The Scott Santens UBI Enterprise

This episode is a reading of my article, "ChatGPT Has Already Decreased My Income Security, and Likely Yours Too", and it is read by an AI I trained on my own voice using Play.HT. It just seemed particularly fitting to do it this way. Link to read and share the article: https://www.scottsantens.com/chatgpt-has-already-decreased-my-income-security/ For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens Thank you to all my Podcast Executive Producer supporters: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Matthew Cheney, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, Larry Cohen, Frederick Weber, CanadayVibes , Kerry Bosworth, Laurel gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Michael Tinker, Judith Bliss, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, Joanna Zarach, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, Myles McLane, Max Henrion, Elizabeth Corker, Gray Scott, Gerald Huff, Albert Daniel Brockman, Michael Honey, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Chris Rauchle, Arjun, Laura Ashby, and all my other monthly supporters on Patreon too.

On June 24 I took part in a panel about the macroeconomics of basic income at the 2022 BIG Conference in Portland, Oregon. Here is an audio recording of the talk I gave that day where I attempted to zoom out and look at the big picture of money, economics, and humanity. For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens Thank you to all my Podcast Executive Producer supporters: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Katie Moussouris, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, David Ruark, Larry Cohen, Matthew Cheney, Frederick Weber, Patrick Brown, CanadayVibes, Kerry Bosworth, Laurel Gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Michael Tinker, Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, Joanna Zarach, Justin Walsh, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Bridget I Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, and Laura Ashby.

On July 26 I took part in a conversation on Twitter Spaces where we talked about UBI for over two hours. A segment of about 21 minutes in length was then edited from the discussion and aired on WPKN radio. Here is that episode as heard on the radio. For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens Thank you to all my Podcast Executive Producer supporters: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Floyd Marinescu, Katie  Moussouris, Zack Sargent, Jeff , David Ruark, Larry Cohen, Matthew Cheney, Frederick Weber, Patrick Brown, CanadayVibes , Kerry Bosworth,  Laurel gillespie, Dylan J Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Michael Tinker,  Robert Collins, Daryl Smith, Joanna Zarach, Justin Walsh, ace bailey,  Daragh Ward, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, John Steinberger, Bridget I  Flynn, Peter T Knight, David Ihnen, and Laura Ashby.

From 2019 to 2021, I took part in a convening on automation, opportunity, and belonging to visualize the future and how to get to a better future among the infinitely possible versions of it. Together we crafted over many iterations a vision document of the kind of society we could be in 2040, and the foundations we would need to build together as a society to achieve it and the updated social contract it will require. At the end of our convening, we all signed on to the vision document we had together created. What I am about to read is the text of that document. You can also read it yourself at socialcontract.fundforhumanity.org. My thanks to all of my fellow participants whose names and bios you can find on the website along with the text of our document. Link to the vision document: https://socialcontract.fundforhumanity.org/vision-and-foundation-for-a-better-society/ For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens You can also sign up for my News Flash via scottsantens.news to get an alert by email each time I publish a new podcast episode.

This episode is a reading of my long essay (and now also a book titled Let There Be Money) which is an in-depth exploration of Modern Monetary Theory and why MMT advocates should embrace UBI. Listening will provide a wide macroeconomic view at what money is, what actually causes inflation, what taxes actually do, and why we need to think about all of this differently in order to achieve what we can actually physically achieve. The limits of what we can actually do are determined by our actual physical capacity to do it, not by some construct we call money. Link to article: https://vocal.media/theSwamp/why-we-need-modern-monetary-theory-mmt-and-why-it-needs-universal-basic-income-ubi For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens You can also sign up for my News Flash via scottsantens.news to get an alert by email each time I publish a new podcast episode.

On August 3, 2021, I hopped onto Twitter Spaces to talk in-depth about the concept of universal basic income (UBI). Here is the recording of that discussion I had with the hosts of the Space: Jenny Q. Ta, Aaron Bowley, and Dan Whitfield. Because they are part of the #DogeArmy, this discussion also included my thoughts on cryptocurrencies and also the Fed potentially implementing digital dollars. My thanks to them for recording the discussion and sending it to me so I can post it here for anyone to enjoy who missed it. For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens You can also sign up for my News Flash via scottsantens.news to get an alert by email each time I publish a new podcast episode.

