Don't we all want to change the world? An extended introduction post (adjusted to keep information current with how it works now):

Steem Basic Income - a re-introduction

I have been very interested in the social experiments around Universal Basic Income.



img source pixabay

As I review the literature on Universial Basic Income, there are two basic questions that always come to mind.

What will pay for it?

How will the money be distributed?

I don't know what the final answers will be for basic income to happen at a societal or universal level, but is there any reason something like Steem couldn't be part of the answer?

The purpose of this project is to provide every Steemian with a basic income.

How can we do that?

To be honest, we probably can't. We don't have enough resources. What may seem small to some, a few cents or a few dollars a day, may be meaningful to others. For this to work, we need people to buy into the system, or sponsor others into the system.

Enrollment

Sounds intriguing... How do I sign up?

Send 1 STEEM to @steembasicincome. Include the name of who you want to sponsor in the comments. You and the person you sponsor will each receive shares in the program. You can also send 1 SBD and the extra value will be treated as a donation to the program and used for promotion or powering up.

Okay, so I signed up. Now what?

You and the person you sponsored will be added to the pool. Each member of the program will receive their Steem Basic Income through post upvotes. The total vote strength available will be divided by the number of shares to determine the vote weight each share receives.

Growing your Steem Basic Income

These seem like small upvotes. Can I increase it?

There are several ways to increase your Steem Basic Income.

Upvote comments and posts from @steembasicincome to power up the votes. Sponsor more members into the pool. Every time you sponsor a member, you will each receive 1 share. By sponsoring more members you can receive more shares. Delegate SP to @steembasicincome. This increases the income for everyone. Thank you! Buy Steem. As Steem goes up, the value of your basic income increases.

Troubleshooting

I didn't get my income today. What happened?

You have to post to receive your income. We are also developing functionality to reward comments, but this might not be working yet. Some content may be blocked from receiving support. Please make sure that your post or comment is somewhere work appropriate. There could also be some issue with the bot. Please message @steembasicincome or @josephsavage for assistance.

Help! My reputation is under attack! Will that affect my income? @steembasicincome periodically reviews reputation of existing members. If your reputation drop below 20, you could be greylisted and not receive your basic income again for a while.

What if I don't usually post every day?

We would prefer to reward your best quality content. Since there needs to be something for us to upvote, you need to at least post sometimes. There will be a periodic review of post frequency and member weights may be adjusted to align with your posting frequency. Members that attempt to abuse this may be removed from the system.

Help! I was removed by @josephsavage and he refused to reinstate me!

In the event that a user disagrees with an administrative decision to impose a temporary or permanent removal, there will be an appeal process. The offending user can choose 1 members from the recipient list (published periodically) and @josephsavage will choose 1 member. Those members will review the elements of the case and decide whether the removal should be reversed. (Appointed members may decline appointment). If they are unable to reach a consensus decision, they may each appoint 2 more members (total of 6), and the case can be decided by majority. If they are still unable to agree, the original ruling from @josephsavage is upheld by default.

This process may be revised, but any revision must be approved by a majority of voting members. A voting post would be published with the new proposed rules and a yes or no comment. The comment with the most member votes (not highest reward) will determine the outcome.

All rules are subject to change until there are members that have paid to sponsor and join. (At launch all members were sponsored and selected by @josephsavage). At that point, changes would need approved through the voting post process. Dissenting members that have sponsored others into the program will be fully or partially refunded if the total Basic Income they have received does not exceed 200% of their initial registration cost (1 Steem per share acquired through sponsoring another member). Sponsored shares (registration fee was paid by somebody else) are not eligible for refund for any reason.

Let's talk math

With the initial investments from @josephsavage, the program started out with 189 SP in voting power, and only 18 shares. That's over 18 SP per share, but it only cost 1 STEEM to add 2 shares. From the start, we knew that adding new members would dilute the existing members. The SP per share will approach the cost per share. (Essentially each member pays in advance for the upvotes they and the person they sponsor will receive.)

Effectively, this is the opposite of a ponzi scheme, as new members are benefitted by the investment already made by existing members, instead of existing members benefitting from the addition of new members. With this math, the incentive to sponsor members is to keep adding new shares for yourself (and provide basic support to other Steemians). (Dark Blue Line in the chart below)

We offset this disequilibrium by spending the STEEM from registration fees on 90-day delegation leasing on the blocktrades market. 1 STEEM buys 14 SP of delegation. This results in a higher equilibrium... predictably around 7 SP per share, as 1 STEEM buys 2 shares. Curation rewards from upvoting members posts are factored into this, and don't really have a material impact. (Orange line)

Since 7 SP per share confers a daily vote worth roughly 0.02 SP, it would allow each new member to at least recoup their initial spend before the delegation starts to expire.

After 90 days, there would still be a disequilibrium as delegation expires and SP/share would start to drop again. Since members would have recovered their initial investment by that point, we expect some members to increase their shares (and sponsor more people), allowing delegation to be renewed and slow the disequilbrium.

