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Sadly, I liked the original idea behind this, and thought it was one of the few actually-interesting applications of crypto currency. If you can (somehow) solve

Sadly, I liked the original idea behind this, and thought it was one of the few actually-interesting applications of crypto currency. If you can (somehow) solve the unique identity problem, you can design a Universal Basic Income using a crypto-currency as backing. The Unique ID problem isn't solved by the blockchain, though, so it ends up being a total mess.

jabradoodle 3y ago
What does this mean? You already have a unique identity as far as the government are concerned, and who would pay UBI if not the government.
- ethbr0 3y ago
  As with all crypto ideas, I believe this starts with "If we wanted to take government out of the picture..."
  - twelve40 3y ago
    i think the question is more along the lines of how is this feasible
  - yunohn 3y ago
    And replacing said government with a team of zero-moral tech bros like Sam Altman. Not that I think any politicians/governments are doing a good job, but I’d rather not ”change” the system and end up in similar shit.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  To the best of my knowledge, the IRS has never scanned my eyeball, and yet I'm still able to send and receive money with them. I'm not getting the UBI angle at all. What part of UBI requires new technology?
  - notahacker 3y ago
    The problem it's solving or attempting to solve is "how do I create demand for a token that isn't redeemable for anything (generated by a private organization which intends to profit from exchanging tokens it generates for money)", and the only people that want those are cryptobros. Throw in the eyeball trackers as a "Proof of Personhood" twist on the "restricted supply" story, to go with the usual "future world currency, unlimited demand" spiel
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      I think you're exactly right. A lot of its talk presumes that its goals can't be met with, say, a government issued debit card.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > What part of UBI requires new technology? None of it, of course. The things that makes implementing UBI difficult to implement are socioeconomic, not technological, in nature. But I think WorldCoin is cynically hoping that invoking "UBI" will trick people into thinking that WC's efforts will be of benefit to everyone.
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      Nailed it.
  - ericd 3y ago
    I’m guessing it’s a way to reduce fraud attack surface without relying on something easily lost, like a portable private key?
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      Or an EBT card?
- sdenton4 3y ago
  Crypto schemes allow a lot of experimentation with the structure of money that no sane government would ever try for fear of crashing their economy in one way or another. Meanwhile, we /should/ be experimenting a lot more with the structure of economics and society, because the current super-structures have created massive concentrations of power and seemingly-insurmountable collective action problems that threaten the biosphere... Bitcoin was designed to act like gold, but this was a series of design choices. (as someone, maybe foldingideas, put it: the crypto bros looked at the concentration of wealth in society and decided that the problem was that /they/ weren't the ones with all the wealth.) You can just as easily design a crypto scheme to generate tokens and distribute them to everyone with an ID regularly: this is UBI, so long as the tokens have recognized value. The problem is that you need to prevent people from registering a million accounts to get a million UBI credits, deflating the value of tokens held by honest folks. Thus the unique identifier problem.
  - dopidopHN 3y ago
    KYC is a thing and apparently crypto exchanges can implement it when asked nicely. But I think grand parent poster is right on the money, it’s a attempts to take governments roles. After all nation states are not that old of a concept. Basically Napoleonic wars. Some type of distopian corporate nationality might come to fruition to replace them.
