Unconditional Basic Income: Around the Survivors a Perimeter Create

Collage by Aydasara Ortega

– One reason to consider supporting an unconditional basic income is that everybody – including you and I – would have enough security to feel “free” and to make our own choices. Maybe we decide to explore having our own business venture. Perhaps we choose to help someone else begin their own. Or we could volunteer our time and energy for an important cause.

– Wouldn’t that be something!

– When someone can live based on his or her own talents and wants, life becomes better for everyone. Or aren’t happiness and self-fullfillment contagious?

– Yes, they are.

–  Actually, did you know that there is currently one privately-funded program being run in California’s Silicon Valley that gives “unconditional” payments to Oakland residents?

– Really?

– Yes and the program’s administrators say: “We know basic income promotes freedom and we want to see our people experience that freedom. 50 years from now, it will seem ridiculous that governments used fear of not being able to eat as a way to motivate people. We also know that at some point in the future, as technology continues to eliminate traditional jobs, we’re going to see Unconditional Basic Income happening at an international scale.”

– Interesting. “If no mistake have you made, yet losing you are, a different game you should play”

– True. So, another logic behind advocating for an UBI is that of automation.

– Say what?

– Automation: an emerging form of clerical process technology based on the notion of software robots or artificial intelligence workers.

– I kind of get it but it still sounds Sci-Fi to me.

– It does a bit but it is a reality check. Automation will take many jobs away which could actually be seen as something positive. We give the repetitive, mechanical, high risk jobs to artificial intelligence and each human being concentrates on finding out what his or her “dreams” are and where his or her abilities are most useful. It is a wakeup call to think about giving individuals a safety net that could give way to creativity and innovation.

– Right. “Around the survivors a perimeter create.”

– Yes. It’s like the light at the end of the tunnel. A lot of people will find a way to do more entrepreneurial things.

– After all, everyone – including those some think might just stay in the couch watching Star Wars if they have an unconditional basic income – only have one life to live.

– And most people – including them and us – want to make the best out of it.

– Indeed. “You will find only what you bring in.”

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