Metaverse thoughts and the Future of Society

It's coming one way or another; What will government look like, and what should we expect?

I’ve mentioned this idea that humans will find themselves in an identity crisis in time, maybe sooner than one would think. Work will become something left to automation and machines, a comfortable quality of life can be provided with limited savings, and there will be nothing to “do” that humans have long ascribed to labor. You can see the trends already; the internet has made countless jobs redundant and has increased the quality of life for almost every slice of demography/humanity. So this question of where we get value from, and for that matter, what do we do in this theoretical where one can live comfortably, even well, on limited funds. Limited to the point that a government could provide a universal basic income supported by new revenue/transcription of value onto digital securities. So what will we do in our free time? Not everyone will be listless, you will still have a slice of humanity that will strive for more, and those will be the innovators that keep society moving forward and upward. (To underline the previous point about the capacity to increase the standard of living while reducing consumer costs and demoniac labor participation - simply look at the computational power of the latest iPhone, or even watch, and it’s many, many orders of magnitude more potent than even a chipset in use five years ago, WHILE decreasing costs).

I think I’ve realized what will replace labor, occupy time, and give meaning to life. It comes back to the concept of the Metaverse. In this persistent online experience, humans will spend more and more time inside this environment, where joy and excitement can be readily had for essentially nothing financially. We have plenty of data to show the dopamine response to social media and receiving “likes,” so our pleasure and happiness engines of the brain will be satisfied, maybe even more so than what can be found in the physical realm. This environment, a whole new society, will require the creation of endless content, scenery, merchandise, and other valuable items. That means we will need endless numbers of creators. You can see early signs of it now; podcast hosting is one of the fastest-booming jobs, where you create consumable content by talking to a friend on camera. We crave the content. All the people who are content with a basic standard of living and without meaningful labor can become creators in this new world. Houses must be built, skins for avatars must be imagined, car color options, etc. I believe that a core requirement for the Metaverse is the ability for virtually anyone to make things. It will be at the core of our experience and how our economy will run. Ads for Metaverse - or physical - merchandise will create demand for spending. This spending will likely be taxed by the organizations/people that operate this digital universe. Those tax dollars - which will be massive due to the fast ability to purchase and issue government-funded minimum income - turn around and will be used for infrastructure.

This tax rate will be very low., widening the tax base and increasing total revenue. After all, what’s .02 cents on a 200-dollar purchase of a digital replica of a famous painting with unique ownership properties? Due to the deflationary pressure of technological advancement, this environment will give the “government” room to create currency out of thin air to provide many users/citizens a basic income. The fear of inflation can be kept in check as deflation will persist. At the same time, demand for metaverse spending will continue to advance rapidly, as supply can easily be created, which would prevent a supply side from being too limited to the total demand - a core recipe for inflation. While I argue that labor in the sense as we know it today will be a relic of the past, in the next 50-60 years, new labor will emerge. Endless creation of content. Our value, our meaning for life, will become creating things that millions and even billions could enjoy rapidly from concept to final good. Our brand - our digital identity - will become a reflection of those goods/services/experiences. Of course, many with limited ability, even with the ease of use of creation tools, will exist. They will consume and spend as the government provides financial power. This consumption, via the multiplier effect, will turn into new tax dollars and economic stimulus for the entire supply chain of that product. They will consume ads, creating revenue for companies that promote while increasing demand for these digital goods. The digital middle class will follow that. This group still will receive a basic universal income. It will become new content creators - that’s where an infinite supply of tv shows, movies, and art experiences, such as music, short-form, and long-form interviews, etc., will come from.

