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Comment by mattkrisiloff | Hacker News Reader

And pilot we're thinking 6 months to a year -- though still to be determined / could change.

I'm afraid with such short duration you'll not be able to observe true effects of basic income on people's behaviors.

It will be more something like "sabbatical" in academia - you can devote a time to some side projects (whether career related or pure leisure), but everything you'll do you'll do with considerations of how your life will proceed once the sabbatical is over and there is no more safety net (assuming rational actors).

The actual study will likely run for 5 years. The shorter pilot will help us refine our research design and mechanics; we don't expect to answer any of our research questions with the pilot.

Thanks for the clarification.

Five years is much better but fundamental issue is still there - "there is a deadline after which the utopia ends".

Did you consider maybe using fewer participants but possibly much longer time-frames (e.g. for the same budget 10x less people but 50 years of BI, or even 20x less participants and 100 years of BI to have safe margin)?

I'm aware this would be hard / impossible to personally see to the full fruition (see e.g. Up series [1]), but even just that 5 years window frame for the observation and research (which you already prepared yourself for) but with participants who could have "piece of mind for the rest of their lives" could radically alter the results of the experiment.

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_Series

Most people will never abandon their job for 5 years of guaranteed income, even if they hate their job.

What happens after the money ends? They have to re-train, search for a job, apply, interview, explain a 5 years gap, climb the office/workshop ladder from the bottom again...

Situation changes radically if the income is guaranteed for life, if they are guaranteed to never have the necessity to work again.

Since a study limited to 5 years can't, by design, satisfy this last condition, it won't be significant at predicting how many people will leave a "hard" job.

> Most people will never abandon their job for 5 years of guaranteed income, even if they hate their job.

Perhaps, when no longer totally living hand-to-mouth, during those 5 years they can e.g. take evening classes and eventually qualify for a better job.

or they'll use the five years to retrain, start their own business, and if doesn't pans out, it's an easily explained gap with valuable experience

What kind of results do you expect from this pilot? I imagine you could get some positive results (i.e. people change behaviour when they get unconditional income), but my expectation would be that not a lot would change. But the problem is that if the result is negative (the behaviour doesn't change), it will be invalid, but most likely misinterpreted by casual observers.

For the short-term pilot, we don't expect to see many behavioral changes--we'll just test the mechanics and refine our research design and outcome measures. We'll begin examining our research questions in earnest with the full 5-year study.

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