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What is the basis of "Crypto UBI"? Besides a teaching tool, a simulation, how can it actually help implement Basic Income?
I learned this from Marcus Brancaglione, of the @ReCivitas institute. They run the second(?) oldest Universal Basic Income pilot on the Southern Hemisphere. It is still going, though it is underfunded.
Donate to the UBI pilot here: http://www.recivitas.org
Donate to the UBI pilot here: http://www.recivitas.org
There is a lot of what I learned from Marcus and the Quatinga Velho UBI pilot that's in this book that I translated to English:
https://www.paperrevolution.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/UNIVERSAL-BASIC-INCOME.pdf
https://www.paperrevolution.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/UNIVERSAL-BASIC-INCOME.pdf
Also important to this thread is Alex Howlett's views on what is "Money." Alex proposes Consumer Monetary Theory, which is the strongest Actual Economics (TM) theory to back Universal Basic Income. You can check out CMT and currency project Greshm here: http://greshm.org
According to Alex, it is not useful to use "Money" or "Currency" to denominate crypto-currencies like Bitcoin and others, and logically he will consider things like gold or other commodities to be assets as well, not money or currency. Those are assets, not "money" or "currency."
Alex makes the case that fiat money is the only actual money that we have, since a primary property of money or currency is to be stable. It is money to the exact extent it can be made stable.
Thus, fiat money, today, controlled by a central bank, can achieve "institutional" levels of stability that primitive/feudal attempts to project the "money" or "currency" function into commodities can never hope to compete with. So we should just not consider them to be money.
A Universal Basic Income instituted by governments and their central banks as they exist today would not run into the question of how to convert an unconditional income of capital, or value, into a currency, that could then be handled as stable money by people.
Regular UBI activists don't even think about the "nature of money." They don't have to. They already live in a paradigm where you have a central bank and a government that taxes people. So just make the government pay people. Pass laws and you're done.
So why bother with this crypto nonsense? We already HAVE a financial system that works. We know how to have stable money. We already have a state that has the power to tax anything, and to redistribute value at any rate it deems relevant, and issue it as money, directly.
The problem is that the state is NOT doing this. The capitalist bougie colonial state is doing the opposite. It is genociding us. Because it is captured by corporations and so we are living in an economic fascist dystopia.
If the existing dominant governments weren't corporate and evil, if they weren't literally bombing the entire world to erase any traces of solidarity and self-organization by the people...
... and if neoliberalism wasn't a multibillion dollar propaganda campaign designed to take over economics and destroy any attempts at the world freeing itself from imperialism and capitalism since the 1950's, then we would ALREADY have Basic Income because it is EASY and OBVIOUS.
Since UBI is so easy and instantaneous to implement at the corporate-state level, we cannot predict when it will be adopted. It can be adopted literally tomorrow, by decree. It takes about a week to implement a Basic Income program in any country. The tech costs zero ($0.0).
So, WHILE we wait for the mainstream UBI movement to succeed in pushing the population to break out of neoliberal/scarcity/jobber/colonialist propaganda and wake the fuck up and demand economic democracy immediately and do a permanent general strike until UBI happens...
... some people had the idea of looking into that "Bitcoin" thing, that magically pulled 300,000,000,000.00 USD of value out of its ass and attributed it to a bunch of magic videogames on the internet. Maybe THAT thing has some utility? Let's take a look.
Now, we are venturing outside of the established state. We are back to the primitive world now. When we traded with sea shells, and rocks, and gold coins, and whatever else. Toss "stability" aside. It's a luxury we don't have.
Our first concern now is in generating value on average. Cryptocurrencies have been existing for a decade now, and one attribute they DON'T have is stability. They are the very opposite of stable. However, I challenge you to invent a videogame that can capture 300 billion USD.
And it's even worse than that because those cryptocurrencies don't "steadily rise in value." The sample we have -- one decade -- is too short. They are truly unstable. They can go to zero at any moment.
And even if the total value of them seems to be more or less stable, there are over 4,000 of them at this point (I don't know the actual recent count; there's always more and more), and the distribution of value among them is power-law.
Apart from "stablecoins" and "security tokens," which we will get to shortly, those things are not backed by anything we have historically considered to be a thing worthy of the name "backing." They have value one moment for some "reason" we will get into, and the next... gone.
