093: Give-a-Mouse-a-Cookie Economy: The Conundrum of Universal High Income

What if the future isn’t about everyone becoming rich, but about money mattering less because almost everything we need becomes abundant?

This week, we’re trying to wrap our brains around universal high income: a future where AI, automation, robotics, abundant energy, and dramatically cheaper goods and services could make traditional work (and maybe even money itself) far less necessary. But eliminating scarcity raises some surprisingly complicated questions. Who builds the robots? What happens to jobs? Can technology really make resources abundant for everyone? And perhaps most importantly: if humans no longer have to work to survive, what exactly do we do with ourselves?

One of us sees extraordinary possibility. Two of us have...questions. A lot of questions.

10,000-Foot View of this Episode:

• Universal High Income Isn’t Really About Income: Despite the name, the idea isn’t necessarily a giant government paycheck. Cole argues that the real goal is abundance: making food, energy, healthcare, transportation, goods, and services so plentiful and inexpensive that money simply matters less.
• Somebody…or Something…Still Has to Do the Work: A post-scarcity world depends heavily on AI, robotics, energy production, data centers, automation, and infrastructure capable of producing what billions of people need without requiring billions of people to work for it. This leads Callie and Mecca to one recurring question: who builds and pays for all of that in the first place?
• What Happens When Your Job Disappears? Cole sees freedom: no more spending a huge portion of your life working simply to pay bills. Callie gives herself about two weeks before boredom sets in, while Mecca wonders whether removing work also removes a source of structure, achievement, and purpose from our lives.
• Can You Actually Eliminate Scarcity? Food might become abundant. Energy might become incredibly cheap. Robots might produce almost anything we need. But beachfront property, time, attention, relationships, experiences, and plenty of other things remain inherently limited. So does scarcity disappear…or does it simply move somewhere else?
• The Give-a-Mouse-a-Cookie Problem: Even if everyone's basic needs are met, Callie and Mecca aren't convinced humans will suddenly decide they have enough. Feed us and we'll want comfort. Give us comfort and we'll want something different, nicer, rarer, or better. Cole's counterpoint: wanting more isn't necessarily a reason not to eliminate the suffering we can eliminate.
• Utopia Depends a Lot on Human Nature: Technology may be capable of changing how resources are produced and distributed, but does abundance change jealousy, fear, greed, individuality, ambition, or our tendency to exploit systems? The biggest obstacle to a post-scarcity future might not be the technology at all. It might be us.
• Maybe the Point Isn't Having the Answer: By the end, nobody has decoded universal high income. And that's kind of the point. Cole thinks some version of it is possible. Callie doesn't. Mecca isn't sure whether it's a utopia or a fairy tale. But understanding the idea well enough to ask better questions might be more valuable than agreeing on the answer.

Memorable Quotes:

• "[Universal High Income is] not about the government is gonna pay everybody all this wage just for being a citizen. It's the fact that resources will become so abundant money is no longer necessary." – Cole
• “Where's the baseline of what would make everybody happy?” – Mecca
• “We can't even agree on raising the minimum wage. How the f*ck are we going to agree on universal basic income much less high income?” – Callie
• "Not toiling for someone else. That is the end goal that I desire." – Cole
• “How do you take some kid out of the ghetto and convince him that this is the way to move forward when he's never had anything really given to him in his life?” – Mecca
• “We can sit here and talk about how much all of this technology is being leveraged and utilized and making our lives better. But at the end of the day, whose lives are really being made better? Who is really benefiting?” – Callie
• "People are going to be afraid of things whether they are well taken care of or not. Fear is inherent." – Cole
• “There was a time that nobody ever thought computers would be a big deal. It certainly wouldn't have one in every home or every hand as they are in now.” – Mecca
• “I can't comprehend how even if we jump to the point in the timeline where everything is 'perfect' and there is no scarcity of any kind of resources that we as human beings aren't gonna find something to throw a fit about.” – Callie

Resources Mentioned:

• So this whole episode kicked off because Cole made Callie listen to a Joe Rogan episode with Zach Bush, where they got into this "universal high income" rabbit hole.
• The term itself is credited to Elon Musk, but it's riffing on "universal basic income," a concept popularized by Andrew Yang during his presidential run. It's basically the government covering everyone's basic needs.
• Mecca compares the whole idea to Downsizing, the Matt Damon movie about shrinking yourself to stretch your money further. Spoiler alert…it didn't go great for those characters either.
• Wall-E comes up more than once as the "worst case scenario" version of a world where nobody has to do anything.
• If you want to support Jen Hamilton's fundraiser for people going through major life transitions, here you go!

Call to Action:

Universal high income sounds simple until you actually try to imagine living in it. Here's the question we're leaving you with: If you woke up tomorrow and never had to work for money again, and every basic need you could ever have was guaranteed, what would you actually do with the rest of your life?

And maybe more importantly: would that life feel meaningful to you?

Let us know where you land. Is universal high income a glimpse of a future worth building, an impossible utopia, or something somewhere in between?

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