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Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Swiss-style Basic Income and IP

To the ill-informed, "Basic Income" is a social security system in which the government regularly gives each citizen a sum of money — with no conditions. No questions asked, no obligations. 

There is a referendum in Switzerland, which if passed would give each adult resident the equivalent of 2750.00 dollars a month. You can read the proponents thoughts here.  In short, the theory is, without the necessity to obtain income necessary to live, people could make more resumed choices about their careers. They could made different choices about how they spend their time. As a result, you might have a more efficient economy. 

Obviously, there are people, including economists, who think this is a terrible idea. The argument against Basic Income is that the whole system will collapse in a morass of lack of motivation to actually work. People will move their expenses down to the level of the Basic Income and then forego employment. Opting instead, it is argued, to just sit around all day. 

I take no position on which one of these outcomes is likely (or the likeliness of this idea gaining traction in the US). Wikipedia has a good run-down on the pros and cons.  However, I do take a position on the economic outcome of people sitting around. I tend to lean on the side of "that's great". 

Why? Because people freed from the restraints of taking ANY job to make ends meet, will naturally gravitate towards their hobbies. When people focus a lot on their hobbies, they tend to turn those hobbies into occupations. We see that with the craft "everything" movement. A zest for baking becomes a bake shop, a thirst for brewing your own beer becomes a craft brewery. A love of reading has become self-published media empires (Ed. a bit close to home....).

Freeing everyone from the constraints of occupation would lead to some people just sitting around. It would also lead to an explosion of new businesses financed by the Basic Income. 

Some of these new businesses would create new works of intellectual property. New artistic, musical, literary works; new software platforms; new devices and new methods could all spring from Basic Income. These works could be licensed world-wide; generating taxable revenue to feed back into the Basic Income system. 

Many Venture Capital organizations have an "Entrepreneur in Chief" position - a person paid to basically think stuff up. We are constantly being told that America needs more "innovation" and "entrepreneurship" and that IP is a step in the wrong direction. Basic Income matched with IP might allow the America to realize the dream of being a "Start-up" Nation where everyone is paid to "think stuff up."


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