This one is a straight up, matter of fact, reality-driven argument for UBI. There will always be failure, and so we should plan for that failure, so that when people fail, it isn't life-threatening. It's a resilience argument for fault-tolerant design of our social and economic system. UBI introduces redundancy, graceful failure, and proportional control. This is the engineering argument for UBI: We are all living, breathing, human beings, and we all need money to obtain the food and housing and everything else we need to stay alive. The best way to make sure we all stay alive then, is to make sure we always have a basic amount of money, and the best way to make sure we always have a basic amount of money is to provide it to everyone at all times, so it's always there, no matter what. Any argument to the contrary is not sound from an engineering perspective. Read the article: https://scottsantens.com/engineering-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi-fault-tolerance-graceful-failure-redundancy For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens You can also sign up for my News Flash via scottsantens.news to get an alert by email each time I publish a new podcast episode.

I've mentioned this argument in a few podcasts over the years, but I finally got around to writing it up as a new part of my UBI FAQ. This argument is another response to the common claim that people provided UBI will just watch TV and play video games. Instead of the usual response using available behavioral evidence, this instead asks, "What's  wrong with that?" How are we to know that someone watching a ton of movies isn't going to be the next Quentin Tarantino? How are we to know that someone spending all their time playing video games isn't going to be the next eSports star? We can't know these things. It's impossible. UBI recognizes that, and better enables people to pursue their passions, which may end up being considered valuable by everyone after all, in retrospect. Read the article: https://scottsantens.com/the-quentin-tarantino-argument-for-universal-basic-income-ubi-people-watch-movies-and-play-video-games For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens You can also sign up for my News Flash via scottsantens.news to get an alert by email each time I publish a new podcast episode.

Steve Forbes recently came out against UBI in a 3-minute video that was filled to the brim with the standard objections to UBI, including the notion that everyone would stop working (which would hurt the  economy and their dignity), which of course was really rich coming from someone really rich, who could have never worked a day in his life, but for some reason still did with his inheritance of the family business. In response I wrote a long thread on Twitter, which I then used as a script for a video response, which I spent a week editing together into a 10-minute video, complete with charts, quotes, references, and a bit of fun for good measure. I suggest watching the video itself, but if you'd just like to listen to the audio instead, here it is. Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3itveUHbQ8 For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens You can also sign up for my News Flash via scottsantens.news to get an alert by email each time I publish a new podcast episode.

I originally published this article in 2015, and to this day it remains an article I frequently link to in order to help people understand how expensive poverty is, and how much we would save by directly abolishing it with unconditional basic income. Whenever someone makes the claim that UBI is simply too expensive, use what I talk about here and ask in return, "What is the cost of not implementing UBI?" Understand that poverty isn't free, and you will understand the return on investment in abolishing poverty, just like the ROI we experience every day in a world now free of smallpox. Read the article: https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073 For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens You can also sign up for my News Flash via scottsantens.news to get an alert by email each time I publish a new podcast episode.

The horror show that is our conditional welfare system remains unknown to most everyone. In 1993, Theresa Funiciello wrote a Pulitzer-nominated book to try to help change that by laying bare the details she learned as a welfare mother herself, and as someone who worked at an organization devoted to helping people in the welfare system. Her book is considered to be one of the most important books on welfare and poverty in America to ever be published, and it concludes with a call for unconditional basic income as the only solution to fix what's broken. In this episode I read the final part of Tyranny of Kindness which focuses on basic income. Theresa gets into the history of the idea and how an income guarantee almost happened under Nixon, and why it was Nixon, and not LBJ who tried to get a guaranteed income through Congress. Why we don't have basic income will make more sense once you listen to this and understand who stands to lose out, and why that would change the political landscape. My thanks also to Jenner Zero of Mind Wave Podcast for the new theme music, which I added for the first time in this episode. Listen to Part 1: https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/Tyranny-of-Kindness-Chapter-1-e5390l Listen to Part 2: https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/Tyranny-of-Kindness-Part-2-e9mo54 Watch the Yang Gang Book Club discussion of Tyranny of Kindness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN9kLNaUtbM Buy the book Tyranny of Kindness by Theresa Funiciello: https://amzn.to/2Zfo75s For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens You can also sign up for my News Flash via scottsantens.news to get an alert by email each time I publish a new podcast episode.