If you have never looked at the cryptocurrency market and you want to know what "power law" looks like, here it is (click on the price history of each token and let the level of instability sink in): https://www.coinlore.com/
Now, according to Serious Economics, all of these tokens should be worth zero ($0.0). They have zero value, because they are backed by "nothing." That is so because Economics models Rational Reasons for Things. Everything it doesn't understand is deemed "irrational."
Eventually, Serious Economics will feel a bit ashamed that their models are so out of touch and they will project some of that sweet Rationality into something that's already happening. But let's forget Serious Economics for now. It's useless for what we are doing.
Some of the cryptocurrencies are relatively "safe." Those are tokens that legally represent shares or reliable or traditional assets, like gold or legal stake in some company (i.e. stocks/shares).
Some of the cryptocurrencies are even "stable": they are tokens that are legally(?? or so they advertise) backed by real money. E.g. the "Paxos" currency is worth $1 because it has a 1 dollar reserve for every 1 PAX token.
Side note: Brazil has a law that allows "Local" currencies to exist legally, as long as they are fully backed by reserves of the official currency, the Brazilian Real.
But even if the vast majority of crypto isn't "backed" by stable or reliable or traditional or legal things, they are "backed" by some kind of force. If they were pure "scams" that were truly vacuous, it wouldn't have lasted this long.
Neoliberal Economics in particular, and the "Story of Separation" in general (as explained by Charles Eisenstein, see the Ascent of Humanity book) do not admit purpose in the universe, or in people. People react to models. People are "Rational," meaning they are deterministic.
Economics and "ScienceTM" cannot understand life. It cannot accept that we have hopes and dreams. It mistakes its models and what they do to us, to the impossibility of us ever behaving not according to these models. Economics does not understand dreams or sacrifice.
The idea that people cannot get together and value an intermediary trade asset -- even if it is "Not Money"TM -- is incredibly oppressive and dystopian, and completely absurd on its face.
Hence we do not need to explain why "cryptoassets" are worth 300 billion. What we have to study is what kind of madness drove us to believe that we should stick to what the system and to what tradition has provided us, forever and ever.
Now, obviously, as can be observed in real time in the 10-year history of 4,000 such cryptoassets being traded in real time, this thing is absolutely radioactive. You should NOT EVER "buy cryptocurrency" because it's a gamble and we don't even understand what's behind them.
We know *something* is behind them, and we will spend decades studying and measuring what is behind them. And we know that *something* is super explosive. We also have made some advances in the whole morality and ethics framework of the whole thing.
But then again, everything Anarchists deal with is flammable. That's our whole thing.
So, let's finally get into what I learned from Marcus and ReCivitas. The main reference should be the book, and all other books that Marcus has written, and Marcus' Medium page which is unfortunately mostly in Portuguese, with some translated articles.
ReCivitas has nothing to do with Crypto. They got started with their pilot in a 100-people village in 2006(?) or so. ReCivitas is a Left-Libertarian (i.e. anarchist) NGO that is NOT backed by government central banks, so it cannot tax anything to pay UBI.
The way not-a-governments (i.e. us, the citizens) can create UBI-paying systems is by taking the money we *have* (instead of the money we can collect or issue) and invest it. Then, we use the proceeds to pay UBIs for us and for whoever needs it the most.
This is a thing that every billionaire can do, but they don't do it, because they don't give a fuck. Jack Dorsey is going to do a pilot by investing 7 million or something like that, i.e. chump change for him, and that invested capital is going to generate income to pay UBIs.
There is far more social technology embedded into the ReCivitas pilot, such as direct democracy and self-governance, and the legal binding of the fund to the community as a whole, and member's contributions plus outside donations. But the principle is interest -> UBI.
But the key learning here is that WE can do UBI *even* if we are not giant corporations, billionaires or central banks. We can take the "real money," the capital, the assets that we DO have, and invest it in the collective.
This is usually called "Mutual Aid," but the focus here is on using the technology of Capitalism -- the scam that rules us -- and turning it against itself. We should get Capitalistic together, to build these funds, and have these funds distribute themselves to EVERYONE.
The dissolution of the rule of the Worldwide Scam that is Capitalism happens when you take the fake "interest" that it generates to pay itself and dilute the working class, and force that interest to be distributed to everyone.
In a regular "Mutualist" (or merely private, as the Jack Dorsey thing is going to be) UBI social-security system, we pool the "traditional asset" and "traditional money" we have, and use the existing economic/financial system to accrue interest, which is a form of profit/rent.
And when we use "Real Money" to do this, we do not have to consider what is the "real capital" that "backs" the currency that represents that income.
