Universal Basic Income on Blockchain?

[Abiky]

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a kind of social welfare where citizens of a given population receive minimum income to meet basic necessities. I've read somewhere online about making a UBI system on crypto. Not sure if something like this exists, but it would be cool if it does. In layman's terms, you'll earn crypto by doing absolutely nothing. This will help minimize inequality, by allowing poor people to participate in the global economy. Even Elon Musk talked about UBI in the Dubai summit.

Is there a crypto with UBI? If there isn't one yet, do you think governments will implement such a system in the future? If not, why? Your input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[jrrsparkles]

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a kind of social welfare where citizens of a given population receive minimum income to meet basic necessities. I've read somewhere online about making a UBI system on crypto. Not sure if something like this exists, but it would be cool if it does. In layman's terms, you'll earn crypto by doing absolutely nothing. This will help minimize inequality, by allowing poor people to participate in the global economy. Even Elon Musk talked about UBI in the Dubai summit.

Is there a crypto with UBI? If there isn't one yet, do you think governments will implement such a system in the future? If not, why? Your input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Let's keep the crypto part away from this discussion.

UBI, is some kind of fund given to people who are below a certain income range seems like a good proposal but we know what government will do to give this money, they will just print out of thin air and give it back into circulation which will do nothing but inflate the economy which is not good in whole unless they decided to pay in something that has actual value like gold or even in BTC instead of creating their own crypto will ensure there is no inflation and the money provided solely from generated revenue.

[d5000]

This was discussed a lot in olden times. In 2014 or so there was a cryptocurrency called Auroracoin which airdropped coins to every citizen of Iceland. Worldcoin could be also described as an example for this concept. It's not exactly an "universal basic income" because it's an one-time payment and lacks regularity, but it's basically the same concept.

There is even an altcoin called Universal Basic Income (UBI), linked to the Proof of Humanity project. AFAIK it's quite similar to Worldcoin.

However, there's a big problem with such concept: they only work with a centralized entity who can verify the identities of the participants with a KYC-like system, otherwise everybody would register as many accounts/addresses as possible. Basically what Worldcoin and Auroracoin did. There are some concepts like "pseudonym parties" coming from Anarchist groups where on a kind of "gathering" people can confirm a pseudonym to a group, but that involves at least a bit of trust in the group "leaders" or "organizers" and also is probably vulnerable to malicious behaviour like doxxing.

And then there's a second big problem: how can such a cryptocurrency get any sustainable value? In the case of Auroracoin for example, the airdrop for every registered new participant was dumped by most participants as fast as possible. I guess WorldCoin will see a similar fate. So the coin must get value due to other reasons.

There's one way I could see something like that materialize: Anonymint (a very knowledgeable user which was banned a lot of times because of his behaviour in the forum) had proposed an "inverse commons" based on the model of Steemit. It's a space where the participants create value on the blockchain, for example a collection of articles or other media. I could imagine such a model where a small part of the income of this "space" is redistributed regularly among the participants. But the first problem (user identification) remains, or you need a PoS-style system where everybody gets his part of the UBI according to his stake in the system. And I guess the income which can be distributed in such a coin is quite low (couple of cents per month, perhaps ...).

Of course if governments implemented such an idea it could work, but how "universal" could it be? Perhaps if it was implemented by the UN or so ...

[Abiky]

This was discussed a lot in olden times. In 2014 or so there was a cryptocurrency called Auroracoin which airdropped coins to every citizen of Iceland. Worldcoin could be also described as an example for this concept. It's not exactly an "universal basic income" because it's an one-time payment and lacks regularity, but it's basically the same concept.

There is even an altcoin called Universal Basic Income (UBI), linked to the Proof of Humanity project. AFAIK it's quite similar to Worldcoin.

However, there's a big problem with such concept: they only work with a centralized entity who can verify the identities of the participants with a KYC-like system, otherwise everybody would register as many accounts/addresses as possible. Basically what Worldcoin and Auroracoin did. There are some concepts like "pseudonym parties" coming from Anarchist groups where on a kind of "gathering" people can confirm a pseudonym to a group, but that involves at least a bit of trust in the group "leaders" or "organizers" and also is probably vulnerable to malicious behaviour like doxxing.

And then there's a second big problem: how can such a cryptocurrency get any sustainable value? In the case of Auroracoin for example, the airdrop for every registered new participant was dumped by most participants as fast as possible. I guess WorldCoin will see a similar fate. So the coin must get value due to other reasons.

