The Big Way Out

Speculation on the Roles of Social Media, Finance, and Responsibility with Universal Basic Income

 The Way Out

Recently, I wrote a piece of speculative fiction about how Universal Basic Income (UBI) may affect peoples' lives in the near future. I admit starting the effort not having a strong position for UBI, but I liked how several aspects of the story worked in support of a UBI to address certain social issues and concerns. The plot is fairly straightforward: A young woman from a broken home, who has struggled with education and steady employment, is kicked out. With the benefit of social media fused with social finance, and an implied social responsibility, her becoming homeless engages a safety net and leads her to observe a few different lifestyles and their approaches to budgeting while obtaining the resources she needs to live a productive life. The confluence of social media, social finance, social responsibility, and basic income piqued my interest. As the story emerged, these four concepts converged, somehow striking a peculiar balance that alleviated my initial quandries.

I am not an expert on UBI, and I am not advocating for or against a UBI or other social-driven policies. This article is speculation on how a UBI may be combined with various technologies, data models, and responsibilities to enable some people to help other people during difficult times. Most of what follows suggests technologies and services that don't quite yet exist. But, they could. Perhaps the combination could be of benefit to all.

First, if you'd like to read the story, you may find it here - The Big Way Out - it's available on a user-set price, so feel free to take a free copy.

The story begins with Darby being kicked out of the house. She is homeless, jobless, no money to her name, a few personal affects, and temporary use of a vehicle. Today, someone in this position may have a friend or family to fall back on, or be aware of temporary lodging. They may post a plea for help online, if they are able and familiar. Maybe someone offers to help. Or, they may be left out on the street.

How could social media come into play to help a homeless person?

Social Media

It's easy to guess one solution to solving homelessness is giving someone a room. At any given time and place there is likely unoccupied residential space. It could be someone's second (or beyond) home, a vacation property, an unoccupied rental, a half-empty hotel, an extra guest room in your own home. And before you recoil in horror at someone or something arbitrarily doling out that space, don't worry - That's not going to be the suggestion. The two points to consider are that space and need coexist and, in limited circumstances, may overlap.

Social media is, among other things, a construct of intentional relationships. We're connected in one venue because we went to the same school, hang out together, share a common interest, exchange services, or otherwise wound up as friends. We're associated with each other in other venues because we work together or belong to the same organization. In addition some relationships can be unintentional, such as those inferred by indirect association and geography. Your sibling's friends, the neighbors you barely know, the leaders at a local social club or church where an acquintance participates. You may not directly participate in these other networks, but they are nonetheless relatable by degrees. In a time of need, the breadth of these relationships may be traversed to identify suitable providers that best meets a need based on the provider's willingness or agreement to share responsibility. However, simply connecting nodes together, grouped by a few common threads, isn't enough. Most don't want to feel obligated to help, or penalized if they don't, and, as anyone who has opened their home to a stranger knows, there are a number of risks and potential for negative outcomes based on a variety of other factors. Further, the recipient may not want to accept such support for reasons of pride, embarassment, or a desire for self-sufficiency. It's important to understand why the need exists.

If you read (or suffered) the story, you should be able to answer these questions: Why is Darby homeless? Because her father kicked her out of the house. Why was she kicked out of the house? Because she quit college and could not hold down a job. Why could she not hold down a job? Because she needed to take responsibility and was not prepared to. Why was she not prepared? Because her parents were themselves ill-prepared to raise a child, divorced, leaving Darby to languish in her studies. While her parents contributed to her present crisis, her father took responsibility by acknowledging both he and his daughter needed help. But, from who?

When considering social networks and factoring in unintentional relationships and their real-world status, not just an online happiness scale, it could be thought of as evershifting and overlapping Venn diagrams. When connected together, observed (versus reported) real world events can promote unintentional relationships into intentional ones. So long as at least one person demonstrates social responsibility, or one person or the situation itself demonstrates the need, these various networks can shift to support that individual. We can observe this in the case of interventions, when family, friends, many times a mediator or counselor, and concerned parties come together in support of someone unable to handle a difficult problem.

Social media, when paired with real-world negative and positive pressures , and constrained by responsible use of sensitive information, could be an incredible force to dynamically and rapidly construct a safety net for, to intervene on behalf of, a person in need.

When Darby gets into the car, realizing she has no home and no where to go, she checks this futuristic version of social media: It already knows she is homeless because her father indicated she no longer lives with him. And so the question is posed: Do you need a home?

Yes.

Who is responsible for providing one?

