I was saving this until the whitepaper was ready for human consumption.
But @dantheman just posted an excellent article on the concept of a coin intended to
produce a universal basic income
So I felt now would be a good time talk about what we've been working on for the past couple of years with the VIVA project.
To understand VIVA you need to understand its history.
VIVA attempts to answer the question,
How do you provide for everyone in a world where the only thing scarce are jobs?
As our technology and automation increase, the cost of production for nearly everything is rapidly trending towards $0.
In the meantime, labor as always, is the primary cost of production.
If you look at places where products are produced cheapest it's because labor costs are low or non-existent.
Automation really just replaces people with machines that don't get tired, don't go on strike to demand better working conditions etc.
Of course, someone has to design the machines in the first place, and while they don't go on strike, machines do break down, so you need people to fix them.
This has spurred a large influx of people into STEM.
One community college summed it up nicely in their course summary on intro to robotics where it said
Learn to build machines and replace your friends and neighbors!
Even these jobs will be going away as we make advances in AI.
So we're destined for an abundance society with no jobs!
That means we can all stop working, stop paying and everything is free right?
No, in a situation like that, the animal side of mankind kicks in and we end up with riots, wars and worse.
But it gets even more challenging...
I've said before that with the current progression of technology, we're either the last to generation to die or the first to live forever.
Live 50 more years and you'll see what I'm saying, or just read some of my blogs on the topic.
Even assuming we all decided to live like the Amish, the fact is that current economic paths are unsustainable, because they assume consumers will always be in a position to buy.
In the USA the social security system is already pushed to the brink.
Give average human lifespans another 10 years and social security checks will bounce.
One solution to all of this is found in the concept of a UBI or Universal Basic Income.
It sounds great on paper, just give each person a guaranteed minimum income whether they work or not.
Now everyone has money! Problem solved!
Not so fast. Here's the sad truth about money...
Everything you know about money is a lie.
It's JUST a government issued commodity we all agreed to use for barter.
There is nothing magical about it and if you give everyone equal amounts of it simply by right of being human, you actually zero that amount of money out of the economy.
Why?
Because demand for items rise when people have money, but supply does not respond to demand, it responds to price, hence prices rise in response first.
This means that new money is inflated out of the economy because everything now costs proportionally more.
I'm not against UBI, but a hybrid approach is warranted if we're to make this sustainable over the course of generations.
Current UBI approaches assume that if you just keep adding money it will solve all the problems and make things better.
UBI might gain traction in Europe, but in the USA, proponents of UBI meet with fierce resistance from our "moral majority".
A majority that preaches that a man must eat by the sweat of his brow and never be a burden to society, no matter how much he contributes.
These are diametrically opposed viewpoints, and I find it hilarious that most "anti-UBI" people are either collecting Social Security and Medicare or planning to.
Either way, no one wants to subsidize the life of someone who isn't trying to live theirs.
So let's examine this from a different perspective.
I'm going to say something that will shock you, so just sit down a minute before continuing.
Sitting down? Good!
The problem here isn't that we need more money!
The problem is that we have an excess of laborers with no jobs available, to give them any sort of satisfaction.
Money doesn't solve this, we either need to reduce the population, or increase the available jobs because people don't work for money.
They work to satisfy Maslow's Heirarchy.
This is why there are volunteers. Jobs are a means to an end in acquiring their hierarchical needs, money is one enabler of that.
Once a person has their lower order needs taken care of, they tend to do what they want.
So, less people or more jobs...
Since I'm not a fan of population control, we've decided to create a currency that ensures every person has a job and a reliable source of income.
Long term we want this to be a path to retirement so automation and innovation are encouraged.
If in 5 years time, each and every person reading this has effectively retired to do whatever they want, then I've done my job.
But how do you give everyone a job?
A job is nothing special, it's just a thing you do, that earns you income.
Prior to the advent of the industrial revolution, everyone that wanted a job could have a job.
They either worked for someone else or they started their own business.
Entrepreneurship was the key then and it's the key now.
Specifically a return to "cottage industry", but with the global reach that the internet affords us.
To accomplish that, we needed to come up with a way that people could launch a business into our ecosystem, hire workers and receive a living wage.
