Thesis: unconditional economic policies (basic income, healthcare, baby bonds, social dividends) are affordances that increase our capacity to expand consciousness.

To the jury, I submit:

1. José Ortega y Gasset's definition of consciousness
2. Gibson's affordance theory

1. Gasset: consciousness = "what is possible to us":

“...our existence is at every instant and above all the consciousness of what is possible to us...So we could say ‘we live’ as well as ‘we find ourselves in an atmosphere of definite possibilities’.”

2. Gibson's Affordance:

"An affordance is an action possibility formed by the relationship between an agent and its environment."

Altering environments alters possibilities, possibilities can alter environments.

Unconditional economic policies afford people resources w/o requiring time exchanged in return, increasing their viable possibilities.

More possibilities means more consciousness (Gasset), policies being the affordances that increase the possibilities.

Ergo: Unconditional economic policies expand the environment of the possible, creating new environmental affordances, new "action possibilities".

Closing with Mark Fisher:

"The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.”

Or, economic policies can tear the hole & open the world.