This episode is a reading of my article published on November 11, 2016 about the importance of UBI to attaining freedom for all. Freedom for all would be an achievement only spoken about in rhetoric and hypotheticals.  There will never be true freedom from sexual and corporate exploitation and all forms of  slavery until freedom is actually granted unconditionally to all, with unconditional basic income. Until UBI, the decisions we make will remain compulsory and without our full consent instead of freely chosen. Read this article: https://medium.com/basic-income/true-freedom-comes-with-basic-income-7ff1368e170 For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens You can also sign up for my News Flash via scottsantens.news to get an alert by email each time I publish a new podcast episode.

This episode is a reading of my article published on April 8, 2020 that goes into what a terrible idea it is to dump everyone onto the unemployment rolls in response to the coronavirus crisis, how automation means many of those jobs are now permanently gone, and just how many lives are likely to be lost as a result. I consider what Congress is doing as political malpractice. The amount of suffering already happening and that will happen in the weeks, months, and years ahead, is entirely avoidable, but it requires Universal Basic Income. Listen to this episode, and you will understand why. Read this article on Vocal: https://vocal.media/theSwamp/the-future-of-the-united-states-depends-on-the-immediate-adoption-of-ubi For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens You can also sign up for my News Flash via scottsantens.news to get an alert by email each time I publish a new podcast episode.

The horror show that is our conditional welfare system remains unknown to most everyone. In 1993, Theresa Funiciello wrote a Pulitzer-nominated book to try to help change that by laying bare the details she learned as a welfare mother herself, and as someone who worked at an organization devoted to helping people in the welfare system. Her book is considered to be one of the most important books on welfare and poverty in America to ever be published, and it concludes with a call for unconditional basic income as the only solution to fix what's broken. In this episode I read Chapter 5 of Tyranny of Kindness which explains the title. It examines the rise of the non-profit sector which operates under the guise of alleviating poverty that truthfully exists as a means of reducing taxes, increasing profits, and funding paychecks through the industrialization of poverty. The concept of TSAR is introduced which is "Table Scraps As a Right", where the creation of a "discard market" enables people to feel good about feeding what would otherwise be garbage to the homeless. I think this entire chapter is extremely important to hear to gain a big picture understanding of just how many people benefit from the perpetuation of poverty, and how no one ever listens to those actually in poverty, who if given the choice, would choose money to spend for themselves. Listen to Part 1: https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/Tyranny-of-Kindness-Chapter-1-e5390l Listen to Part 3: https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/Tyranny-of-Kindess-Part-3-efu89h Read Tyranny of Kindness by Theresa Funiciello: https://amzn.to/2Zfo75s For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens You can also sign up for my News Flash via scottsantens.news to get an alert by email each time I publish a new podcast episode.

In 2014, I self-published my first article on Medium that to this day I think remains a solid introduction to UBI. Up until this article, I'd been reading a lot about UBI and engaging in a lot of discussion on Reddit about UBI, but this was my first attempt at "giving back" to the discussion with my own thoughts. It did quite well, getting over 100,000 views and because of its success, I was inspired to keep writing new articles, following it up next with my article about UBI and inflation which was even more widely read and shared. In this first article though you can see a lot of Andrew Yang's UBI: $1,000 per month basic income, 10% VAT, financial transaction taxes, carbon taxes, but most historically, it was this article where I first coined that basic income is not left or right, it's forward. It's because of that I think this particular article may just make it into the history books, seeing that it has gone on to become a central message of Andrew Yang's presidential campaign that is strongly resonating with a growing number of people. Read my article on Medium: https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3 For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens

