Embracing the internet economy: An alternative to Universal Basic Income
The narrative coming out of silicon valley is the machines are coming for your job. But knowing how to navigate the internet economy could make you immune. As jobs are automated companies will be able to do more with less. This process is destroying the corporate career opportunities many people rely on. Elon Musk argues in this article Unviersal Basic Income (UBI) is needed as this process begins to accelerate. Sam Altman argues a similar case here.
There are, however compelling reasons why we don’t need UBI. If we look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs we see UBI can help with the bottom two rungs (Physiological and Safety needs, diagram below). However people still need to fulfill the top three rungs, love and belonging, esteem and self-actualization. There are a variety of ways to pursue these, but for internet natives (millennials and younger) it will be through the internet. Jobs like becoming a creator, influencer or producing digital products online are on the rise. These jobs satisfy the top rungs of the hierarchy and produce an income to satisfy the bottom ones. For example being a creator forms bonds and a sense of belonging with their customers and the communities that form around the creators content. Esteem and purpose can come from the value the creator provides to their communities.
An interesting property of creators and the digital economy is that many of these business come out of passion projects. It becomes a way to monetize what people already want to do on their free time. A great example are gamers who stream their game play on twitch. The top streamers earn multi-millions, much better than the 2021 US mean wage for all occupations of $58,260. Likewise the top channels on YouTube earn millions. YouTube has a much broader range of content creators vs Twitch. But note how many of the YouTube channels are born of people pursuing their interests and making videos of their process. Dude perfect is a good example. The channel is self described as “5 best buds just kickin it” and has an 8 figure valuation. This is a somewhat counterintuitive way to make a living, but these types of lifestyle channels are one of the more lucrative creator categories.
Imagine a world where you like rock climbing. You take it up, get decent at it. Then you are paid to share your process and what you learned. A future like this will be easier to realize Naval’s concept of escaping competition through authenticity. Which is a wonderful idea conceptually, but it is still quite hard to reach your target audience. But in the future this problem could be solved with advanced customer analytics. For example a platform that makes it easy for your content to reach its niche using matching algorithms based on background, social circle, interests and many other dimensions can be applied. So instead of painstakingly building an audience over years, AI programs match your content with under served people that you alone are best suited to positively impact. In addition to the creator economy, the digital products economy and the crypto economy are quickly growing. The details of these topics I’ll save for another article but the same process is playing out there.
From the creator economy alone we can see examples where society doesn’t need UBI. What we really need are more easy ways to monetize the things people want to do. The building blocks are already in place and as more commerce moves to crypto native platforms the opportunity to make a living based on your passions will increase. What I am doing now, and what I encourage anyone with a 9–5 job to do is start experimenting in this space. Do so even if you expect to spend your whole career as a traditional W2 employee. You and your company will compete with these occupations for talent. Any manager will need to deeply understand how these economies work and why someone would choose being a creator vs working for your company or team.
If you found this topic interesting let me know with some claps, a follow, a response or another way. It helps me know what is adding value.