Social Responsibility

Social responsibility is defined as holding yourself and others responsible for actions and outcomes of actions, the information sent and received, and the tools and technologies used in any conduct. Responsibility does not include response to imbalance, including justice, reciprocation, equity redistribution, social scoring, or any other remedial action. It is the moral framework in which a given society conducts itself, including the tools with which that conduct takes place. Put another way, it is something satisfied through physical interpersonal relationships, not by technology or legislation. So, at least in my version of the future, don't look for the Social Responsibility feature in your augmented reality implant.

Countries and cultures have differences in values and beliefs, and the future is envisioned to show that each country and culture may appropriately celebrate and promote its respective values while enjoying future connectivity and modernization, and not make any assumptions about a dystopian or homogenized culture. To a very limited extent, the implied future state shows this difference, with subtle representation in how the characters interact: They are people of distinct cultures, with different attitudes, and it's entirely possible to be responsible, maintain unique qualities, and respectfully represent one culture within the boundaries of another, without one or the other being homogenized or marginalized. In this way, Social Responsibility is specific to a given society, inclusive of the primary and secondary cultures that reside within a specific geography and/or country.

The safety net in the story is visualized through an augmented reality version of the previously mentioned Venn diagrams, referred to as the rings interface. Once Darby becomes homeless, the unintentional relationships inherited by living with her father are pushed out. A temporary residence is assigned with a former high school acquaintance, which she has no choice in rejecting. On her way to the temporary residence, she is guided to select from a few available options based on her situation and compatibility. Her safety net is composed by evaluating these various social media and real world networks, and data regarding the less obvious factors so far discussed - the why's of her situation. She is free to choose or dismiss the options as she prefers, with some nudging away from less compatible cohabitants, and encouragement towards more compatible cohabitants. Because information about her real world situation is available to authorized viewers, things she might otherwise not share or at least be honest about with her friends, the solution to her needing a home is constructed to include the underlying causes, not just the immediate practical need of a roof over her head.

If a person is broke, needs a home, and also suffering from a behavioral or medical problem, which home would be recommended? Who needs to be present, if anyone at all? Who would take them in?

Consider for a moment a master configuration of all your online profiles. If an option was included to open your home for a few hours so that someone could make a pit-stop, take a load off, take a nap, and it was limited to a particular type of audience and time frame, would you do it? Current or past co-workers? Old school mate? Friend of a friend? Church member? Your child's friend's parent? A member of a similar or trusted profession? Someone with a similar experience, good or bad? And what if, in accepting that request, you were provided with an appropriate dossiere on the request and circumstances, and any needed stand-by support? Would you enable such an option? Same question but for a longer period of time, and with additional support? Would you enable such an option?

Would you help someone in their time of need, if it would be of statistically insignificant risk to you or anyone else living with you?

In the story, Darby is paired with a former high school classmate, Veronique, who provides her with temporary shelter. In this case, only a few hours, while the long-term living arrangement is coordinated. This is Darby's first real exposure to a peer being autonomous (or, at least, semi-autonomous). Veronique is in graduate school, lives in a small though nice studio apartment with all the modern amenities, and it's implied she volunteers for temporary layovers. Darby did not reach out for help, her observed need was paired with another who was willing to help. While Darby rues what seems like a nice lifestyle, it's soon clear that Veronique, who shows herself to be diligent with her finances, is perturbed by Darby's immaturity. Then again, Veronique was only paired with Darby to give her a temporary stop, and in so doing educates Darby in one way a person may manage their budget.

It's one thing to open your door to someone for a few hours, and quite another to invite them in and share a living space. Anyone who has done so knows it comes laden with expectations, limitations, possible risks, and, a desire for guarantees. Are you going to drive each other nuts? Are they going to pilfer your silverware? Are you able to accommodate a medical or behavioral condition, or a disability? Can this person pay their share of the rent, pay for food, and any other reasonable expense? If things don't work out, can you get them out? What do you really know about this individual?

Yolanda is a hard working and no-nonsense young woman who is paired with Darby because in addition to needing a house, Darby needs a mentor to help finish her transition into adulthood. How Yolanda chose to take on this responsibility is not described, but there is a suggestion that Darby's involvement with the program comes with an expectation for Darby to become a mentor for someone else at a later date. Yolanda helps Darby get settled, gives her some initial tips on an alternate way of managing her budget, and clearly lays out her personal expectations. It is also implied Yolanda had some degree of help in preparing for this.

Darby needed a home. She also needed a path to becoming a productive and responsible adult. Veronique may have been able to help with the first, while Yolanda was better suited to help with both. 