As amazing as the internet is, distribution of labor and resources is still a huge issue.
But the internet does allow us to create "labor proxies" and there are some things such as disaster proof backup redundancy, for which distance from the source is an asset rather than a liability.
The real trick here is to create new kinds of business.
Innovative businesses that do new things, leveraging the strength of the global economy yet don't require a fortune to get operational.
In order to maximally benefit from a global economy, we need an economic engine.
Something sleek and powerful, nimble and able to respond to the market at a moment's notice.
Welcome to VIVA!
VIVA is an economic engine, powered by supply and demand fundamentals.
It enables entrepreneurship, by fully leveraging the computing power of each and every connected node.
To be continued...
https://steemit.com/basicincome/@williambanks/introduction-to-viva-part-2-more-than-meets-the-eye
See. This is something I can read and see potential in.
Real world application rather than just profit fluff suggesting equality
When do we see this launch and how the heck does the system afford to pay everyone as a diminishing return is likely realized due to human lazyness and sloth? The whole something for nothing concept doesn't fully resonate with me yet as I cannot seem to understand how anyone expects this to be feasible long term as you take away the very driving factors that motivate people to do things.. :/
This is huge and the whitepaper was lovingly called the whitenovel .
I've created a 6 part summary I'm distilling into a 4 part blog posting. BTW next chapter is up...
https://steemit.com/basicincome/@williambanks/introduction-to-viva-part-2-more-than-meets-the-eye
...and how do I make sure I can follow this, and be on the front end of it, other than just following @williambanks? Please post or email me a subscribe link - [email protected]
Best with this, Guy
Actually, following @williambanks is probably the best way to keep on top of this.
Okay but some sort of opt-in list in case I don't get to spend every day or the rest of my life on Steemit is what I was hoping for. In time I imagine...
Don't stress it, this isn't something launching tomorrow. Our whitepaper is still a novel and needs major work. Our website is still being designed. There's time to relax, just check my blog each day for the next week or so. You can also follow user @vivacoin for official information and finally our website will be at www.vivaco.in when it's stood up, so you can book mark that URL and wait for it to no longer be just a parking page.
Great! Best of luck with it, it sounds fascinating so far from the posts.
Hi. You forget that factually the majority of things in your live for the driving factor is something entirely different. Take for example love. You fall for someone because of a trillion other reasons. Laughter, enjoyment and fun are yet others. Expressing a creative side of your yet another.
Money can't buy me love?
That might be true, but he real thing we're discussing is a concept called entitlement.
Most people agree that the lowest orders needs are things you are entitled to by virtue of being human.
The disagreement comes into play when you start talking about the higher order needs.
In Europe the consensus is much more in favor of entitlement to mid and higher order needs.
In the USA the consensus is that these aren't needs, but wants. You must work to acquire those wants if you really want them.
Our species still has a long way to go.
For now, let's just give everyone the ability to earn an income by removing the road blocks and let them take charge of their own destiny.
Money can buy you hookers.. Which is like love if my googling is correct. ;D
LOL, that had me rolling!
Love is basically chemical intoxication caused by hormones, pheromones and the devils vagina magic. 0_0
Yeah... tell that your mother who showed you how to wipe your ass, once she done enough of that for the sake of love and come again.... ;)
Thank you for this intelligent and thoughtful rebuttal.
My point still stands, hormones and vagina magic.
Yes, it's a valid point, but imo just fractionally correct. I would argue it is a very tiny fraction. One of the outstanding amazing human capacities is to actually live in monogamy by choice, pure will power. It's totally against our chemical hunkybunky cocktail :p With this will power we can do all sorts of irrational things, probably just because we are bored.
LOL. So true, Alec! There is so much more to love than lust. Miserable is the man who believes the physical aspect is all that is available. Lust is on that Maslow's hierarchy of needs right above defecating. Come on, is your wife/significant other no better than your toilet? How do you feel about your mother, sibling, or child?
I believe there is nothing in the world more important than the love that holds family and society together. Only people who know how to love sincerely can truly find fulfillment.
remeember the NBT experiment that failed at some point
Agreed and I do shamelessly borrow some concepts from there because they had some good ideas.
Where they really fell down was the same place all cryptocurrencies fail. They think they can keep printing cash without restrictions.
