“Universal Basic Income (UBI) or National Dividend (ND) is income distributed equally to all members of society, regardless of wealth, income, employment status, or willingness to work. It was first mentioned in Thomas More's novel Utopia and started being discussed in Europe in the 1970s, rapidly spreading in the 2000s. The term 'Common Allocation Gold' also exists.”
Just as UBI is defined above, it is basic income given without being affected by external factors. The legitimacy of basic income stems from the principle “ensuring every human can live with dignity.”
Why has this concept of UBI gained renewed attention?
“As productivity in society gradually improves, and less labor is required to produce the same amount, it becomes irrational to maintain income proportional to labor, as it cannot sustain people's lives.”
Critique of Economic Reason, Economist André Gorz
The main reason, as suggested by Gorz's argument, is that as technological advancements accelerate, especially with the rise of AI, the value of labor decreases. AI development leads to reduced human labor and consequently a decrease in income from work. This leads to a situation where expenditures exceed income, preventing people from achieving a minimum standard of dignified living. The solution lies in redistributing the income generated by AI, which aligns with the concept of UBI, bringing it back into focus.
In particular, the 2090 societal class map presented by Professor Yoo Ki-yoon's research team at Seoul National University predicts that society will be divided into 0.003% of platform-related individuals and 99.997% of precariat (general citizens), with the general labor market largely dominated by AI robots. As a result, the 99.997% of ordinary citizens will no longer earn income through labor and must rely on the income generated by AI to maintain a humane life through UBI.
In relation to UBI, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and co-founder of Worldcoin, has conducted an actual UBI project. Altman's UBI project was a three-year experiment starting in 2019, providing 1,000 low-income individuals in Texas and Illinois with $1,000 monthly. The aim was to assess how basic income would impact lives in anticipation of job losses due to AI and automation.
The results showed that participants experienced significantly reduced financial stress and became more economically flexible. They invested more time in leisure activities and had the freedom to seek better job opportunities without financial pressure. However, some participants' participation in the labor market decreased, with working hours reduced by an average of 1.3 hours per week. Although participants enjoyed health-related benefits, there was no significant long-term improvement in health or access to healthcare.
In conclusion, while this project demonstrated the potential for basic income to bring positive changes to individuals' lives, it also emphasized the need for additional institutional support to address broader societal issues.
Simply providing fish rather than teaching how to catch fish wasn't the ultimate solution. This point aligns with the notion that implementing UBI may still be premature. For UBI to be universally applicable and operational across all humanity, two conditions must be met:
The era must come where the value of labor approaches zero.
Infrastructure capable of efficiently distributing UBI must be ready.
However, the timing of the first condition is uncertain, as it heavily depends on the perceptions and trends of the people living on Earth, making it a factor we cannot prepare for. Therefore, I believe it’s now time to focus on what kind of infrastructure can properly administer UBI under the current circumstances.
What are the requirements for such infrastructure, and what infrastructure meets these conditions?
2.1.1 It must be suitable for both mixed economic systems and capital-based economic systems.
The current global economic system is primarily labor-based, where workers earn income proportionate to their labor. However, as mentioned above, income tied to labor has a diminishing value. The more AI develops, the more this trend will accelerate. Eventually, the portion of the economic system based on labor will gradually disappear, replaced by a capital-based system. Therefore, the infrastructure for UBI must focus on both a mixed economic system and a capital-based system, anticipating the future.
2.1.2 It must operate online, not offline.
Economic activities will increasingly migrate online in the future. Economic activities, by nature, can thrive online due to the speed and efficiency that the internet provides. Thus, UBI, rooted in economic activity, would benefit from having its processes, such as fund disbursement, carried out online.
Furthermore, AI, one of the reasons for the resurgence of UBI, will likely replace human labor and serve as a key economic agent. Just as humans are naturally inclined to operate on land rather than at sea, AI, born in the digital world, will primarily function online. If economic activities of both humans and AI converge online, it may even be possible for AI to directly distribute UBI to humans without intermediaries like corporations.
In my view, the infrastructure that meets these conditions is blockchain, which has garnered attention and developed industries over the past 17 years.
2.2.1 Blockchain is an infrastructure suitable for mixed economic and capital-based systems.
A capital-based economic system involves capital flow, where asset owners manage and generate profits through asset operations. Blockchain fundamentally supports this capital flow, enabling transparent and efficient capital distribution. Blockchain's smart contracts, in particular, automate the distribution of capital and ownership structures, minimizing the role of intermediaries, making it possible for capital to be exchanged directly without brokers like banks or corporations in the UBI process. These features help both AI, which accumulates capital through labor, and humans, who need capital, to more efficiently use and access it.
Thus, by choosing blockchain as the UBI infrastructure, we can immediately apply it to the current mixed economic system transitioning towards a capital-based system and utilize it more fully in the future.
2.2.2 Blockchain is an online infrastructure.
Blockchain operates as a distributed ledger system in a digital environment, allowing funds to move globally through the internet, regardless of physical location. Since UBI must be implemented globally, the infrastructure requires a global digital system, and blockchain perfectly fits that requirement. Furthermore, blockchain eliminates delays and complicated procedures inherent in physical financial systems, streamlining the UBI disbursement process.
Blockchain can also create near-infinite accounts quickly and efficiently, supporting AI's economic activity. While verifying AI identity may be challenging for now, it can still be utilized as partial infrastructure for supporting UBI-related economic activities.
For these reasons, blockchain is an efficient infrastructure for managing capital flow in a capital-based system and serves as a powerful online infrastructure for distributing global funds, making it a suitable platform for implementing UBI.
Source: Unsplash
Humanity is entering a new era powered by AI, an era never before experienced in history. This leads to a polarization not only between societies or nations but now between machines and humans. While current polarization can be mitigated to some extent through national welfare policies, the polarization between AI and humans will require a different welfare policy centered on the redistribution of wealth from machines to humans. This is where UBI comes into play, requiring extensive research and experimentation.
UBI is a necessary welfare policy for the upcoming AI era, but there are still some unsuitable aspects under the current economic system. To administer UBI effectively, infrastructure suited to an online capital-based system, rather than the current offline labor-based system, is needed. Blockchain is poised to fulfill this role.
The time has come to view blockchain not just from an investment and financial perspective but also from a welfare standpoint. If blockchain can lay the groundwork for sharing the immense productivity brought by AI with humanity, it will allow us to achieve the significant progress of coexisting with AI.
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