How the Quasi-UBI Helps the Solopreneurs Create in Freedom
This post is the seventh instalment of my 8-week series of research about the failing economic system, solopreneurship trend, blockchain, and Solana Pay.
This research wouldn’t have been possible without the support of Superteam UK so follow them on X.
If you missed the previous articles, I made a Gitbook for this series, which also functions as a playbook for the DAO.
I switched the week 7 and 8 topics about the consolidation of the UBI into the scheme to ensure the flow makes more sense. So, the ownership tokenisation will be explored more deeply in the final week.
So, how does the UBI play out in the solopreneurship DAO?
Just as I elaborated in the early weeks about UBI as a precursor for a healthy economic system, solopreneurship needs to have good financial support while working on their ideas. Some have a good cushion in their savings accounts, but for those who become solopreneurs not by choice and still have to juggle multiple different jobs on top of their personal responsibilities, it’s quick to get burned out.
Moreover, we know that the quality of their work could be compromised.
Picture this.
A mother of one child, having to work her 9–5 which is now becoming only a metaphor because let’s be honest, your team or bosses could message you after-hour or at the weekend, or for the jobs that require more thinking, you need to do the deep work only after all distractions have been gone. She wants to step down the hamster wheel to provide more income and gain more time and freedom to spend with her partner and child, but due to the demanding work responsibilities, she can only pursue this early in the morning (before 9 am) or late at night. Because, again, when you arrive home, soon you’d be inundated with household responsibilities, causing you to prioritise them for good or bad reasons. The good reason is to wind down and release your “work mind”. The bad reason is to get them over with so that you can work on your personal projects as soon as possible, or worse, to catch up with the deep work from your 9–5 that you didn’t have time to finish early in the day due to the distractions.
Side note: I can recommend the book “Essentialism” here but sometimes, jobs are demanding, end of story.
Back to the imagination, perhaps, living like this can be feasible for only a few days in a week, but even after so many weeks, it’s about to crash and burn.
Human beings are not designed to live like this.
We’re creatures of the free. We’re spiritual beings who experience the physical reality. We are made to spend more time outside, roam freely in nature walks, inhale the negative ions-laden pine forest air, and not hunch before our computer for hours on end.
That’s the essence of the UBI itself: to return human to their dignity.
The workers can still work for their dignity, but that portion of their life does not crowd out the rest of the essential aspects, such as time with themselves, their family, their neighbours, and their society.
How could we expect society to be healthy and not be populated by fatalistic thinking minds if what we see every day is the centralistic economy and massive wealth discrepancy? It’s more than being poor by choice, it’s by design, I’ve talked about this in this article.
It pains me to read the survey results or opinions that the UBI makes people lazy to get off their behinds and work.
No, the UBI provides enough safety to explore the unknown.
If you, who have health issues, think that you might not go hiking again although you like it, someday get offered help by your doctor friend that she will be only one call away and the medical help will be available with short latency during your next hike, would you go hiking?
Absolutely.
That takes off some pressure.
Similarly, the UBI is important to relieve some burden from your shoulders while you’re exploring. I can’t emphasise this enough:
Human minds are evolutionarily made to be in negativity bias, in risk aversion mode. Giving the builders the UBI to sustain them their basic living relieves them of the scarcity mindset.
They become bolder in exploring ideas.
And only in freedom do unlimited possibilities for creation happen.
Wait, before delving into the technicalities, I sensed my mind, my devil’s advocate, opposed the previous paragraph. She said: but two arguments prove otherwise.
The first one, the flow state happens during formal work instead of play.
The second one, Parkinson’s Law says that work expands to fill the time it’s allotted. It means a higher degree of freedom doesn’t corroborate my argument of having a better quality of work.
Let’s prove these fallacies wrong.
I have refuted the first one in the article below.
Long story short: the survey might have portrayed negatively the role of playfulness and boredom, measuring productivity by formal work. When people say they feel happier at work than at play, isn’t it the picture perfect of our society of burnout?
Moreover, if you could support the creators or builders to build in freedom, why wouldn’t you?
There’s a counter-argument here that the human mind achieves the impossible given enough stress.
But there’s a caveat here: it must be a healthy amount of stress that is paradoxically strenuous enough but not damaging the overall well-being.
If you don’t believe it, you can look up many different articles posted by people qualified in their medicinal field. The terms are called:
Hormesis and Homeostasis
(I can’t believe I wrote these well-being terms in my blockchain article which also mentions the UBI and solopreneurship. This is what my life has become)
Crash course in biology:
Hormesis is a phenomenon where your body adapts to a mild level of stressors so that it reaps beneficial effects, such as cortisol management and longevity. Here’s the thing: the stressors could be toxic if the body is exposed to much higher doses.
I’ve got many examples of this because I’m not known for listening to my body cues.
For instance, a ketogenic diet might be good to “flush out” your system of excess sugar and drive your body weight down several kgs, but when you already have a lean mass to begin with, or if you’re a woman and your hormones are sensitive, you can get amenorrhea, just like what I wrote on my Substack.
