Some problems with this idea though -- even with a lot of intense agricultural improvements (sky gardening, hydroponics, automation, etc etc) it's pretty hard f

Some problems with this idea though -- even with a lot of intense agricultural improvements (sky gardening, hydroponics, automation, etc etc) it's pretty hard for a family of 4 to grow all their own food. And it's nigh-impossible for the carrying capacity of the earth to support everyone subsistence farming. As far as I can tell, the main problem is not even our socioeconomic structures (those currently suck for distributing the efficiency gains of innovation, it's true) but the extent that we feel stuck in them. That is there's a dual problem where it is very difficult to change policies and because it's very difficult we begin to think that it is impossible to shape the structures we are living in and try new things. (There are also immense political incentives to stay with the status quo in the current system -- see the DEA refusing to reschedule marijuana today) - so we don't have a lot of experimentation. I don't know how UBI will work long-term or how it can be configured the best. I don't know how any policy proposal will work really, societies are dynamic and complex enough that hypotheses are difficult to come up and difficult to test -- but experimentation is important! So I'm mostly excited to see some people somewhere beginning to experiment and at least start floating the idea that laws/policy is mutable and shapable depending on the outcomes we want.