    - ethbr0 3y ago
      There's the possibility of utopian corporate nationality too. Being an employee at a lot of corporations is nicer than being a citizen of a lot of counties. But corporate benevolence mostly demands on human capital supply and demand balances.
  - kbenson 3y ago
    But again, as GP noted, isn't that a problem governments have already solved? If you want UBI it's going to be through the government, as that's the entity collecting the funds through taxes that would be distributed, and they already have a unique identifier for people. In the U.S. it's your SSN, which is conveniently also how they track you for income taxes (again, where a large portion of the funds for distribution are gathered) If the government wants to link a retinal scan to a SSN, that might make sense with regard to UBI, but how does it make any sense for some random blockchain? Are we expected to think that even if a government wanted to use a blockchain they would use some third party blockchain and not roll their own? I find that highly unlikely.
- twelve40 3y ago
  Here is one answer: > How Altman plans to pay for Worldcoin’s UBI, however, remains murky. “The hope is that as people want to buy this token, because they believe this is the future, there will be inflows into this economy. New token-buyers is how it gets paid for, effectively,” Altman told Coindesk recently.
  - vxNsr 3y ago
    He literally defined a pyramid/ponzi scheme (depending on how or if value is shared with existing users). That’s very interesting that he feels protected enough to say that out loud.
  - tremon 3y ago
    So it's a pyramid scheme?
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
Governments already exist. To try and upend them by replacing their system of personhood and currency is in effect the tech-bro version of a mutiny. It may seem ridiculous but that's precisely what crypto is. An attempt to replace central banks and governments. Tech companies have grown very powerful, and they see an opportunity to create a world-wide "private government" and they're going for it. This won't be the last attempt. Governments will eventually wake up. Or if not. That's it for them.
- oh_sigh 3y ago
  Governments exist, and the current standard of identity verification is a laminated piece of paper with a picture on it. If you're giving away free money you might want to have a standard slightly higher than that.
  - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
    The laminated "paper" has microchip in it in most places and codes which can be checked against a central database. It's a good enough standard. In fact better than crypto-chaos.
  - fatfingerd 3y ago
    Sure, but maybe that payment power is going to have a lot of side effects that are worse than limiting/filtering gifts through potentially corrupt governments that can also prevent other situations. For example, the resource curse implies there will be great reasons for companies to risk gifts of small amounts of money to lots of people in a country about to vote on whether to protect collective assets from corporate theft.. All the weird action committees of US corruption haven't even had the logistics to directly bribe voters of a low population state to piss in the pot. Should they get iris wallet addresses for everyone correlated to scan locations? Is anything the US would do about this beyond the capabilities of Kenya?
- pookha 3y ago
  LOL. "Sam Altman" is not trying to upend governments. It's the opposite. Him and his ilk are trying to interface with governments in such a way that they can use the legal violence of a government to streamline the integration of their systems (schemes) into the public's life. Sam Altman wants to use the same play book that pharmaceutical and defense industry's use (regulatory crony capitalist capture). This is not "tech bro" mutiny this is -- probably -- the first of many crony capitlist (BlackRock\Ratheon\Etc\Etc) attempts at duplicitous digital currency.