No one will be bored in our new future; dopamine will be triggered as much as you allow with your engagement with this world. And finally, you will have the upper and wealthy class. These will be people/families/companies/brands who drive mainstream consumption, provision of professional services, etc. Many of these items and services can be supported by simple token economics. - say you read a website, and the company pays you one type of token, which, if you amass several, can be exchanged for a token that you can pay for premium content. The platform receives transaction costs; creators are paid in the brand currency - which can then be sold on a public market, another significant source of demand for the currency, giving its value to the content creator. The company could increase or decrease the “reward” for content consumers’ usage. The economics of it becomes very stable, an endless rotational system. The user buys tokens on market or from the company, making revenue for the company to expand its service. The reader is paid with a form of token which can be grouped and exchanged for premium credits, a situation where readers are being paid to use the service. The reader’s payment flows to the creator, who then exchanges his tokens for the central currency and, by doing so, creates a supply of tokens available to purchase. The whole system coupled together makes it a constant circle of supply and demand.

To give credit to the idea that this model could create stable economics, you have the system. Still, ads could supercharge the equation - which would drive up demand for reader tokens, raising available tokens that can be spent on premium content. This spending creates huge transaction “taxes” paid to the content platform maker. In short new, good content creates demand for this new token, and the increased value of the token/demand entices new creators to come to the platform. More creators on the platform and more supply entice more readers. More readers, who require tokens to access content, more demand for the token, and it keeps repeating. The content platform continues to scale up in the quality of infrastructure. The creation or destruction of tokens by the platform providers allows them to keep the economics stable; if the tokens start inflating, the company can slow down the creation of tokens and even destroy them. If the token deflates the platform can, the company simply has to go into the public market and buy supply which limits the number of credits and attracts new buyers to create demand for the TOKEN, driving token value up. It’s interesting this can be zoomed out and looked at h through the lens of monetary policy. With a digital currency whose supply can be expanded or contracted with the click of a button, reactions to slowdowns or overheating (inflation) can be met far faster than adjusting interest rates as we do in today’s world, a mechanism that takes 6+ months to materialize in the real economy.

The “government” can also slow down or expand currency payments to citizens. If the economy of the Metaverse begins to slow down, the government has to increase the basic income, instantly creating more possibility of demand. If the economy begins inflating, currency distribution could be slowed, or the government could destroy tax payments in the currency, reducing the total supply of currency units in the Metaverse. This instant ability to expand/retract the total circulation of money gives the monetary policy setting body, which must work with the fiscal policy to work genuinely, would make the current central banks salivate. The ability to fine-tune the market can’t be overstated. It would be far more stable than our current economic system. A limited supply will never be an issue (unlike post-Covid, where limited supply has driven costs through the roof).

The last I want to say is that this reality and the models I’ve mentioned require an ecosystem where an excellent quality of life can be had for very little as tasks and services we currently must do are outsourced to a machine. The system will work very smoothly as long as the “Metaverse” keeps expanding in the consumer’s experience. In the current economy we live with today, labor is a necessity to feed yourself and provide for your family. I believe this human construct, labor, will essentially go extinct and be replaced by a new type of creative labor. The idea that the current government could provide universal basic income is unrealistic and would be almost impossible to implement without rampant inflation or brutal deflation. The size of the deficit means very little, as the argument against deficient spending is that this spending crowds out the investing class. However, in this new future, deficit spending is compatible with this future. cost of capital will be very cheap in this system. This system is mainly based on creativity and the creation id new goods and services; these are hard things for a government to crowd out - as an example, painters and musicians have never been threaded by too much.

Additionally, in terms of crowding out, this future provides unlimited potential for new “things,” and the cost of capital to start a brand or company will be incredibly low. There will be a very small hurdle to creating something new, something not hurt by government spending; the total economy is too vast to allow debt to GDP to pose a meaningful threat. . . Also, the government's total spending (GDP) in percentage terms will likely be very low, and it will need far fewer total assets to perform its functions. It will have huge and expanded revenue by taking a fractional percent in every transaction at a very low rate, thus expanding the tax base while keeping total levies low.

There will be plenty of opportunities for growth and achievement in this world. The low cost of capital, vast levels of machine-driven productivity, and low barriers to entry to create new products/services will guarantee that. This is how a universal basic income could work and not become communism, though I admit this flirts with that idea. It’s a very different thing and depends on very different economics/ structure of society and huge techno-local breakthroughs that break the mold of the current system. One last note that occurred to me, regarding barriers to entry or creating goods in services - education, and training will be widely available and cost a fraction of today’s educational costs. This is seen even today, on the internet, especially in our post-Covid world, where entire academic experiences exist wholly online. One professor could provide lecture content for 100k+ students while having less real-world work under the current academic structure.