There's one way I could see something like that materialize: Anonymint (a very knowledgeable user which was banned a lot of times because of his behaviour in the forum) had proposed an "inverse commons" based on the model of Steemit. It's a space where the participants create value on the blockchain, for example a collection of articles or other media. I could imagine such a model where a small part of the income of this "space" is redistributed regularly among the participants. But the first problem (user identification) remains, or you need a PoS-style system where everybody gets his part of the UBI according to his stake in the system. And I guess the income which can be distributed in such a coin is quite low (couple of cents per month, perhaps ...).

Of course if governments implemented such an idea it could work, but how "universal" could it be? Perhaps if it was implemented by the UN or so ...

You do have a point there, mate. Cryptocurrencies giving away free rewards usually end up being "dumped" on the market. Developers might need to introduce some sort of mechanism that will lock tokens within a certain time. The idea of a UBI could work if implemented well. It would be of great help to people in need.

Wasn't crypto always about financial inclusion? Making it accessible only to those with capital, would totally defeat its original purpose. I'm yet to see if governments will implement such a system (UBI). Elon Musk suggested it, so anything's possible.

[d5000]

To be clear, I would love to see that, even it was only an experiment. But I simply see big, maybe unsurmountable challenges.

Even if you implement it with KYC: what to do with stateless people and refugees without ID? How to fight identity theft? What about corrupt politicians printing fake passports for example? I think maybe you could do something (in Worldcoin-style) with biometric features like fingerprints or ocular scans, but that would probably be a data protection nightmare. You'd need an extremely trustable entity to manage the data - and if it got hacked, then you basically can close the coin down (or have to re-KYC everybody).

One type of UBI coin I have discussed several years ago in this forum and forgot to mention in my last post was a "geolocalized token". The idea was: instead of distributing the tokens to individuals based on biometric features or national IDs, they could be "dropped" to places around the world and people would have to "collect" them. Tokens could even be dropped regularly inside people's houses.

Basically this would work a bit like Pokemon Go (remember that old game? ) or like geocaching games.

But of course this would also unfortunately a quite centralized verification mechanism, because it would need a closed-source "trusted" geolocation software you can't manipulate. However, if the system was managed for example by a kind of democratic cooperative, then I think a reasonable decentralized structure could be achieved, although still of course much more centralized than Bitcoin's.

On a very small scale this already seems to exist, see here: https://medium.com/coinmonks/proof-of-location-geospatial-data-on-blockchains-ea973adb0ee5

[Bipedaljoe]

For the proof-of-unique-human problem, what is probably ideal is to use Bryan Ford's old idea Pseudonym Parties, and resolve the issue of fake regions (anyone pretending to be a quindecillion people in the middle of the Pacific ocean) by making the parties not physical, but video based, and doing them 1-on-1, with a "stalemate" mechanism where people can "dispute" their pair and each be assigned under another pair (as a form of "court"), 2-on-1, and with an opt-in ("immigration") mechanism where the immigrant is under such a 2-on-1 verification their first event, and once verified they become a first class citizen. You can see a full implementation of it on https://code.bitpeople.org, finished since many years (and game theory design finished since 2018, I started inventing system in 2015). Besides Bitpeople, the legacy population registers are probably the best approach, and that each country launches a "one person, one unit of stake" blockchain with their own citizens securing it.

[markm]

The tendency, or even the need forced by circumstances such as hunger thirst etc, to "dump" can likely be expected to trend toward the vast majority of the currency rapidly flowing toward the rich, and lacking actual productivity the buying-power seems very likely to decline.

The decline in buying-power seems likely to be even more rapid than fiat's decline in value, in fact I am fairly sure a lot of folks already have claimed for yonks (arbitrary unit, scale it yourself) that giveaways aka "liberality" or "social safety nets" or "bleeding-heart pinkos" or whatever the terminology used  are already to blame for a lot of the decline exhibited by fiats.

So it is to me a bit unclear still how it would "work" until or unless it can maybe be fueled by some kind of "universal basic work" or "universal basic employment" maybe even in the physics sense of the term "work" which basically amounts to "energy" since it is typically a measure or unit of energy like kiligram-meter-seconds or maybe even kilogram-meters, a measure of change at least so maybe it can be decoupled from energy if some kind of reversible computing for example could allow a useful change to happen with any energy involved in doing it being reclaimable like in reversible computing.

I have noticed though that the richer the population the less applicants one seems to get for simple jobs like running around maps killing monsters for millionths of a cent, or even for ten-thousandths of a cent or actually even things like reading an email for an eighth of a cent, especially in the email case if verification is required so it takes extra keystrokes for them to answer a question about the email they just supposedly read.

