I think that a lot of people hear Basic Income, and if they have some form of compassion for their fellow man and an awareness of computers currently allow and where they are headed, they understand that pretty soon we'll have to figure out a way of living in which a large portion of the population, or at least a large enough amount to comprise a real threat to social stability, will be unemployable. Completely. There will be no job that actually contributes to moving our society forward that either a machine or another person with greater abilities will not be better suited for. There will literally be no place in the economy for them to contribute.
So what do we do with these people? Well we say that they get a Basic Income, enough money to live, and not just survive, but live. We're not going to be able to consign a hundred million people to lives of depredation, so Basic Income is going to have to cover the basics and some of the stuff that makes life good.
In a lot of these discussions there are examples of the money currently spent on the welfare bureaucracy and how all that money can be rolled into BI, and I think that a lot of people stop listening there, convincing themselves that we'll be able to create a BI, provide for people who can no longer work, and nothing in their lives will have to change. And my gut tells me that this is dead wrong.
So what can you do to contribute to making BI happen? Well you can realize that taking care of those people is not going to be free. You can start making yourself comfortable with the idea that taxes will have to go up. Definitely on the ultra rich and the very rich, but also on us programmers, sitting here on HN and complaining about making 180k a year because San Francisco. BI is going to mean that the people we put out of work get taken care of, but its also going to mean that you'll be driving a camry and not a tesla. Because we are the top 5%, and even if the 1% and the 0.1% are definitely going to have to be taxed way way more, we are going to have to do our part for the 95% below us. You've got to square yourself with the possibility that having a job will be something that very few people get, and that you will not be rewarded with incredible riches for doing so. BI will probably bring a bunch of us a lot closer together, and hey if we're lucky it might even be awesome Star Trek style.
But to get there we're going to have to sacrifice to take care of our fellow man, and it won't all just magically take care of itself. If you start preparing for this now, hopefully you won't be like so many of the baby boomers I see, my parents and their friends included, who pay lip service to taking care of their fellow man, but whose actions in the voting booth betray these principles, as they just can't bring themselves to make even a small sacrifice in their current living condition. That's what I try to work on every day, making sure that I am not so addicted to my lifestyle and material goods that when BI and a 90% marginal top tax rate are on the ballot, I don't blink and find myself voting for the man who promises "tax cuts and forget about the other guy".
That, I think, is the biggest thing you can do to make BI happen.