The principal book on basic income is out now!

In October 2025, my book "Basic Income: The Path to Abundance and Freedom" was published. This is not the first work on basic income: profound scientific studies and popular books have been published before. However, in them, basic income is considered only as one of the modern socio-economic practices, an element of the state's progressive policy. I see in BI something more — a decisive tool for the complete transformation of society.

We are on the threshold of the most profound social changes in human history: they have been prepared by scientific and technological progress. It is not just about the progress of technology, which had already become proverbial by the middle of the 20th century, but about the emergence of a new — digital global space. The appearance of the train, the car, and the telephone did not have such an impact on human capabilities and their social connections as the Internet, social networks, and AI. The social consequences of these inventions are extremely poorly studied because science cannot keep up with the progress of digitalization.

But we know enough to draw reliable general conclusions. The new digital world contains solutions to all the main social contradictions: primarily, between the poor and the rich, and between production and consumption. But these solutions will not be realized by themselves. They are hindered by the dominant socio-economic practices, born of a completely different world.

Digitalization and classical capitalism are phenomena of a different nature; they try to subjugate each other, but at the same time, the former represents the future, while the latter represents an outdated reality. Basic income is ingenious precisely because it allows capitalism to naturally and painlessly evolve into a new system, the foundation of which will be not industry, but the digital economy, science, and the creativity of materially independent people.

Historically, the range of goods that people use free of charge has constantly expanded. From the moment humans emerged from the animal world, they had only the fruits of nature at their disposal: wild plants and animals, water, air, sunlight. As society became more complex, more and more products appeared that were perceived at that level of development as surplus and were appropriated by the elite. Gradually, the "surpluses" became part of the indispensable consumption fund for everyone, giving way to a new "surplus product," which gave rise to an even wealthier upper class.

For most of human history, inequality was a companion to all material and social progress. But this could only continue until production began to develop at a pace exceeding human needs. The moment came when advertising was required to sell industrial products — there were too many goods. At the same time — by the middle of the 20th century — the social state emerged in the most developed countries. The range of free goods was supplemented by free secondary education, healthcare, social benefits, and privileges. People's welfare increased sharply, and with it, human capital, i.e., a person's ability to manifest their natural mental and volitional capacities.

People have developed many new needs, related not only to comfort but also to more complex self-realization. At the beginning of the 21st century, production is capable of satisfying them all, but the old system of income distribution, inherited from the Era of Surplus, leaves 90% of people without the "commodity" needed to obtain these goods, i.e., money.

As automation grows, people's wages are increasingly lagging behind the supply of goods. Under these conditions, money, backed by an unlimited mass of goods, turns into mere conventional signs through which people are supposed to satisfy their needs. However, the system is structured in such a way that it considers money a scarce resource that cannot be given away "for free"! We have reached an impasse from which there is no "classical" way out, as prescribed by economics textbooks.

Basic income is not at all a measure to improve the social system. Such a narrow view only discredits this great idea and prevents it from making its way into the public consciousness. BI is a real panacea, and now all conditions are ripe for it. The main idea of my book is: we are at the most opportune time for introducing a guaranteed income for all. We don't just need experiments: there have been enough of them, and that stage has been passed. The book contains many arguments in favor of the fact that BI is a perfectly and comprehensively justified idea, ready for implementation.

The next step is a workable BI project that can be launched right now and later expanded to a global scale. The contours of this project are also outlined in the book. My proposal differs from those previously expressed in that I do not rely on the state as the main agent for implementing BI. The digital world itself, in the person of its innovative businessmen, is capable of realizing the dream of universal unconditional sufficiency.

When the individual and their rights are paramount, all international, political, and social conflicts will cease, because the class and national divide will either disappear or fade into the background. It is impossible to imagine more fertile ground for the development and prosperity of business, and many visionary entrepreneurs already realize this.

The book "Basic Income: The Path to Abundance and Freedom" teaches us not to be afraid to invest in a common future, citing the example of the most successful IT businessmen of our time. Basic income is a magic wand that will turn the economics of scarcity, born in the 19th century, into futuronomy — an era of abundance of material goods and spiritual opportunities. At the end of the book, I present the world's first Universal Declaration of Basic Income — a document expressing the essence of the most peaceful and profound revolution in human history.

Georgy Smelin