UBI

MOVED TO https://github.com/basisproject/tracker/issues/79

UBI (one that covers some large portion of living expenses) is a piece that's absolutely vital to this project. There are a few reasons:

• Allows companies to scale down without people fearing their livelihood.
• Removes a lot of the drive for survival. If my company fails, it's not the end of the world. Lowers cost of internalized costs (ie, puts downward pressure on externalization).
• Removes the need for wages to account for survival/living expenses to some extent, making wages more about the differential between conditions (as opposed to the necessity for existence).
• Allows for higher experimentation (entrepreneurship)
• Allows for removal of wages entirely for many classes of work.
  • Accounts for homemakers/artists/etc: essential work that is traditionally not valued in the capitalist system.
• Accounts for disabled / elderly people who cannot work.
• Provides an incentive for membership outside of the obvious joy of participating in a socialist mode of production.

Overall, UBI is a "pressure release valve" that lower externalities, directs production toward meeting needs (as opposed to survival), and most importantly puts the "fun" back into fungible asset distribution mechanism.

Now, let's talk properties.

• UBI goes into a special per-person account.
• Must be spent on internal economic activity. This effectively gives it the property of covering living expenses (ie, use cost) or stimulating the internal economy.
  • Cannot be converted into external currency (USD) unlike credits
    • Prevents systemic capital drain, a huge problem when the network is small and vulnerable
    • Incentivizes expanding the network to include things like housing
  • Cannot be transferred to other members directly unlike normal labor credits...so can't be used for secondary market expenses (garage sales, paying someone under the table)
• Has some maximum amount (like 6 months' worth). This is mainly a use-it-or-lose-it mechanism. Once spending resumes, the UBI keeps refilling on a periodic basis.

Other discussion points:

• Paid monthly? Daily?
• Is UBI universal for the entire network? Or just a region?
• Can some portion of UBI (ie, maybe the second half of the max value, so 3+ months) be based on labor hours to incentivize tracking labor hours?
• How is the amount derived?
  • Overall performance? If region-based, this would necessarily be the regional profits (from sales to outside market), but as the network grows, maybe this becomes less important?
  • Once network and asset pool grows large enough, democratic?
• Vesting period? Should new members instantly get the full UBI, or maybe some percentage of the max vested over 4 years? The idea here is that while the network is growing, we don't want people who join just to get free stuff.

This also necessitates some form of time-based automation mechanism in the system, which is somewhat foreign because the other transactions are user-initiated. It's possible this could even be a "tap to get your UBI" button in a mobile app.