Hi Steemit! Scott Santens here. If you've ever googled "basic income", you may have read something I've written.
I'm the first and so far only person in the world purposefully living with a crowdfunded monthly basic income.
Verification on Twitter (Twitter verified - 61,000 followers)
Greetings, everyone. I joined Steemit 11 months ago after learning about it on Reddit where I moderate the /r/basicincome subreddit, but only posted my first post here 12 days ago. Sorry for taking so long. Believe it or not, the idea of getting paid to post here was a turnoff, not a draw for me, but before I explain my reasoning, let me tell you a bit about myself and my work...
A bit about me
Back in 2013, a discussion hit the front page of Reddit about how most people have no fucking clue how quickly technology is advancing now. This was before the 2013 Oxford study came out about how 47% of US jobs are likely to be automated out of existence "in the next decade or two." Despite thinking I was somewhat on top of technology, I was surprised to learn how self-driving trucks were already driving ore from point A to point B in Rio Tinto mines in 2013, with the full intention of 100% automation of trucks by 2020. How many of you reading this right now knew that? How many of you knew that only two years later in 2015, Rio Tinto already hit 100% automation of trucks in two mines? Or that Suncor is looking to replace 800 truck drivers by 2020 (80% of all their drivers) who happen to currently be earning $200,000 per year, largely because they earn $200,000 per year? Or that in the US, self-driving trucks are already on the roads, and that the first commercial delivery has even already been made (and it was beer)?
Now ask yourselves how many politicians knew all of the above back in 2013? How many members of Congress even right now are talking about how quickly technology is advancing, and how we need to get our shit together to make sure massive unemployment and the collapse of the economy via loss of aggregate demand via loss of consumer buying power isn't a direct result of automation? It was this that got me looking into solutions, and in doing so, I came across the book "Manna" by Marshall Brain. If you haven't read this book, click the link and read that shit. It is spot-on and makes a compelling argument that we're looking at a fork in the road up ahead, where we can either choose dystopia or utopia. Things can be a lot worse, and or they can be a lot better, but the status quo is not going to continue. What happens in the years ahead is entirely up to us.
In my search for answers, I came across the idea of basic income, and in researching that idea, my entire life began a different path. I subscribed to the basic income subreddit when it had a few hundred subscribers, and was soon welcomed to become one of its moderators. Pretty much every day since then, I've read articles about basic income and posted them there. The community now has over 40,000 subscribers, and I've personally read thousands of articles/papers directly about UBI or indirectly related to it in the process.
After doing so much reading and research, I reached a point in 2014 where I decided I needed to start contributing to the discussion with my own writing to help expand, deepen, and popularize the discussion in a way everyone could understand as opposed to what was still mostly academic at the time. So in June of 2014, I published my first article about basic income on Medium, and it was one of the most popular on all of Medium that month. Its success helped give me the confidence to keep writing on Medium (where I now have over 20,000 followers), and to also start my own blog.
My next major turning point was with the publication of my article about self-driving trucks and basic income, which went even more viral than my first article. I suddenly found myself being asked to do interviews on the radio and elsewhere and was invited to begin publishing my articles to The Huffington Post. It was also translated into multiple languages and republished in quite a few places, including college course packets.
Before long I also found myself getting asked to give talks about basic income and to be part of panels at conferences. Public speaking was never a goal of mine, and yet here I am now being asked to travel not only across the US but also around the world to talk about basic income. I spoke at the First World Summit on Technological Unemployment, have spoken at dozens of events since, and will give my first keynote speech in Sweden later this year to an audience of around 2,000 people.
In late 2014 I got the idea to use Patreon to crowdfund a basic income of $1,000 per month to enable me to focus full-time on advancing the idea in the public consciousness. Unlike everyone else on Patreon, I would reach $1,000 and then pledge anything earned over that amount to others making the same pledge. I named it The BIG Patreon Creator Pledge. It took all of 2015 to achieve, but starting in January of 2016, I began receiving $1,000 per month in crowdfunded basic income. It's an income floor. Nothing prevents me from earning any amount of income on top of it, and in fact having a basic income means I'm more able to earn additional income because it functions as capital and bargaining power. By capital, I mean it takes money to make money, and by having money, I'm able to use that on things like marketing tools. By bargaining power, I mean I'm able to refuse people asking permission to publish something of mine for free, and instead ask for a fee to do so, or to refuse to write something for someone unless the pay and/or terms are sufficient.
