Very interesting read and I'm in your camp. I also think that the NEED versus WANTS is a topic that is in the center of the debate; for all the arguments you already mentioned. And yes, the rich will not start projects because they simply like it; Some do, but most of them don't. When the rich get richer, I don't see they will launch more projects to re-distribute their money with those who really need it.
This morning I was reading in our financial news, many Dutch millionaires are under foreign tax regime because of the high taxes in Netherlands and those rich were stating: "Give us more influence in what will be done with our tax money, and we come back to Netherlands". That I just find a stupid wish and it would be really stupid for our society to even think about this, or debate this. It only give the rich more power over the rest of the society.
I recently read a great article about basic income, an instrument that could give everybody the freedom to do whatever he or she wants. This article was in Dutch language and I translated it and posted today. Very interesting and detailed arguments why we should provide everybody with a basic income without any rules that tells the individual to work or something.
If I would earn 28M$/year: Sure I would use some of the 28M$ on myself, but lets say that would not be more than 50k-500k per year. That is already such an amount of money, I probably would not know how to spend that.
Probably a large part of the 28M$ I will use to support projects on basic income, to get such system further tested and determine through practical implementations if and how to move forward with such instrument.
Thanks for the detailed response!
I have never really asked more than a "comfortable" life... I don't really see or understand the point of anything more than that.
I do like the idea of using such large sums to explore further how we can create Universal Basic Income, which I think will become very necessary in the future, as more and more people will find their jobs displaced with automation... and no new jobs opening up to take their place. I'll go check out your article/post as it is a topic that is very interesting to me, and I am watching several cryptocurrency initiatives that are trying to establish basic income.
Agree, a comfortable life is all I need as well and that doesn't cost millions a year :)
Basic Income: fully agree, we need some kind of instrument like that since in a couple of decades AI and Robotica will for sure handle the tasks of most of our jobs. At the same time, we need to make sure the ownership of the IPR of AI and Robotica is in the hands of all of us, instead of a couple of corporates.
Crypto based basic income: Someone pointed me to GrantCoin, but although their story sounds interesting, the amount the actually payout seems to be around 1$ per participant per month, which is for people in the western world nothing. Wondering if they are able to increase this with a factor of 1.000.
Musiccoin also propagates basic income, but they take it from a music perspective. Before a listener needed to pay for a streamed play of a track (pay-per-play), but they made it free for the listener and part of the mined coins are now flowing towards paying the musicians owning the tracks. Still the pay-per-play is in effect, ie a track that is played 10 times more than another gets paid 10 times more then the other.
Yes, I got involved with the GrantCoin idea early on-- I guess they now have renamed it "Manna" and are redesigning how they do things. Not sure what will come of it... for the moment, the contributions are extremely low (by western standards), but it always seemed unclear how they proposed to fund the project. I think VivaCoin is pursuing a somewhat similar ideal.
VivaCoin: indeed, I looked into before they went ICO, but also with their idea, wondering how the finance it. I think they may dream the coins gets some value by itself, through trading and investing. But I dont think that is a sustainable model.
Sadly, a lot of these projects have beautiful ideals, but we end up with the more functional "how does this sustain itself?" and most of the time nobody has any idea. You can't just have "output," you have to have input, as well... something to make it attractive enough to investors that they will pump assets into it. Something for something, not something for nothing.
I agree with you!