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RE: Mutual aid societies - The evolution to the current state of the art
I can't wrap my head around basic income. Economies are zero sum - where does the wealth necessary to provide basic income come from if the recipients are consuming wealth but not adding value to the economy? Do we just print money and hand it out, expecting the purchasing power of that money to stay constant despite continuous inflation in the money supply? I don't understand the something-for-nothing aspect of basic income...
Economies aren't zero sum and Steemit proves that to an extent. Wealth already exists and the only thing money does is track it in a sort of accounting system. There is plenty of wealth already, and with AI there will be much more wealth generated by non-humans in the future than there is today. Just because a lot of people have no money in their pockets it doesn't mean they are worthless or have no wealth, or have nothing to offer. It simply means the money isn't tracking the forms of wealth they have.
There are two issues here - redistribution of existing wealth and distribution of newly created wealth. If redistributing existing wealth, is it voluntary? Today 1% of people control more than 50% of global wealth - how would a basic income program redistribute that wealth to the 99%? All the wealth in the world today is spoken for. To reallocate a portion of it would require those that currently hold the wealth to donate it. Why would they do so? Can you envision Soros, Buffet, Gates, Thiel, Slim, Ortega, Koch... yourself... giving away wealth to provide a basic income for someone without wealth?
If distributing newly created wealth, how do you maintain the purchasing power? If you are proposing a scheme similar to 'helicopter money' wherein central banks print money and distribute it to citizens as a living wage, how does that not result inflation? And if cradle-to-grave basic income in proposed, how does that not eventually result in a Wiemar Germany situation?
I think income has to be tied to economic contribution or the wheels fall off. But I'm really interested to be shown another way, because I think blockchain tech makes a basic income technologically viable... just not sure if it is economically viable.