That last part is a huge element of basic income that people don't see on first look, but I feel by having it. Basic income is the power to say "No" made possible by unconditional economic security. This really is about security. The fact I know I will start the 1st of each month with $1,000 instead of $0 means that I can say no to people I might not otherwise say no to, and it allows me to bargain where I might not have otherwise bargained. And it even enables me to work for free which has long been a luxury of the rich. It shouldn't be a luxury. Unpaid work should be a choice everyone should be able to pursue without worrying about survival as a direct result. If you'd like to read more of what I've learned, here's a piece I wrote for Vox, and one I wrote for Business Insider about my perspective on basic income thanks to having one.
In 2016, I wrote my most successful article yet. It was in response to the victory of AlphaGo, which I argued is a clear signal that we've gone from linear to parabolic in our technological advances. It was supposed to be impossible for an AI to defeat the best Go players in the world, and if possible at all, not for another decade. Everyone who thought that was wrong. I fully expect more achievements to absolutely shock people, including those in the fields working on them.
Here in 2017, I've been given a $29,000 grant by the Economic Security Project (co-founded by a co-founder of Facebook) to assist me in my research, writing, organizing, traveling, and speaking about basic income. I've also co-founded USBIG, Inc., a 501c3 created to advance the discussion of basic income in the US, where I serve on its board of directors. There's also a book out there now, with a chapter I wrote for it.
It's been four years since I first read about basic income, and in that time it's gone from something very few people even heard of, to an idea that has been endorsed by Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, The Movement for Black Lives, multiple Nobel-prize winning economists, entire think tanks like the RSA and the Niskanen Center, the co-founders of both the Tea Party and the Coffee Party, and celebrities like Penn Jillette and Joe Rogan. In fact, (here's a database I maintain of almost 300 UBI supporters you may know but may not know support UBI).
We've got a long way to go, but with places like Hawaii already looking to do something at the state level, and with experiments like Y-Combinator's already up and running in the US, and with experiments like Finland's and Canada's popping up internationally, as well as Give Directly's in Kenya, I feel confident we can achieve a basic income guarantee in the US before it's too late, which I think is somewhere around 2025 or so, at which point technology will be advanced enough and affordable enough to make a great deal of human labor unable to compete against machine labor, and most consumers no longer able to consume anything but what they need to get by.
Yes, technology makes stuff cheaper, but not all the stuff, and demand will continue to decline as discretionary income continues to decline. The collapse of demand is unavoidable without the creation of purchasing power, and thus the creation of customers. We can't have a consumer economy built on a base of consumers only able to purchase their basic needs and little else. On the other hand, if everyone started each month with enough to cover their basic needs, then just think of the discretionary income boost and what that would mean for the entire economy. If you're a business owner, this alone should make you want to support basic income - more paying customers.
Let's talk Steemit now
With all that said, I think Steemit represents an important step in the direction we need to go. All of us are increasingly global citizens within online networks. We're netizens. As netizens, we are the nodes within networked systems creating all the value of the networks. Think Facebook. If one were to copy Facebook and just change the name, but no one used it, how much value would it have? Nothing. Zero. A network with no users is worthless. So here we are creating all this value in our status updates on Facebook, but we don't see it as work, even though it is. It's work that's been atomized. An hour of hard work is easier to see as work. A few seconds creating a status update for fun is harder to see as work, but it is. And when that work is combined with the work of billions of others in a constant stream, there is a HUGE amount of value. The problem is that outside of rare exceptions like Steemit, it's all going to the few who created and maintain the network infrastructure instead of the network nodes comprising the network.
I therefore argue for the need of netizen dividends. Netizens should be compensated for the value they create. The trick is how to best go about that. Unconditional basic income recognizes this value by recognizing the value of all unpaid work everywhere, online and offline. Steemit is attempting this on one online platform, and that's exciting, but having observed it over the past year, and because of having a basic income, I think some adjustments need to be made to preserve/improve desired incentives. I also think that without even any changes, Steemit would be vastly improved if everyone on Steemit had a basic income independent of Steemit. Let me explain.
