[pessimizer]

That sounds like a automation problem. If you have an office dealing with UBI and unemployment in your neighborhood, the government can literally know their customer. The more people unemployed, the easier it will be to staff them.

These people are pretending they're fighting fraud, when instead they're trying to reinvent government responsibilities/campaigns as passive income sources for 3rd party rent-seekers. Uber for welfare.

[px43]

That sounds neat. I like the ultra-local approach.

The important thing that I think your argument is missing is that everything here is additive. I'm sure the whole Worldcoin team would love it if governance organizations of all sizes, from tiny villages to billion+ population nation states would run UBI programs to take care of their people. The thing is, today, that's not really happening, so there are a number of people working to make it happen from different angles. Maybe all of them fail, maybe one succeeds, maybe a bunch succeed and any given citizen of the world might be entitled to payments from a handful of UBI sources.

Do you think there are better global scale UBI projects and ideas out there, or do you think we should just stop trying to solve this problem?

[JumpCrisscross]

> Do you think there are better global scale UBI projects and ideas out there, or do you think we should just stop trying to solve this problem?

To the degree Worldcoin is doing anything to UBI, it's in tarnishing its brand. (Identity verification is not what's holding it back.)

If they were serious about this as anything but another crypto pump-and-dump, they'd focus on direct foreign aid.

[px43]

Sybil resistance is important in any sort of UBI system that preserves privacy, which may or may not be important. I like the idea of a privacy preserving UBI, and feel like it's definitely a lot more equitable than having it based on existing passports, or bank account numbers, or something like that.

[JumpCrisscross]

> I like the idea of a privacy preserving UBI

This is valid. But even if we reduce scope to a privacy-preserving UBI, nothing Worldcoin solves the core hurdles thereto. It's solving a side problem tangentially related to those involved with a privacy-preserving UBI, but entirely germane to an a16z-style crypto pump-and-dump.

Adjunct: how is Worldcoin privacy preserving? At least with Bitcoin you can plausibly deny ownership of a wallet. In a world on Worldcoin, every traffic stop lets the cops inspect your bank account.