An Introduction to Basic Income

March 21, 2014

If you’ve not heard of the concept of Basic Income, you should get familiar. It’s about to become a central topic within all modern societies.

Key points

The jobs are going away, and they’re not coming back. Any narrative that doesn’t convey this is either ignorant or deceitful.
We keep adding people. Faster and faster. It’s accelerating.
We have limited resources. Water. Food. Space.
We must control our population, or it’s going to end poorly for us.
I think one way to to reduce the population is to simply educate people as to the dangers of having too many people. It’s difficult for this to happen when everything is a competition for a few jobs and a few dollars. Basic Income helps this situation by reducing pressure on us by allowing us to sit back and focus on the higher things in life.
What would people do? They’d do art, science, literature, film, etc. They’d build things. They’d make people laugh. They’d make people cry (in a good way). They’d be happy, and sexy, and curious, and smart, and full of wonder, and innocent. They’d explore their humanity unburdened from the unnecessary burdens of artificial work.
Many people would be dedicated (at least partially, and by volunteer or draft service) for assisting the infrastructure. That means government, that means helping improve the systems that create the value that enables the prosperity.
The key focus would be free, high-quality education for all.
Equal to education would be the elimination of hardship for the suffering. So, hunger, shelter, basic needs, etc.

Right, well that sounds super. Where in Hades is all that money coming from?

At first (and for the foreseeable future), the country continues to create and sell things; they’re just mostly created by automation. Say 90% of the value is created from automation, and there are like 10% helping to improve that system at any given time.
Much much later that would become redundant. Why are we trying to buy and sell things? Is there not a more advanced form of value exchange? You make me laugh and I help you in your garden, for example. Doesn’t seem to scale well, though. Ultimately that would be the kind of advanced exchange in this model though. Germany exports personal flying machines that give people pleasure, and they get stand up comedy from Canada in return. But what happens when someone doesn’t have something to trade? What if they’re just takers? That’s the issue with the entire system.
The best answer there is that you incentivize giving back to the system through more money and better amenities at first. Then, as the education seeps in and shows them that they SHOULD give back to the system, that won’t be as necessary. Adjust as needed.

I wonder if something like this could be tested on a small scale anywhere. If anyone can do it, I bet it’s Vermont.