Our Values
Freedom
We hate exploitation. Jobs should never be taken out of desperation. We’re opposed to coercion. Bellies should be filled first; only then can we win hearts and minds. We think paternalism at a distance is silly. When it comes to strangers, we almost certainly don’t know what they need better than they do.
People
There was a time when time was all we needed. People could survive by putting in the effort. Those days are gone. We’ve made it easy for society to supply the basics, but impossible for individuals to secure them on their own. The nature of modern society requires connecting each person with the asset (cash) that let’s them fully engage.
Dignity
Unconditional cash looks like systematic generosity, but we should be careful with the messaging. It’s a shared right of progress. Universal Basic Income is best thought of as a dividend paid out to everyone for the progress we’ve made as a society—or as compensation for the loss of our ability to plant a field, build a house, start a fire, and survive. Progress robbed time of its value for producing the basics—but that freed it for what truly matters, as we intended. Furthermore, paid work is not the only type of work that matters. Those engaged in non-paid work are often doing the things we find most valuable and that deliver real dignity.
Time
We’ve been told that time is money, but that’s backwards. Money was invented to free time. And we hate spending our time doing boring or unpleasant things. The goal is spending more time doing what we want. Leisure matters, sure, but what we really want is to do interesting and important things with the people we love. UBI supercharges this pursuit of freeing time.
Progress
We’ve been trying to free time from the beginning. We want people to look for better ways to do their tasks, not fear it will cost them their job. We’re no different: we champion UBI to work ourselves out of the job of automating trust. We want it baked into the system so we can move on to solving the next problem.
Community
Cash is not the point. What becomes possible when people aren’t desperate — that’s the point. When basic needs go unmet, everything else suffers: relationships fray, programs fail, good intentions bounce off empty stomachs. The goal was never to hand people money. The goal is neighbors who show up for each other, kids who can actually focus, parents who have something left at the end of the day. Cash removes the obstacle. Community is what grows in the space it creates.
Generosity
Unconditional cash doesn’t eliminate the need for each of us to be generous — it makes our generosity more effective. We don’t want to eliminate charities; we want them to focus on what they’re good at. Today, charities get pulled down into supplying basic needs, since a full belly and good night’s sleep are needed before other services can be leveraged. Cash delivered with a helpline, a handshake, or a hug is the winning formula.
Pragmatism
We don’t want to upend the entire system. We want to apply a simple hack that lets the system hum once again. Progress is a history of hacks — money, free markets — that let prosperity scale. If a stranger needs something, we prefer to convert any gift we want to give them into cash and let the market work. It’s time to hack the system again.
Measuring What Matters
Is GDP really what we’re after? Many UBI evaluations try to “prove” that hours of paid work didn’t decrease. But that’s backwards. Of course paid hours should decrease over time — as long as the important stuff still gets done. Efficiency should matter only when it matters. We need new metrics: ones that count what people actually value, including the picnics and softball games.
(Almost) Humility
We’re convinced that unconditional cash transfers work, but we know we don’t have all the answers. We don’t know the optimal parameters, or how quickly it should scale. We need more data, and we want to follow its lead.