What would I do if everyone had a basic income? My own answer to the BIG question.
What would you do if you had an unconditional basic income?
I regularly ask people this question, because the answer is the true definition of basic income. Basic income isn't really about the money. It's about what money enables us to do in our lives that we'd otherwise be prevented from doing without enough money to meet our basic needs, and without enough time to really live, due to all of our time being spent just trying to stay alive.
I already have a basic income via crowdfunding, which I use to advocate for basic income for everyone, so a question people ask me is what I would do if tomorrow everyone had basic income. I've answered this question a few times in various interviews, but I've never written about it. So here's my answer.
I'd write more.
More specifically, I'd write more science fiction.
Even more specifically, I'd write more science fiction screenplays.
I've always loved writing. As a kid, I'd love to just find a quiet place with a stack of paper, and just write. In school, I loved writing assignments that involved writing fiction. One of my favorite experiences back in elementary school was writing a story inspired by Airplane!, and reading it in front of my fifth grade class. It was absolutely absurd, but I wrote it to make me laugh, and it ended up making the whole class laugh too. It was such a great feeling to imagine something into existence, and for that creation to then reach the minds of others.
A few years later, one of my favorite experiences in high school was an assignment in German class to write a short story in English and translate it into German. I took that assignment and ran with it by using my story (and my love of computer animation) to create a computer animated short film. That was an even greater feeling, to imagine something into existence, and for that to be transformed into something people could watch. Sure it was just an animated short about 7-Up's Cool Spot bringing to life a Listerine bottle Frankenstein-style inside a castle that ended up in a battle between Hershey's kisses and Life Saver Minis set to the song "Line Up" by Aerosmith, but it was something I imagined that became real enough for other people to enjoy too, and that to me was an amazing feeling.
Years later, in 2011, I decided to write my very first screenplay for a full-length feature film, purely for the fun of it. It involved months of research, and months of writing, a total of nine months actually. It wasn't all day every day of course, but it was something I worked on pretty much every day, for at least a few hours a day. The best way to learn something is to just do it, right? So that's what I did. I didn't take any classes or read any books on screenplay writing. I just studied the screenplays of movies I loved most, and tried to make my own using them as a blueprint.
The result was a 120 page screenplay I titled, "The Stories Within." Here's the log line I wrote for it to give you an idea of what it's about.
A New Orleans writer's work of science fiction involving the two greatest conspiracies of the 1960s unknowingly makes him a target for his own assassination.
It's written as a story inside a story inside a story, where each layer is meant to have a different style on screen. One layer kind of makes fun of Hollywood and is full of common tropes, while another is meant to be more reflective of reality in contrast to those tropes, and another is docudrama style. The docudrama layer looks at the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the Apollo 11 Moon landing mission, and depicts two new conspiracy theories for each that I created myself for the purpose of the story. It's science fiction. It's thriller. It's fun. It's the kind of movie I'd like to see, and that's why I wrote it.
I wrote this spec script over a span of almost a year, over six years ago, and in that time it's probably been read by maybe a dozen people. I did it for the pleasure of writing it. I did it to learn something new. I did it to create something original. For those who choose to read it now, I imagine some of you will quite enjoy it and wish it actually was a movie you could watch. Others, especially professional screenwriters will probably loathe it as a poorly written excuse for a script that deserves to be burned with fire. To me, it doesn't really matter, because the fraction of my life I spent writing it was for me. It was work. It was creation. And it was meaningful.
Getting better at something takes time. It takes doing it over and over and over again. Thanks to my basic income, I've been free to focus on writing for the first time in my life really, and I feel my writing has not only improved as a result, but that I've been slowly developing my own style. Years ago, I would have thought it crazy to be told that one day my writing would be used to help teach college students how to write, but here I am now with pieces in multiple college textbooks. For someone who originally went to school for a degree in engineering physics, I never thought I'd be where I am right now, absolutely free to spend entire days writing absolutely anything.
So what would I do if everyone had a basic income? I'd write even more. I've actually got a second screenplay that's been halfway complete for years that I'd absolutely love to get back to, and many other story ideas waiting to be written, but I just feel writing about basic income is too important to write about anything else.