In a "Real Money" UBI, the currency that pays the income IS the capital that backs the income. It is a tautology.
In a "Real Money" UBI, the currency that pays the income IS the capital that backs the income. It is a tautology.
That tautology is provided by Serious Economics and the existing State. They are good and solid while we wait for the next ecosystemic/financial/social collapse.
Now, one way you could augment Mutualist (or merely "private") UBI systems from not-a-government entities, is to use "cryptocurrency" that is *backed* by real money.
So you could e.g. pay people in PAX, where each "fake" PAX token is legally backed by 1 USD that is real.
So you could e.g. pay people in PAX, where each "fake" PAX token is legally backed by 1 USD that is real.
You can get arbitrarily complex with this, e.g. you pay people in a token that represents a legal share of a fund, so 1 token legally represents X.Y% of a pool of Real Money. We don't need to get into this.
But the idea here is that the most obvious way in which we can use "crypto" is as a proxy, as a distribution mechanism. Instead of hauling physical US Dollar notes around the globe to pay people, or wire US Dollars across the expensive banking system, use crypto tokens.
The best tokens to use for that kind of global Crypto UBI pilot or mutual social security system are "stablecoins." In the absence of those, use tokens that represent a share of a "pie" that is legally linked, somehow, to "Real Money" or "Real Assets."
OK, so is that Crypto UBI? Well, it is that too.
But that is not the corner of "Crypto UBI" that I'm interested in. I'm not merely interested in using "cryptocurrency backed by Real MoneyTM" to enable global, real-time, low-cost mutualist UBI funds.
But that is not the corner of "Crypto UBI" that I'm interested in. I'm not merely interested in using "cryptocurrency backed by Real MoneyTM" to enable global, real-time, low-cost mutualist UBI funds.
For completeness, let's establish that "Crypto UBI" is just an umbrella name to, really, any application of any digital technology to the advancement of UBI.
Alex Howlett's Greshm system ( http://greshm.org ) is included in "Crypto UBI" initiatives, besides not having any cryptography in it. It is a centralized digital currency, and it is fully backed by Real MoneyTM, and the digital currency is *stable* by way of solid economics.
So, with that out of the way, we can, finally, get to the understanding of what IS, really, this "not really money" crypto stuff. Why is Bitcoin valued at a gazillion dollars? When we finish exploring that, we can figure out whether we can use that to ACTUALLY *fund* UBI or not.
I wrote about this already on my Medium. At length. But I should probably try to be more concise here. Also, let's see if my explanation has improved since the last time I did this.
I just have to summon some extra patience and strength to do this.
I just have to summon some extra patience and strength to do this.
I think my usual angle is not optimal. It does not work as a good story. The focus should be on who ARE these crazy people that have thrown themselves at believing an unreal thing that economists detest IS REAL and making it real against all existing models?
"Cryptocurrencies" as an existing phenomenon that I think is what the "phenomenology" thing studies, have happened because of, basically, heresy, ignorance, and religious hope.
"Not knowing that it was impossible, they went out and did it."
"Not knowing that it was impossible, they went out and did it."
I have written at length about how the "solid" and "real" things that Serious Economics studies are entirely vacuous, and that the vacuity of a new religion of value and the vacuity of an established religion of value are the exact same core vacuity. I won't repeat this here.
Cryptocurrencies have originated with Bitcoin. I have written about this at length too. Bitcoin is a planet-destroying machine that implements a digital alternative to whatever madness makes humans desire and value physical gold and destroy the world mining for that too.
Receipt of why we must outlaw and destroy all Bitcoin "miners": https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
Bitcoin runs on "Proof-of-Work Miners" which is possibly the worst thing ever created by software and hardware engineers. It is an entirely obsolete system that consumes 0.3% of the world's power output for no reason whatsoever. We already have alternatives that consume zero (0).
There are literally zero reasons why we haven't valued Bitcoin at zero ($0) and moved all the valuation into a green alternative. The green alternatives are equally as secure, more scalable, and cost near zero to operate.
This is just that "humans being humans" thing again.
This is just that "humans being humans" thing again.
That is, after all, the problem with religious thinking. When you break away from Established ReasonTM, but the intuitions you are using to do that breaking away aren't very good, and you get identified with them, what you get is a cult that refuses to die, like Bitcoin is.
The creators of Bitcoin were "Libertarians"TM. Libertarianism is an "alt-right" political ideology from white men who want to concentrate all wealth and accept no democratic control over it. They consider government "corrupt" because it's the only thing that can check them.