jabradoodle 3y ago

What does this mean? You already have a unique identity as far as the government are concerned, and who would pay UBI if not the government.

ethbr0 3y ago
As with all crypto ideas, I believe this starts with "If we wanted to take government out of the picture..."
- twelve40 3y ago
  i think the question is more along the lines of how is this feasible
- yunohn 3y ago
  And replacing said government with a team of zero-moral tech bros like Sam Altman. Not that I think any politicians/governments are doing a good job, but I’d rather not ”change” the system and end up in similar shit.
kstrauser 3y ago
To the best of my knowledge, the IRS has never scanned my eyeball, and yet I'm still able to send and receive money with them. I'm not getting the UBI angle at all. What part of UBI requires new technology?
- notahacker 3y ago
  The problem it's solving or attempting to solve is "how do I create demand for a token that isn't redeemable for anything (generated by a private organization which intends to profit from exchanging tokens it generates for money)", and the only people that want those are cryptobros. Throw in the eyeball trackers as a "Proof of Personhood" twist on the "restricted supply" story, to go with the usual "future world currency, unlimited demand" spiel
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    I think you're exactly right. A lot of its talk presumes that its goals can't be met with, say, a government issued debit card.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > What part of UBI requires new technology? None of it, of course. The things that makes implementing UBI difficult to implement are socioeconomic, not technological, in nature. But I think WorldCoin is cynically hoping that invoking "UBI" will trick people into thinking that WC's efforts will be of benefit to everyone.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    Nailed it.
- ericd 3y ago
  I’m guessing it’s a way to reduce fraud attack surface without relying on something easily lost, like a portable private key?
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    Or an EBT card?
sdenton4 3y ago
Crypto schemes allow a lot of experimentation with the structure of money that no sane government would ever try for fear of crashing their economy in one way or another. Meanwhile, we /should/ be experimenting a lot more with the structure of economics and society, because the current super-structures have created massive concentrations of power and seemingly-insurmountable collective action problems that threaten the biosphere... Bitcoin was designed to act like gold, but this was a series of design choices. (as someone, maybe foldingideas, put it: the crypto bros looked at the concentration of wealth in society and decided that the problem was that /they/ weren't the ones with all the wealth.) You can just as easily design a crypto scheme to generate tokens and distribute them to everyone with an ID regularly: this is UBI, so long as the tokens have recognized value. The problem is that you need to prevent people from registering a million accounts to get a million UBI credits, deflating the value of tokens held by honest folks. Thus the unique identifier problem.
- dopidopHN 3y ago
  KYC is a thing and apparently crypto exchanges can implement it when asked nicely. But I think grand parent poster is right on the money, it’s a attempts to take governments roles. After all nation states are not that old of a concept. Basically Napoleonic wars. Some type of distopian corporate nationality might come to fruition to replace them.
  - ethbr0 3y ago
    There's the possibility of utopian corporate nationality too. Being an employee at a lot of corporations is nicer than being a citizen of a lot of counties. But corporate benevolence mostly demands on human capital supply and demand balances.
- kbenson 3y ago
  But again, as GP noted, isn't that a problem governments have already solved? If you want UBI it's going to be through the government, as that's the entity collecting the funds through taxes that would be distributed, and they already have a unique identifier for people. In the U.S. it's your SSN, which is conveniently also how they track you for income taxes (again, where a large portion of the funds for distribution are gathered) If the government wants to link a retinal scan to a SSN, that might make sense with regard to UBI, but how does it make any sense for some random blockchain? Are we expected to think that even if a government wanted to use a blockchain they would use some third party blockchain and not roll their own? I find that highly unlikely.
twelve40 3y ago
Here is one answer: > How Altman plans to pay for Worldcoin’s UBI, however, remains murky. “The hope is that as people want to buy this token, because they believe this is the future, there will be inflows into this economy. New token-buyers is how it gets paid for, effectively,” Altman told Coindesk recently.
- vxNsr 3y ago
  He literally defined a pyramid/ponzi scheme (depending on how or if value is shared with existing users). That’s very interesting that he feels protected enough to say that out loud.
- tremon 3y ago
  So it's a pyramid scheme?

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago

Governments already exist. To try and upend them by replacing their system of personhood and currency is in effect the tech-bro version of a mutiny. It may seem ridiculous but that's precisely what crypto is. An attempt to replace central banks and governments. Tech companies have grown very powerful, and they see an opportunity to create a world-wide "private government" and they're going for it. This won't be the last attempt. Governments will eventually wake up. Or if not. That's it for them.

oh_sigh 3y ago
Governments exist, and the current standard of identity verification is a laminated piece of paper with a picture on it. If you're giving away free money you might want to have a standard slightly higher than that.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  The laminated "paper" has microchip in it in most places and codes which can be checked against a central database. It's a good enough standard. In fact better than crypto-chaos.
- fatfingerd 3y ago
  Sure, but maybe that payment power is going to have a lot of side effects that are worse than limiting/filtering gifts through potentially corrupt governments that can also prevent other situations. For example, the resource curse implies there will be great reasons for companies to risk gifts of small amounts of money to lots of people in a country about to vote on whether to protect collective assets from corporate theft.. All the weird action committees of US corruption haven't even had the logistics to directly bribe voters of a low population state to piss in the pot. Should they get iris wallet addresses for everyone correlated to scan locations? Is anything the US would do about this beyond the capabilities of Kenya?
pookha 3y ago
LOL. "Sam Altman" is not trying to upend governments. It's the opposite. Him and his ilk are trying to interface with governments in such a way that they can use the legal violence of a government to streamline the integration of their systems (schemes) into the public's life. Sam Altman wants to use the same play book that pharmaceutical and defense industry's use (regulatory crony capitalist capture). This is not "tech bro" mutiny this is -- probably -- the first of many crony capitlist (BlackRock\Ratheon\Etc\Etc) attempts at duplicitous digital currency.