Blockchain-based Universal Basic Income?
Fewer than 100 people own well over half of all global financial wealth.
More than 2 billion people live on less than 2USD/Day.
Most jobs will be eaten by robotics and artificial neural networks.
Current global finance is a Ponzi scheme.
Current wealth is made at the expense of the environment and violence to humans and animals.
We need a Blockchain-based electronic currency designed to solves problems of global poverty.
It needs to be immune from control and manipulation by the powerful and wealthy elite.
It must be distributed as a Universal Basic Income for the entire world population.
It must quickly grow and become self-sustaining to fend off financial attack.
It must be stable and predictable.
It must be democratic and must be controlled by the general global population.
It must be designed and implemented now.
Any Steemians interested in this idea?
There are some potential problems, though I wouldn't say to drop the idea entirely.
Money doesn't magically have value, it only has value if people consider it to have value, if they consider it to have value, they exchange it for things of value. If you pay $1 for an apple, its not just the apple thats worth a dollar, the dollar is ALSO worth an apple. Which has more value? To make it clear, on a desert island, which one has more inherent value, the apple or the dollar? The apple give the dollar value, not the other way around. I didn't see anything in your points that would give the currency value, and you'd be massively devaluing any value it had by distributing it without value compensation. I could pass out monopoly money, it doesn't mean it has value or anyone would use it.
Universal basic income doesn't solve poverty problems, it was thought of long ago, its been tried. I think its popular because its the easy answer, it seems obvious, with basic supply and demand reasoning, its obvious it won't work and thats why it hasn't. Otherwise, the world would already be out of poverty.
To get people out of poverty, you need, as a must! Property rights and contract law. If anyone can come steal your shit, and you have to rally a posse or be a one man bad ass, you'll end up with a posse or on one man bad ass calling the shots. It doesn't need to be governmental, it can be an emergency community contact tree, a social standard, a neihborhood watch, somethin.
If you can't hold someone to their word for economic compensation, i.e. an employment contract. Again, doesn't need to be difficult, just some kind of contract, a social understanding. This is what to expect if you don't follow these standards of contract. The vast majority of society functions on social understanding, "this is the way things are done".
With those things any society with build its self out of wealth, but there are educational things you can do to help people out. Teach them how to build with local materials, mud is a common first material, its pretty much where ever you'd build a house.
Teach them to grow local food and foods adapted to that climate. Part of the western ideology of poverty relief is the belief that whats good for us is good for them, temperature, water supply, soil ph, and minerals vary wildly. It's extremely expensive to grow food like the west, adding soil ammendments, irrigation, etc. To a person with nothing, thats impossible. Growing native and acclimate plants mostly requires water and care.
Clean water. There are a lot of expensive and praised clean water and minerature distillaries that are unnessecary to clean 90% of the water impovershed people have access too.
You need a big barrel, some rocks, some dirt, some charcoal, and preferably some shade. You put that in layers with a tap on the bottom, keep it a little damp, and in a week, you'll have a filter that will last years.
How do dig wells is important.
Old school waste management, bury it for 10 years, its good clean fertilizer. Usually lacking in impovershed areas.
All these things are educational.
Yet they make almost no difference if there isn't at bare minimum property rights and contract laws.
Now WITHIN that framework, I see a benefit for a blockchain to compensate people for working on the community, then it is an economically stable value exchange. Blockchain covers most of the contract law and much of the property rights. Cryptocurriencies have the potential to leverage the power from the hands of corrupt governments, as it makes it almost impossible to levy taxes against the population, so they have to treat the people well.
I would say the biggest problem to solve is how virtual currency translates into physical reality effects and real-world dispute resolution. But a unit of virtual currency can represent the value of an apple just as easily as a unit of fiat currency can. Cryptocurrencies can bootstrap themselves. Fiat currencies also had to start from nothing. But these are interesting questions. We and others could have a recorded Google Groups discussion if there is interest in this topic and put it up on d.tube.
My point was exactly that, its the use of a currecy of limited supply that gives it value. The problem with fiat currencies is they are generally limited by the discretion of goverments and not by a law of nature. Most crypto-currencies are naturally limited.
So I agree with you there.
My issue is with a unnatural limitation of the dispursement that would devalue the currency, as there would have been no exchange of value. It would devalue the currency just as if a government had printed the money. If everyone gets a percentage, no one has an increase in value making it pointless, if only some people get the percentage you have the issue of deciding who which get into a potential for fraud. All this devalues the relative market value of the currency, so fewer people would use the currecy, further devaluing it. You would need some kind of sales hook.
I'm not particularly interested in this topic in particular, I think economic freedom would solve the worlds poverty problems, thats my primary excitement for blockchain. I think a platform to give blockchain microloans with blockchain contracts would be a supiour idea for decreasing poverty.
I genuinely believe a minimum basic income doesn't actually work economically, unless its only a subpopulation of who uses the currency, as the rest of the population holds up the value.
I'll try and remeber to look for curiosities sake when a get another few minutes.