I see a world where academics (and hospitals) become a utility - and should be treated as one. I hope this creates better, more experienced, and open mindsets to go out and expand the economy even further. It will also create accountability, as the classes are all digital. It’s fair to say that word will quickly get around about which courses and professors to sign up with. But this exists today as a web service called “rate my professor,” but this system isn’t universally used. Something similar will become a norm, such as a 5-star feedback score readily accessible for look-up on the academic organization’s platform where you sign up for classes.

I will rewrite this and organize it in the coming days and weeks. This is a wildly different future than many imagine, but what I’ve laid out is realistic, even a probable representation of the future. This all counts on the symphony of different technologies to emerge and converge. But we’re closing in on it at a logarithmic rate. There are endless other scenarios that could be written on. Still, I wanted to focus mainly on the new creative content maker, how their economy will work, and dive into what it means to be a human and how dramatically that will change in the second half of the century or if we must endure periods of low growth and global strife, then maybe the following century. This keeps me very optimistic about life. We must get there and have the right breakthroughs without blowing ourselves up fighting China or some other unforeseen foe.

The second leg of my outlook stool will be expanded ability in the medical field, anywhere from running genome models and creating new treatments for cancer-related maladies to the expanding toolkits used by surgeons when operating on a patient. This could easily manifest even new abilities for healthcare providers to 3D print organic material or grow organic material into new organs etc.

The third leg requires a growing desire of workers to be out of the office / shy from corporate brands and innovate and create an alternative path for life. This ultimately leads to a profound change in the widely accepted belief of what it means to be a human, to what it means to be a human in a labor-less world. We will need to do something for the masses, I believe I’ve outlined how that can happen, and it will require all of society to agree that time in life is better spent on yourself and your brand and that it’s socially acceptable not to be employed. This last step may be the hardest. It will be very difficult to get Republicans - and many independents - on board with a steady universal basic income. The irony of this essay is that I, the author, identify as a far-right Republican, who abhors the concept of socialism and the path it takes society down, and who believes that equal opportunity is the obligation of our government, not equal outcome. I indeed scoff at the idea of universal basic income. But the reality is that I am not blind, I consider myself very well-read and versed in the rapidly changing technology ecosystem, and although my firmly held beliefs, it’s hard for me to imagine a future \given the track we are on that doesn’t involve significant elements of socialism and a complete re-imagination of what it means to be a citizen, from responsibility to the state all the way down to loyalty and patriotism. As time progresses, we are simply inching closer and closer to a future where, with a high degree of probability, there is a globalized power structure. The notion of the nation-state will be looked back at as quant and dangerous. I don’t take joy in painting this picture, but I refuse to abandon intellectual honesty and fabricate a different outlook that more comfortably fits my worldview.

I recently joked with my father; I said, “the more I think about it, the more technology advances and human labor becomes less and less productive relative to automated solutions, the more I’m starting to think that, while very dangerous, Marx didn’t have it all wrong. He was on to some things, but he was just a century or two too early and left too many doors open that made room for corruption and destruction.” My idea for a basic income, say it was 2090 today, is each person would receive a direct payment via a CBDC of $4,000, only to be spent on necessities. (That’s the abbreviation for emerging technology, a central bank digital currency, and yes, it is absolutely coming to a (digital) wallet near you. The Fed is well on its way to designing its implementation, and you can be assured that it will be a part of life by 2035, and with it, the government will have the power to deliver aid with pinpoint accuracy with strict safeguards against abuse, control where your digital currency can be spent, will be able to instantly seize your assets, track your spending and those you give to, prevent the purchase of firearms at the point of sale or, at a minimum, can finally build a national registry of gun owners that the left has called for, for so many years, and finally, they will constantly maintain awareness of your financial standing)

