13. How We Begin
13.3 UBI, Culturepoints, Education
13.3.1 Universal Basic Income
Let us look at a concrete combination of futurities from this book, and at what their implementation might look like, in order to illustrate this general process more clearly.
I will use as an example the combination of the futurities for a universal basic income, culturepoints, and a better education system, and whether it would be possible to implement them in Germany.
In this example the UBI, which, thanks to efficiency gains, costs less money than the systems it replaces, provides the money needed to implement culturepoints and a better education system.
For countries such as the United States, where switching to a UBI would not save money because they do not have a sufficiently dense network of social benefits for it to replace, this example is not applicable. There, money would have to be saved in some other way or additional revenue brought in (for example through restructuring the healthcare system).
The UBI is intended to replace the entire social system, with the exception of health and long-term care insurance (the healthcare system is its own social system). So this is about state benefits that cover basic needs. Anything beyond that, which offers better protection against specific risks (unemployment, inability to work, property damage, ...) or builds up savings (pensions, life insurance), should take the form of voluntary insurance. The state can set rules and conditions for that, but it has no place in the system of mandatory social contributions.
Change in government spending through switching to a UBI: I am not trying to break down the figures for Germany’s current social system here in order to compare it with the UBI. That goes beyond my expertise and would exceed the scope of this chapter. In the course of the adaptation, the following data would have to be compiled for the financing and design of the UBI:
Current state:
• How much money does the state spend in total on the social system, excluding health and long-term care insurance?[71]
• How much money does the state generate from income tax and how much from social insurance contributions (excluding health and long-term care insurance)?
• How much money flows into the social system from other sources
(= costs - income tax - contributions)?
• Which groups of people receive state support, and how much does each person receive in total?
• population (85 million)
• UBI spending (set the amount, then population × amount)
• other savings resulting from the UBI (for example by charging school fees, through which the UBI for children is balanced out)
• Where would groups of people have significantly less money available after the social system is switched to the UBI? Are there social benefits that would have to remain separately in place to avoid unfairness (I assume this isn’t necessary, but it has to be examined in detail)? If so, what additional costs for the state would that mean?
• With what fixed income tax rate117 do we generate enough revenue to cover, together with the other sources, the spending of the new system (UBI spending + any remaining social benefits - other savings)?
To check plausibility, give people a concrete sense of it, and provide a basis for discussion, the tax burden in the new system (fixed income tax, from which the UBI is deducted) should now be compared with the previous system (variable income tax depending on tax class and income level, plus social insurance contributions).118
Which income groups would be made significantly better or worse off by the switch to the UBI than they are now?
Groups that are made worse off will oppose the system change. Is their worse position justified because the previous system was unfair? A good justification would help legitimize the change. Or should the level of the UBI and the income tax rate be chosen differently?
Groups that are made better off will support the system change, but they also mean less revenue for the state. Is their better position justified because the previous system was unfair? Or should the level of the UBI and the income tax rate be chosen differently?
Another reason to have an overview of which groups of people would receive how much more or less money under the UBI than before is that these are additional changes to society that come with side effects. We cannot realistically experiment in advance with replacing the social system. So in preparation, we should do our best to estimate the consequences of these changes.
We can summarize the collected information from the “Current State” and “UBI State” lists with this calculation:
other sources = “current social system costs excluding health and long-term care insurance” - “current income tax revenue” - “current social insurance revenue (excluding health and long-term care insurance)”
surplus = “UBI income tax revenue” + “other sources” - “UBI state spending” + “other savings”
In addition to this calculated surplus, further positive effects will arise over time. More economic growth through greater motivation among citizens to improve their income. More volunteer work, since people’s basic needs are secured. More entrepreneurship, since people are willing to take more risks. More people devoting themselves to their artistic passion or pursuing alternative ways of living.
But all of these are effects outside the social system itself, difficult to model, and we therefore do not take them into account in our cost calculation.
The social system is the state’s largest source of both income and expenditure. Even small percentage improvements can therefore generate a very large surplus in absolute terms. In Germany, we are talking here about costs on the order of €1 trillion per year, a little less than 50% of the state’s total budget. By setting the UBI level and the income tax rate, we determine at what efficiency gain the line lies between the population being overall worse or better off compared with the previous social system. I think a 10% efficiency gain is a very conservative estimate for that.
We take this conservative estimate as our benchmark and therefore set the UBI level and income tax rate so that 10% of the spending on the social system replaced by it remains as a surplus.
In the German state budget, switching the social system to this variant of the UBI frees up about €100 billion per year.119
That money can then be used to realize other futurities. Of course, the money could also instead be returned to the population immediately in the form of a tax cut or an increase in the UBI. But the positive effect of using it to realize other futurities is far greater. In our example, those will be the education system and culturepoints.
