[Applause]
so few years ago I was having breakfast
with my husband in the kitchen and up
from our basement guest room appeared
these two huge German Jews my husband
who had failed to mention that he had
invited them to stay quickly said Oh
meet farmen and che they’re leaders of
the ubi movement is with Roland I that’s
so awesome and what’s ubi and Armitage a
boat said oh that’s universal basic
income and that would be L explained
it’s when everyone gets say monthly
income automatically and they don’t have
to work for it so they can pay for
things like food and clothing and a
place to live then so how much are we
talking about here I asked my husband
chimed in he said oh about $1,000 a
month so it’s pretty wild right but we
didn’t have to work for it wouldn’t we
all become slugs or binge watch Netflix
or play video games all day where would
be the motivation and the curiosity to
do things wouldn’t it all be dulled I
have tons of questions and what was the
purpose of ubi why are they so
enthusiastic about it so I decided to do
some research nice talk to a bunch of
people I even watch video debates I
wanted to figure out what the deal was
here it turns out that ubi is a really
complicated idea and it’s seriously
controversial
so what I did was I went on a journey
and I I that I realized that it actually
had to do with how technology was making
everything cheaper Siana tech
entrepreneur and I realized that when I
launched my video tech business that
powers thousands of applications
throughout the world I couldn’t do that
years ago I would have had to hire
hundreds of people for what I could do
now technology is making things like
food cheaper with vertical farms that
are robotics robotic leap our dand
making clothes cheaper with automatic
knitting machines and even 3d printing
houses where we can live but the problem
is that although technology is making
things cheaper the reason it can do that
is because it doesn’t require people to
do the work which means that massive
number of people are soon going to be
unemployed in fact it turns out a study
recently said that 47 percent of all
jobs could be lost in the next 20 years
almost half the population so think
about truck drivers there are three and
a half million chuck drivers out there
they’re there I think they’re
anticipating something like eighty
percent of those truck drivers could
have to lose their jobs to self-driving
trucks and it’s not just blue-collar
jobs it’s also all kinds of jobs like
paralegals or folks in the medical
profession or engineers across the board
now the folks who are speaking in favor
of ubi are saying that we need a way
when those folks are out of work they
need a way to pay for them for food and
clothing in a place to live and ubi
could be that income that they could get
to pay for them
now the folks against UVI are saying
those numbers they’re actually
misleading because what will happen is
eventually over time those jobs will be
replaced by other jobs and there may be
jobs that we can’t even imagine today so
for instance 20 years ago we never even
imagined that there be jobs like a like
you exa UX designers or app developers
so they’re saying we don’t have to worry
about it well I actually think that we
do because we need to figure out the way
in the transition there’s going to be
this transition period where we have to
figure out how people are going to be
able to eat and pay for places to live
and how are we going to pay for this
turns out that if every person got say
ten thousand dollars a year then it
would cost about two trillion dollars
additionally and there are lots of
different ideas as to how to pay for it
so for instance folks are saying look we
don’t need our whole welfare system or
maybe any of it at all because ubi will
replace it things like food stamps and
homeless shelters will go away because
people will be able to pay for food and
housing other people are saying well we
can make cuts in the military or we can
add income tax to the rich or maybe
carbon tax for corporations that hurt
the environment and so many people are
even saying we could print money because
it’s a whole new economy or maybe a
combination of all of them
I don’t have an answer and I don’t think
anybody really understands or has an
answer at this point but I’m an
entrepreneur and when I start a company
I don’t have to figure out how it’s all
going to happen we don’t go from one to
a hundred overnight it takes phases and
experiments so we start little by little
and we figure it out as we go along so I
wondered if experiments were happening
with ubi and then I met Matteo and
Johannes two other German Jews and they
told me about experiments that were
happening all over the world their
experiments happening in Kenya and it
was wild they said that 90% of all ubi
recipients actually started businesses
with it or bought livestock Macmillan
yojanas actually started their own ubi
experiment out of a out of Berlin and
their crowdfunding it so what they’re
doing is they’re raised with each time
they raise about twelve twelve thousand
euros or so then they hold or completely
random lottery anybody can participate
even you guys here and the winner gets a
thousand euros a month so it’s about a
thousand dollars a month no strings
attached you don’t have to say what