Another stressor that now I keep in mind to do it more sustainably is I take a cold shower every day. I don’t do cold plunges because it’s too extreme for me at this moment, my body has been under a lot of stress over the years, but I can do cold showers.
Put simply in the entrepreneurial lingo, hormesis can expand your comfort zone and promote growth, but with too much of it, you’d get burned out. Simple enough? Let’s move on to the next.
Hormesis can expand your comfort zone and promote growth, but with too much of it, you’d get burned out.
Homeostasis is the equilibrium state a body must maintain in order to survive. For instance, our temperature. The mechanism involves the receptor, control centre, and effector. Our body is intelligent, it has different systems like the lymphatic, nervous, digestion, and so on to maintain our body in its safe region for us to operate.
The relationship between hormesis and homeostasis here is clear: Hormesis can train your adaptability and comfort level to achieve your homeostasis quickly or more efficiently.
In the entrepreneurial lingo, when a problem crops up, instead of having a mental breakdown, you could take a step back and assess the strategy to deliver your business out of the situation.
Homeostasis in your entrepreneurial journey is when a problem crops up, instead of having a mental breakdown, you could take a step back and assess the strategy to deliver your business out of the situation.
Back to the UBI idea above, with the UBI as one of the support systems in achieving your homeostasis in business, you can take more stressors and expand your curiosity without worry, alright?
Now, the second argument about Parkinson’s Law can be refuted easily by using this knowledge of hormesis and homeostasis.
If our body is not well enough, or if our mind is not sincere enough to do the job, of course, we tend to prolong the tasks that we must complete. This phenomenon is caused by the body and mind's reluctance, so we drag our feet to work.
Have you met a creator who’s passionate about working and achieving more?
They complain about their lack of time, but that’s not due to their laziness. In fact, they want to do so many things because their mind is fresh of ideas.
Anyway, the UBI in its ideal state might not be coming anytime soon, but blockchain enables us to build the community and govern our treasuries with more control. Therefore, the UBI that’s generated from the investment in this solopreneurship DAO can be called the quasi-UBI. It has the qualities of UBI to a certain extent, but not all, not the ideal one.
I spoke to a friend, Patrick, the founder of the Generos.io, which rewards generosity with gems and tokens. The tokenomics is built around the concept of giving or helping another member of the community and rewarding such generosity accordingly.
You can read the white paper further here.
By introducing gamification and fresh UI on the app, Generos encourages people to practise their generosity muscles. Generosity is a trait in our brain, and by understanding that neuroplasticity is something trainable, by having this trait exercised regularly, it becomes easier to recognise spots to help or volunteer.
Neurons that fire together, wire together.
Moreover, the model of the app follows the philosophy of real-world giving: we can’t pour from an empty cup. There’s the time needed to recharge your gift or help giving before you can gift help to another member.
It’s proof that blockchain can mimic real-world societies and even better because we’re equipped with technology.
The UBI concept that I’ve discussed has to be tailored to the reality of blockchain that requires give-and-take transactions.
Well, that’s true because of the law of thermodynamics: you can only transfer energy from one form to the next. So, there’s no free lunch.
In my thesis about the UBI, it’s taken from the taxpayers’ money or the contribution from big corporations.
In my ideation stage of Berdaya DAO, it’s taken from the retail investors pooling money, similar to the crowdfunding or patronage websites.
So, how can the solopreneurs return the investment?
The investment can be for the pre-order of a product which can then be delivered to the investors. This emulates the business model in the real world.
If it’s not about launching a new product, but rather, an expansion, the retail investors might benefit from the dividend distribution of the profit, or simply revenue sharing.
It can also be a P2P lending model or even modified seller financing.
If you’re not familiar with seller financing, it means the buyer (or the investor here) “owes” in instalments to the owner or solopreneur to pay the agreed amount. It’s basically a loan provided by the seller.
For instance, I want to buy a business for $1,000 but I don’t have the money yet. Instead of taking a loan from the bank, I can make an agreement with the business owner that I will pay 10% of the price as the down payment and the rest of the funds (typically 50–60% of it) will be paid back to the seller in instalments. The rest might need to borrow the money from somewhere else.
Seller financing signals the confidence of the seller that the business sees sustainable revenues.
In regards to the solopreneurship investment, it can happen if a solopreneurs want an exit, but the transfer of ownership must happen over some time, particularly if it revolves around branding. We know how solopreneurs want strong branding.
The point is the business model is customisable between the solopreneurs and investors. It’s not as rigid as the patronage websites because a DAO is a community-first business.
Therefore, with some financial burden regarding their products being taken away from their shoulders, the solopreneurs can create more easily and unlock a new level of growth that was previously closed.
And for investors, it’s cool and fun to see your money empower another human being with ideas.
If you ask, what’s the joy in it if I can get surer yields in the ‘safe’ big companies in the US stock market, for example?
My answer is only one sentence.
Don’t you want to be a nation of owners, not renters?
Thank you for reading this far.
If you are a solopreneur, an investor, or simply know someone who might benefit from joining this DAO, feel free to join the Discord server or extend the invite link below.
If you want more articles that are centred around business and leadership that value gentleness and a holistic approach to problem-solving, feel free to head to my ✨Substack✨.
Until next time,
