tl;dr: re-thinking my position.

The concept of Universal Basic Income has a lot of traction in the tech world. People like Musk and Zuckerberg are advocates.

As I understand it, the path of the world creates two realities for us to contend with.

First, we know how to create enough food and basic supplies to meet the needs of everyone on earth. Just look at how much food is thrown away each year, particularly in the United States.

Second, the path of technology is such that more and more jobs will be done by machines, leaving fewer and fewer jobs for everyone else.

And, they argue, providing a Universal Basic Income doesn’t make people lazy or provide incentives to not work.

The last point was my basic issues vis a vis UBI, something that Andrew Yang made a cornerstone of his Presidential campaign via a “Freedom Dividend.”

A recent conversation, however, with the CEO of a crypto project has got me re-thinking the position. He emphasized point #1 above and, naturally, advocated how crypto projects could distribute the income more quickly and more fairly. This was something I blogged about in Jan 2019 discussing projects like  Mannabase, Swift Demand, and Circles. All of them seem to still be up and running (in various stages), but I’m not sure how much real traction they have. As I pointed out, there’s a lot of friction to be concerned with.

Still, he was persuasive and a (relatively) recent experiment in Finland with UBI showed that, although it didn’t depress desire to work, it didn’t elevate it either. That being said, the overall health and wellness of people was indeed higher.

Given that there are 7 billion people with PTSD now and many who live with food insecurity, that’s something worth noting. If this past year has taught us anything, it’s that we’re all interconnected and the welfare of others affects our own welfare.