An important dimension of social responsibility is trust. You not only need to have a high level of trust in some people, you also need to be able to trust the technologies by which sensitive information is shared and conveyed. For example: If you happen to use a budget planning tool, would you take a screenshot of that and share it with your friends via an app or website? Would you do the same with your tax returns? And, yet, it is that level of trust that is sometimes needed between two people, and the technologies that connect them, to mentor someone about a topic involving sensitive information, be it financial or medical or otherwise.

Yolanda introduces Darby to an instruction book that documents what comes next. The book begins by acknowledging that Darby was kicked out of the house on purpose because her father recognized he needed help. Her father returns to retrieve the car the next day, and Darby confronts him about not understanding her, while he admits his recognizing he needed help. He took responsibility, knowing Darby needed to do likewise, and both Veronique and Yolanda showed responsibility by becoming involved.

 Social Finance

In this future of social media fused with augmented reality, and a broadly accepted sense of social responsibility, comes privileged social discussions. These are the discussions you have with a doctor, a lawyer, a priest, a family or friends about personal details that you wouldn't publicly share. You trust these parties because of some stated responsibility and alleged legal protection. But, let's be realistic, there have been enough leaks and hacks nowadays to know that such arrangements are tenuous at best. You really have to trust that person, not only in the moment, but in the long term. This isn't an ephemeral trust, it is a committed trust. Yet, having this type of trust need not be risky.

As introduced in an earlier article, Identity as a Biohazard, I suggested we could individually authorize consumption of privileged information, and just as easily redact that authorization. If I have a secret, and I share it with you and simultaneously give you some authorization to see that secret, and later take that authorization away, then, yes, you know the secret, but what value does it have to you? You can't sell it to any legitimate source because any recipient would need an authorization that permits that entity to hold and transfer that property. While leaked information is no longer private, it is possible to solve for trust. Privacy is important and necessary but, as anyone in security and quantum physics knows, the moment you observe something the state changes. A lot of times private information isn't as private as one may think. Contemporary services, especially those billed for anonymity and security, invite scrutiny. Privacy winds up being temporal, meaning you trust the other party for a duration of time.

Trust regarding information is extended with the expectation the other party will preserve that trust until retracted. In this case, if a random person possessed a lurid detail of your life, what value would it have without trust? This could be thought of as authorization for an attribute accompanied by a certified attribute source. Assuming a trust mechanism can be enforced, who is going to publish this value, use it as evidence, other than as a source of gossip? As far as an investigator is concerned, it could have been fabricated. Information without authorization is anonymous, it is hard to verify without corresponding factual evidence. In this way, the anonymous source providing anonymously procurred information in your preferred news source becomes no more believable than what is currently running on Disney+. An anonymous source could procure an authorization for that information and supply it to the journalist, thereby validating the integrity of the information without revealing the person, and afford consumers confidence in its origin, however inaccurate it may be. Otherwise, a source producing anonymous evidence would be unacceptable. When the anonymous source produces some kind of evidence, and when it is accompanied by an authorization claim, this is akin to the owner signing their name across that bit of information specifically for another's consumption for a specific reason, and possibly without revealing the owner's name. Privacy can be maintained by abstracting ownership, and trust can be enforced by authorization.

I'm reminded of this every time I get into a discussion with someone about financial budgets. They extend trust by sharing their financial details, trusting that I won't use those details beyond the context of our discussion. This situation is represented in the story by Darby sharing her financial details with both Veronique and Yolanda, and receiving two entirely different types of advice as far as how to budget. There is no hesitation or pause in sharing this information because the authorization to view it is everything. That doesn't change people's reactions, such as in Veronique's case when she is startled that Darby has no savings and received no money from her father after being booted from the house, or in Darby's jealously at Veronique's success. Darby's information is of no practical use to Veronique. Even if she wanted to gossip about it, without that authorization, there is no reason not to think she fabricated it. It could only ever be rumor, gossip. And that is all.

Social Finance is the sharing of financial information with a non-transacting partner in a trusted and time-bound authorized state. Like, talking with a tax-preparer, or CPA, or your friend about your finances, except you take everything with you at the end of the conversation leaving no physical or digital trace that the conversation took place. The difference in this case is the combination of Social Responsibility and the consistent use of technology to authorize and redact access to that information.

Introducing different ways of budgeting was meant to show reality: People have different approaches and processes to how they choose to handle their assets because they are unique people in different circumstances in different cultures, and no single product or workflow will meet every need. Depending on how you were raised, you may or may not have been trained in managing a budget. The augmented reality system used in the story includes a variety of small applications, which Veronique suggests Darby enable while she is visiting because they best align with Veronique's budget strategy, and, this is an instance where social responsibility and social finance intertwine: Most people won't be so fickle with a friend vising their house about the cost of turning on a light switch. In this situation, the cost of every activity is annotated. Darby doesn't realize this event was part of Veronique's socially responsible contribution: To introduce Darby to the idea of budgeting.