With VIVA it is possible to mint negative amounts of cash, eliminating coin from the ecosystem entirely and contracting supplies, which buoys prices. In addition to that ,the liquidity pool is designed to keep the bulk of funds off the market and pay a daily dividend instead. Unlike many other coins, we have direct fiat gateways as business enterprises running on the platform. (The company we work with is licensed to issue debit cards and also process credit card payments)
So coins don't have to land on the market nearly as often and when they do, they are mostly in the hands of large players.
Businesses absorb these costs as a cost of doing business, but to get businesses to accept that, you have to make a compelling argument to the business that you are a vital part of their infrastructure. By giving businesses a say in the coin fundamentals and allowing them to leverage the entire infrastructure on demand as a profit center MOST of the time, they are incentivized to continue with us and this drives the cycle that the engine relies upon.
So yes we learned lessons from watching NBT.
ah yeah, just NBT was worth mentioning since they were "on it" and failed pretty much.
project looks really good!
Yeah thanks!
By asking the question you helped me put something to words I was having trouble figuring out how to explain.
I've read VIVA's whitenovel (since I edited it) and it is amazing how it all works together. VIVA is truly revolutionary. It already has a few important business lined up to push the flow of coin.
Thank you for that by the way! You did a great job on it. Just one more pass and I think it'll be ready for primetime.
My wife edits like no one on earth. Took me 12 days of continuous writing to get the whitenovel to where I felt it could be consumed by a human in a single dedicated sitting. She had it fully edited and returned to me in about 8 hrs.
Congratulations on having one of the best support systems in the world. Thanks goes to your wife as well as you.
This is exciting! I like how you are presenting the problem and possible solution so far and I'll be following this project! I am off to read part 2!
Thanks! I really hope you enjoy it!
Very interesting. I will need time to think about this concept. Will you be discussing it on any podcasts or crypto shows? I find listening to a verbal discussion on such things really helps me to clarify the issues in my mind. I've read the first 2 parts and I look forward to the next one - I suspect I will need to read part 2 a few times to really get it.
Thanks and yes there is a lot more coming. Engines are complex machines. More so if they are engineered to be extremely efficient or have something innovative going on under the hood.
Thanks for resteeming by the way!
You're welcome. I am very intrigued and excited about the concept thus far:) Something will need to be done because once AI starts to take over most of us in the STEM fields will likely be facing hard times in the same way as many blue collar workers have done.
Great work William, but just to note, humans are not the only consumers nor the only money makers, so UBI doesn't actually mean everyone. Only the humans.
Well very true, but that's why we use labor proxies and properly account for them in the system.
Anyone in our system can hire a labor proxy for nearly any task whether that proxy is made of flesh and blood or silicon, metal and oil it doesn't matter. At the end of the day every one who participates sees living wage for their participation and the hiring of a proxy increases your income but only to a point.
There is nothing wrong with being rich or having rich people. But when people are starving for want of money to buy a meal whilst 1% control 99% of the resources. That is a problem.
So we just change how money works and that way everyone gets a fair shot at a good life doing what they love.
Upvoted, resteemed, following @vivacoin, and bookmarked the website. I am now going to read the second part of your post, and then click the 'learn more' button on the website.
Thank you, the others and your wife for your dedication.
I'm so new to crypto but now that I've got a baby taste of it, I want to learn more. I'm very excited about what you propose and cannot wait to read the white papers @williambanks. It definitely seems as if you've got your finger on the pulse of something very important.
Thank you @merej99 BTW I read your latest, it was great work! I upvoted it!
Thank you @williambanks
That is much appreciated :)
Do to the dynamic nature and uncertainty factors of the human experiment, the first full scale attempt at UBI may be a dismal failure. But so was the Wright brother's. However, one can't help but imagine, if the U.S.A. does this first, the massive global, uncontrollable influx of desperate foreigners. Great article. Keep up the good work.
If the USA were to do UBI it would probably only do it for natural born citizens. Otherwise the USA would be crushed by the weight of remittances. We already have a problem with retirees moving "some place nice", and removing the economic activity that their social security checks are supposed to provide to american businesses.
I'm not opposed to everyone getting a living wage. But they must be given the opportunity to contribute to the economy and the human condition too.