This benefit payment of $4,000 would be universal, given to the poorest man and all the way up to the wealthiest man; though the option to waive will be there, the richest amongst us will waive it if just for good optics. This new state-provided income will be the universal subsidy. It would mean the end of Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, ACA Expansions, Countless entitlement programs, Food Stamps/EBT, and likely, Social Security. This future deeply unsettles me, but if it’s going to come, I want to try and get my thoughts out there on how to build a system that is least destructive and still maintains some benefit to the people. For healthcare, due to the changes I laid out earlier, a solution will be needed, and the likely scenario will be a near-universal call for nationalized healthcare. This is a mistake; the government is already too far involved with our healthcare and the operations of hospitals and private practices. Huge sums of money have gone toward the healthcare industry, but doctors are earning less than they ever have, and patient outcomes have been average or worse than just a decade or two ago. So the question is, where is all this money going, and what is it being spent on? That is the core of my argument against further government intervention and tinkering with how healthcare is provided. That said, I see the realities, and a “nationalized” solution will probably be necessary, and will almost certainly happen in the near to medium term. So I want to propose my solution to ensuring universal healthcare coverage. Instead of single-payer, what I would suggest is giving everyone below a yet-to-be-determined wage level a $7000 annual voucher, tied to CPI, that can only be spent on health insurance from a provider who must enroll with the State, an enrollment that will require the insurer to offer plans that provide certain minimum coverages and waive certain factors, such as pre-existing conditions. The health insurance companies will gladly tailor cheap plans near the $7,000 mark that meet the letter of the law concerning enrollment. Still, they will also design far more lavish healthcare plans with enhanced coverage and benefits for those Americans who spend more than the government-provided $7,000.

A vital part of this proposal requires competition across state borders. The days of companies competing only with other companies in the state need to come to an end; the result will be states working tirelessly to create a welcoming environment for health insurance companies so that they may domicile there and bring their substantial tax revenue. It could be described as a race to the bottom. Ultimately, one or two states will have incredibly friendly environments for insurance companies to operate in, like how Delaware bent over backward to become the most corporate-friendly state with a court system that strongly stands by corporate-friendly precedent. This strategy has led nearly every major corporation in the country to file and register a business in the state. With the CBDC, restrictions on the voucher money would strictly limit an individual from using his 7,000 vouchers for anything other than payment to a registered health insurance provider. (given this leftist kick I’m currently on, I would want to see legal changes made that would require health insurance plans to cover the cost of pharmaceuticals, which has caused countless Americans to slip into poverty. Strict monitoring of the voucher would be the way it is ensured that the $7000 subsidy is spent directly to a sanctioned provider and on a plan that meets the state-mandated requirements on covered illness and circumstance. Also, to take things a little further, I could see a situation where a $3000 tax subsidy for every plan written would motivate the health insurance companies to lose their apprehension over the new system and maybe even encourage them.

Of course, there will be higher coverage plans, but a bare minimum of healthcare protection is there, which I believe is critical to the welfare of the state and, by extension, its people. The free market works well, but sometimes the social cost and strain on the fabric of the republic. In these situations, the welfare of the masses necessitates bold actions taken by the state to preserve that fabric and the shared national morale of the people that make up this great republic. We need our country to be healthy; it’s a national security issue in many ways. Healthcare costs prevent people from seeing the doctor early, which then sees the issue to compound, and eventually, costs far exceed what early intervention might have run for. That said, we have innovations that could bring about significant improvements in general welfare and healthcare. For example, using an Apple Watch or other device to track your Cardio output, an insurer or another party could create an incentive system by reporting data to health insurance companies that allow them to price down your plan due to a better health profile. Incentivize fitness. These technologies are just emerging, so it’s genuinely only our imagination that limits what could be done with them and how we can use the innovations to our advantage, from driving prices down to improving healthy lifestyles.

