Lately, there has been a lot of talk about whether or not governments should establish a UBI or universal basic income. The theory is that with increasing automation and concentration of wealth in a smaller number of people's hands it will be necessary to do so to maintain a consumer economy in the future.
What is a UBI?
One easy definition is the following:
"A basic income is a form of social security in which all citizens or residents of a country receive a regular, unconditional sum of money, either from a government or some other public institution, independent of any other income" Wikipedia.com
In many parts of the world simple versions of this idea already exists.
Alaska
For example, the US state of Alaska has something called the Permanent Fund which distributes a small sum to every citizen living in the state. The funds come from resource extracting companies which operate in the state.
And the idea has been tried on a larger scale in the past.
The largest trial was held in Canada in the 1970s under the government of Justin Trudeau's father, Pierre. Known as Mincome, it tried to assess whether or not participants would no longer want to work if given a sufficient sum of money under the UBI program. The project was canceled in 1979 and final results were not tabulated based on the data.
Even the great civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of this idea shortly before his death in 1968.
He felt that such as system would help address some of the problems associated with poverty which afflicted America at that time.
How is this all related to Steemit exactly?
I know, I'm getting to the point, doggy...
By now most Steemit users have discovered that it is possible to make a small passive income while participating in the Steemit revolution. But what happens if it doesn't stop there?
Perhaps the next generation of Steemit users will be able to generate enough income on the side to dramatically change their lives? Although it's unlikely that any government will create a UBI any bigger than a pilot sized one, it might be possible for Steemit (or other blockchains like it) to scale to the point of doing the same thing.
Pretty amazing, I know!
Perhaps future webizens on planet earth will no longer need to worry about basic income because all of our social networks will pay us to participate in them. Even if 10% of the activity which currently happens on Facebook were to be switched to something like Steemit then it would have a pretty massive impact!
Here's hoping anyways...
Thanks for reading as always.
(CH)
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