13.3.2 Culturepoints
Cost of culturepoints: In Chapter 5.3, we estimated the annual cost of culturepoints in Germany at €50 billion (85 million citizens × 12 months × an average of 50 culturepoints used per person).
Direct savings in other areas are deducted from that. If, in return, we lower the UBI by €10 because everyone has on average more than 10 friends and acquaintances who include them in their culturepoint list, our spending falls by €10 billion. If the broadcasting fee is abolished and replaced by higher income tax instead (so state revenue remains unchanged), and the state spends only €1 billion on a remaining television and radio station instead of the current €9 billion[73], (“Tagesschau” is a national institution and must be preserved!), then the state has reduced its spending by a further €8 billion. Further savings for the state result from lower cultural support120 where that role is taken over by culturepoints (for example in street festivals), and from higher taxes on advertising.
The culturepoint system creates costs for the state of about €30 billion per year. So we can easily finance this futurity from the surplus generated by switching to the UBI.
Unlike the social system, we have a good way to test the culturepoint system before rolling it out nationwide. We should make use of that opportunity. And the ideal test environment is: schools!
Schools are highly dynamic social environments, and they can easily tip because of bad incentives. Children are also very inventive when it comes to dealing with technology and using it in unintended ways.
Last but not least, children have a much greater incentive to exploit weaknesses in the culturepoint system. While many adults will, with a shrug, be satisfied with perhaps a dozen culturepoints from friends and relatives, because compared with their thousands of euros in income that is not a large amount, every extra euro from culturepoints makes a noticeable difference for children with only a few euros in pocket money. So a test in schools offers the best chance of noticing problems with the culturepoint system before we roll it out for all citizens.
For children, culturepoints have greater significance than for adults, if they take part in this system. Both in their social environment and financially. Of course, one could instead decide that only adults receive a culturepoint account, in order to avoid this whole issue. We will keep that option in reserve as Plan B.
But if at all possible, we do want to include students from fifth grade onward in the culturepoint system. After all, children too should be able to support things that they like.
In addition, culturepoints are meant not only to support culture, but also to improve how we treat one another through this digital currency of recognition. If this effect is stronger for students than for adults, then that is not just a good test scenario. It is also the area where this aspect of culturepoints can have its strongest positive effect, if it works.
In this example, we will begin restructuring the school system in parallel with the introduction of culturepoints. But since we will start with pilot projects there too, before rebuilding it nationwide, that will not affect our culturepoint tests.
The variables for which we will test different values at different schools, in order to find the best version, are the number of positive culturepoints, the number and weighting of negative culturepoints, and the type and extent of the explanation of the culturepoint system.
Psychologists will regularly survey the students and observe them in everyday school life in order to understand as well as possible what effects culturepoints have on their behavior and on the school’s social structure. Presumably the students will receive laptops with the culturepoint app installed for the duration of the pilot study (which they are allowed to take home).
Based on the experiences of the first year of tests, changes will then be made (improvements to the app, the number and weighting of culturepoints, explanations for the students), and the test will be repeated at other schools.
There is no need to go into any more detail about the pilot projects here. They are obviously feasible.
Example bullying: The following example shows what kind of challenges the school environment poses for the culturepoint system, and why I believe that if it can hold up here without tipping, it will be ready for the rest of society.
How can a student behave who is being bullied by classmates and, as part of that, is forced to show their culturepoint lists? The classmates want to force the student to give them positive rather than negative culturepoints, the equivalent of stealing lunch money. Alongside options for escalation outside the culturepoint system (telling parents or the teacher-advisor about the bullying ...), the student has the following option:
They put the students bullying them on their positive list. They can show it if necessary. On the evening before the end of the month, at home when their classmates can no longer demand to see it, the student moves the entries to the negative list. On the first morning of the new month, before going to school, they restore the old state with the push of a button (this is possible because the app stores such actions from the last 48 hours of the month separately, and forgets them again after the restoration). So their classmates have only ever seen their entries on the positive list, were nevertheless punished with negative culturepoints, and cannot attribute them to the student. If the average student receives 20 positive and 10/2 negative culturepoints, they have no idea to which side the victim of their bullying contributed.
Once we know from the pilot projects that the culturepoint system is robust enough and the app works, it will be rolled out nationwide. Accompanied by detailed information for citizens about what it is, how it works, and what effects their behavior has. In schools, this will be supported by instructional units in all grades from fifth grade onward in which it is explained (and in which students who have a smartphone or laptop can set it up and try it out).
Use will increase gradually, as citizens install the app and fill their culturepoint list.