This is why I'm a huge proponent of food stamps and think that a major expansion of the food stamp program could be the right way forward for America.
Food stamps buy groceries and only groceries, these groceries come from local stores. Those stores buy predominately locally made supplies (meat, fruit, veggies etc) , the farms hire local people and the stores hire local people. Local people like the children of the food stamp recipient, allowing that family to contribute back. That's just some personal thoughts on the matter though and not particularly relevant to viva and it's goals.
Mic drop.
I'm not so sure about that... do we have any precedent? Why would there be riots and wars if every person's needs were met?
It's actually impossible.
Impossible for social security checks to bounce or for average human lifespans to increase another 10 years?
I can't speak for the rest of the world, but I know the USA is well known for accomplishing the impossible.
We have people living to 120 right now, and death itself is looking like it might just be another disease we need to cure.
As for precedent, yes we have precedent. You're assuming that supplies would move and everyone's needs would be met if we just had more money.
The reality is that wealth would consolidate in the upper echelons and the government would be left to care for the people. Capitalism of the flavor we have in the USA is a system that privatizes the gains and socializes the losses.
The problem is that government must intervene if the needs of the physical majority cannot be met and they cannot be met in an abundance society just by virtue of abundance. All abundance means is you've gone from a supply problem to a distribution problem. Money doesn't solve supply problems, it solves distribution problems.
So government intervenes and starts another "new deal" system which forces a redistribution, or the government and their owners are set upon by the worlds most heavily armed, aggressive and trigger happy population.
Keep in mind we have a second amendment, not to protect our houses from our crackhead neighbor, but to protect our freedoms from our crackhead government.
Exactly, people like dollarvigilantes or many others are not bad people but what they promote are systems where if you have money, you will find suggestions abouth the best way to invest or save your money.
The problem is 90% of people around the world do not have money or do not know how to get it without a job. After a clear situation where the West is under heavy anti-industrialization and jobs are destroyed and not created, what people need is systems or method to get an income, not ways on how to invest something you already got. What is necessary, it is to get ideas or lessons about how to make a fishing rod and not how to duplicate the fish.
Even more, if you look the system what is really teaching everywhere (school, family, church, TV or work) is how to spend the money not how to make it. Advertisement , 24 hours a day, is bombarding the potential clients on how to depart from their hard gained money.
Now, that the system is not allowing people to have a job, they pushed for a while the debt system. Buy this making this or that mortgage but now, this can not go on forever. Majority of people is loosing a job and remaining out of the job market for too long... It is a house of cards!
Yes the current situation is tenuous at best and probably completely unsustainable.
Debt does serve a valid purpose and is a necessary evil, but people abuse it. You should whip out your credit card to repair your car, not put gas in it.
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Amazing post !!!
Keep working, stop paying.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/624?msg=welcome_stranger
How would infrastructure be paid for? Things like roads, parks, even water, sewer and power?
You have to pay someone if you want those services, if not government then a private provider of some sort. Point is it all needs to be paid for. Even if you choose to live like the Amish you have to pay property tax or your property will be taken from you by force, by men with guns and the power to lock you away until you pay.
It's a nice dream, but in reality you can't just go to a restaurant, dine on the finest meals then skip the check and expect the other patrons to cover for you.
Lol, when you figure out why the concept triggers you, you will begin to understand how deep the rabbit hole goes,....
What part of keep working, stop paying is confusing you?
The road builders will build roads, probably all those unemployed thugs currently screwing up the world, because everybody else continues in their jobs, as well.
The only difference is now you don't have to hustle others to survive, and those that screw their neighbors the best won't be running things.
You can order what ever your heart desires from the web for no more than the promise that you will work productively from the age of 20 to 50.
If you are a bum, expect trouble/hassles from your working neighbors,....
I can only lead you to the door, you only have to be ready to leave behind what brought you to it.
What I like about projects like this is that economics is long on theory and rhetoric and short on experiment. Can you say more about how you're going to test this concept?
BTW, UBI is one topic I mention for political experimentation in my latest column. http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=columns&vol=randall_hayes&article=011
Very soon, within a few weeks we will begin announcing and distributing official information. Programming is already going on behind the scenes.
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