Universal Basic Income might not work because the state can just flip a switch and take back your digital money whenever they want.
The paper argues that in a fully automated future, income is merely an 'administrative permission' that creates a massive power asymmetry. It proposes 'Minimum Sovereign Production Units'—individually owned, offline-capable robotic systems—to give citizens a physical, uncancelable basis for survival that the government cannot turn off at a desk.
From Universal Basic Income to Minimum Sovereign Production Units (MSPUs): Productive Autonomy and Power Asymmetry in the Age of Physical Artificial Intelligence
SSRN · 6192200
As AI and robotics displace human labor, Universal Basic Income (UBI) is widely proposed to preserve welfare under technological unemployment. This paper argues that redistribution alone is structurally insufficient when citizens are fully alienated from embodied productive capacity. In digitized welfare regimes, income becomes an administratively mediated permission system-centrally authorized, conditionally continuous, and instantly reversible-creating a new asymmetry of power under full autom