Veronique budgeted a la cart, where every small activity and purchase was recorded individually. Yolanda introduces Darby to an alternate method of budgeting, a more straightforward and simplistic combination of data and apps, not quite table d'hote (the opposite of a la cart), reducing the numbers to an easy to recognize format of income, commitments, and outflow. She helps Darby situate her budget so that she doesn't run a deficit, and then suggests the consequences when she does.

As different as Veronique's and Yolanda's approaches are, they are both working within the same framework to educate Darby, Veronique with a more extreme version, and Yolanda with a more practical version, so that the basic concepts are at least introduced. In the story, blame the parents for that lack of training. In your experience, did someone explain budgeting to you in your formative years by relating their experience, or did they hide the financial pressures and burdens in an effort to over simplify the explanation and excuse any findancial concern?

Darby, a socially and emotionally stunted young woman has no qualms about sharing her personal information with a distance acquaintance and absolute stranger because she knows she has total control over her data, even when that data reads zero.

And, as Yolanda suggests, and Darby later realizes, having no money means living on Government Noodles - and what could be worse than that?

 Universal Basic Income

As previously mentioned, I am no expert on Universal Basic Income (UBI), and have no direct experience with financial support though I do have direct experience with providing social support to those in need. I recognize people need help in a timely fashion, and I think in our various pursuits to achieve greatness in our respective industries we have the opportunity to help those less fortunate or who have fallen on hard times by using a combination of the services we are creating with the services that exist. Doing everything on a single platform, or throwing money at a problem may treat one or two symptoms, but not the problem. We are able to treat the problem by combining efforts, services, and real-world support.

One part of the story that didn't make it past the editorial cycle was a discussion Darby had with an old friend. While at Yolanda's, she tries to place a call, and in the published version nobody answers. In the original version, her friend does answer, and Darby observes what the future has in store for an unproductive adult: A life of base entertainment, simple pleasures, and meager living conditions. There is no reason to think there is any future apart from that if the individual doesn't change. For space reasons, trying to keep the story shorter, I opted for the Government Noodles line as a least comfortable threshold to which all should be entitled.

There is no direct mention of UBI in the story, only an expectation. Yolanda refers to it as an allowance, and Veronique makes no direct mention of it albeit indicates it may play a part because she qualified for a better apartment given her scholastic pursuits. In this way, UBI is represented as an allowance for an individual to be able to care for themselves, or recieive care, at an essential level, with many elements of support accompanying it. The criteria are not fully explored in the story. There are many people with problems that cannot be solved with the carte blanche statement of shape-up, get a job that the story suggests. Hopefully, obvious as it is to me, it is not impossible to solve their problems in a slightly different way.

I started the story having a somewhat negative reaction to UBI, and I finished it realizing the UBI didn't really matter as much as the other elements; Social Media, Social Responsibility, Social Finance, when used in concert, could give significant meaning to a UBI that I think the proponents of UBI may be after. 

The Way Up

Okay, I admit it: I like dystopian science fiction. I like crushing the world on my intellectual boot heel, lifting it up, and seeing what kind of mess I made. Check out Vore for a recent example. Imagining the destruction of something is a lot of fun; imagining a hopeful outcome can be more difficult. Consider a looming technology singularity: Do you think the result will be positive or negative? Here is my attempt at a positive outcome, Ourselves, albeit it's still somewhat unsettling.

The Big Way Out is my attempt at a positive future even with some hints of a dystopian vibe, such as companies being automated by artificial intelligence, making repetitive labor obsolete and thereby limiting job opportunities. Darby's dad makes mention of this in his effort to get her to learn about her autonomous future, and in the end of the story she is pursuing want-ads for artificial-intelligence tuning jobs. Another unpublished part of the story is that Darby is hired on at a small manufacturer to tune AIs, quits again, has an argument with Yolanda, and finds another similar job, except the manager is more supportive of her. Darby winds up excelling in this small company, eventually becoming one of the company's leaders.

The title of the story, The Big Way Out, is meant to capture the situation when someone thinks all is lost, and how that person encounters safeguards using a combination of technology and people. It ends with the premise that there is more, a way up from where they are.

Isn't raising people up within our community the entire point? Well, anyway, in my version of the future, it is.

Summary

Social Media, Social Finance, Social Responsibility, and Universal Basic Income may be combined to form a safety net for people in need, with respect to everyone's privacy, in support of small, mid-sized, and large business, such that all who desire it may succeed.

It doesn't have to be fiction.