In many senses we already have a lot of that kind of univesal basic employment in place, check out the whole "internet marketing" thing. "traffic exchanges" and such.

So there is already a kind of "minimum wage" available simply by reading hundreds of emails every day for example.

It just might not all be available in all locations, and of course advertisers might well find some regions less productive to advertise to than others so less likely to pay for such jobs.

Again though one also sees a tiny minority that earns a lot from that kind of stuff and a vast majority that just slaves away clicking for credits and/or reading ads for credits often without ever even "earning" a minimum amount demanded for a payout transaction to happen in a "negotiable" currency.

Overall it seems to me that it is necessary to first develop a funding source providing funds that can thence be divided up among proposed or potential recipients of such a scheme.

I face this constantly in working on the concept of "Play to Earn" games.

First I need a faucet as it were, a profit-centre, an investment generating interest, something generating a flow of funds some of which can once it exists be diverted toward earnings-for-players of some game I would like to reward the players of.

Without a supply of something to be earned there is ultimately no earning for the proposed beneficiaries, in the game case the players...

Make it trivial enough though and maybe it can be such a puny trickle that only the utterly desperate will avial themselves of it and everyone else hardly even notice the tiny "leak" it is in the overall economy...


-MarkM-

[d5000]

You can see a full implementation of it on https://code.bitpeople.org, finished since many years (and game theory design finished since 2018, I started inventing system in 2015).

Interesting project. I'm a bit skeptic due to it relying on video chats, but I've to dig a bit deeper in the documentation.

Besides Bitpeople, the legacy population registers are probably the best approach, and that each country launches a "one person, one unit of stake" blockchain with their own citizens securing it.

That's basically the "KYC coin" I was mentioning in the last post. There may be ways however which aren't that privacy-intrusive. In some countries, you can go to the post office and the employee will then take some steps to confirm that you're a real person, including you showing them your (physical) ID card. When I made that once it was possible without high resolution ID photos still (this was 7-8 years ago approximately), but that may have changed in the last years. If carried out without high resolution ID imagery which are stored somewhere, this could indeed be a possibility to implement an ID mechanism for such a coin, although of course you need trustworthy stores (post offices probably aren't trustworthy enough in most countries).

So it is to me a bit unclear still how it would "work" until or unless it can maybe be fueled by some kind of "universal basic work" or "universal basic employment" [...]
Overall it seems to me that it is necessary to first develop a funding source providing funds that can thence be divided up among proposed or potential recipients of such a scheme.

Excellent observation, I have the same doubts about the "universal basic income coin" concept. But an "universal basic employment" coin where the price grows with the amount of work / services / goods offered in the circle would be great (if it works).

One idea I remember in that direction was Steem(it), a coin which had some popularity in 2016/17/18 and basically was attached to a kind of forum or blogging platform, and you would be able to get coins if you provided "work", in the form of posts. However the funding source there was a bit unclear, basically I think it was fueled only by its price increase while it was rallying. However it showed that in some circunstances such an idea can work if the source is there.

BAT is another idea of the same type (Basic Attention Token) but based on ad traffic from a little bit later.

In Argentina there was a cryptocurrency called Moneda Par which worked in the same way alternative currencies in barter circles work: each new participant was granted some initial credit if a service offered by another person in the network was purchased with it. However this system is inflationary of course, it only provides short term stability. An idea how to associate the unit of such a coin to a tangible unit are time banks, where you would offer work and the price would be related to the time you have worked. But that concept has some flaws (not all kinds of work have the same supply/demand) and it relies also on someone controlling that the "workers" really work the time they announce.

The biggest effort in that direction may have been Faircoop/Faircoin, but I think they are dead now.

[markm]

I suspect Buckminster Fuller might have been on to something with his "forward person-days" idea, basically how many days of life-support are in stock for how many people.

Ultimately it might end up making sense to have live birth licenses cost however many person-days the almost certain reliable proven long term interest rate will cause to generate one person-day per day going forward, so that the person-days "paid" for a birth license would be "staked" as it were - actually invested, genuinely productively, in ongoing provision of person-days of real food clothing shelter etc - to presumably reliably provide for one live person going forward.

If people still sometimes die, then ancestral accumulated "estate" or "family/dynasty size" or somesuch could result.

Each account could have a designated inheritor account it would go to, potentially a "our hoped-for child" account or whatever.

It would be necessary to figure out what return on investment is realistically across centuries or millennia expectable.

It might make sense also not to mint it as fast as actual life-support capacity of the planet or solar system or galaxy or universe is expanded, so that it can increase in value, which presumably ought to mean basically a better quality of day on average being provided for.

