(Pardon the incredulous-sounding intro but...)
Actually you can pay for it. Exactly because any regular ordinary person can pay for it. Exactly because abundance is inherently free. (For the rest of the comment I'll redefine the label "you" to be one single ordinary person who wants to make a basic income happen IRL.) [0]
Abundance is free because it defeats the fundamental condition required for a scarcity-allocating market. That fundamental condition is: there is not enough for everybody. For example, try selling stray kittens in a neighborhood overrun with stray cats. No scarcity, no market price. In contrast, basic income requires abundance otherwise you have no business trying to universally share something you don't have enough of. Everybody can't have formula one race cars and red bottom heels. So just to be explicit:
With a universal basic income, you should only seek to share only those things you have in abundance. And since abundance is free, you are merely
**seeking to share free shit**.
**Abundance cycles**
A) Armed with the above perspective, you launch a form of self-sustaining loop called an abundance cycle. You take out a home equity loan for $25K. You use $15K of that $25K to build [1], or buy [2], a THOW ("tiny house on wheels").
B) You give the tiny house to a handy builder-type who redirects the savings in rent towards spending more time building, you guessed it, more tiny houses. You use the remaining $10K to cover materials for the initial THOWs that the builder builds from scratch.
**Ride free**
C) The next THOW is gifted to a mechanic. The mechanic brings transportation into the abundance cycle. D) Y'all build, then sell a third THOW to buy requisite parts/materials for the mechanic's transportation phase. E) Mechanic personage, freed from financial shackles of keeping a roof overhead, begins spitting out reliable autos restored from $3K jalopies and hoopties found on craigslist [3]. They alternatively build electric bikes [4] and velomobiles [5] if requested over a car.
**Gotta eat**
F) Your circle of three, all saving on rent and transportation, is now able to repeat the process to bring a grower into the loop. A house and car is gifted to a combination aquaponics [6] grower, diy soylent [7] mixer, mealsquare [8] baker and cricket powder [9] integrator.
**Zap that**
G) Next, the self-sustaining circle does its amoeba thing to encompass a solar installer. The installer works with the builder to produce, or retrofit, THOWs topped with solar panels [10]. The circle goes off grid if/when desired. Now you've got food, shelter, transportation, and energy all covered.
**Highly contagious**
H) You assemble the circle, affectionately calling itself the "amoeba initiative". It meets and decides to split into two organisms. I) The first organism focuses on gifting houses, transports, foods and electricities to as many people as possible as fast as possible. "Build two, sell one, gift one, repeat" is it's poorly-chosen motto. Gifts are first made to contagion vectors, namely giftees most able to produce more gifts.
**Umm, water?**
J) The second organism does the research [11] and entrepreneur thing to find the best way to cover the last and most difficult and most critical basic need, water. Strategically selected expertises seek to bring to the masses a Slingshot-like [12] water purifier. Delivering clean water from polluted urban water sources-- think Flint, MI --means full grid independence. Kowtow to ~~immorten joe~~ the water MUDs only when you want unnaturally relocated grass species growing unnaturally green.
**No fossils**
K) You assemble the AI ("amoeba initiative") again. You task them with extending arms to cover energy storage with air batteries the size of shipping containers, ala LightSail [13], which solves the weight and toxicity problems with time-shifting power from the solar panels. This in turn is crucial to weaning the last tenacious supplicants of the fossil fuel teat. You also task the assembly to polish cel-tower-obsoleting [14] laptops and mesh-connecting [15] smartphones, in order to deliver i) internet, ii) more importantly mobile data, and iii) most importantly carrier independence.
**Better markets**
L) While the AI is still assembled, you reluctantly but necessarily task them with a PRA ("public relations arm"). The PR arm demonstrates and clarifies, in preemption of forseeable change resistors, how freer and larger and healthier private markets result from all the free and scary sharing of abundance. A market economy will always precipitate from the phenomena that is the human appetite. By design the human appetite, even when fed all essential nutrients, is infinite and will always find more to want beyond need. "Built to crave perfection", "continuous improvement necessitates an infinite appetite", "trust good instincts" are among catch-phrases tossed onto the annoyingly named ideate wall that triggers your early escape from PRA's first session. Exhausted, the assembly decides to table whether to engulf the tailors' guild; apparently folk suffering about naked isn't enough of thing.
**Zero net cost** (nee Shit's free yo!)
M) One day, the AI throws a recognition ceremony. A sizeable surplus resulted from delivering requests for customization of the "basic" AI houses, transports, and recipes. From the surplus, the AI assembly symbolically pays back your original $25K loan. They hand you a wordy plaque that truthfully states "You did it for free" as the last line.
**tl;dr**
Because of something called abundance cycles, even you can cover the world's basic needs, eliminate missed human potential and consequently bend hyper-exponentially the curve of human progress. The 13 "unlucky" steps are just an "off the top of the dome" illustration. A serious treatment can do much better exactly because a basic income focused on sharing abundance is free to do, exactly because abundance is intrinsically free.
tl;dr($tl;dr) Because abundance cycles
*p.s.*
Seriously... imagine bending the curve of human progress for $25K. Recoupable. That is a fraction of the cost of 1 basic income trial or study. It's not my place to tell any advocates who do
_actual better more_ work than myself to "Stop studying, Start doing", so maybe you can find a lesser hypocrite than myself to tell YC Research. ;-)
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[00] precedent https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/comments/3m8x3d/hey_guy...
[01] http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/pages/plans
[02] http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/products/amish-barn-raiser
[03] http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2016/01/28/the-man-who-gets-h...
[04] http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/08/31/electric-bike-revi...
[05] http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2012/10/electric-velomobiles....
[06] http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/10/20/aquaponics/
[07] https://diy.soylent.com/
[08] http://www.mealsquares.com/faq.html
[09] http://static1.squarespace.com/static/52524dbbe4b0b242f8ce4c...
[10] http://defyingnormal.com/blog/2014/08/26/tour-solar-setup-va...
[11] http://simonthorpesideas.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/science-and...
[12] http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-tech/re...
[13] http://www.lightsail.com/
[14] https://myriadrf.org/projects/novena-rf/
[15] http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516571/build-your-own-i...