Human motivation is something most people misunderstand and have not studied. I think we assume that the natural state of humans is laziness, and that money is this great way of getting humans who would otherwise do nothing, to do something. This is extrinsic motivational thinking in action, and it is indeed a great way to get people to do tasks that people don't want to do, and are physical or routine in nature. But, and here's the rub, money as an extrinsic motivator can destroy motivation and also hinder creative thinking. Intrinsic motivation is far more powerful.
The power to say no is also key in this. Are you truly choosing to do something voluntarily if the option to not do it doesn't exist? In an experiment that looked at the option to decline, one group was given a choice to do one of two tasks, and the other was given the same two choices but also a third, to do nothing. The result? People spent 5 minutes on the tasks when they were not given the choice to do nothing, and 7 minutes when given the choice to do noting. If you do something because you want to do it, and it's fully voluntary, there's no beating that.
Another interesting example to consider is something in Israel that's like Halloween in the US, but instead of candy, it's charity. Kids go around collecting support for charities. A study took three groups of kids and tried different motivators. One group was given a small amount of money per success. One group was given ten times that amount per success. The third group was given nothing except an explanation beforehand that what they were doing was important to society. Can you guess who did best? It wasn't the group that was paid the most. It was the group that got nothing except for the knowledge that what they were doing was important.
Apply this to Steemit. Look at the posts here. Look at how people interact with each other. My perception is that a lot of what's posted here is in the pursuit of money. I don't perceive this at all on Reddit. I don't even know if it's true here, but the perception feels true, and that alters the experience. I expect someone to comment on this post, but because I know there's the potential you could earn money for it, I don't know for sure if you're commenting for the money or because you really wish to say something. It could also be both. It's also why there are so many bots.
I also get the distinct impression that despite this place being seen as a haven for free speech, speech isn't entirely free due to the combination of monetization and lack of basic income. What I mean by that is when you need money to live, and you can earn money for commenting here, free speech is infringed through the fear of not earning money that could have been earned, or even getting downvoted by someone with a lot of Steem power. Did you watch that episode of Black Mirror that involved the wedding? It feels kind of like that, with people being afraid to tell people to fuck off. Just as work isn't truly voluntary without the option to say "No!", free speech isn't truly free without the option to say "Fuck you!"
Now, if I knew that you and everyone else here had a basic income, then I would know that no one on Steemit is posting anything out of their need to survive, or withholding from posting something out of fear/worry. I think that would help cut down on people purely posting for money, bot creation, and also people coming off as fake in their responses. The quality of posts and comments would likely go up with the removal of posts and comments made purely in the hope of monetary reward. But at the same time, Steemit would still be operating on extrinsic rewards, which again is problematic. Imagine if Wikipedia paid people for posts and edits. Do you think the quality would be better or worse? I think worse. But what if the connection between post and income could be partially decoupled? What if Steemit involved something more like a true netizen dividend?
I think one possible way of going about that would be a percentage of Steem from every post and every comment going to the entire Steemit community as a flat dividend. Instead of 75% going to the poster and 25% going to the upvoters, it could be something like 70% to the poster, 20% to the upvoters, and 10% divided between all accounts on Steemit. Another option would be 70% to the reward pool, 10% going to STEEM power holders, and 10% going to all Steemit accounts. Either way there would be a stream of revenue entirely decoupled from actions that would better reward what isn't rewarded.
An example of something not rewarded is a post or comment that inspires a post or a comment. There is value being generated here on Steemit not being rewarded, even with the existence of rewards. It's a recognition problem that's impossible to calculate. Personally, I am massively thankful to the Reddit community. What I've read there, what I've learned, the discussions I've had, it's all responsible for helping me get where I am today. I would not be where I am without Reddit, but none of that value is recognized, nor could I ever recognize it. I don't know exactly where I got ideas to write about. That's not how ideas work. We influence each other in all kinds of ways. Everything is a remix. We kid ourselves into thinking we're all "original" in our ideas.
For the same reasons I so strongly support basic income simply for being a citizen, I think that if people here earned Steem for just being on Steemit, posts and comments would be less extrinsically motivated and a bit more intrinsically motivated. In my opinion a better balance should be sought, where people are rewarded for their work, but there's more work that's recognized as adding value to the whole, and there's an overall shift from quantity to quality.
