How might a basic income cryptocurrency affect governments, states, and citizenship?
I’ve followed basic income closely, as I believe it’s a viable and desirable option for dealing with automation—and also, for generally improving the human condition. I’ve read many recent developments and arguments with pleasure, including an announcement today about a quasi-basic income in Quebec, progress with a pilot in my province of Ontario, and recent proposals for social welfare funds in Bloomberg and The New York Times. (I also donate to GiveDirectly.)
So I’m surprised that I hadn’t previously read much about the idea of a basic income cryptocurrency. It wasn’t until I joined Steemit and read posts such as this one and this one that the idea had occurred to me, though I have subsequently discovered Grantcoin and Mannabase. My interest was further piqued by a sidebar conversation with @markkujantunen about what the government’s role should be in distributing a basic income—if any.
And this all leads me to a thought: if a basic income cryptocurrency were actually successful, and widely distributed, it could ultimately unravel states and state-based citizenship. My thinking is as follows:
- If citizens receive a basic income cryptocurrency that their government doesn’t administer…
- And if people spend this cryptocurrency to purchase goods and services in an anonymous, untraceable way…
- Then a significant portion of various countries will have little economic involvement or attachment to their state (about 13% of people live in poverty in the US, for example)—they will not be taxed by their state, nor pay taxes to their state.
- Which may significantly weaken their political attachment to their state, given that voting would have negligible impact on their standard of living.
- Which would almost certainly be destabilizing to our current political systems and structures.
For this reason, I wonder if the biggest impact a basic income cryptocurrency might have is providing further impetus for governments to get ahead of the game and institute something themselves—before it’s too late.
Very interesting - will follow you!
Thanks!
Hi, very interesting thought. I think we both know governments will do everything in their power to make sure that they can find a way to put a tax on this. However this might be very difficult for them.
One thing that worries me about this is how criminals can also use this system to accumulate wealth in an intraceable way.
But the idea of a basic income through a cryptocurrency is great. A coin from the people for the people. It could even become an alternate economy.
Governments are struggling to regulate cryptocurrencies, so I don’t know how they would begin to tax them. I think the best they could probably do is tax exchange of real-world goods, such as real estate, which is much harder to keep anonymous. So we’ll probably see an increase in taxation for things like land, real estate, and other physical goods that are exchanged using whatever form of currency.
As for criminals, for sure, but I’m not sure cryptocurrencies increase the amount of criminal behavior, and a lot of behavior in the regular financial
system comes pretty close to criminal (e.g. subprime loans), so I’ll bet we’ll come out ahead in the end.
This is a very interesting idea. But as there are vast differences in wealth between countries, I find global basic income to be more akin to development aid than universal basic income as a form of welfare. And who would provide the coins value by purchasing them? Wealthy individuals who wish to further the political agenda of internationalism? Nations seeking to disrupt the political cohesion of rival nations? Who else?
This is worth a read: Circles cryptocurrency basic income proposal.
I may have missed something but I did not notice a component of universal income in the proposal. It is said in the proposal that anyone can join the network and have their own personal coin minted, a coin others may opt to trust to a degree of their choosing. As far as I could tell, there was no mention of any universally accepted coin airdropped to anyone.
As I understand it, coins are continuously minted for each user. And the value of each user’s coins is related to how much people trust them, and how many people trust them. So it seems, effectively, it is a way to translate trust in the real world into a basic income currency that’s being continuously minted for each user, and whose utility is determined by people’s trustworthiness. You don’t have to do anything to earn and use it except be trustworthy. I’m sure this is a bad summary, but that’s my initial take.
You become trustworthy by consistently returning the favor. This is not basic income as basic income is, by definition, given in exchange for nothing.
Ah, true. I believe you receive the currency for nothing, but you can’t spend it unless other people trust you. So, yes, that’s a subtle nuance because if you have me a US dollar it’s already widely accepted and I could spend it in many places. This said, without a way to ensure people aren’t creating multiple identities, the system won’t work. So I don’t see how you get around the need for trust signals to make the currency viable.
Oh, I think the currency system is interesting. But it is no basis for universal basic income as it laid out in the white paper.
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