you’re going to do with the money or you
don’t have to say what you’ve done with
it
and the winners it turns out also
started a number of businesses there was
one woman who started a funeral service
business she goes around at funerals and
she says nice things about the recently
deceased and get paid gets paid for it
pretty cool I know as a founder it takes
a lot of time and months and months to
figure out product market fit took us
about 18 months for Ziggy l my company
and I could see how having ubi in the
background knowing you can eat and and
have a place to live while you’re
figuring it all out could be the
difference between persevering and
failing
all of this talk about ubi made me think
about my own life say I wasn’t always a
tech entrepreneur in fact I originally
studied art history focusing on the
Renaissance
you know Michelangelo and Leonardo da
Vinci they painted the Sistine Chapel
and and Last Supper and they were able
to do it because they had patrons like
pope julius ii and the meta cheese i
unfortunately it was not as lucky i did
not have a patron and i didn’t have any
particular talents well except maybe
ping-pong but i didn’t think that was
going to pay the bills so i had to
figure out a way to make a living i
decided to go to law school and become a
lawyer the problem is I was never
particularly interested in the law and
once I became a lawyer I spent years and
years toiling in a profession that I
wasn’t particularly interested in I
wondered if I had gotten you bi that
thousand dollars a month growing up or
as a as a young adult whether I would
have started businesses sooner probably
would I have gone to law school I doubt
it I wondered if my my friends were in
the same boat as I was so I decided to
launch a survey that a number of you
took and I asked if you knew as a
teenager that you would be given a
thousand dollars a month guaranteed for
life would you have made different
choices
and I got 576 responses in just a few
days thank you and the results were
fascinating what I found was that I
wasn’t alone that there were so many
people who would have taken risks and
would have followed their passions had
they had that money there was a woman
who said that that the money would have
given her the confidence to be bold
another said who said that she couldn’t
afford to take risks because failure
would have meant no food on the table i
hundreds of people respond that they
would have traveled more more or lived
independently people who said that they
would have they wouldn’t have moved in
with their boyfriends or gotten married
so young there were people who said that
they would have taken more maternity
leave or spent more time at home with
their kids a guy who said that he would
have spent time with his sick mother and
a woman who said that she would have
spent time more time with her terminally
ill husband but not everybody was so
positive about the thousand dollars
there was there’s a guy who said that he
would have burned through it in college
bars and another woman who said that she
would have pissed through it on material
things and then there was one woman who
said that she was a teenage drug addict
and that automatic income would have
probably been the worst thing for her
I heard from musicians and artists and
opera singers and theatre directors all
of whom had given up their passions to
become bankers and lawyers and engineers
now there were certainly those who were
have passions for that and that was
wonderful and they the ubi would have
helped them as well
the time and time again I heard of
people who said that they lost three
years of their life ten years of their
life and more working in crappy jobs or
professions that they had absolutely no
interest in and for me that’s the worst
that time that precious time that
actually the most precious thing that we
have lost wasted years not focusing on
the things that they love I wonder
whether if we had ubi whether we could
focus on the passions whether we could
spend more time with the folks that we
love whether we might jump start an
entire Renaissance of artists and
painters and sculptors whether in fact
ubi could be our new patrons just as
Michelangelo Leonardo had julius ii and
the Medici so let’s not get hung up on
whether we’re going to have jobs in 20
years or how much ubi is going to cost
those are mere distractions
let’s focus on the questions that really
matter
questions like can we spend the time on
things that we’re passionate about do we
have to take the job or go to law school
to become a lawyer just because we think
we have to pay the bills and find a way
to make a living if we have an idea can
we find creative ways in which to fund
it can things like patreon and
Kickstarter be our new personal basic
income and as we raise our children in a
world that values money more than
meaning how can we teach them to follow
their passions and hearts and focus on
what interests them most these are the
questions I’m curious about these are
the questions that empower me every day
I hope that these questions and the
answers empower you as well and I hope
together we can build a world in which
we have the confidence and income to go
where curiosity takes us thank you very
much
[Applause]
you
[Applause]