It maybe need not be tied to having that many people actually currently alive, so that for example a colony ship could head out with maybe one crew-couple and enough forward person-days to stake when they find a place to colonise and when they get there be provisioned ahead of time for some number of planned descendants.

How many person-days does it take, on average, to provision one person-day per day going forward?

I think that would be an important number to figure out.

Can one hundred people in one day, or ten people in ten days, etc - one hundred people-days - build forward-going life-support for one additional person?

If so presumably 1% earnings rate ought to be sustainable?

If not then what kind of percent would be sustainable?


-MarkM-


EDIT: Very useful background materials for this topic are Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth and Critical Path; having everyone involved make sure to have read these should help a lot...

[DeathAngel]

I don’t think anything like this exists, facilitated on blockchain. I don’t like the thought of Universal Basic Income, it reeks of Communism & having freedom stripped. It’s OK if you are allowed to work too but some weird UBI where nobody works & we all have the same income sounds like North Korea.

[markm]

It seldom involves everyone having the same income.

Usually it just means there is a minimum for everyone.

In some, usually government-implemented ones, you only get it if you don't already make that much, and only as much of it as it takes to bring your total income up to the basic.

In other schemes, such as "The Velvet Monkey-Wrench" everyone gets to optionally do up to two tours of community service, whether military or civilian, to add up to two more "basics" so after two years of working age spent putting in that time they'd be making three times as much thereafter as folks who chose not to do such service.

Plenty of variants no doubt.

Also I expect in practice there might be something like Michelin's three stars or the often used five stars of quality, though maybe just assuming each star is one dollop of basic might be simpler than for example three separate blockchains one-star basic for workers, two-star for forepersons/managers, three-star for executives.

(That last harks back to games where you build industries each unit of which requires X number of workers, Y numbers of forepeople/managers, and Z number of executives to process whatever quantity of whatever its inputs are into whatever quantity of whatever its product is, like a worker-class-food factory, a manager-class food factory and an executive-class food factory and so on for clothing and shelter and presumably drink etc, which for simplicity also might assume you have to wear manager clothing and eat manager food and so on to qualify to be a manager and each planet or region needs to pay its people enough to afford to become managers or executives else it won't have enough to run its factories and the people will migrate to places where pay is high enough they can afford to be of above-minimum class...)

Generally the idea is not to prevent folks managing to become rich but simply to ensure everyone can afford basic life-support.

An advantage of not having the overhead of trying to figure out who qualifies as broke enough to get some of it, "simply" giving it to everyone regardless of how stinking-rich they might already be is presumably it ought to be easier thus less expensive than having to somehow figure out how rich they already are thus how much extra they need to bring them up to the "basic" level.

The Buckminster Fuller references I linked previously make pretty clear there is more-than-plenty to go around, but just looking up how much per person-day it costs to house people in prisons seems generally to indicate that it might be cheaper to prevent the poverty that can drive higher crime rates by accomodating people in free-er yet cheaper venues or ways...


-MarkM-

[IMZ Noo Account]

'One type of UBI coin I have discussed several years ago in this forum and forgot to mention in my last post was a "geolocalized token". The idea was: instead of distributing the tokens to individuals based on biometric features or national IDs, they could be "dropped" to places around the world and people would have to "collect" them. Tokens could even be dropped regularly inside people's houses.'

In Australia, the unemployment benefit is still called 'the dole' after the century-old practice whereby one went in person to receive a range of foodstuffs -- 'the dole.'

In the early 1980's, I interviewed an elderly man who recalled it from his childhood in the 1930's in Newcastle, New South Wales.

He mentioned that you got a little packet of cigarettes, and that smokers would be 'hangin' out' for the last few days before dole day.

[Hispo]

I don’t think anything like this exists, facilitated on blockchain. I don’t like the thought of Universal Basic Income, it reeks of Communism & having freedom stripped. It’s OK if you are allowed to work too but some weird UBI where nobody works & we all have the same income sounds like North Korea.

I would be okey with such a system if it also included some proof of work or proof or productivity, so people would need to work and add value to society in order to secure a basic income (plus whatever they manage to earn from their work).
If nobody works and still they have managed to secure a basic income, then there would be many problems (inflation included) with the currency used to pay people their basic income.
It is a fact money is only a way to transfer capital, but such money needs to be backed by wealth and if there is no wealth creation then such a currency does not have wealth or scarcity, then the value would tend towards zero in the long term.

Also, I don't think North Korea has a system like that. People living in NK have to work to make a living, they don't simply sleep and eat all day.