Libertarianism was originally the name of what we call today Left-Libertarianism, which is pretty close to Anarchism. The idea is that, yes, governments and states are evil, and a problem we need to solve. But that's not what "Libertarians" (Proprietarians) want.
Proprietarians want the state gone not because the state is an imperfect rendition of democracy that's easily subvertible by the privileged castes of society to accumulate wealth. They want it gone because it is taxing them. That is all.
The more virulent form of Bitcoin adoration is called "Bitcoin Maximalism." The idea of Bitcoin Maximalism is that taxation should not exist, and the only Legal Money that should exist is Bitcoin, so that the privileged castes can hoard it ALL, putting current inequality to shame
That's why "Cool Billionaires" like Jack Dorsey like Bitcoin. They are Proprietarians.
Bitcoin, notably, has a monetary issuance rate of zero. The mass of Bitcoin is designed to be more or less constant. The "mining" reward function was tuned to make the internet "Libertarian" insiders rich in the first years.
Since Bitcoin has no issuance (or issuance only to rich people who can afford hardware miners) then it cannot meaningfully pay a Basic Income to people.
The only way Bitcoin can be used for a UBI is if rich people sell their Bitcoin to establish UBI funds.
The only way Bitcoin can be used for a UBI is if rich people sell their Bitcoin to establish UBI funds.
And that is true of every other cryptocurrency, with the exception of the handful cryptocurrencies specifically designed to power UBI systems (i.e. "crypto UBI" crypto-currencies).
ALL other "non-crypto-UBI" crypto-currencies have issuance functions that are wholly inadequate as redistribution mechanisms. Mainly because those systems do not identify users, and the do not issue a basic amount of cryptocurrency to every identified user.
To use crypto-currency to pay UBI, you need to teach the computer about the people that exist. You can do that in a myriad ways, but that's not our focus here. The ID problem is not very interesting and it can be solved either centrally or e.g. P2P (see http://BrightID.org ).
Once your crypto-currency can see people, it has to decide whether it will issue new tokens to these people, or if it has some internal function that can capture ("tax") the tokens that are already in circulation and redistribute them to people as a UBI. Both work.
The cryptocurrencies that were created after Bitcoin and before Crypto UBI, even if they could see individual people, their issuance rates were all garbage. E.g. Dogecoin (valued at half a billion) issues "50" coins every 10 minutes or something like that. A constant.
It is completely pointless to teach Dogecoin about sharing its "50 coins every 10 minutes" among all people. Because if the user base goes 10X, the UBI rate falls to a tenth.
So, you need to design a cryptocurrency to support UBI from the ground up.
So, you need to design a cryptocurrency to support UBI from the ground up.
The motivation behind the Crypto UBI people and the Regular Proprietarian/"Libertarian" Crypto people are completely different, and yet they are united by something common, just like Anarchists and Left-Libertarians share some understandings with Proprietarians.
The common ground between us is the understanding that There is No Spoon. The rules of the system can be bent, and, in some places, broken.
The fluctuations of the 300 billion dollar USD market cap are the spoon being chaotically bent.
The fluctuations of the 300 billion dollar USD market cap are the spoon being chaotically bent.
As Anarchists and Left-Libertarians and even less-lefty mainstream people, we thank the alt-right Proprietarian white male contingent for creating Bitcoin and bringing its technological principles and the sociological phenomenon it caused to our attention.
But now that we have that information, you can all fuck off, and we hope Bitcoin is destroyed and outlawed sooner rather than later, for our ecosystemic benefit.
Now, what if we DARE to touch the radioactive and magical stuff emanating from this Frankenstein, and actually use it for a good purpose, like forcing the world to end economic fascism and actually institute UBI as a legally-encoded human right?
We don't need any "cryptocurrency" as they exist today. They can all be tossed aside. What we want are "Crypto UBI" crypto-currencies, that actually pay users, instead of rich "miners."
Instead of using the "crypto" phenomenon to fund traders, we want to fund *everyone*.
Instead of using the "crypto" phenomenon to fund traders, we want to fund *everyone*.
Just like people should eventually realize that "Proof of Work" crypto-currencies are garbage and should be abandoned, at some point people should eventually realize that valuing "Crypto UBI" makes far more sense than valuing non-UBI, hoardable crypto.
Crypto holders that buy cryptocurrency that does NOT pay itself to them, are funding traders, because they think they can trade. They can't trade, and they get exploited. They are suckers.
A currency that does NOT pay itself automatically to all its participants is, by definition, a Ponzi scam.