The horror show that is our conditional welfare system remains unknown to most everyone. In 1993, Theresa Funiciello wrote a Pulitzer-nominated book to try to help change that by laying bare the details she learned as a welfare mother herself, and as someone who worked at an organization devoted to helping people in the welfare system, and as someone who even became Special Assistant to the Commissioner of New York State's Department of Social Services. Her book is considered to be one of the most important books on welfare and poverty in America to ever be published, and it concludes with a call for unconditional basic income as the only solution to fix what's broken. This episode I devote the hour to reading the first chapter in the hope listeners will better understand why it's so important to replace welfare as we know it with UBI. Listen to Part 2: https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/Tyranny-of-Kindness-Part-2-e9mo54 Listen to Part 3: https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/Tyranny-of-Kindess-Part-3-efu89h Read Tyranny of Kindness by Theresa Funiciello: https://amzn.to/2Zfo75s For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens You can also sign up for my News Flash via scottsantens.news to get an alert by email each time I publish a new podcast episode.

Originally published in 2015, this article was written as an introduction to systems thinking, and how if we look at the United States as a system, we can reform it in systemic ways to function better, not just for some citizens, but for every citizen. I think fellow Andrew Yang supporters will appreciate how almost everything I proposed as a fix made it into Yang's campaign platform, from universal basic income and universal health care, to ranked-choice voting and measuring our success using things that matter to us instead of GDP. Read the article: https://medium.com/basic-income/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens 

In this podcast I make the case that there's no policy being proposed by any 2020 Presidential candidate that's as progressive as Andrew Yang’s Freedom Dividend. This is for all the progressives who think otherwise. Read the article: https://medium.com/basic-income/there-is-no-policy-proposal-more-progressive-than-andrew-yangs-freedom-dividend-72d3850a6245 For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens  You can also sign up for my News Flash via scottsantens.news to get an alert by email each time I publish a new podcast episode.

On January 19th, 2017, I recorded an interview with Sam Seder as his guest on his Ring of Fire podcast to talk about UBI. Until yesterday, I was under the impression the episode had never been posted, because I was never told about it, never saw it shared anywhere, and could never find it anywhere when I searched for it. Turns out, the interview was behind a paywall this whole time. Sam has now graciously made the full episode available without a paywall, and for those only interested in my 20-minute segment, here it is. Listen to the full Ring of Fire episode 369: https://fans.fm/p/289 Read my post on Reddit about my interview with Sam and what I thought happened: https://www.reddit.com/r/YangForPresidentHQ/comments/cc1kd4/apparently_scott_santens_had_a_discussion_with/etjzs3u/ For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens 

Freedom, liberty, democracy… these words are used so often that we give them little real thought, rarely holding them up to the realities of what we see around us. What do these words really mean? Do they currently exist for us to celebrate as we appear to think they do? And if not, is there anything we can do about it? Let’s take a closer look. Read the article on Medium: https://medium.com/basic-income/its-time-we-take-a-closer-look-at-americas-three-favorite-words-f512f8a1ad6f For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens 

In the Winter of 1795 and 1796, one of the the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, Thomas Paine, wrote an essay that to this day over two centuries later, remains perhaps the greatest justification of all justifications for unconditional basic income. His argument is founded on the principles of justice, where all human beings are owed their natural inheritance, and the injustice of a civilization that makes some people worse off than what nature would otherwise provide is an injustice that must be rectified. In his words, UBI is a right, not a charity, that will give currency to the principles of revolutions. Read the essay: https://fermatslibrary.com/s/agrarian-justice For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: https://patreon.com/scottsantens 

In April 2019, a report titled “Universal Basic Income: A Union Perspective” was paid for and published by Public Services International (PSI), a global trade union representing 20 million workers employed around the world providing public services. This report was authored by Anna Coote and Edanur Yazici of the New Economics Foundation (NEF), a British left-leaning think-tank. They concluded that providing services to all is better than providing income to all. In this episode, I explain how this report, and how it was rolled out, is a prime example of a disinformation campaign designed to manipulate public opinion against the idea of universal basic income, and in doing so, I hope to increase the critical-thinking skills of readers to better spot this kind of shameless propaganda in the future about anything, not just  UBI. Read the essay: https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-doesnt-work-says-new-prime-example-of-fake-news-60ea1983b6c4 For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: patreon.com/scottsantens 