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The reality is socialized healthcare will manifest in the United States sooner rather than later. If you don’t believe me, consider this. Autonomous driving is not some future science fiction idea, it’s becoming more and more real by the day, and the first place it will be used on large scale will be in commercial trucking. Why is this a problem? Because commercial truck driving is the most or close to the most widely held occupation in virtually every state. What will this country do when 21mm young men suddenly have no means of making an income? Will the national leaders shrug and suggest they learn how to code? I don’t think so. There will be a massive populist political revolution. Massive changes will come to be in this country in response to the collective uprising of many in the working class, most specifically, the people who for years kept our country running by keeping shelves stocked, and gas pumps full, and the people who boil and sweat in challenging labor industries.

Thanks to the profound earning power of capital, this country's wealth, primarily concentrated in large cities on the coasts, will continue becoming more affluent and prosperous. The disconnect between these people and the people who have seen their jobs evaporate and who have been left to fend for themselves will make today’s partisan divide seem quaint. In rural America, you have families at the dinner table trying to figure out if they should make the $79 payment to keep the cell phone bill current. In urban, upscale America, young adults crowd together in bars, often multi-million dollar establishments, nocking back 24-dollar Gin and tonics. The discrepancy between these two world experiences is staggering. Without safeguards to protect and empower the Americans who have been left behind in a previous generation, unable to find employment in the high-tech economy that dominates our world, there will be tremendous strife and suffering.

With regards to healthcare, however, my plan removes a lot of red tape (you can say goodbye to sprawling and inefficient Medicare/Medicaid/ACA expansions/Other entitlement payments), and keeps the best of private industry/capitalism in place, while borrowing some of the best ideas of social welfare advocates and advocates of a single-payer system, but without involving sprawling government and suffocating regulation on the people who administer healthcare. You will have universal healthcare coverage; the insurance companies will continue to make money and help streamline the system. Doctors and medical workers will continue to be well paid while preserving key elements of the free market. That element is created by insurance companies competing for your $7000 voucher and competition for higher dollar plans from the higher income earners in this country. Competition and innovation will continue unabated. I would also call for two more things along with this new strategy.

For one thing, malpractice needs to be massively reformed; it costs the healthcare system unspeakable amounts of money, discourages young, intelligent Americans from entering medicine, and dramatically handicaps physicians’ income - with malpractice insurance and taxes, your average doctor is looking at about 60% of his earnings disappearing. In effect, he works for himself for 4/5 months of the year for himself. Additionally, pharmaceutical practices need to be reformed, as shown below.

One, favored nation status must be invoked; the United States can no longer subsidize the rest of the world on medication costs. I strongly support laws that require Pharma companies to charge for their drugs in this country exactly or below par with the cheapest rate they sell their drugs elsewhere in the world. If a new drug comes out, costing 8 dollars in Canada, that drug better not retail for a penny more than $8 in the US market. We lead the world in pharmaceutical innovation; our financial system gives these companies tremendous capital to take risks and develop new treatments. It is only fair that Americans pay no more than other people worldwide, given they are American, and could even have helped finance drug innovation y investing a portion of their 401k into Pfizer or Merk. In return for this new mandate on Pharma sales in this country, I would like to see a financial office of sorts open up under the Department of Treasury with the sole and simple task of providing below-market rate loans to companies working on developing innovative products that benefit the defense or welfare of the American people. After completing rigorous applications, interviews, and examinations, companies share their plans for a product that serves one or both purposes. This department provides significant, long-term financing at far below-market interest rates. These loans would be treated as first lien and must be paid back within a short period following the release and sale of whatever the company was working on. If there is a failure to pay, the IP would be seized, patent rights revoked, and assets seized, and the government would auction off the IP to other industrial players in the market.

One more bit on healthcare - an idea I’ve been playing with: a hospital must be a utility and should be treated as such. A tax-free entity that has a fiduciary and service responsibility to the people of its area of service. Private practices should be opened up to allow for non-MD ownership. This would create a massive boom in spending as it brings new, fresh capital into the organization - money that can go to better equipment and services. The new environment of solid demand for profitable organizations by outside investors/organizations new in the healthcare sector would create a whole new valuation scheme for practices, valued at a multiple of revenue rather than how it bizarrely works where the value of a practice is based on traditional valuation methods, such as a multiple of revenue or EBITDA. These new valuations for private practices would attract many doctors to the private market - it will also bring many new young men and women into medical schools - an extraordinary situation as currently there are fewer and fewer kids going to medical goal as the e perceived value of that degree which is complicated and expensive starts to attract new generations. I see the private market bidding and paying hospital utilities to access and use the facility’s equipment. The private practice receives legitimacy, infrastructure, and a significant and mandated consumer base (as the hospital becomes a tax-free utility, the government can impose limits and controls on costs/services, and the because of this, the hospital is also granted a de facto monopoly for a specific geographic region.