We have known since before launch that there will be potential issues after the 90-day mark. We are clear about the income being small, and identified four ways of overcoming that:

Upvote comments and posts from @steembasicincome to power up the votes. Sponsor more members into the pool. Every time you sponsor a member, you will each receive 1 share. By sponsoring more members you can receive more shares. Delegate SP to @steembasicincome. This increases the income for everyone. Thank you! Buy Steem. As Steem goes up, the value of your basic income increases.

The 2nd method allows each individual to overcome their own dilution by reinvesting (but essentially still a reverse-ponzi scheme).

The 4th method is the rising tide. Even though dilution is still happening, as STEEM appreciates the $ value of the upvotes gradually increases, but it doesn't change the disequilibrium problems.

The 3rd method (free delegation to the pool) would slow the dilution, but could result in faster enrollment. In the long run, they same problem happens. New members typically recover their investment within 90 days and then subsequent income would slow to a trickle. Not really a permanent basic income solution.

The 1st method (upvote comments and posts from @steembasicincome) is where the magic happens. This brings extra SP into the pool (through author rewards). If every member shares 1 upvote (full or partial) it grows the pool and extends the time before disequilibrium.

Since the limit of members can't actually reach infinity, the disequilibrium point only needs postponed until the rate of new enrollment drops below the growth from author and curation rewards. At that point, there will be a steady rise in the basic income that each member receives. We don't have a baseline estimate for how many members will consistently upvote the update posts, so we don't have a pretty chart for this.

TLDR

Math, math, math your basic income will cover your enrollment and then gradually drop off into nothing unless you enroll more shares after 90 days, math, math, math.

Unless everybody upvotes @steembasicincome. If that happens, we all get sustainable basic income.

So basically this is a vote buying club? You pay upfront and agree to upvote posts which generates revenue for everyone in the club that will be shared by receiving upvotes on your posts?

This is an actual question I received. And here is my actual response:

You're essentially correct, but there are some differentiating features. First, in order to get shares for yourself, you have to sponsor shares for somebody else. This creates a more diverse membership and encourages supporting people that might not have the liquid funds to join voting clubs.

Second, upvoting the posts made by the @steembasicincome account is not required, whereas for most voting clubs there is some requirement in that regard.

Finally, the upvotes are individually weighted for each member, based on typical weekly posting behavior, so it doesn't pressure members to publish when they wouldn't otherwise, just for their daily upvote. If your philosophy is that individual posts should be rewarded, rather than individual members, than you are free to disagree and not participate.

Math often causes ventures to fall short of reality. We would love to provide a steadily rising basic income for everyone, but the money has to come from somewhere (just like with a universal basic income). In this case, the money has to come from people choosing to support it by sponsoring fellow Steemians and by upvoting it to grant it a greater share of the reward pool. Ultimately, most of the basic income you have already received came from @josephsavage choosing to offer a generous project grant to get the ball rolling.

What if I hate this?

If you completely disagree with what we are doing, please feel free to move on. If you were sponsored by somebody else, and want nothing to do with it... please let us know, and your share will be deleted. Since you paid nothing, you won't get a refund, but we will grey-list you and allow future potential sponsors to choose somebody else instead.

Where are we now?

When we started and did our first testing, delegation orders were being filled very quickly. Now extreme demand in the delegation market has resulted in delay each time new orders for delegation are sent to @blocktrades. We believe this is caused by the breaking of the SBD peg to the dollar, although we accept that may be a controversial statement.

Delays in filling delegation orders have resulted in dilution effect being closer to the blue curve instead of the orange curve. This will pop back up when our open orders are filled, so there is currently some extreme volatility in our vote values.

Further, about 80% of the post rewards are coming in SBD instead of SP. This poses an interesting possibility...

Let's Talk Bidding Bots

@josephsavage has an active post promotion strategy using bidding bots. He has been using it for this project, for The Daily Sneak, and for his own articles. Having been applied to 45 posts since initiation, the strategy generates an average return of slightly better than 10% per post. If the liquid post rewards (SBD) are deployed using this strategy, it could grow the SP of the project more quickly (drawing in 'support' from various bidding bots) and offset the dilution.

We know that some of our members don't like bidding bots. We will be following this strategy for the next week, but we will put it to a vote. Below this post, I will make two comments:

I would like SBD to be spend on bidding bots to add that profitability to the reward pool

I don't like bidding bots. The SBD earned by @steembasicincome should be spent on STEEM and used to power up.

Upvote whichever comment aligns with your views, and feel free to chime in with your thoughts. We will treat this as a potential rule change, and follow one member, one vote. If you don't care, don't upvote either comment. (Or upvote both and let your votes cancel out!)

This is the math-filled extended introduction, and we hope that you have stayed with us! We will do a simpler overview of the project each week, so that there is always a pending version that we can share with new sponsored members. If you read this whole article and are happy you joined (or were sponsored)... welcome to the party!!