Now that you know what I'd do if you and everyone else had a basic income, consider for a moment how many other people are out there with ideas just sitting there, due to simply not having the time or energy to work on them in a world without basic income. Imagine what you yourself have a passion for that you'd do far more of, or instead. Imagine the tsunami of creativity that will be unleashed once everyone is free to spend their lives working on the things that they're most passionate about instead of what they're essentially forced to do, simply to "earn a living."
More than anything, I want that world to exist for us. We can create that world together by making sure everyone has an unconditional basic income. And that's not science fiction.
Howdy Mr. Santens. I’m the guy that just found you through twitter. I (we, as I’m part of the team)really appreciate you boosting the Dash Direct project through your tweets! As I read this article, I realized that we must be fairly close in age. You reminded me of an assignment in 4th or 5th grade where we had to write a children’s book that we would share with younger students. My story was about the 7up spot and learning to count. Prior to that, I was crowned “Lil Mr. Haydays“ for a 1st grade paper (or paragraph) about the most important thing in my life. The subject was learning to read and write. I’ve only very recently come back to my childhood dream, and am Very encouraged by people like you and Joël Valenzuela, to learn that it’s never too late to redefine yourself and create your own value as a human rather than studying away at the job that you were told you have to have. Thanks for being you, and for working so hard to promote a basic human inheritance!
I'm starting to think more about what I might do if steem steadily increases in price and proves to be a sustainable blockchain/cryptocurrency. Photography, and to a lesser extent writing, is my passion. I can see myself living in a third world country, like India for instance, and writing and photographing there where cost of living is low and any income I earn from sharing my work on steem can cover my expenses. I can't really afford to live in Australia any more. Things are getting that dire. And I can promise you that Australia will be one of the last countries to get a UBI, the same as we have been down the list on a host of other progressive issues like assisted dying, drug law reform, and same-sex marriage.
Hi Revo... I actually moved from Australia to the US because the cost of living was so high, the infrastructure can't cope with the amount of people in the cities and the politics was driving me crazy (I'm less involved in US politics because it's nuts). Moving was an incredibly expensive experience, but I feel more confident and secure over here.
"Write more" is absolutely the top of that list. I happen to love my job (there's a reason I've been doing it for seventeen years), but basic income would allow me to cut back some of my hours there and focus more on my creative output. :)
How do you know those funds wouldn't be better used by the people who earned them?
@endplunder, I'm not certain I understand your question. A universal basic income means a certain amount earned by everybody simply for being human. It's all earned income. Is this what you mean?
Earned by being human? Things must be produced before they can be consumed. For you to receive payment for doing nothing, the same will have to be taken from someone who has actually earned it.
I'm going to point you to Scott's basic income FAQ. It addresses your concern, and likely many others you may not even realize you have, far better than I can.
http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq
Specifically, I think this entry may be a good place to start:
http://www.scottsantens.com/wouldn-t-a-basic-income-just-be-stealing-from-those-who-earned-their-money
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Then this world will be a better place for all, I like this kind of thought.
I was just thinking... What if we treated childhood as our "basic income years" The years where our needs are all met until we can get to a point where we no longer need it, ideally we could spend that time learning how to make money/provide our basic needs...
Anyway, I think about what I would do if money was not an obstacle all the time. It's how I create my goals so I can make that happen in the future.
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It's hard not to think that more people would just sit on the couch and play with their phones. I struggle with my own laziness and lack of discipline all the time, and sitting on the couch is soooooo easy.
I'd like to think that I'd follow my passions a lot more, and maybe I would if I wasn't exhausted from working... but maybe, just maybe everyone would actually spend that time following that little dopamine hit that social media and addictive games provide...?
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STOPFor some reason, we tend to think that everyone has the worst, laziest of intentions. As if everyone always cheats when they aren't watched, or lies when they aren't checked. We feel like everyone else is that way. And so we hear arguments about how people wouldn't work if they didn't have to. And what turns out to actually be true is that when basic survival isn't a concern, people actually work harder, they just call it play at that point. They enjoy.
This, universal healthcare, and the wrapping of psychological and dental care into that, would fix a hell of a lot of bad things.