I'm not exactly a UBI proponent, although I think it could be part of a reform plan.

The thinking on the scenario you describe is that productivity would have to be so heightened, to cause that degree of unemployment, that the real cost of living would be reduced to a tiny fraction of what it currently is. So, a UBI would not cost nearly as much in that world as it would in ours.

I think it's very unlikely that we'll see that kind of static unemployment, though. More likely, in my mind, is that we'll see people reduce their work hours on other margins: fewer hours per week, more time off between jobs, retiring earlier, etc.

While labor force participation may be much lower, it wouldn't be that there's a huge class of unemployable people. Rather, there would be more people between jobs and working parttime.

Imagine a country using its power grids to mine Bitcoin and then distribute the rewards to it's citizens.

Productivity?

We tax the machines for their output/value add etc.

Or some micro transaction cost (0.01% for every task AI runs)

If UBI is introduced to some countries, then it will be the end of those countries, as UBI is pure communism. If UBI is introduced to all countries, then it will be the end of the world.

If AI reduce some of the work in some sectors, then people will have to move to another sectors, change their specialization. If they don't do it, they should die. In nature, those not adapted perish. It's normal and it has to happen. If you fight against this universal law you will lose. You just can't fight against it, no matter how clever you think you are. You will be punished by nature by collapsing all the race. And perhaps the few that survived can recreate the world again, but who knows.

Personally, I think any plan for UBI that doesn't begin with the absolute first step of cutting welfare and all it's administration and management is a non-starter.

Then again, even if that were to happen and they divert all funding from the old welfare apparatus to the new one, I doubt it would provide enough funds for UBI at the scale most imagine.

Do we even need UBI if the money is deflationary?

When (not if) AI eliminates so many jobs ... unemployment will rise and those RIFd (reduction in force) will find themselves changing careers. Just like those switchboard operators, travel agents, elevator operators, etc. -- all whose jobs were eliminated in the past.

On the flipside, AI makes it easier as a solo founder (or small team) to launch and do business. AI makes us more productive. We may find that job losses from AI were well more than offset by employment opportunities that it enables.

Now during the transition, it may be both wise and humane to offer needs-based support for those making that transition. But that income is not universal nor without strings attached. Support available may have requirements, such as participating in training, and limits on how long that support lasts.

A thread about using endowment funds #434123

UBI is just yet another fancy term for moving money unconsentually. We already do it, we will do it for the foreseeable future, and there's nothing good about it. Who cares if we invent new words for it?

Look up endowment funds for homeless / poverty / public goods. People have floated the idea of keeping an endowment fund or trust to deal with UBI related stuff (housing, monthly expense payments).

I think it's actually more likely than not, and not just some socialist re-distribution scheme from the productive to the unproductive to buy votes either.

What is inevitable is best to think of it as a a band-aid on a much larger gaping wound that is the debt-based monetary system, which is inherently a game of musical chairs where Cantillon insiders are the DJ.

If all the debt was paid off, there'd be 0 dollars in circulation, because there's literally more debt than there is money to pay it off. The few original international banks would own literally everything if they felt safe enough to stop the music.

Obviously this is necessitates some violent outcome that is in no-ones interests, except those few thousand lizard people with deep underground bunkers that would false-flag us into nuclear Armageddon in-lieu of payment. So, the more plausible outcome is an engineered soft-landing with a new base money instead of letting the world fall into repossession.

Some form of UBI in this case would be a tacit debt jubilee, and will come out of a wind down of the financial sector.

We already know Bitcoin, by only accruing fairly, will force this downsizing of big finance. That's also why it's so important Bitcoin ends up in the legacy system in ways that seem icky to us, it's the trojan horse, or drinking its milkshake... pick your analogy.

Insurance companies and other forced buyers of fiat liabilities aren't actually people in the political sense, so they distribute the hit proportionally when this debt, otherwise known as financial assets, are destroyed one stimmy check at a time. Insurance companies are not so coincidentally buyers of the financialized bitcoin like MSTR notes etc, its how they thread the compliance needle to come out the other side of this.

Thinking about it in terms of productive wagies is antiquated factory lineworker minded thinking, that world hasn't existed in nearly 100 years. We're past peak financialization, because there can be no wealth re-distribution with Bitcoin, so the DOGE-Tariff-UBI psyop coming soon will be a controlled demolition of the legacy system.

Inflation will fund it

People commonly frame UBI as "communism", but there is a libertarian case to be made.

Reduce all government spending to near 0, redistribute all government cashflow to citizens in form of UBI.

This way government budget is no longer centrally planned (communist) but spent according to the needs of individual economic actors (free markets).

Not a naïve question at all. The real challenge, as I see it, isn’t just about funding — it’s designing a system that doesn’t collapse under its own weight.

The AI

A.I. wud fund it, of course! just like it has funded fiat for 300 years now, or longer, issuing tokens of allegiance; even if the original A.I. was a collective of people - that's psychopathic intelligence, not based in reality or natural law, just a bunch of psychos making sh!t up, believing they get to control other people!

as far as fiat printing: unlimited amount can be printed on the backend, but on the front end, limits can be imposed on how fast and for what one gets to use those fiat tokens; imagine 90% penalty on early withdrawal of retirement funds - what does it matter if the IOU fund made 10x?