In the pursuit of any attempt to divide a population into the deserving and the undeserving, we must face the reality of two error types. A Type I error is an error of inclusion, a false positive. This is giving something to someone we don't think deserves it. A Type II error is an error of exclusion, a false negative. This is not giving something to someone we do think deserves it. The question is which is more important. Is it more important to make sure someone who doesn't deserve Steem doesn't get it? Or is it more important to make sure someone who does deserve Steem gets it who otherwise wouldn't without the application of universality? Apply the same logic to money in society.
But again, even without any of my proposed payout structure changes, I think what's being done here on Steemit is important, and I think it's important this place succeeds, so I plan to start cross-posting my blogs here and in so doing, doing what I can to get more people becoming active participants of the Steemit community.
I think it's imperative for a network that rewards its users to become large enough that it threatens other networks. If this can be achieved, those other networks may feel inclined to start rewarding their own users so as to not lose them to competitors that do. This could lead to a potential tipping point from the old model of providing nothing to those who comprise networks, to a new model where all networks must provide a share of value to all users. In a world where AI is automating jobs, this could be the way of making sure technology works for everyone instead of only the few.
With that said, I guess that ends my intro post. I hope it's been informative and perhaps even thought-provoking. My thanks to you for taking the time to read it, and my thanks to the creators of Steemit for creating a platform that recognizes where the value of a platform arises from - those who comprise it.
One final note
I have a new puppy. He's a Long Coat Chihuahua. His name is Titus Sanchez. I was going to go with Rick Sanchez or Schwifty (because shit on the floor), but my girlfriend loves Titus Andromedon, so we combined them. You can find more photos of him on my Instagram.
Welcome to steem nation
nice brother
Wow, this post is so amazing I am not even sure where to start. I will try my best to organize all my thoughts.
I have heard about this idea from someone in Europe who was doing this too. He was saying that once he was able to have a guaranteed 1,000$ a month, that was when he was really able to start truly creating what he wanted for the first time in his life.
At some point when I was growing up, I gained the idea that money would solve problems. Every since then I have been conflicted creating and doing what I want Vs. making a lot of money to have the power to solve any problem that could happen.
I now know that this is a false truth that I have, but at the same time it is hard to change that within me. Through out my day to day life I am constantly distracted between what I want to create and what will make me money.
Which then ends up with me doing very little to nothing with my time.
When I first discovered about steemit I saw this as a way of accomplishing both. It helped motivate me to start creating again because of the monetary reward that came with it; I felt like I was fulfilling both my needs, instead of having to sacrifice one for the other.
Its has helped me grow with the focus of creating and making money. Yet lately I feel lost. I no longer know if what I am creating is good or if it is what I want to create. Mostly because I am letting other people decided the value of what I create for me based on what they judge the reward value should be.
I feel there is a lot of programming through propaganda to create these Ideas to make good workers. Like the phrase "what do you do for a living"? People who are desperate are easier to control. I feel education has been institutionalized to train and create good little worker with the right skills.
I fully believe basic income to be the answer. Although since the government(s) is running on a centralized debt system that fund something that is inherently evil, I do not know if it is a good idea for it to be generate through them.
Thank you for inspiring me with this post. It is now my goal to gain a passive income of 1,000$ a month which will serve as my basic income. I think this might solve my problem of not being able to focus my energy & attention on things were money is not present. Giving me the ability to say "no" or "fuck you" when I need to focus on what I want instead ^_^
Thank you, and I have to say your sentence right here is a key understanding:
"I am letting other people decide the value of what I create for me based on what they judge the reward value should be."
Those who believe markets are "perfect magical calculators" are taking a good idea, which is the concept of a market, and putting it on a pedestal it does not belong on. Yes, markets can indeed put a price on things, and in so doing function incredibly to leverage scarce resources to maximum effect in certain cases, but in other cases, markets can also fail miserably at determining value.
I think a prime example is any well-known artist who only became well-known after death, and died poor. A single painting that sells for $1 million dollars apparently reflects the art itself as a work of genius, but the work itself didn't change. It's the same piece of work that the artist couldn't sell during their lifetime, or sold for like $5 perhaps.
Now imagine the person who sells such a painting. Perhaps someone who buys a painting for $500,000 and sells it later for $1 million... did they add $500,000 in value to the painting? Compare this $500,000 as being perhaps 10 times more than the artist who painted it earned off their painting during their entire lifetime. Is the act of selling on their painting more valuable than the act of creating that painting and every other painting that artist ever created? Of course not! But there are definitely those who will conclude that based on the numbers.
