding like a family,

00:09:09.160 --> 00:09:12.240
to even an ecosystem of trust.

00:09:15.000 --> 00:09:17.680
And we've been doing this
for the past three years.

00:09:18.440 --> 00:09:23.840
I said we have already raffled out
to over 100 people this basic income.

00:09:24.640 --> 00:09:29.160
And what is not the same in every story

00:09:29.620 --> 00:09:31.130
is that they say

00:09:31.130 --> 00:09:34.020
they feel a lot more self-esteem
when they go back to work.

00:09:35.720 --> 00:09:39.560
They feel a lot less stressed
in their overall life.

00:09:41.680 --> 00:09:45.730
And what we didn't experience
is that people would leave their jobs.

00:09:46.920 --> 00:09:50.720
Usually if you ask someone,
Would you continue working?

00:09:51.440 --> 00:09:54.050
Then the majority of people says,
yeah, well I would.

00:09:54.640 --> 00:09:58.360
But my neighbour,
he is really lazy, he wouldn't.

00:10:01.510 --> 00:10:05.000
And for us, in our experiment
only four people quit their jobs.

00:10:05.840 --> 00:10:09.640
Three because they didn't like it
and they wanted to change what they did,

00:10:09.640 --> 00:10:11.600
and one [wanted] to go and study.

00:10:14.720 --> 00:10:16.560
And we can learn from these stories.

00:10:19.010 --> 00:10:21.070
With winners of basic income

00:10:22.860 --> 00:10:25.360
we have detected three phases

00:10:25.360 --> 00:10:29.480
which I even went through
when I was thinking of quitting my job.

00:10:31.440 --> 00:10:34.920
And the first is,
acknowledge - dependency.

00:10:38.080 --> 00:10:42.360
When you first win this money,
they all say the same:

00:10:42.360 --> 00:10:45.760
I'm so pressured, I have
to do something for the crowd.

00:10:45.760 --> 00:10:48.960
I mean, they gave me this money for free,
I owe them something.

00:10:50.400 --> 00:10:53.670
When I thought of quitting my job,
my first thought was,

00:10:53.670 --> 00:10:56.480
I can't take unemployment benefits.

00:10:57.480 --> 00:11:01.170
I want to give something to the community,
and not take something out of it.

00:11:02.860 --> 00:11:05.080
But the truth is, we are dependent.

00:11:05.940 --> 00:11:07.760
And this will not change.

00:11:07.760 --> 00:11:10.600
This is a fact, and it's strengthening us.

00:11:13.680 --> 00:11:17.080
Which leads directly to the next one:
tolerate your freedom.

00:11:19.480 --> 00:11:23.400
We noticed that a lot of times
friends would tell the winners,

00:11:25.360 --> 00:11:29.100
Why don't you just take the money
and do what's good for you right now?

00:11:29.840 --> 00:11:32.530
What is it that you really,
really want to do?

00:11:35.000 --> 00:11:39.920
And when I first experienced this freedom
of taking unemployment benefits,

00:11:41.160 --> 00:11:43.680
I noticed I had a lot more ideas

00:11:44.240 --> 00:11:46.120
and I didn't consume as much

00:11:48.320 --> 00:11:50.520
as if I didn't have
to compensate for anything.

00:11:53.120 --> 00:11:56.080
And it's a common story
around all of our winners as well.

00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:04.080
The third phase
is self-responsible freedom.

00:12:06.040 --> 00:12:10.490
Our society tends to skip
the first two phases,

00:12:10.490 --> 00:12:12.450
and jump right into this one,

00:12:13.240 --> 00:12:14.840
And this is nonsense.

00:12:15.680 --> 00:12:20.960
Because because of this credit of trust
that you have been given,

00:12:21.560 --> 00:12:22.800
something bigger can grow.

00:12:26.920 --> 00:12:31.700
And we noticed that
I had more ideas, I did them,

00:12:31.700 --> 00:12:35.960
I was asking myself, so how can I make
this freedom than I experience

00:12:35.960 --> 00:12:38.140
and bring it into my work life,

00:12:38.140 --> 00:12:40.600
and bring it into
other people's work life?

00:12:42.280 --> 00:12:46.500
This is how "My basic income",
this experiment, has started:

00:12:47.200 --> 00:12:48.680
because of this phase.

00:12:50.390 --> 00:12:52.280
This is what made [me] just think,

00:12:52.280 --> 00:12:56.480
how can I grow and give other people
this freedom as well.

00:12:59.280 --> 00:13:00.490
Because we're so -

00:13:00.880 --> 00:13:03.560
we still think we can earn
and purchase freedom.

00:13:09.200 --> 00:13:10.560
But we can only live it.

00:13:16.720 --> 00:13:22.160
So if you take nothing but one thing,
then I would say it's,

00:13:23.160 --> 00:13:27.000
this basic income feeling,
this deep inner freedom,

00:13:27.000 --> 00:13:28.000
can start with you.

00:13:30.320 --> 00:13:33.520
And can start with you
asking yourself and your friends,

00:13:34.400 --> 00:13:37.320
what would you do
if your income was taken care of?

00:13:41.880 --> 00:13:45.840
And imagine what kind of society
we would live in,

00:13:49.160 --> 00:13:51.240
if we could go for the freedom

00:13:51.950 --> 00:13:54.400
and the things that are right
for us right now.

00:13:57.610 --> 00:13:59.530
And it can start with you.

00:14:00.270 --> 00:14:02.480
I wish us all the best of luck for that.

00:14:03.060 --> 00:14:06.490
(Applause)