Basic Income: Stop talking. Start Doing.
Execute & give people purpose!
Two weeks ago I was invited for a panel debate on “The Future of Work”. A “The Future of Work” discussion usually revolves around the topics ‘spoiled’ millennials, artificial intelligence, and — new to the ‘FoW’ club — Unconditional Basic Income (UBI).
In a tiny nutshell, Basic Income is a system in which all citizens receive a standard amount of money each month to cover basic expenses such as food, rent, and clothes. The only problem? Nobody can prove or rule out whether ‘Basic Income’ will actually work in practice.
Elon Musk and many others argue UBI to be the only way for our society to survive the unemployment wave due to artificial automation. Studies show for instance, that over 1 million truck drivers (one of the most popular professions in The States) might lose their job due self-driving vehicle technology. Unfortunately, in a Swiss referendum, the people that would benefit the most from UBI, voted against…
The reality?
Nobody knows & everybody is just talking:
“What if people commit fraud? and how do we punish fraud when it happens?”
“How much basic income should we give people?”
“What if inflation kicks in?”
“Will certain people be left out?”
…
The only thing I can think of is:
How can you innovate and do something that has no precedent by trying to anticipate all the ‘bad things’ that could potentially-perhaps-sometime-maybe occur?
Just do it!
I ran a startup for three years where one of the big lessons learnt was “Don’t design for the worst. Design for the good. When something bad happens, you deal with it along the way”.
When you build a new service or product driven by the fear of bad things that can occur, you’ll end up having a crappy product, serving no one. You have my word on this; even when you believe you have thought of everything, many unanticipated — as Trump would state — ‘bad things’ WILL occur.
So in business, building a product for the worst, means you are out of business. In a governmental environment on the other hand, it means you’ll have a system in place that is extremely expensive and ineffective, defying any policy’s (such as UBI) initial purpose and ideology.
Any new idea — business or public — is always based on assumptions. Assumptions are food for countless discussions often paralysing any progress. Yet the only way to get answers is by actually doing it, and see how things pan out along the way.
How? — Agility and Scenario Planning will be key
If you want the UBI’s societal advantages to thrive, I believe the only way to implement such a system is via ‘agility’. Meaning: Let’s just ship UBI built with the ‘good’ in mind.
In an agile environment contingency planning is not a matter of over-regulating, but scoping possible scenarios to occur, and defining how to respond when a scenario actually seems to become a reality.
For instance, let’s say we deploy the basic income at €2,000 per person. A scenario we can anticipate is inflation to kick in, however, not at what percentage. By creating several scenarios beforehand, we can respond swiftly and determined on how and whether to increase the basic income in case inflation reaches certain levels.
What’ll be the actual challenge? — People
Similar to Marco Polo’s travels, the societal integration of ‘Basic Income’ will constantly evolve as we sail the ocean of uncertainties.
As mentioned earlier, a lot of people’s labour will become obsolete and no longer needed due to the rise of ‘the machines’. Knowing that a lot of people derive their meaning from their employment, ‘purpose’ will most likely become the hardest societal problem to tackle.
How do you give those people purpose when they are no longer needed?
The reason companies like INTUO exist is because of the fact that the purpose of individuals is becoming one of the strongest drivers in an organisation— often stronger than money. But how do you keep people motivated in a world with Basic Income where they have money, no required skills, and time on their hands?
This might sound like a dream to some, but in reality this will probably be the biggest problem we’ll face due to automation (and Unconditional Basic Income)…