so few years ago I was having breakfast
with my husband in the kitchen and up
from our basement guest room appeared
these two huge German Jews my husband
who had failed to mention that he had
invited them to stay quickly said Oh
meet farmen and che they’re leaders of
the ubi movement is with Roland I that’s
so awesome and what’s ubi and Armitage a
boat said oh that’s universal basic
income and that would be L explained
it’s when everyone gets say monthly
income automatically and they don’t have
to work for it so they can pay for
things like food and clothing and a
place to live then so how much are we
talking about here I asked my husband
chimed in he said oh about $1,000 a
month so it’s pretty wild right but we
didn’t have to work for it wouldn’t we
all become slugs or binge watch Netflix
or play video games all day where would
be the motivation and the curiosity to
do things wouldn’t it all be dulled I
have tons of questions and what was the
purpose of ubi why are they so
enthusiastic about it so I decided to do
some research nice talk to a bunch of
people I even watch video debates I
wanted to figure out what the deal was
here it turns out that ubi is a really
complicated idea and it’s seriously
controversial
so what I did was I went on a journey
and I I that I realized that it actually
had to do with how technology was making
everything cheaper Siana tech
entrepreneur and I realized that when I
launched my video tech business that
powers thousands of applications
throughout the world I couldn’t do that
years ago I would have had to hire
hundreds of people for what I could do
now technology is making things like
food cheaper with vertical farms that
are robotics robotic leap our dand
making clothes cheaper with automatic
knitting machines and even 3d printing
houses where we can live but the problem
is that although technology is making
things cheaper the reason it can do that
is because it doesn’t require people to
do the work which means that massive
number of people are soon going to be
unemployed in fact it turns out a study
recently said that 47 percent of all
jobs could be lost in the next 20 years
almost half the population so think
about truck drivers there are three and
a half million chuck drivers out there
they’re there I think they’re
anticipating something like eighty
percent of those truck drivers could
have to lose their jobs to self-driving
trucks and it’s not just blue-collar
jobs it’s also all kinds of jobs like
paralegals or folks in the medical
profession or engineers across the board
now the folks who are speaking in favor
of ubi are saying that we need a way
when those folks are out of work they
need a way to pay for them for food and
clothing in a place to live and ubi
could be that income that they could get
to pay for them
now the folks against UVI are saying
those numbers they’re actually
misleading because what will happen is
eventually over time those jobs will be
replaced by other jobs and there may be
jobs that we can’t even imagine today so
for instance 20 years ago we never even
imagined that there be jobs like a like
you exa UX designers or app developers
so they’re saying we don’t have to worry
about it well I actually think that we
do because we need to figure out the way
in the transition there’s going to be
this transition period where we have to
figure out how people are going to be
able to eat and pay for places to live
and how are we going to pay for this
turns out that if every person got say
ten thousand dollars a year then it
would cost about two trillion dollars
additionally and there are lots of
different ideas as to how to pay for it
so for instance folks are saying look we
don’t need our whole welfare system or
maybe any of it at all because ubi will
replace it things like food stamps and
homeless shelters will go away because
people will be able to pay for food and
housing other people are saying well we
can make cuts in the military or we can
add income tax to the rich or maybe
carbon tax for corporations that hurt
the environment and so many people are
even saying we could print money because
it’s a whole new economy or maybe a
combination of all of them
I don’t have an answer and I don’t think
anybody really understands or has an
answer at this point but I’m an
entrepreneur and when I start a company
I don’t have to figure out how it’s all
going to happen we don’t go from one to
a hundred overnight it takes phases and
experiments so we start little by little
and we figure it out as we go along so I
wondered if experiments were happening
with ubi and then I met Matteo and
Johannes two other German Jews and they
told me about experiments that were
happening all over the world their
experiments happening in Kenya and it
was wild they said that 90% of all ubi
recipients actually started businesses
with it or bought livestock Macmillan
yojanas actually started their own ubi
experiment out of a out of Berlin and
their crowdfunding it so what they’re
doing is they’re raised with each time
they raise about twelve twelve thousand
euros or so then they hold or completely
random lottery anybody can participate
even you guys here and the winner gets a
thousand euros a month so it’s about a
thousand dollars a month no strings
attached you don’t have to say what