In 1932, Bertrand Russell wrote one of my all-time favorite essays. In Praise of Idleness focuses on humanity's infatuation with work, and how if we divided the work more evenly instead of relegating some to poverty and others to overwork, we could all work four hours a day without anyone being unemployed, and with more leisure for all. And this was about 100 years ago, so how many hours would make the most sense to Bertrand now? If you've never read this essay before, you're in for a treat.   Read the essay: http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: patreon.com/scottsantens 

Back in 2016, I pitched an article to TechCrunch about explaining the progressive case for replacing welfare programs with unconditional basic income. This is the article I wrote which continues to be widely shared by readers as one of their favorites of mine, especially now that Andrew Yang is running for president on a UBI design that offers people the choice of basic income or welfare. TechCrunch link: https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/09/the-progressive-case-for-replacing-the-welfare-state-with-basic-income/ Medium link: https://medium.com/basic-income/the-progressive-case-for-replacing-the-welfare-state-with-basic-income-e8bd02c5875e For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: patreon.com/scottsantens 

Back in 2016, I was asked by Vox.com if I'd like to write an article for them about what it's like having a basic income. What have I learned about UBI through having it? Do I look differently at UBI thanks to my own personal experience? This is the article I wrote.   Read the article: https://medium.com/basic-income/what-if-you-got-1-000-a-month-just-for-being-alive-i-decided-to-find-out-9e8591976c37   For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq   You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: patreon.com/scottsantens 

In this episode I read one of my all-time favorite essays about universal basic income and how our goal as a society should be full unemployment, not full employment. This essay was written by John Bentley back in 2005, and was one of the earlier things I ever read about UBI that I've read over and over again since, and as a result has greatly influenced my own thinking. By sharing it with all of you now, I hope it will influence your own thinking as well.  Read the essay: https://www.philorum.org/speech/20051207JohnBentley.html For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: patreon.com/scottsantens

Back in September of 2016, I did an interview for Forbes about a fully universal unconditional basic income and to this day I think it remains one of my better summaries of UBI for those new to the idea, and even those familiar with the idea. It succinctly covers most of the main points and I think can be a useful way of introducing people to UBI, so I've recorded the interview as a podcast and hopefully more people will find it by listening to it.  Read the full interview in Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kaviguppta/2016/09/22/basic-income-might-be-the-answer-to-societys-productivity-crisis/ For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: patreon.com/scottsantens

On April 6th, 2019 I was part of a panel in Oslo, Norway about the Future of Work alongside fellow panelists Guy Standing, Becca Kirkpatrick, and James Bloodworth. The panel was chaired by Basic Income UK's Barb Jacobsen and was part of UBI Nordic 2019. Panel description: The nature of work continues to change drastically. Experts predict that automation and AI will lead to massive job losses, and the growth of the “gig” economy is creating unstable jobs, with increased demands on flexibility and efficiency. Temporary positions create income  insecurity for workers, and there will be a need to update skills and knowledge continuously. In such a situation, basic income may become a  critical element of future work life. Video of the panel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs-HTLSNIaE More about the event: https://ubi-nordic.org/ For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: patreon.com/scottsantens

This was the opening keynote speech I gave at the Imagine Belfast Festival of Ideas & Politics in Northern Ireland on March 26, 2019. From the perspective of beings not from this world, what is money? Why do some humans have so much of it while most have so little? And what message would it convey if human civilization trusted every human being with a minimum amount of access to resources by way of UBI? Full test of the speech: https://medium.com/basic-income/think-like-a-martian-about-money-and-universal-basic-income-ubi-d543922f06d3 More about the event: https://imaginebelfast.com/events/basic-income-in-northern-ireland-what-cant-it-do/ For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: patreon.com/scottsantens

By far, one of the the most common concerns, if not the most common concern, in regards to the idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI) is that all prices will inevitably go up as a result, immediately reducing the value of each dollar, and essentially creating a new zero. Let’s call it the “New Zero Argument” against UBI. This episode dives deep into that argument and reveals just how baseless such an argument actually is, given all the variables in the inflation equation, and all the evidence we have to plug into it. Read the article: https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7 For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: patreon.com/scottsantens