Just as the cost of the system will rise only gradually, the state will neither shut down public broadcasters immediately nor immediately cut back cultural support. There is no point in creating a gap where the new system does not yet function, while the old one has already been dismantled.
In Chapter 5.3 we already looked in detail at the hoped-for positive effects of the culturepoint system, which is why the state is spending so much money on it. So to make it easier to picture, here is just one figure: Funding the culturepoint system means that in Germany there will be about 400,000 people121 who are paid through appreciation rather than through attention (via advertising) or directly in euros. For whom it is completely irrelevant whether they help poor people or rich people, who rely on overall gratitude rather than controlling the payments of individuals. And it is the population, not the state, that chooses who receives this payment through culturepoints.
Since these people have such a disproportionately large influence (media, artists, websites), this lever should be enough to change society as a whole significantly for the better.
13.3.3 Education System
Let us now turn to the third futurity that we want to implement in this example, also financed from the surplus generated by switching to the UBI: the education system.
Compared with the other two futurities, it has the highest barrier to entry before we can begin implementation. It requires an amendment to the Basic Law, since education in Germany has so far been a matter for the federal states. This follows from Article 30 of the Basic Law: “Except as otherwise provided or permitted by this Basic Law, the exercise of state powers and the discharge of state functions is a matter for the Länder.”[75]. So far, no subsequent article lists education as a matter for the federal government, and that would have to be added.
Even before an amendment to the Basic Law creates the legal framework needed to begin restructuring the education system, we need capacity planning and a plan for how to reach the target state. Unlike with the UBI and culturepoints, we cannot simply create new rules, write software, redirect flows of money, and suddenly everything works differently. School takes place in buildings and is taught by teachers who, in their studies, learned certain school subjects and teaching methods. But all of that is supposed to change. To achieve that, we will need a step-by-step approach and persistence over the long term.
Number of additional teachers, number of schools: In Chapter 7, we presented the school building for this futurity, designed for 1,000 students taught by 100 teachers. In practice, however, we need more teachers per school in order to have a reserve for illnesses and to compensate for teachers working part-time. In Germany, around 40% of teachers currently work part-time, averaging 20 hours per week instead of 40. So we need 40 of our 100 teachers twice over. With a reserve for illness we arrive at a rough estimate of 150 teachers per school.
How many schools do we need? In the 2023/2024 school year, Germany had 8.8 million students at general education schools[76]. If we assume this to also be the number of students in the new education system, then we will need 8,800 schools. That also lets us calculate the number of teachers required: 8,800 × 150 = 1,320,000 teachers. At present, Germany has about 800,000.
We will need 8,800 schools for the new school system, as well as about 520,000 additional teachers. For these teachers, we will have to spend about €20 billion per year.122
Fortunately, we do not need all of these new teachers at once, since we will also convert the schools to the new system only gradually. The more we can spread their training over many years, the fewer new training facilities we will need, the easier it will be to find enough prospective teachers, and the more evenly their retirement, decades later, will be distributed across many years.
So a plan has to be drawn up for how many new teachers will be needed by when, and by when how many training facilities must be available in order to train them in time. The curricula for the individual modules also need to be developed by this point. We need them in order to carry out the training of teachers for the new system (each teacher learns how to teach a handful of modules).
I am quite hopeful that enough young people can be inspired to enter this profession once they know that their new working environment will be much better than today’s schools, and that the teaching profession means a secure job.
In addition, we will also need more other staff, since we want to take as many non-teaching tasks as possible off the teachers’ shoulders. For that, we will hire another 320,000 people, for whom we will spend €15 billion per year.123
Let us return to the school buildings. To function well, the education concept requires a uniform school size, a specific room layout, and sufficient green space around the freestanding school building. The existing schools in Germany do not fit this concept. But building a new school of this size currently costs about €60 million[77], and we need 8,800 of them...
Assuming that we cannot make this cheaper through efficiency gains is a pessimistic assumption, but €60 million per school is manageable if the total cost is spread over enough years. After all, even now we are spending at least some money on new school buildings. So the necessary additional spending should at least be somewhat lower than the total cost.
Spending each year no more than €25 billion in additional funds to build 500 schools of the new type, so that after 18 years all have been replaced, seems to me a sensible schedule. It means that over the years capacities are built up that can tackle one construction project after another.
There should be clear efficiency gains if we do not plan every school individually, but instead develop a master plan that is continuously improved over time and repeatedly carried out by the teams. The same will later apply to the schools’ repair cycle, which will likewise extend over 18 years.
When I look at construction projects in other countries, I see no reason why it should take many years to build a school: if the whole process is handled more quickly, that lowers costs and lets the team move on earlier to the next project, the construction of the next school. The state can analyze construction costs and simplify rules wherever this promises savings in cost and time.
