r/BasicIncome

Hi fellow Georgist. I have some question regarding UBI/citizens dividend

Is it only citizens that should receive it or also long term residents?

Should people under 18/their parents get it?

Do you think there should be some kind of working requirements?

How do we avoid that people just take the money to live as a "nomad" in less developed nations?

A stagnant UBI alone would still dystopian if advanced AI and robotics make extreme abundance possible, it’d end up being a pittance check.

If a future AGI powered economy generates unprecedented productivity, but the average person only receives a fixed survival stipend while a tiny ownership class captures nearly all of the gains, then we haven’t solved the problem we’ve just stabilized techno-feudalism.

The goal shouldn’t merely be “prevent starvation after mass automation.” It should be ensuring that the productivity gains of machine civilization raise the material floor for everyone dynamically.

In other words, as automated productivity scales, baseline human purchasing power and quality of life should scale with it.

Not as charity. Not as welfare, but as a kind of basic human inheritance entitlement derived from humanity’s collective scientific, cultural, and technological development that made those systems possible in the first place.

A static UBI could still trap people inside artificial scarcity while machines generate near post-scarcity levels of output.

& critically, distribution mechanisms shouldn’t become fully centralized digital chokepoints either. People should still have decentralized means of exchange and participation that preserve autonomy, privacy, and resilience outside purely corporate or state controlled platforms.

UBI is only the first step. The real question is whether automation leads to managed dependency under concentrated ownership, or distributed abundance & genuine post-labor agency… something more akin to a protopia rather than a dystopia or a utopia ( which quite literally means nowhere)

Podcast episode with Jaron Lanier, pioneer of virtual reality and scientist at Microsoft Research. He proposes a radically different way of thinking about AI, and unpacks its consequences from AI safety to the future of the economy.

Highlights:

• The case for thinking of AI not as an alien intelligence, but rather as a collaboration of human data
• How this reframe helps you understand the failures of current AI systems, and why so many of the industry's most powerful figures seem to be losing their grip on reality
• A practical approach to AI safety inspired by multi-factor authentication in cybersecurity
• Why universal basic income is unstable, and why a creativity economy (where people earn from their contributions to AI) could be a better way of distributing the benefits of AI
• How to be an optimist about technological progress while acknowledging the risks and being critical of certain developments
• Why history gives us the most rational grounds for optimism about our future with AI

I’m not afraid of a mass drop in GDP, a labor participation drop, or a drop in tax revenue.

I’m afraid of voters voting for politicians who promise a higher basic income. I’m afraid of taxes growing painfully high as the poor try to steal from the rich.

I like many people on this subreddit lean to the right. My fears are unquestionably the most common fears for right wingers that support/hesitantly support basic income.

The only way I would be in favor of a basic income is if there was constitutional amendment guaranteeing that the basic income fund wouldn’t surpass a percentage of tax revenue. I would also need a guarantee for tax rates to not surpass a specific threshold.

Even if a reasonable basic income bill was proposed today I would vote against it since certain checks for the basic income are not guaranteed in the constitution. I would need a basic income amendment with upper threshold limits before I could support it.