We do not at all value extremely important work sufficiently. Did you know 1/3 of Americans are putting in 1.2 billion hours per week of unpaid care work? It's value if paid is estimated as being about $700 billion per year, or 5% of GDP that's missing from GDP, if it were calculated into it.
Why is that work not considered work, and therefore not even valuable, when the same work that does get paid is considered as valuable?
Here's another question. Imagine a small community of five houses, each with one parent, each with one kid, where each parent pays one of the parents for daycare so they can work doing daycare for another parent. Economists would consider this as full employment. Every one has a job, and that job is adding to GDP. Now what if each parent stayed home and raised their own kid? This would be example of full unemployment, with nothing added to GDP, and yet the nature of the work and the time involved is exactly the same. But which example is most likely to lead to better adults decades later? The one where everyone was raised by someone else other than their parent? Or the one where everyone was raised by their parent?
I think society needs to look in the mirror and recognize what isn't being recognized, and redefine what it considers to be work, and what it values. I also think that forcing people to work with the threat of poverty looming over everyone, and even dragging and keeping people down in poverty, is preventing a great deal of work from being done and value being created.
Imagine if only one new Einstein is out there working three dead-end jobs 70 hours per week in the hopes of preventing their family from living in poverty or trying to get them out of it if they're in it... how do we calculate that loss of value to society? How do we even calculate what value Einstein himself added to society?
Once we start thinking about how poorly we judge value, and how much value is being hindered and prevented by a system not built on Level 3 of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs instead of Level 0, it's hard not to see the immediate need for implementing basic income.
Agreed. Time & wisdom & experience & skills and resources and many things are so valuable. Determining the level of value something or someone has is a tough thing to do. Facebook stole from people so much.
This sort of is one of the questions I have re GBI and that is who gets to make the decision to stay home or not?
I don't doubt that there will be a paradigm shift needed, it's just who is the one that's going to make decisions. If it is each individual without strings attached, sign me up.
SDG
It's no different from now, it's just that the incentives (both tangible and intangible) will be rearranged a bit. I could ask the same question about the current system: Who gets to make the decision to stay home or not? The individual does, of course. They weigh up the pros and cons and incentives and disincentives and make an informed choice (if they're lucky). And not to forget that the more precarious your existence is, the less real choice you have in the employment (and otherwise) marketplace. Giving everyone a liveable minimum wage means that people are actually freer to make real choices about how they allocate their time and resources.
I'm sorry, but $1,000/month is not a "liveable" wage in San Fransico, California - although it might be in rural Nebraska. Placing an artificial, sub-poverty income limit on all people is not "freedom," it's just a softer form of slavery than we have right now, but it is slavery nonetheless.
Basic income is not meant to be a complete replacement for income. Tell me if, for those working in San Francisco, a $12,000/yr or $1,000/mo increase in their after tax income would make a difference in their lives?
As far as cost of living differences, Scott address that concern in one of his articles.
I studied at home. My mother taught me. It helped. I wish my mom had Steemit 30 years ago.
Yes, it is an easy trap to fall into; Since so many things can be bought with money, it creates a reality where those with the most money can manipulate that reality to the desires (even if it sacrifices someone else).
Yes, van gogh was a huge victim of this exact thing. Think how he would be if he received the support & acknowledgement now when he was actually alive
Yeah, it is weird how the ability to buy low and sell high is the one that is valued most in the society. But at the same time it adds no particular value to society, yet those are the ones running a high percentage of the market.
Yeah, there needs to be more recognition on supporting caregiver or raising kids. But who will provide that? Right now it seems that the government are controlled by people who love to focus the budget on war?
Even better example than Einstein is Tesla. He was broke most of his life and still created so many practical things yet his innovation was constantly stifled by his money backers focusing more on money that innovation.
Yeah I definitely see the need but I don't know how to make that happen. A lot of us don't even know where to begin getting a basic or passive income.
We love you @BallinConscious. Quite possibly the most interesting guy on Steemit!
Nice to see you on steemit :D have a great time.
@ScottSantens welcome to Steemit. I have seen your work across the web going back some time. I do believe Basic Income will be a part of life in the near future. I leave figuring it out to the economists.