In the first year, then, perhaps construction of ten of these schools would begin, in order to gain experience, identify problems, and find possible optimizations. And then each year more new construction projects would be started, until eventually 500 new schools are being built per year. Since the introduction of the new school model happens in parallel to the construction of the schools, some teaching will therefore take place in old buildings. The degree to which they are unsuitable for the new school model (too small, wrong room layout, too little surrounding green space), together with the current structural condition of the schools, thus determines an order in which new parks must be created or existing ones redesigned, and new buildings erected. Until these are available, many small and large compromises will have to be made in order to implement the new school system as well as possible in the existing buildings.
Like with the construction projects, there will be a few pioneer schools that switch their teaching over to the module-based model first, in order to gain experience, identify problems, and find possible optimizations. For this, we will need a few teachers able to teach under the new system.
So a number of schools will be selected whose existing buildings and green spaces are already very well suited to the new school model. In them, teachers124 will begin teaching five parallel classes in Level 1. This teaching model is so completely different that students cannot switch into it. Consequently, entire schools cannot be converted all at once either. Instead, new students will begin in Level 1 and from then on pass through the school in the new system.
After a lead time of perhaps two or three years to identify problems before the entire school system runs into them, all other schools will also start their new students in Level 1 under the new system. Each year, more teachers125 will teach in modules. At the same time, the number of teachers still teaching the remaining older students in the old class-based system will continue to decline.
Ten years after the first pioneer schools have begun doing this, the first students will leave their schools with lists of completed modules instead of graduation certificates. Two to three years later this applies to all students. By then, vocational schools, universities, and training companies must be prepared for it. Additionally, we want to convert our vocational training to a module-based dual system. I did not describe this in more detail in Chapter 7, and I will not do so here either: it will differ from profession to profession. The basic principle is the same as in general schools. Experience gained in their conversion can be used.
This restructuring of the education system in particular requires broad consensus within society. At the very beginning for the amendment to the Basic Law, but also in the long term. On the teaching side, this restructuring stretches over a total of 18 years: two years of preparation, three years of model schools, ten years of transition by school year, and three years of dual vocational training, before all young adults entering working life have gone through this new school system. And the same 18 years are also needed before all school buildings have been rebuilt and are thus as well suited as possible to this new school system.
As the reward for all this effort, in the end all children in Germany have a happier time at school, enjoy learning more, and their foundation of knowledge far better equips them for navigating our increasingly complex world. Thanks to the modular structure of their schooling, they will have much more broadly distributed knowledge, meaning many more people will have mastered a far greater amount of useful knowledge (instead of, as it is currently, only the material in everyone’s identical curriculum). That will make society as a whole more adaptable and resilient.
Last but not least, I am also hopeful that a society whose members have gone through this new education system will be better at making good political decisions and, when faced with problems of all kinds, will neither panic nor bury its head in the sand, but instead search for the best possible solutions. The fact that in this example not only the education system was reformed, but culturepoints and a UBI were also introduced, should make that hope more realistic.
13.3.4 Result
Let us now look once more at all three futurities implemented in this example together. All the cost figures mentioned are no more than rough estimates of what a detailed financial plan would actually have to work out. At least I have tried to make moderately pessimistic assumptions about the costs. So let us put them all together and see whether our example at least looks plausible.
Changes in annual costs for the state:
+100 billion euro (UBI)
- 30 billion euro (culturepoints)
- 20 billion euro (530,000 teachers = 424,000 full-time positions)
- 15 billion euro (320,000 employees in education)
- 25 billion euro (500 school buildings per year, for 500,000 students)
______________________
= 10 billion euro (reserve)
What all three futurities have in common is that they aim at a transformation of society.
The UBI, by providing a secure foundation from which people can take risks or do what they believe is right.
Culturepoints, by steering society a certain distance away from pure capitalism and towards rewarding friendly behavior. Which above all should lead to a drastic improvement in our media landscape.
The education system, by preparing future generations far better for our complex world than we currently do.
Taken together, I believe that realizing this example, with the restructuring of the education system and the introduction of culturepoints and a UBI, would within one generation lead to a completely transformed society. One far better able to hold its own in this world and to tackle further necessary transformations without losing heart.
And do you still remember the positive follow-on effects of the futurities on the rest of society that I deliberately left out of all these calculations? Once they, to whatever unknown extent, do occur after all, they provide the state with additional resources. In the form of greater economic growth and higher tax revenues, more capable state employees and better infrastructure, a more efficient society. And these newly available resources can then be used to tackle the implementation of further futurities or the handling of new problems, or to offer a helping hand to people in other states.