In a highly networked world, Metcalfe's Law [0] trends most services towards winner-take-all. Living off the 0.01% may be our least-worst alternative to neo-feu

In a highly networked world, Metcalfe's Law [0] trends most services towards winner-take-all. Living off the 0.01% may be our least-worst alternative to neo-feudalism. One under-discussed aspect of UBI is that it might render minimum wage unnecessary; people could end up working for luxuries rather than subsistence. And of course, there are other non-monetary incentives to work (intrinsic rewards, passion projects, prestige/reputation). Still, the issue you raise is significant. The thing that bugs me about UBI as proposed, is that there isn't a clear Schelling focus, or organic emergent self-balancing process, for deciding how much it should be. I'm a fan of Yang, but the "$1000/mo" target is ultimately arbitrary, because it's a nice round number, and large enough to have a significant impact in people's lives. But why not $750 or $1250? Why shouldn't it index to regional cost of living and/or GDP? What metric do we use to decide when/if it should update? I don't think that's a reason not to do it, and I suspect any amount of UBI will result in better outcomes than spending the same money on bloated federal bureaucracies; but it feels very zero-sum / tug-of-war to just pick a nice-sounding number, and then have to fight over raising or lowering it every election cycle. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law