UBI changes work. Makes it better, more democratic and productive. It means the fruits of labor are distributed, not hoarded.

Consider, for example, all of the rewarding and undercompensated work required to care for children and the infirm that happens in communities every day, done largely by women to the detriment of their participation in paid labor. What if men and women had the kind of insurance provided by UBI and could share responsibilities to family and community more equally? UBI isn’t a way to accommodate humans to an algorithmic world. It’s a way to preserve what’s human in our world by expanding human choice within our economic system. Right now, our economic system is rigged to reward the owners of technology and capital while transferring risks to workers and end users. Wealthy corporations have then pumped their gains into our political system, entrenching their advantages and thwarting our interests. The payoff for us has been constant data breaches and the erosion of privacy, contingent schedules and gig work, and dead-end bullshit jobs that make it impossible for people to save toward future goals. UBI could improve the bargaining position of the average worker not in the far-off future, but now. It offers an alternative to low-wage work for long hours to make ends meet. It would give workers the breathing room they need to acquire new skills and to tend to their families—benefits that would redound to the economy as a whole. With access to UBI, workers could also experiment with economic arrangements outside the traditional capital-labor dynamic. Communes like the Federation are one possible iteration, but so are worker cooperatives and other organizational models designed to democratize work and distribute its proceeds more fairly. Finally, UBI could begin to correct the unjustified and enormously unequal distribution of the economic gains from internet technology—built, keep in mind, on the valuable and regenerating resource that is our personal data. There is nothing inevitable about an economy where the best one can say is, “My boss is an app, and I owe it money.” UBI can provide the space for us to commonly imagine a different kind of economy, rewarding innovation while sustaining all of our communities equitably. It’s an opportunity to center perspectives often left out of our economic debates entirely, like those of the black and brown women whose labor underpins much of the wealth generated by our economy. The Magnolia Mother’s Trust, a UBI pilot for low-income families of color in Jackson, Mississippi, is one promising effort. This new initiative will provide 15 families headed by black women with $1,000 each month for a year, more than doubling their annual income. Aisha Nyandoro, whose organization is spearheading the project, explained that it was born of the conviction that “all people have the strength and capacity to be the authors of their own lives.” Konstantinou’s story ends on an uncertain note, which is a perfect reflection of the uncertainty and turbulence of our political and economic moment. We don’t know whether our future will bring us automated pain and, if so, whether UBI will bring us relief. But we know enough today to demand an economy that works for all of us—and UBI might have a role to play in that.