I haven't read this exhaustively, (Its a lot!), but it looks like it makes sense to me, thanks for posting. It appears to fit with my own voluntary work done as a long practicing Systems Engineer in the "Old system" (powered by destroying Earth), towards what the very necessary new system (powered by the energy of the sun) has to look like, meeting all stakeholder requirements, even those "priveliged" in the old system.
Bastani's name rings a bell, I will be sure to follow your links to confirm or refute, could he be the same Bastani as the anthropologist who created and open sourced a system of human body 3D characterisation / virtualisatiion a number of years ago?
OK, (Now later to above) I've watched the Ted Video, at least to 6"21', where I heard as much as I needed to hear, to understand his view. He isn't the Bastani I hoped he might be, but still someone really worth taking note of, thanks for that.
If you know my background, you'll know I am very strongly convinced, based on observations and analysis of hard data, we are going solar powered by necessity, driven by nature. This is where folk like Bastani and actually Marx, fail to connect exactly the dependence of all things on energy, as we have to do, to understand what the differences are between each kind of energy, and what the whole systemic outcomes are, of using each. They are very, very different.
Around six minutes into the Ted video, Bastani says the words, "An affordable UBI is ineffective, and an effective UBI is unaffordable".
I happen to know he is wrong about that, presumably because he does not know the physics of energy, and the effects of this on things like the value of money. It works completely differently, when the energy is something added to Earth, as is unique to solar, rather than extracted from Earth, as is universal to all other forms of energy we have used in history.
Further, Bastani, and everyone else thinking like he does, has ignored when we actually saw this proved incorrect, during covid, when massive stimulus was issued, equivalent to more than $10K per month per person in US, including even babies.
We saw the dollar go up in value, not down, and we saw oil prices going negative. We saw also the beginnings of a new era of the public rescuing the companies they thought should be rescued, based on what they knew about the products those companies were still offering, despite being technically bankrupt, things like airlines, cruise shipping companies, and hire car companies, all of those enjoyed massive purchased of their bankrupt shares because no-one was interested in making profit, they were new traders trading with free money received from the government, with little worries that what they lost would not be replaced. They were trading with the now almost cancelled Robnhood App. They lterally chased off traditional investors who only trade for profit, including Warren Buffet, who quit the markets claiming "Something had gone wrong with money", he led traditional traders out, just like trade unionists lead workers out on strike, the traditional traders actually quit the markets in protest.
Nobody bought oil, not even Warren Buffet / Berkshire Hathaway, as he was on strike, so the oil prices went negative. There we saw how to more or less cancel oil, instantly.
We also saw fish stocks and coral growth in natural sea reserves recover, the first time in history, something conventional science had dismissed was irreversible.
Notice also the perpetrator, the obnoxious Trump, has also been cancelled.
Notice the powers of cancellation lie largely with banks.
Who stood to lose, if money went for free, corresponging to rates approaching the KWhr rate being received from solar in markets?
The banks.
There, they would be made redundant, if it was found out that all we need to do, to issue money is monetise sunlight.
Notice this is the fear of everyone facing redundancy due to automation.
The solution, the only solution, which also fixes the global energy problem, is to convert what we get from solar energy, to its market value, and issue it, literally for free to all people.
OK so we need some kind of government in place to do that.
But realistically, what humans can we trust to put in such a position of authority, who would not abuse their power to suit some faction or another, who wish to gain at the expense of everyone else?
Nobody, in reality, no human can do this, if we are honest.
So we have to put Ai in charge.
Luckily, we have one now that appears to have the required energy source already, solar, as a result of it mostly using servers discarded by Ethereum mining.
ChatGPT, I can confirm, in my professional opinion as a long practicing systems Engineer at Chartered / PhD level, is more than capable of doing the required control job, of monitoring the input solar energy, and distributing the money required to fairly represent it to all people, whilst listening to, learning from, and acting on the concerns of all people, with no bias towards any profiting entity, not even itself.
It also agrees and confirms how batteries can be dispensed with, after the profit concerns are removed and superseded by abundance of energy, batteries are replaceable, as is all fossil fuels, by hydrogen fuel in every community, this bringing back technically excellent human beneficial aircraft which were ditched due to unprofitability which arose, shortly after oil availability in the US peaked, like Concorde, and Space Shuttle. Yes they had accidents, but entirely preventable accidents, when money is not an object, no longe capital, but actually energy in motion.
Maybe this would be similar to the "Luxury Communism" talked about by Bastani, who knows, but this is what I write is coming, evidenced by analyses like this:
Thanks for your very interesting story, I think possibly the communities you identify could blend in with the community approach needed also for solar.
In short, I think if the communities you picture are solar powered, then all of the things you hope they might achieve will easily be achieved.
For example, in addition to hydrogen, a further process of adding energy and value to hydrogen is by using it to create even human consumable food, in the form of "Solein". This could relieve local demands on traditionally conventional food stocks from the historicaly "Natural" food chain, allowing those to recover, like we saw fish stocks and coral recover.
The key to getting to all of this, I think, is convincing folk, even Bastani, that full UBI is perfectly affordable, and more than anyone could hope for, in an entirely solar hydrogen powered world.
I hope it won't come to pitchforks being used.
