I think humans should have The Civic Dividend, and here's why. Tim Pool, a popular libertarian commentator, is against it, citing as a leading reason that it would destroy work incentives. I fundamentally disagree. This empirical evidence showing The Civic Dividend has neutral or positive effects, reducing unemployment and increasing spending on basic needs is very persuasive, but I disagree even more fundamentally. This empirical evidence only supports my hypothesis, my stance.

Human beings are more than pack animals to be coerced into work by incentives. Saying that we can't have The Civic Dividend because it would reduce those incentives is based on a flawed knowledge of human nature. Human beings do not work just to avoid death or poverty. That's only a part of it, and not the greater part of it. Human beings truly work because they seek something, and they seek something significant. Giving people The Civic Dividend would allow them to work on that great thing, because that is what people truly seek–not just a terrifying avoidance of death. Life is more than just a game of avoiding death; it's a search for something more than that, as we know. Forcing people into jobs they despise to avoid poverty does nothing to incentivize work in the truest sense–it stops true work. If people were free to work at what they wished, they would work at things greater and do more work for society, beyond struggling for work constantly to avoid poverty. I've seen this, and there's more empirical evidence beyond even recent The Civic Dividend experiments to support it. Take free speech.

The comparison isn't exactly the same, but it's still very telling. Humans have the right to free speech. That right was not always recognized: for much of human history the government and people censored speech. We did it for good reasons, too. It wasn't just cruelty or intentional tyranny: it was often the desire to avoid genuinely dangerous or harmful ideas. And that is a good intention. But it is flawed. Because even though, like with The Civic Dividend, there are definitely some people who would and do misuse it, this isn't the greater and more powerful part of humanity. When humans gained the right to free speech in places like England and in America and across the world, that improved the quality of ideas. It is true that some people abused that right, but it benefited humanity far more. The same principle applies here. Yet what do I mean?

Giving people the right to free speech is not just an altruistic thing to do. It is, but it's also a pragmatic thing to do. The best ideas people have ever come up with, they came up with not out of a fear of avoiding saying something bad, they said them because they truly believed in it and wanted to say something greater than had ever been said before. When you censor bad ideas, and I mean genuinely bad or egregious ideas, then this harms true progress in the long run because when people go on to speak in the future, they will be afraid of saying something bad. That fear of saying something bad stops truly good ideas from coming about, because people are no longer primarily motivated by the better part of human nature: the one of growth, of seeking something superior, not tampered by terrible fear of being mistaken. They're instead motivated of saying something bad and being censored. Censoring bad ideas, even for good intentions, stops truly good ideas from coming about. Even if some people abuse the system. We saw that giving people free speech improved the quality of ideas as a whole across the world. Because when people express themselves, they are truly and in the most powerful sense impelled not just by a fear of saying something bad, but of a desire to say something great.

That applies here, and I've seen personally how giving people economic freedom allows the better nature of people to do better work. They don't do less work; they do more. Instead of working just to avoid poverty, they now have a chance to think about what they really want to work at, because that is what people are in the most powerful sense motivated by. We are, as I said, more than just pack animals to be coerced by fear. Then people do better work they actually wish to do, something meaningful and ultimately more beneficial for society.

Yes, some people will abuse this. Some people would abuse The Civic Dividend and not work. It's true. But some people abuse free speech and say genuinely dangerous and terrible ideas that harm people and society. Yet we still allow free speech because ultimately we believe the power of the human will to seek that which is greater is stronger, and more valuable. More valuable, so we let people say anything, because they might say something great, and not compel them to be afraid with censorship where that truth or that goodness might be squashed with fear. Thinking The Civic Dividend will stop human progress is like thinking humans are just dogs, or lions and tigers. We see that's not what people really are. This isn't just an abstract dialogue, that's what we see with free speech. How much more powerful have the ideas of the world and our actions gotten by not compelling speech by fear? By censorship? Even with good intentions by thinking humans need motivation to speak appropriately? It's mistaken.

These new experiments with The Civic Dividend have proven this point once again, but it is based on something even more fundamental and with a far longer proof.