On March 1st, 2019 I did an AMA (Ask Me Anything) in the /r/YangForPresidentHQ subreddit the day after Andrew Yang did his AMA in the /r/politics subreddit. For about three to four hours I answered questions from people new to the idea of UBI as well as those who've known about it for years. In this episode I read those questions and my answers to them. Link to my AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/YangForPresidentHQ/comments/aw8ld7/hi_im_scott_santens_basic_income_advocate_and_mod/ Link to Andrew Yang's AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/avuqn8/i_am_andrew_yang_us_2020_democratic_presidential/ For more info about UBI, please refer to my FAQ: scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: patreon.com/scottsantens

In mid-February I was contacted by the legislative aide for Delegate Gabriel Acevero of Maryland who has introduced a bill to create a social wealth fund intended to eventually pay out a cash dividend to every resident of Maryland. As a prominent advocate for UBI, I was asked to provide a couple pages of written testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee about why such a bill is so important. The following is my prepared testimony as submitted for the hearing on March 1, 2019. The full text is available on my blog: scottsantens.com/my-unconditional-basic-income-ubi-testimony-for-maryland For more info about UBI, please refer to my FAQ: scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq  You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: patreon.com/scottsantens

A Bipartisan Free Market Solution to Climate Change Through Atmospheric Justice In the past year since I originally wrote this article, over 3,300 economists have now signed onto a statement in support of carbon dividends, recommending that the most cost-effective way to reduce carbon emissions at the scale and speed necessary to act sufficiently on climate change is to implement an annually rising carbon tax where the revenue is returned directly to U.S. citizens through equal lump-sum rebates. This policy recommendation is thus officially now the largest public declaration in the history of economics. The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividends Act also now exists in both the U.S. House and Senate, and Canada has in 2019 become the first country in the world to implement carbon dividends nationwide.   Text: https://medium.com/basic-income/this-idea-can-literally-change-our-world-107cbc94057a   For more info about UBI, please refer to my FAQ: scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq   You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: patreon.com/scottsantens 

A common first reaction to hearing about a fully unconditional and universal basic income is that it's socialism or that it's free money and nothing is free. Both reflexes are wrong, and this episode gets into why. Text: https://medium.com/basic-income/if-you-think-basic-income-is-free-money-or-socialism-think-again-4a17e8d15b1 For more info about UBI, please refer to my FAQ: scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: patreon.com/scottsantens

After two years of experimentation within a two-year experimental design, Finland released on February 8, 2019, preliminary results of their basic income experiment. For anyone who reads the full report, it can be considered nothing short of both promising and fascinating, but what it can’t be called is complete, because the results are still preliminary and based on only the first half of the experiment. With that said, as is also true of the experiments in the U.S. and Canada in the 1970s, there are certainly some conclusions that can and can’t be drawn within the proper context of the experiment’s design. But to reach these conclusions, we’ll first need to go over some of the nitty-gritty details of how the experiment was designed, and what it didn’t even try to measure... Text: https://medium.com/basic-income/what-is-there-to-learn-from-finlands-basic-income-experiment-did-it-succeed-or-fail-54b8e5051f60 For more info about UBI, please refer to my FAQ: scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support my work through Anchor or Patreon: patreon.com/scottsantens

Is the technological automation of human labor the greatest justification for unconditional basic income? In this episode, I dive deep into how our problems are very much in the present by going beyond technology and economics, and into human biology itself. I cover what we as humans have learned from animals in the lab and in the wild, and then apply it to the UBI discussion. Text: https://medium.com/basic-income/human-park-a-mammals-guide-to-stress-free-living-17f6cab007b3 For more info about UBI, please refer to my FAQ: scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support my work through Anchor or Patreon: patreon.com/scottsantens