[gunhell16]

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a kind of social welfare where citizens of a given population receive minimum income to meet basic necessities. I've read somewhere online about making a UBI system on crypto. Not sure if something like this exists, but it would be cool if it does. In layman's terms, you'll earn crypto by doing absolutely nothing. This will help minimize inequality, by allowing poor people to participate in the global economy. Even Elon Musk talked about UBI in the Dubai summit.

Is there a crypto with UBI? If there isn't one yet, do you think governments will implement such a system in the future? If not, why? Your input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

I'm not familiar with that UBI, op. If the government here in our country were to implement that, it's highly unlikely. Most of our officials don't care about crypto
innovation at this time. They're even blocking the websites of foreign crypto exchanges in our country, so something like that is even more remote.

Maybe in other countries that are welcoming to blockchain technology or cryptocurrency, it's possible that could be adopted,
especially if it brings genuine benefit to the crypto community, then why not?

[danherbias07]

There are four projects like that here in our country. 3 of them are in exchange for a little work, mostly it's like community service only. The other one is where most poor people are flocking. If you have kids and cannot raise them on your own, the government will provide something monthly in your ATM, like you are getting a salary from the taxes of the people.

Many taxpayers are angry about this method because they believe it's unfair that someone who cannot find a job dares to have kids. It's like they are paying tax to make someone lazier. I don't know about injecting it into cryptocurrencies, but I highly doubt that will happen.

[cabron]

There are four projects like that here in our country. 3 of them are in exchange for a little work, mostly it's like community service only. The other one is where most poor people are flocking. If you have kids and cannot raise them on your own, the government will provide something monthly in your ATM, like you are getting a salary from the taxes of the people.

Many taxpayers are angry about this method because they believe it's unfair that someone who cannot find a job dares to have kids. It's like they are paying tax to make someone lazier. I don't know about injecting it into cryptocurrencies, but I highly doubt that will happen.

That's the same in US where they provide for the homeless. Not exactly what people would approved but the government is willing to support the homeless because this is the responsibility of the government.

I don't think there will be a UBI in blockchain unless they will really mandate everyone to downlaod a wallet on their phone and then they will send some stablecoin on it regardless of an individual is a homeless or not. But stimulus packages might just be posible.

[jackpotmaster]

Where would the value for this UBI coin come from? Universal Basic Income also implies endless money printing..

[uneng]

Is there a crypto with UBI? If there isn't one yet, do you think governments will implement such a system in the future? If not, why? Your input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

First of all we need to know where this money is going to come from. Are there going to be any donators? Is Elon Musk going to give away some pennies from his fortune to become the emperor of the world in exchange?

This concept isn't impossible to happen for real. The point is that it's not going to come from governments, because they already have their own means to run welfare programs (through the banking system), besides the fact there are going to be many cheaters, just like we see people cheating bounty, signature campaigns, airdrops, giveaways and promotions in general.

[Abiky]

'One type of UBI coin I have discussed several years ago in this forum and forgot to mention in my last post was a "geolocalized token". The idea was: instead of distributing the tokens to individuals based on biometric features or national IDs, they could be "dropped" to places around the world and people would have to "collect" them. Tokens could even be dropped regularly inside people's houses.'

In Australia, the unemployment benefit is still called 'the dole' after the century-old practice whereby one went in person to receive a range of foodstuffs -- 'the dole.'

In the early 1980's, I interviewed an elderly man who recalled it from his childhood in the 1930's in Newcastle, New South Wales.

He mentioned that you got a little packet of cigarettes, and that smokers would be 'hangin' out' for the last few days before dole day.

I think you're referring to "GeoCoin". As far as I know, that project is already dead. But the concept/idea was great. There's another crypto project that resembles the idea of a "Universal Basic Income". It's called IDENA, listed under the ticker "IDNA". You'd basically need to "check in" at a certain time (epochs in the Blockchain), to verify you're indeed a human. After the process is complete, you're awarded with IDNA coins in your wallet. It's all part of IDENA's consensus algorithm.

If governments had such a system, the economy would be much more equitable. But that will never happen. Especially when the rich/wealthy will strongly oppose it. Therefore, a UBI would only be a pipe dream. We'll see what happens in the long run.

[TastyChillySauce00]

UBI only sustainable when you got high yield low cost economy, maybe by taking advantage of robots.

The weight from giving out wealth for free to the people needs to be offloaded somewhere else and only utilization of robots and AI for farming, etc is possible.
As of now, the value that UBI give can only be derived from tax and that's another weight for the productive taxable people.

Unless there's a crypto that can solve this problem, I doubt there's one out there.