With all due respect, I would like to explore more of this article and ask some question:
1, How to define UBI? Is it conditional, age related, monetary linked?
2, For clarity purpose, let’s consider CCT a form of UBI. Social security is a form of subsidised, conditional UBI, does it doing its purpose?
3, How to define work? Spending entire day scrolling in Facebook, yet with Income , does it consider a form of work? What about spending entire time on the internet as an app developer, does it count as work? If there is income, is it not work? What about without income yet for altruistic purpose like citizen science, citizen politics, citizen movements?
4, NEET, not in education, employment or training. Another related but distinct term is NINJA, no income, no job, and no assets. According to BLS, anyone that unemployed for more than 12 months are considered out of labour market, as well as the intent of not seeking jobs is out of labour market. Is it a mis-identification that are not well defined? Or it is structural unemployment that preclude a lots of labour force from gaining employement? Or the nature of jobs are evolving into a non-permenant, non-structuralised format that defined as informal sector?
5, What are the consequences of the NEET/NINJA? Is the whole term an outdated work? Let’s assume you are an Uber driver, would that be considered as NEET? Let’s assume yes, given the fluid nature you can earn exponentially more than “Normal” jobs, wouldn’t it be a sign of progressive?
6, Entrepreneur. A French word. For some means unemployed. Refer to The Social Network where Sean Parker is talking with his date. Should UBI be used to support Entrepreneur and nurture them, enabling them to take riskier move without the worry of falling back? Would this be a better productivity enhancement?
7, In the meantime, each person has their own taste. In economics, it is called Preferences. Whether these preferences would lead to a better outcome or worse is an unknown and debatable issue. What known is the diversity of preferences instead of a one-size-fit-all solution leads to market economy. If there is a demand for something, there creates a supply for it. Do we sufficiently measure the productivity on the demand instead of the supply of it?
I hope these question leads to more interesting comment on the issue discussed.
Interesting concept. But having Earth as a reference of center doesn’t make any sense in the scale of galactic empire. We are simply not at the physical center of the galaxy nor we are in the most probable way, ie, the shortest distance for delivery. It doesn’t make sense to pin the coordinates to Earth like Corusant that is near the center of galaxy and the shortest distance to major space route. And when coordinates are no longer pinned to a singular point, is also meant the end of that place’s particular importance, ie, all road leads to Rome now all road leads to Byzantium. Roman Empire essentially evolved into Byzantine Empire.
We no longer remember where we came from. The exact birthplace of human if ever exist (human actually evolved, doesn’t appear overnight), we simply forgotten that particular location and moved on. In addition, Earth is not the most advantage location to begin with. Planet has terrain constraining developments, resources that need to be mined, then there is this thing called ocean that basically covered a large portion of surface. Space on the other hand is a void, can be mended or amended, full of asteroid that can provide resources, and energy. Kardashev scale requires energy that are in space, like stars or black holes, not a planet type energy that are simply limited.
And then there is this thing called gravity. Our biological evolution been fighting it the whole time. From our moving motions to our blood circular system, the biological energy spend alone amount to a significant percentage. Then there is the energy spend on mechanical to moving goods around and to fixing things, all these energy are simply used to counter gravity. True, we could also harness gravity, but a no-gravity environment requires much less energy to produce. Moving in space only requires velocity, where as escaping gravity requires a whole lot more energy that our rockets essentially designed to counter it.
Perhaps, like Isaac Asimov, once humanity as a species been dispersed throughout galaxy, the birthplace of human will be forgotten. The overarching goal of Foundation series is to find Earth, whereas all road leads to Trantor should be written into all road leads to Earth. Perhaps, by then an old relic robot from Earth is all that is left for posterity.