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Comment by itmag | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I think increasing productivity is a huge reason to implement some kind of Guaranteed Minimum Income.

This guy puts it better than me: http://www.xamuel.com/ten-reasons-for-guaranteed-minimum-inc...

Also, I think it's a bit cruel to expect former factory workers to just "skill up" and become programming ninjas or whatever. Not everyone is born with the same cognitive assets.

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That idea sounds pretty far-fetched. 3D-printing is another step closer to the ideal of self-sufficiency; similar improvements in agriculture and energy production all put us on the path toward resuming a kind of modern homesteading, allowing us to eliminate the role of institutional middlemen in meeting our basic needs.

Apart from the dubious economics of a Guaranteed Minimum Income, such a program would maintain the role of institutional intermediaries in our lives just as self-sufficiency again becomes possible.

> put us on the path toward resuming a kind of modern homesteading

Future homesteads will lose bids for natural resources because big actors will be able to exploit these resources more efficiently due to economies of scale. I'm for basic income.

Are there reasons why the idea of a Guaranteed Minimum Income could not be implemented using a peer-to-peer system? Would middlemen be strictly necessary?

How do you mean?

I don't really know (yet?), but it seems to me that what you need is a network of nodes, such that each node automatically downloads a common amount of money from a pool once a month. That pool would be filled by the system subtracting a percentage from the gross income of each node. Is it really necessary that those calculations are done by a central unit - like the IRS -, or could they be done in a distributed manner, SETI@home-style?

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