I would like to see a program like this exist right now, aimed exclusively at the semiconductor market. Many countries have sovereign wealth funds that invest in strategic assets that benefit their home country’s long-term strategic goals, diplomatically or otherwise. Why can’t Congress put together a “Department of Strategic Initiatives” that would be given a very substantial budget of which they can decide how and where to invest, however, guided in their efforts by strategic goals set out by the executive branch of the government? I want to see several hundred billion dollars in cheap financing made available to every U.S. chip maker; I want to see a $300 billion investment made into a large-scale domestic hub built for a multi-corporate chip ecosystem, from design studios to nearby venture capitalists, financiers standing by ready to invest and pour money into activities at an area nearby where multiple semiconductor campuses are located, with the addition of several absolutely massive scaled foundries for chip manufacturing.

Semiconductors are the oil of the 21st century and beyond. China, and even more so Taiwan, is so far ahead of us, only a massive Marshall Plan-type investment will help us close the gap, and even that might not be enough. If China decides to take Taiwan for itself and war breaks out, the global economy will slam to a halt, and regardless of how long the conflict will take, it will take many, many years to recover from that shock; you would be looking at a lost decade or more. I can’t even really begin to fathom the chaos that something like that would cause on every inch of land occupied by humans and a few months of COVID lockdowns in Taiwan completely derailed the world’s supply chains. Imagine what that would look like if the factories that produce all those components were bombed, their shipping ports blockaded, and their factories set ablaze. Something like 95% of semiconductor products is sourced from Taiwan. A war there means no cars, computers, iPhones, appliances, TVs, or anything that has even the tiniest semiconductor in it.

We must create a new silicon valley, focusing on semiconductors and other electronic equipment. I wouldn’t mind seeing the same investment made into desalinization or fission energy, but I won’t go into those issues, as both deserve far more than I can give here. Still, all that I can conclude is that it seems our leaders, from Congress to the White House, have zero vision, awareness of the threats facing us, understanding or appreciation of the rapidly advancing technology that will shape the future, or, importantly, the courage to take bold action that these trying times marked by rapid technological game changers, great societal change, and significant economic upheaval and fundamental realignment call for.

Moving back to the issue of how you handle a country filled with men and women who have no part of the labor market, who can more or less get any essential products they need thanks to abundant supply enabled and transported by artificial intelligence-guided robotics. When we reach this point, every entitlement and welfare program must end. Those payments, from SNAP, EBT and Food Stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, Unemployment, and many other programs, and Social Security. Altogether, they cost roughly 2.4 trillion dollars annually in federal outlays, but that doesn’t include the annual social security costs. Adding that to our total entitlements and welfare outlays, the total reaches 3.7 trillion dollars. If I had the controls, all that would come to an immediate end. Before you rip this essay up, I’m not suggesting we just stop these programs and do nothing else. I will discuss my closely held beliefs below, and let you decide how to color what I’ve had to say today with those revelations. I am a strong supporter of some of these support programs. I believe social security is an excellent policy, though somewhat poorly executed (if I had it my way, I would be able to opt into a privatized social security benefits account where I would be able to guide the investments made with my money being saved for me, but I realize that is not politically tenable).