you’re going to do with the money or you
don’t have to say what you’ve done with
it
and the winners it turns out also
started a number of businesses there was
one woman who started a funeral service
business she goes around at funerals and
she says nice things about the recently
deceased and get paid gets paid for it
pretty cool I know as a founder it takes
a lot of time and months and months to
figure out product market fit took us
about 18 months for Ziggy l my company
and I could see how having ubi in the
background knowing you can eat and and
have a place to live while you’re
figuring it all out could be the
difference between persevering and
failing
all of this talk about ubi made me think
about my own life say I wasn’t always a
tech entrepreneur in fact I originally
studied art history focusing on the
Renaissance
you know Michelangelo and Leonardo da
Vinci they painted the Sistine Chapel
and and Last Supper and they were able
to do it because they had patrons like
pope julius ii and the meta cheese i
unfortunately it was not as lucky i did
not have a patron and i didn’t have any
particular talents well except maybe
ping-pong but i didn’t think that was
going to pay the bills so i had to
figure out a way to make a living i
decided to go to law school and become a
lawyer the problem is I was never
particularly interested in the law and
once I became a lawyer I spent years and
years toiling in a profession that I
wasn’t particularly interested in I
wondered if I had gotten you bi that
thousand dollars a month growing up or
as a as a young adult whether I would
have started businesses sooner probably
would I have gone to law school I doubt
it I wondered if my my friends were in
the same boat as I was so I decided to
launch a survey that a number of you
took and I asked if you knew as a
teenager that you would be given a
thousand dollars a month guaranteed for
life would you have made different
choices
and I got 576 responses in just a few
days thank you and the results were
fascinating what I found was that I
wasn’t alone that there were so many
people who would have taken risks and
would have followed their passions had
they had that money there was a woman
who said that that the money would have
given her the confidence to be bold
another said who said that she couldn’t
afford to take risks because failure
would have meant no food on the table i
hundreds of people respond that they
would have traveled more more or lived
independently people who said that they
would have they wouldn’t have moved in
with their boyfriends or gotten married
so young there were people who said that
they would have taken more maternity
leave or spent more time at home with
their kids a guy who said that he would
have spent time with his sick mother and
a woman who said that she would have
spent time more time with her terminally
ill husband but not everybody was so
positive about the thousand dollars
there was there’s a guy who said that he
would have burned through it in college
bars and another woman who said that she
would have pissed through it on material
things and then there was one woman who
said that she was a teenage drug addict
and that automatic income would have
probably been the worst thing for her
I heard from musicians and artists and
opera singers and theatre directors all
of whom had given up their passions to
become bankers and lawyers and engineers
now there were certainly those who were
have passions for that and that was
wonderful and they the ubi would have
helped them as well
the time and time again I heard of
people who said that they lost three
years of their life ten years of their
life and more working in crappy jobs or
professions that they had absolutely no
interest in and for me that’s the worst
that time that precious time that
actually the most precious thing that we
have lost wasted years not focusing on
the things that they love I wonder
whether if we had ubi whether we could
focus on the passions whether we could
spend more time with the folks that we
love whether we might jump start an
entire Renaissance of artists and
painters and sculptors whether in fact
ubi could be our new patrons just as
Michelangelo Leonardo had julius ii and
the Medici so let’s not get hung up on
whether we’re going to have jobs in 20
years or how much ubi is going to cost
those are mere distractions
let’s focus on the questions that really
matter
questions like can we spend the time on
things that we’re passionate about do we
have to take the job or go to law school
to become a lawyer just because we think
we have to pay the bills and find a way
to make a living if we have an idea can
we find creative ways in which to fund
it can things like patreon and
Kickstarter be our new personal basic
income and as we raise our children in a
world that values money more than
meaning how can we teach them to follow
their passions and hearts and focus on
what interests them most these are the
questions I’m curious about these are
the questions that empower me every day
I hope that these questions and the
answers empower you as well and I hope
together we can build a world in which
we have the confidence and income to go
where curiosity takes us thank you very
much
[Applause]
you
[Applause]
Please follow and like us: