RE: Could Universal Basic Income in America Boost Global Interest in Cryptocurrencies?
I'll not go into details and lenghty comments here, but I do think UBI is absolute necessary since I see a future in which most of the work is carried out by robots and AI, hence we will only have a very few jobs for humans to handle. Hence we need a different compensation system for people to be able to get to the basic necessities (food and roof).
In my country the Nertherlands it is calculated UBI would not cost our government more money, since the expectation is that when implementing UBI today, most people will still do some kinda work; Maybe more voluntary work, but still turn labour into some value. Tests showed groups of people getting free money from the government, mostly will not sit still and do nothing anymore. The money our government spend on unemployment, can be used to pay for UBI and all the money the government will save from not checking up those who receive unemployment benefits, increases the amount of money that can be spend on UBI.
I dont see the reference of UBI and crypto. I actually think UBI will be implemented with our fiat money, no need for Bitcoin. Although it would be nice to use crypto, crypto is still by far to difficult for the mass. And even when handling and using crypto becomes as easy as handling fiat, I still don't see the need for crypto, or the necessity for the people to use crypto in a UBI world. Can you elaborate on that statement you made?
Which statement? The last part where I asked if crypto could do a better job with implementing something like UBI? There are a number of write ups about it from some google searches, but maybe my major concern is about assigning UBI to actual identities 1:1 and system of delivery. Maybe a blockchain is better suited for such a task? Plus, UBI necessarily takes from automation, some work unit, so viewing a blockchain as the simplified unit might make sense too.
A blockchain has certainly some good features that can be used in distributing money as well as handle identities. If this would be an implementation as how crypto is implemented today, de-coupled from fiat, no control, volatile, I wonder. Although I really would like to see crypto getting mature, and was hoping for a much shorter maturity adoption rate as so many other technologies; I start doubting this fact. Crypto to reach maturity may take another 1 or 2 decades. UBI we need sooner. Hence I believe, UBI will be implemented in different ways, using fiat, maybe powered by blockchain, but this could be a private one, or semi-private/public version; But I don't see Bitcoin or any of the altcoins playing a role anytime soon.
Added to that: It seems the fast majority trusts our financial institutions; They trust identity services used left and right by digital services; And the governments have identity information of its citizens. Hence distribution of UBI is as simple as the governments are distributing unemployments benefits today.