[flashm]

That's it. Everyone is too busy trying to make money, which is fair enough. Even open source to an extent. What's the first thing programmers say when someone says how do I get a programming job and earn loads of cheddar writing apps? 'Do some open source and get it on your CV'.

No one is going to build this stuff unless it has some sort of personal gain for them. There's nothing wrong with that at all, it's just the way things work.

[mbrock]

If I had a basic income, I would spend my days working on exactly this type of thing, with a bit of consulting on the side to earn travel money or whatever.

[flashm]

You've proven my point. If you had money on a tree, you'd do it, but as you don't (as far as I know!) you won't.

I would love to have a basic income, or an endless supply or money and be able to work on what I want, when I want. At the moment I'm not quite there, so have to find the odd day or two per week to work on more interesting 'stuff' than paying bills.

[mbrock]

I wasn't trying to disprove your point!

It's interesting that there is this huge contingent of programmers who have a picture of what they would do if they had basic income, and that that picture is very different from what they do at their "day jobs."

It's part of why I think basic income experiments are so very interesting. Just this question of what would people do? What new things would happen? How would software change? How would everything else change?

[flashm]

Ah sorry that's the way it read, probably my comprehension!

It's a very interesting field. I'm not waiting around for it to happen though, especially in the UK which is a very conservative country in the main.

I'm actively building my business so that I can take a back seat, or sell it within 3 years and thus spend more time solving different problems (that may or may not have a monetary end-game for me).

At the moment they are just side projects!

[Godel_unicode]

Really? What value are you assuming "basic income" would take on?

[mbrock]

Well, enough to live a frugal lifestyle. It's an established concept, if you're not familiar:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income