Basic income is now a dominant discussion in India's 2019 general election. Here I explain the difference between what's being discussed and how actual UBI works. I also get into some of the details that are commonly misunderstood.  Text: http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-is-now-a-dominant-discussion-in-india-2019-ubi For more info about UBI, please refer to my FAQ: scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support my work through Anchor or Patreon: patreon.com/scottsantens

This is an audio version of my article which you can read on Medium:   medium.com/basic-income/trickle-down-economics-must-die-long-live-grow-up-economics-5b8334a0db76   For more info about UBI, please refer to my FAQ:   scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq   You can support my work through Anchor or Patreon:   patreon.com/scottsantens

Here's my January 12th, 2019 appearance on talkRADIO's The Saturday Show with Alexis Conran to talk with him about basic income and why it should replace Universal Credit in the UK.

This is an audio version of my article which you can read on Medium:   https://medium.com/basic-income/doug-ford-cancelled-ontarios-basic-income-pilot-experiment-because-it-was-working-75dd504d5fe6   For more info about UBI, please refer to my FAQ:   scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq   You can support my work through Anchor or Patreon:   patreon.com/scottsantens

This is an audio version of my article which you can read on Medium:   https://medium.com/basic-income/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines-7c6442e37a49   For more info about UBI, please refer to my FAQ:   scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq   You can support my work on Patreon:   patreon.com/scottsantens  

Robots are hiding in plain sight. It’s time we stop ignoring them. This is an audio version of my article which you can read on Medium: https://medium.com/basic-income/the-real-story-of-automation-beginning-with-one-simple-chart-8b95f9bad71b For more info about UBI, please refer to my FAQ: scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support my work on Patreon: patreon.com/scottsantens

Prospect Magazine approached me to write an article for them about what people get most wrong about unconditional basic income. It was published on December 3, 2018. This is my narration of the pre-edited version of that article which I've posted to my blog: http://www.scottsantens.com/what-people-get-most-wrong-about-unconditional-basic-income For more info about UBI, please refer to my FAQ: www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support my work on Patreon: www.patreon.com/scottsantens

How to convert an economy based on fear to one based on joy. We discovered something monstrous that works, and we use it to drive our economy. We've done it for so long, we don't even question it, and we never even tested a far more powerful alternative - UBI. This is an audio version of my article which you can read on Medium: https://medium.com/basic-income/the-monsters-inc-argument-for-unconditional-basic-income-3b22b63eed3e For more info about UBI, please refer to my FAQ: www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq Support my work on Patreon: www.patreon.com/scottsantens

This is the recorded audio of a keynote speech I wrote for my appearance on stage in Ireland at DemCon 2018. It's an argument for unconditional basic income as being a missing fundamental foundation for democracy, and how we need both working together if we're going to survive as a civilization. The text of this speech is available here: https://medium.com/basic-income/what-we-need-to-truly-thrive-democracy-and-unconditional-basic-income-ccdbe72cefa5 The slide deck I created for this presentation is available here: https://www.slideshare.net/ScottSantens/unconditional-basic-income-and-democracy For more info about UBI, please refer to my FAQ: www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq Support my work on Patreon: www.patreon.com/scottsantens

This is a keynote speech I wrote for my appearance on stage in Sweden at Oredev 2017 that I've since recorded in audiobook form. It's effectively an in-depth introductory summary to technological unemployment and the idea of unconditional basic income. Text available here: https://medium.com/basic-income/its-time-for-technology-to-serve-all-humankind-with-unconditional-basic-income-e46329764d28 Slide deck available here: https://www.slideshare.net/ScottSantens/cutting-the-gordian-knot-of-technological-unemployment For more info about UBI, please refer to my FAQ: www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq Support my work on Patreon: www.patreon.com/scottsantens

How IP-Funded Basic Income Could Enrich the Public Domain. It's time we reduce the perceived need for intellectual property by guaranteeing everyone an unconditional basic income, and funding it as an IP dividend using royalty fees from patents and copyrights. This is an audio version of my essay which you can read on Medium: https://medium.com/basic-income/the-zombification-of-intellectual-property-and-the-tool-that-could-finally-reform-it-2ec037309837 For more info about UBI, please refer to my FAQ: http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq Support my work on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens