Universal Basic Income: Swift Demand

The Problem

The future that lies ahead is becoming progressively more automated as time goes on. Companies like McDonald’s and Tesco cut thousands of jobs to implement self service checkouts and in the not too distant future, it is highly plausible that many other industries will be effected in a similar manner.

Due to our unprecedented technological advances, several job types will be a thing of the past. Goldman Sachs has anticipated that the driving industry alone could lose 300,000 jobs a year to automation, with several automated driving tests already under-way in 2018.

This news makes me proud to be a part of the human race. The sheer amount of knowledge that we now have as a society to help efficiencies within the workplace amongst other things is something to be admired. I am all for technological advancement and I believe it is within our best interests to embrace it with open arms; this is the future.

That being said, the increased automation within the work environment will lead to a huge societal problem, with serious socio-economic implications if it is not taken extremely seriously. The vast reduction of jobs humans will be required to do, will lead to exponential rises in rates of unemployment and a larger divide between rich and poor.

It is our duty, as a forward thinking society, to think about the real issues that we will ultimately face in the future, and put together an action plan to ensure the future is a better place for all.

Universal Basic Income

Universal Basic Income is a form of social security or welfare regime in which all citizens receive a regular and unconditional sum of money from the government. This ideological view has been backed by key figures such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Stephen Hawking and Bernie Sanders as something that is necessary to combat the real issues of future automation and wealth distribution.

The Universal Basic Income promotes freedom for all, the ability to work if you so desire to earn extra money for yourself and your family, but also the option to not do so if you don’t want to. A study in the 1970’s found a negligible difference in work effort when a basic income was introduced, and a study in Namibia actually found increased levels of economic activity, particularly through the launch of new businesses.

Universal Basic Income, in many ways, helps bridge the ever growing gap between rich and poor, whilst also still providing sufficient financial incentive for people to find work if they wish to. The current system in place in the UK is often counter-intuitive to personal economic growth. With the adoption of oppressive tax brackets and benefits being cut and/or reduced the more hours you work, it is often financially unwise to work longer hours. With the introduction of a Universal Basic Income, this is not the case. Your income entitlement will be given to you, regardless of what you may earn on top of that, ensuring justifiable incentive for the majority to pursue work.

Due to all of the reasons above, I believe a Universal Basic Income is paramount to the success of society in the future, and it is something that I am strongly in favour of.

The Solution

Swift Demand is one of the first applicable projects in regards to Universal Basic Income and will be based upon a cryptocurrency blockchain. Whilst creating such a huge project is no easy feat, this “experiment” hopes to provide a Universal Basic Income through its Swift Token system.

100 Swift Tokens are “air-dropped” per day into a verified account, everyday. This number will remain 100, but will eventually decrease based upon living wage estimates and the value of the coin etc.

Currently the project is in it’s very early stages and is yet to convert to a legitimate blockchain yet, nor is it on an exchange of any kind. But that being said, I firmly believe in the ideology behind the coin and therefore hope it achieves the success it deserves.

580 trades have been made with Swift Tokens within the last 24 hours and almost 13,000,000 tokens have been traded since the inception of the project. It is totally free to sign up and you can start receiving your 100 tokens per day right now! It took me around 5 minutes to sign up, with just a simple verification process to ensure only one account per user.

Although still in it’s extremely early stages, I see the potential in this ecosystem and there’s nothing to lose by signing up and giving it a go. Some business start-ups are utilizing this opportunity to advertise work on the Swift Marketplace in exchange for tokens. You can even buy a cryptocurrency t-shirt for 6,000 tokens!

Swift Tokens may be of little value now, but in the future, if their vision is successful, they could be worth a lot more. If you support the ideology behind a Universal Basic Income I’d encourage you to sign up and give it a go. I’ll leave a link down below, any other questions and I can try my best to answer them.

Swift Demand

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Sapientia Ianua Vitae

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