I am, in many ways, a right-wing semi-populist with a hint of nationalism. I am conservative on social issues, as well as on several fiscal issues. I am pro-life and profoundly suspicious of the permanent bureaucratic element of the federal government, as well as the revolving door between policymakers, military leaders, think tanks, and lobbying groups These are the people that wield the real power in our Republic, something that upsets me greatly. Regarding social issues... I think the woke establishment and its overwhelming influence on our society is a problem; it provokes racial issues where none lied before, it pushes grossly inappropriate content on young children as has been widely documented, it has terrified countless Americans from speaking their minds, it has shut down academic debate by suppressing all speech that might not fit their narrative, or shutting down facts that don’t align with a specific world view, and frankly, I find most members of this group to be militant, hostile, and rude. Beyond culture war issues, I believe agencies and groups charged with protecting our national security, that is, us, have, with a fair amount of evidence indicating it, abused their powers and have actually done to the American people the very things they were meant to do to bad actors - be it tapping communications, surveilling individuals without a warrant or probable cause, suppressing media stories that could have had a very significant impact on the direction of our country out of purely personal preference by those in power, all the way to, as we’ve recently learned and confirmed, outright censoring hundreds of thousands of Americans, most recently coordinating a significant, partisan effort to suppress and manipulate social media in the heat of a presidential election.

Regarding social issues that are relevant today, I tend to agree that cops are a little too eager to use physical force and aggressive tactics. Still, I also recognize that they are asked to do an impossible job and that their life is on the line and could have it taken away in the blink of an eye, and as such, I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt. With regards to the economy, I believe that tax cuts are stimulative, pro-growth, and encourage consumer demand, I think penalizing the rich is a foolish strategy, I think reducing costs for employees and wealthy individuals naturally leads to more capital available that can lead to them passing on more income to their workers and friends - especially in a tight labor market. If employers have reduced taxes and therefore more net income, yet if the labor market is tight, and it’s challenging to hire employees, it’s very obvious to me that wages for low-level workers will go up; this is one of the reasons why I dismiss anyone bashing the trickle-down economics of Raegan’s era. I am a sincere and avid patriot supporting substantial investments in defense. One view I think of as a guiding light when it comes to policy questions: I believe government usually destroys, slows, or crushes anything it gets involved in. I am a Republican, but putting me in a specific box is tricky. The way I like to think about it, I am a pacifist US Nationalist who agrees with many Republican policies and beliefs, while also being able to admit when I see value in the concepts, however rarely the proposed implementation, that propagates in Left-leaning circles. If you want to know a little more about what I think and how I feel about specific

issues and how I see my role as an American, and what that means for the many Americans around me, scroll to the bottom, where you will find an excerpt about an issue that is specifically important to me.

Now seeing those views, you might chalk me up as a classic Republican who is more worried about how much money he is making than the welfare of anyone else. This would be a wildly inaccurate assessment. I have spent much of my life living in Manhattan, NY, in a predominantly prosperous area filled with successful and wealthy individuals. I enjoyed my time there but found it lacking in some critical ways. Despite this having been my environment for some time, I am (and maybe it’s because of that experience in New York) acutely aware and concerned with the challenges facing countless rural and small-town Americans who have been displaced, left unemployed, unable to find meaningful labor, lost in life, addicted to drugs, aimless and lacking dignity that purpose so often provides, often relatively poor, and more and more, angry on a fundamental level.

No further federal or state aid will be paid out from many tiny programs or another. What needs to be done is a complete analysis of money flows, and calculations need to be done to determine what people are receiving. One centralized department in the federal government should be charged with issuing those funds. The size of the government would shrink significantly by shutting down so many programs that divide small amounts of money up into smaller and smaller payments, causing confusion to recipients on where to apply for aid and how to collect, not to mention, requiring tens of thousands of federal workers and the many millions it costs to employ them to administer all of these small payment streams. No, with the future iI anticipate is coming, the best scenario is one in which there is ONE income stream, a sum of the many benefits you might have once received, rounded up to a figure that can provide you the bare minimum a comfortable life. You receive this money, and how you use it is up to you. Remember, you also have a $7000 voucher for healthcare costs. But your income stream from the universal basic income program is yours to spend, however, you see fit. If you choose to buy 40 packs of Camel’s, that’s your right, but no one will step up to help you feed yourself for the remainder of the pay period. We give a lot and expect people to behave responsibly and rationally. The idea of it, if it didn’t conflict so aggressively with my own personal beliefs, is rather beautiful—no subsidy payments from 6 different organizations, plus four more streams from different departments at the state level. (which reminds me, this new system that replaces the various aid programs from the federal government and state would reduce the operating expenditures of the states dramatically, leaving them plenty of resources to improve infrastructure, hire adequate police, and invest in better education for students, as well as other beneficial things for the public at large).