For me I abide by Pareto's Principle in everything I do. Whether it is here on Steemit or in my business. I recognize that some will and some won't and the ones who won't will far outnumber the ones that will.
I do like the idea of giving a portion of awards to everyone but I would add a caveat, "they would have to be active at some level".
So I am going to leave you with an adorable gif and upvote myself at 100% just like I did your post. I also resteemed your post.
Thanks! I see nothing wrong with the caveat of some level of activity being required for a netizen dividend of any kind. I would compare that to the requirement of a pulse besides citizenship for an unconditional basic income. ;)
Question as a newbie here: what is the reasoning behind upvoting our own comments?
I am still not too sure how this all works exactly so hopefully someone else can explain it more accurately. From what i understand if you are the first to upvote and the post becomes popular you receive a higher proportion of the curator rewards than you would otherwise by being amongst the first to promote the post to others.
Welcome to Steemit!
Welcome to the community.
Welcome to steemit @scotsantens. Thanks for educating people on these changes affecting humanity as we speak.
In addition to basic universal income, I am hoping that there is more education on creating passive income via business and side hustles.
Welcome to STEEMIT, @scottsantens! Just out of curiosity, I was wondering how you came up with the $1000/month figure, because a few months back, @maryfavour was writing how the $10,000 she earned on STEEMIT was life-changing for her, and that she is now considered a "millionaire" in her country of Nigeria: "STEEMIT HAS MADE ME A MILLIONAIRE"! So at some level, the "correct", useful amount becomes rather subjective and arbitrary.
Furthermore, if everyone in the U.S. alone was given a "basic income" of $12,000 per year, multiplied by 326,474,013 (the 2017 estimated U.S. population), the price tag comes to near 4 TRILLION DOLLARS per YEAR, or over 20% of annual GDP!
And while it may seem like a very noble idea at first glance, my years of market experience suggest we'd see a rapid repricing of literally everything, to the point that the new "basic income" required would quickly rise exponentially.
A few months back, there was a bunch of thought-provoking discussion on this subject in the comment-section of the following post. It'd be interesting to hear your counter-arguments to some of the points brought up over there: "Universal Basic Income is our future, at least according to Mark Zuckerberg".
The $1,000/mo figure comes from the fact I live in the US, and $12,000 is the defined poverty line here. The amount will vary nation by nation depending on what is considered the poverty line in each nation.
I've recently written actually about how to calculate the actual cost of basic income, and even posted it here on Steemit as my first post. You can also find it on the World Economic Forum. Please read it to understand how you're doing it wrong by calculating the number of people by the amount. It's a bit more complex than that.
As for rising prices as a direct result of UBI, that too is a common misunderstanding based on an oversimplification and lack of study. It was one of the first things I ever wrote about UBI in great depth. Please read it in full to get a better hold of all the variables involved, as well as the applicable evidence to apply to the concern.
As for my counter-arguments to common arguments, please see my FAQ. There's a lot there to read but many people ask the same questions and have the same misconceptions.
You're sort of helping me make my point. From my perspective, everything is much more complex than what it seems you're outlining in some of your articles. Everything is a moving target. For example, you wrote "groceries might end up costing you an extra 1.4% per month", based on the following video about what would happen if Walmart paid a "living wage":
But, fast forward a year and a half later, and we got this instead:
Link: Wal-Mart Lost $21 Billion Wednesday: What Really Happened?
But what's a few extra billion here and there among friends?! ;) Also sounds like taxpayers may have lost quite a bit more in tax revenue than they "saved" from this particular "debacle" as well.
Regarding inflation, the main reason all the Fed Q.E. really didn't work is because all the money they "printed" was not only hoarded by banks, but it still didn't make up for all the money that "evaporated" in the debt bubble collapse. Martin Armstrong has generally been one of the few who's gotten much of this correct. And he's also been right in that inflation shows up as interest rates rise, not when rates fall (as most mainstream news sources often claim)...
Link: Armstrong Economics: The Three Faces of Inflation
Link: Armstrong Economics: The Fed & Interest Rates: The Nightmare That Will Not End Nicely
Regarding Milton Friedman, I've seen that interview a few times and generally agree with what he says. However, he's also making the point that if you're going to have welfare, with all its double-thinking "conditions", and all the additional middle-men and overhead, why not take that money and give it directly to the people instead, where it can do the most good. In 2009, if the bailout money had gone more directly to the people as opposed to the bankers, it may have also had a much greater effect as well.
