This is an experiment. All of human history is an experiment, really.
People have tried to organize society in all different ways. We’ve moved on from monarchies and feudalism and towards societies with more abundance and greater democracy on average.
But when we look at the world today, we see too many people working too hard to be living in financial precarity.
Costs rise faster than wages. No matter how much we throw ourselves into our work, we keep losing ground to more bills, more debt, we struggle just to stay afloat.
We look back at history as though it were inevitable. But if we paused to really think about it, we realize that people have always been making it up as they go along. And that means it’s not too late to put aside what’s not working to try something different.
So, the premise of this particular experiment is simple: to see what happens when people are given money on a regular basis with no strings attached. Not in exchange for their time or their work, but just because people need money.
It’s a test of the concept known as UBI or universal or unconditional basic income, which proposes a regular cash stipend provided to every citizen regardless of whatever other sources of income they may or may not have.
UBI is a floor beneath which nobody can fall. A world where nobody ever has zero.
This project is an exploration of several fundamental questions that UBI raises like what if we decided to simply trust people with money to count on them to do something good with it.
And if UBI were a thing, what could it mean in each of our lives?
Then again, would it be reckless to simply give away that kind of freedom?
What if people just took it as an excuse to slack off?
What would actually happen in a world where people could get by even without a job?
These are complicated questions and nobody knows the answers really.
To implement a universal basic income would be to take a leap of faith.
It feels risky, even dangerous, given our assumptions about other people. But what if there’s something we’re missing?
What if something like UBI could work?
How much pain would that save us?
This experiment is about catching a glimpse of what a world with UBI might look like by witnessing real human behavior and seeing what happens, good or bad, when people are granted that kind of trust when they’re given a UBI.