This would save a lot of resources as the agencies that provide subsidy payments are highly bloated and overstaffed. To be 100% clear, I offer this proposal, but with the demand that social security and any other government programs are immediately ended. The savings would essentially help offset the cost of a Universal Basic Income system. As mentioned before, the government can do much more with less. Productivity gains (through automation or otherwise) will fuel this economic engine, driving economic growth and increased transactions in both the natural and digital world. Steady consumer demand for new technology is a factor that will enhance federal revenue, as in this model, they are taking a small cut of every transaction you make, both in the real world and in the Metaverse. And don’t forget, with the CBDC, money under the table will be a relic of the past. The government will know precisely what you have, what you owe, where you are keeping it, at what outlets you are spending it, and where you are sourcing your income. The Feds will get what’s theirs. If we get a universal basic income, you can be guaranteed that the Feds will do everything in their power to recoup and collect every digital penny they can. What I propose here is scary, concerning, dark, and slightly exciting.

This new economy will work in ways we just don’t understand in today’s world. The idea of a UBI is absurd and seems like some socialist talking point that will never happen. But the trends are in place, and if you extrapolate from today’s circumstances, it becomes much more apparent that something as radical as that will be coming our way. I picture a world where 70% of the population doesn’t participate in the labor force. The remaining 30% will be people that run and direct large businesses, oversee complicated operations, serve in certain occupations that require human dexterity, and a portion of them will be computer coders. However, AI is coming for them too. The cost of coding has collapsed as it has become very easy to outsource complicated coding projects to large coding factories in India that work at very low rates and deliver similar results as their American counterparts. This new economy could really grow fast, and, hopefully, in the long run, reduce our need to spend such a high % of our GDP on defense, as if the country’s economy reignites in this new normal. Productivity continues to surge; we can lower our % spend and still pour tremendous, earth-controlling amounts of money into the defense sector.

User-generated content in the virtual world, creative work, and proficiency at new challenges in the future economy will be the future of our labor market. Given the size of the digital economy and how much room it has to grow, with the Federal government taking a small slice of every transaction — from the 4$ you spent on a new jersey for your avatar, to the $250 you spent on a new virtual bachelors pad, to the $1500 in the real world spent on a new VR headset — we could easily see a scenario where Federal Revenue grows dramatically. Especially if a minimum tax is imposed, requiring everyone to pay $1000, either in aggregate from a portion of their in-game and in-Metaverse spending, or just outright if they don’t participate in that world. I’m not sure how it will all work, and I’m not even sure I will be alive to see it, but I am sure many of these things will come true.

The start of this future will be the day they issue the CBDC (central bank digital currency) while the masses cheer and celebrate, not realizing what has been unleashed and what future awaits them.

**** On Homelessness in America: I firmly believe it’s a moral imperative and a patriotic duty to get every single individual living on the street in poverty off the ground, giving back some dignity with fresh clothing and an opportunity to clean up, and I want them to never return to the street or life in squalor. Yes, many of these people are drug addicts or are mentally unwell. That does nothing to change my mind. It just means we need to do even more to help them find their way to a better track. We live in the United States, the greatest nation this world has ever seen. I look at all fellow citizens as brothers and sisters, ilk that shared fundamental values with me, shared patriotism and committed themselves to self-improvement and upward mobility. I see them as people I would happily go out of my way to help if they needed a hand. So with that in mind, I am genuinely disgusted by the homeless problems our country faces, I see it as a complete and utter failure of the state, from city hall to the oval office. We have the resources and the obligation to lift these suffering Americans up and do what’s possible to give them a small fraction of the joy that most Americans get to experience regularly, from family, a delicious meal with loved ones, success at work, a sports game going your way, and so on.

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