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eBay Founder Pledges $500,000 To Test Universal Basic Income Program In Kenya (mashable.com)
"Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar is the latest tech bigwig to get behind the concept [of universal basic income]," reports Mashable. "His philanthropic investment firm, the Omidyar Network, announced Wednesday that it will give nearly half a million dollars to a group testing the policy in Kenya." The money will come from the Omidyar Network and be doled out to people living in Kenya through a program called GiveDirectly. Mashable reports: Universal basic income is the notion that a government should guarantee every citizen a yearly sum of money, no strings attached. The thinking is that such a program would relieve economic stress as automation technology severely reduces the demand for labor. Theories along these lines have existed for centuries, but their proponents have never had much luck convincing governments to give them a shot. Thus, the only data on real-world effects come from a few scattered experiments throughout the years. GiveDirectly is looking to add to that knowledge with one of the biggest trials of a basic income system in history. The group recently launched a 12-year pilot program in which it plans to give 6,000 Kenyans regular stipends for the entire duration. Around 20,000 more will receive at least some form of cash transfer. The Omidyar Network is hoping the study will help advance the debate around basic income from broad theoretical terms to more practical considerations. "While the discussion has generated a lot of heat, it hasn't produced very much light," wrote the Omidyar Network's Mike Kubzansky and Tracy Williams in a blog post announcing the pledge. "There is very little research and empirical evidence on how and when UBI could best be used."
Because automation is a real threat to the economy in Africa...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The whole point of all technology is to lessen the need for human work, because if you need human work then you need other people and if you need them they've got leverage to demand things from you.
That's an incredibly cynical point of view. It's also completely and frankly rather obviously bullshit. The increase of technology and the rise of human civilization has done nothing but vastly increase the dependency each human has on each other. It used to be every couple fed themselves and their children. Then humans banded into tribes and the hunter/gatherers did the feeding, and the others took care of the children/old/weak. Then we made cities, and one farmer fed three or four. Now we have combine harvesters, and one farmer feeds a hundred. There is maybe a few dozen humans alive today in the US who are truly self-sufficient, who do and could continue to survive with the help of no others, while even a few hundred years ago half or more of the human population could do so (at least for a few years). Technology has made specialization a requirement, and with that has come a level of interdependence unrivaled in human history, and that interdependence is if anything getting stronger (now entire countries rely on other countries, in a hundred years that could become entire planets).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
This is why I often say it would be incredibly useful to have a crazy radical left, as crazy (and thereby wrong) as the radical right we've got. To renormalize where "moderate" really is. Not saying that I want such a radical left to actually win, but to have them there as a threat and a contrast to more moderate left positions, in the way that the Black Panthers, though wrong in their position, were useful in helping Martin Luther King Jr. seem more reasonable to those who might have otherwise considered him radical, if not for the Panthers' contrast.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
In other words, you take money from the rich and give it to the poor.
That is exactly what UBI is. It is redistribution of wealth. In a world where the rich are getting richer, and goods and services will (supposedly) get cheaper and cheaper to produce because of robots and AI, yet require less and less labor, them some sort of redistribution will likely be needed to maintain social harmony.
India is probably most serious about UBI. They already have a huge welfare system that is badly corrupted, so they would benefit from just wiping it out and replacing it with something simpler.
UBI would be much harder to implement in America. There is little political support for redistribution, and there would be enormous resistance from people currently receiving entitlements that would be drastically reduced under any plausible UBI system.