The Scott Santens UBI Enterprise

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.