The Time for Basic Income Has Come. An Open Letter to the Heads of Tech Corporations and Financial Institutions of the World

I address the leaders of technological progress, the heads of corporations, visionaries, and investors who, with their ideas and resources, have fueled the tremendous leap in technology of recent years.

The scale of the changes you have brought about cannot be overstated. Humanity has already entered the Era of Surplus. Productive capacities, amplified by artificial intelligence, robotics, biotechnologies, and new computing, allow us to create goods, services, and knowledge in volumes far exceeding current needs. The economic model we traditionally call capitalism has so far been built on scarcity of resources, labour, and information. Today, the shortage of goods is increasingly being created artificially: it is upheld by institutions that simply cannot keep up with the pace of technological development. The number of people who are no longer needed as labour is growing rapidly. This trend cannot be stopped; it is changing our reality so profoundly that it demands a new social contract. You are one of its main parties.

So far, there is no clear answer to the question: how will ordinary people support themselves and their families when their labour ceases to be a necessary condition of production? Technology can provide well-being for everyone, but for now, only a narrow circle enjoys the fruits of progress, and the gap between what is possible and the actual standard of living is widening. Such a situation destabilises society and, consequently, undermines stability even for those at the top.

Almost eight billion people today hold devices that show them every day: technology works wonders, wealth multiplies, but their own lives do not change or become only harder. Mass poverty against a backdrop of abundance is a direct path to social explosions that will not spare any country or any corporation. Basic income becomes the only way to preserve capitalism, to modify it into something more sustainable and adequate for the times. We will gain billions of solvent people, ready to learn new things and realise their hidden potential.

For the first time in history, discussions about guaranteed income have ceased to be an abstract dream — the modern technologies, whose foundations you have laid, make such a system practically feasible. Real experiments — from Alaska and Canada's Mincome to pilots in Stockton and Finland — have shown that guaranteed income does not suppress motivation, but reduces stress, improves health, and boosts children's academic performance. Opponents often point to the risk of inflation or abuse, but the data from these projects do not confirm negative scenarios.

In its economic nature, basic income in the 21st century is dividends from digital and technological rent. Platforms are already extracting enormous value from the very presence of humanity on the net. Part of that value can be returned directly to people. It is this rent that can serve as the initial source of funding, without waiting for future growth from the AI and automation boom. Later, the funding source for BI will be the accelerated growth of the economy after the main constraints are removed — low consumer demand and the uncertainty of the majority about tomorrow. Then a natural flow of business activity will emerge, which only needs not to be hindered — to ease regulation, move to a "cheap" digital state. Business will be the first to benefit from all this — that is why it should voluntarily and proactively support basic income.

There is another undoubted advantage. As basic income becomes established worldwide, states will be able to shrink their tax systems — basic income will take over their functions. It is not added to existing social programmes but replaces them — subsidies, tax deductions, targeted assistance — creating a single transparent mechanism. It will be much more convenient for businesses to deal with one regular payment that implements social policy than with a multitude of taxes and a bureaucratic system, cumbersome and inefficient. This transition will happen naturally when basic income demonstrates all its benefits to states. There will be no point in duplicating it with old taxation, and business will shed that burden.

The infrastructure for distributing basic income already exists. The largest platforms have identification tools, digital wallets, communication networks, and an audience of billions of users. The task is to create a transparent system where every inhabitant of the planet can verify their identity — not for total control, but to receive their share of digital dividends, without bureaucracy and intermediaries. The architecture of such a network can be designed so that double payments and abuses are technically impossible. What is lacking is only coordinated action by those who manage the key infrastructure and the political will, which also largely depends on you.

The first step is to start a direct dialogue between representatives of financial and technological capital, scientists, and politicians to reach a consensus — that basic income is inevitable. Be the first to proclaim this to the whole world and breathe great hope into it. There is already a precedent: in Davos, more than four hundred of the world's richest people signed an open letter calling for higher taxes on super-profits to reduce poverty. But tax mechanisms are an outdated way of redistribution that does not solve the problems of low demand and the degradation of human capital. We need precisely basic income as the foundation of the entire economic architecture.

To start such a dialogue, I propose holding an international forum in Georgia, a hospitable country at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, with a developed digital environment and a government open to modern solutions. It is a platform with low pilot costs, allowing for a clean experiment over 12 months without the data distortions typical of large economies. The goal is to develop a framework agreement between leading platforms, states, and civil society on the introduction of unconditional basic income as a system‑forming element of the global digital order. Georgia would be the ideal place for the first nationwide pilot project on basic income.

I am one person without billion‑dollar budgets or influential lobbyists. All I have is the power of an idea whose time has come. That is why I also appeal to the general public. Share this message, translate it into different languages, discuss it. Only a massive public demand can turn the idea of basic income into a practical task for business and governments. The louder the voice of millions sounds, the harder it will be to ignore it.