Think about this for a second.
Think about this for a second.
The point of a currency is to encode an economic share. If you use a currency, in whatever thing that's analogous to a community that you're in, and that currency does NOT grant an amount of itself to you every day, what that means is that you have NO RIGHT to just live.
The planet we are in is powered by the Sun, for "free," and that energy is processed by an entire pre-existing ecosystem that produces all we need. So of course a "currency" that you use among humans has to encode your share of this natural gift.
The idea that "economics" measures "production" is an unrecoverable categorical error that underlies everyone's understanding. That is what happens when the psyche of an entire civilization is damaged at its very core by the paradigm of "Separation."
So, on the one hand, crypto "buyers" are suckers, because they have to buy the money that encodes the economic rights that they were supposed to have in the first place.
But by that criteria then so is everyone else in the world of Real Serious Money.
But by that criteria then so is everyone else in the world of Real Serious Money.
Every day you go out to your "Job" to "Work" because you need "Dollars" (the agreed-upon economic encoding of your share of Things) to enjoy the solar power and the pre-existing ecosystemic bounty ensuing from the natural processing of that solar power.
And the system is not giving you any (ANY) Dollars by default. You need to get them. You need to be a serf to someone else.
Does Jeff Bezos has to do that? No, he doesn't.
You're a sucker. You're a slave to Jeff Bezos. He has convinced you that the planet is his.
Does Jeff Bezos has to do that? No, he doesn't.
You're a sucker. You're a slave to Jeff Bezos. He has convinced you that the planet is his.
The only difference between the Real Serious Economics Legal Dollar System and Real Gold Bars and some garbage like Bitcoin is on how much of organized violence is backing the upholding of the exploitative scam.
The only violence that backs Bitcoin is mentioning that Bitcoin is garbage on Twitter, which will guarantee at least five Random Men tweeting angrily at you about how Bitcoin is real and solid.
Measuring the legitimacy or the desirability of an economic/financial system by how "stable" the currency is, or how "solid" is the violence, ignorance, magic or religious hope that backs is, is a mistake.
We have to start with: "Is the game it models not exploitative?"
We have to start with: "Is the game it models not exploitative?"
For the first time in history, we have the technology to create a *token system*, literally the digital version of primitive sea shells or rocks, literally just vouchers, that we can equitably distributed, BY DEFAULT, to actual people.
Now, if we can figure out how to channel the kind of magic that powers a piece of garbage like Bitcoin, to give *any* of that valuation pattern that's invested in Bitcoin, into an *equitable*, *sane*, *just* magic internet money system...
... then we are challenging the "default" story of money: that money is earned through slaving away, not as a human right to a share of existing wealth that belongs to no one -- it's a commons. We are striking at the heart of capitalism, and we will be making waves.
So, of course, "buying crypto" is dangerous. But life is dangerous. Revolution is not without risks. You can be an idiot and trade away every possession for a cryptocurrency, be it "crypto-UBI" or "non-UBI crypto." And then it goes to zero, and then you are fucked. DON'T.
The moral and ethical Guard Rail of Crypto UBI is the following:
"DO NOT BUY IT."
That's it.
Crypto UBI *pays itself* to you. So you don't have to buy it. Just receive it. That is enough to participate.
"DO NOT BUY IT."
That's it.
Crypto UBI *pays itself* to you. So you don't have to buy it. Just receive it. That is enough to participate.
Now, Crypto UBI needs markets. Currencies need currency markets to exist.
The important thing to remember is that the crypto-currency markets are for adults, or for people who have nothing to lose, or for people who are fighting some invisible spiritual battle through it.
The important thing to remember is that the crypto-currency markets are for adults, or for people who have nothing to lose, or for people who are fighting some invisible spiritual battle through it.
If you do not know anything about Cryptocurrency, you don't ever buy it. If you think you do, you also don't buy it, because you don't understand it. It has taken me 10 years to scratch the surface of it. So no, you do not understand it.
Ok, now we can get into the serious stuff.
What we are going to do now is think about how to actually solve the problem of using cryptocurrencies to advance UBI. It is more or less what many Crypto UBI projects are doing, in one way or the other. But I'm going to focus on my own Crypto UBI project, Dailycoin.
I'm going to use Dailycoin because it is an extremely simple Crypto UBI system. In a sense, it is the simplest conceivable Crypto UBI system.
And I'm a simple person. I like simple things that have a simple explanation.
I'm tired. Continue this some other day