Finally, I'm always fascinated by how much more "bang for the buck" I seem to extract versus others who seem less able to "afford it" in the first place. As such, I'm intrigued by how some countries such as India are able to perform cataract surgery for $25 per patient versus $1000's of dollars in the West. Perhaps if we could find a way to bring more such competitive "price advantages" to Western cultures, it may go a long way in addressing some of these bigger issues.
I am a crypto-enthusiast who came from reddit too. I was a moderator for couple of early stage cryptocurrencies. Welcome here :)
I liked the idea. The blockchain tech is coming out of age. In near future, it is quite possible to implement a sort of UBI through blockchain. Other tech such as finger-tip id (Qualcomm's fingerprint sensor) with smartphone can help to reduce false identity. Grantcoin is a small step towards this idea.
I think Govt. may react or apply UBI at very late stage. But crowd-sourcing UBI can show the path to the future. Do you have any specific idea with blockchain that can help to build a crowd-sourced UBI? Or, is there any group working on that?
There are some really interesting ideas out there in the crypto-UBI space. Some are already out there, like Grantcoin (soon to be Manna), Circles, and most recently VIVA. There are those in the works like Cicada, Cubecoin, Musicoin and UBIcoin.
I know I'm missing some, but these are off the top of my head.
There are also some interesting platforms being developed around UBI as a concept. Personally, I'm most excited about the release of GroupIncome. Check it out!
As for my own idea, I'd like to see a cryptocurrency exchange apply an exchange fee that goes to every wallet on the exchange. It would be like a crypto-Tobin tax used to fund a netizen dividend for the exchange's users.
I brought up some of the Cicada ideas to @kyriacos on the post I had mentioned in my other comment, and I really couldn't disagree with the point he made. While it may offer some minimal level of UBI, if anyone can survive on that is another question entirely...
Great work, great article, great idea. I think it is the future, or the possibility for a nondystopian future.
What do you think crypto currencys role would be? I don't really like the idea of a fed coin.
The basic income trials have been to created bank accounts to verified people. Crypto/digital cash makes the accounts and accounting a lot easier, but how do you see the verification working? It would be fairly simple in the United States, through social security numbers and accounts.
Perhaps the basic income payments could just be paid to social security accounts and withdrawn if the citizen chose to, of just save it there, and gain interest somehow, incentivising some people to work and save.
The problems I see with this are
Reliance on government, ideally the basic income system would be separate from the government, like a grassroots federal reserve.
And the ID verification system, used to track citizens and their spending, if the data could be anonymized so ecnomists/businesses/customers could have more data to make better decisions while the individuals information could be secure.
If there's only one thing the government is good at, it's cutting checks. Through the Social Security system, everyone in the system reliably gets their income, the overhead is about 0.7%, and the amount of fraudulent payments is about 0.4%.
I'm just not worried about this perceived "reliance on government" problem. I think the most empowered citizens in the US are seniors receiving Social Security. They vote in huge numbers and because of that, government works for them,not the other way around. I think the Alaska dividend shows another example of this, with people turning out in large numbers to vote when anything dividend related is on the ballot.
I think the role of cryptocurrency is two-fold. Because it can be immediately implemented without government in some form for sub-groups, it can function as a way of building support for the idea of basic income at the national level, and immediately make a difference in people's lives. And after UBI is implemented, crytocurrencies with UBI somehow implemented as part of them or using them will function as another layer on top of the basic income, to increase total incomes, and building stronger foundations for people on which to build.
Personally, I'd like to see citizens take back control of their currencies in the form of seigniorage reform, where private banks are no longer allowed to create and expand money supplies in the form of debt, and instead money is created debt-free directly in the hands of citizens. Perhaps the blockchain could be part of that. I don't know.
I'm going to start taking notes on all of this. It's all so interesting and eye-opening !
Indeed it is. All of us are generally smarter, and certainly more informed, than just one of us.
With upcoming finger/iris sensor on smartphone, personal data can be encrypted and processed in anonymized way through machine learning or AI. Then ecnomists/businesses/customers can have abstract/meta data to make better decisions and conduct research.