Most people don’t understand why Digital IDs and CBDCs will soon be welcomed by the masses.
Here’s the story so far…
Poverty is Growing, Becoming More Common, and More Exposed
Recently, there has been a lot of talk about poverty. Mostly because during the government shutdown, the federal government food program, SNAP, ran out of funding. Out of some 330+ Million Americans, 42 million rely on SNAP to supplement their grocery purchases every month. In New York State alone, $770 million is spent by the federal government every month, and California, over $1 Billion. It’s a big deal.
As a result, there was a world’s share of celebrity lip-wagging and open wallets. Pop Star, Billie Eilish reportedly donated 25% of her wealth to those solving hunger in the United States. She also did as much as she could to call out billionaires like Elon Musk.
Musk’s response, he’s going to solve poverty the same way every other technocrat envisions:
On top of the affordability crisis, there is the more important matter of continual job losses, which are in continual decline across the United States. Tech firms are downsizing while increasing their use of AI. Retail stores are shuttering their doors. Even in Las Vegas, tourism is slowing down. It’s well known as America’s discretionary spending capital. And when spending slows down for the world’s oldest profession, you know you’re in trouble.
All of that sounds a bit alarmist, but here’s what I want to highlight. Because AI is reducing the amount of jobs available, AI is also becoming the answer. Although, AI job losses have not yet created a good crisis the government can use to implement Universal Basic Income(UBI). It has not stopped them from promoting it as THE solution. In fact, it is almost becoming universally accepted (even among the contrarians) that UBI WILL be the solution.
Bert Dohmen at Dohmen Capital Research writes:
The Problems of AI Are Now Being Exposed
“The tremendous gains in “productivity” due to AI, which we forecasted, are already emerging now. Even the president’s economic advisor Hassett talked about rising productivity and the many benefits that AI will have on the economy earlier this month.
Productivity will continue to soar with AI, which means that each worker that still has a job will be able to produce much more.
However, millions of other workers will lose their jobs. The loss of jobs is a negative, so UBI, Universal Basic Income, will surface and send unemployed people a weekly check.
The big tech firms are already having huge layoffs such as 30,000 from Amazon and 15,000 from Microsoft. And they are not just low level, but high income middle level people. That income will be missing in the economy.”
Here’s what Musk means by solving poverty:
What Most People Think About UBI
With that in mind, massive job losses will be not be the main reason Digital IDs, CBDCs, and their offspring UBI, will be welcome.
Most people are still arguing about the top 3 most widely believed problems with UBI:
- It’s too expensive.
- It will cause inflation.
- It will discourage work.
In the world of the technocrats, those are just kinks to be worked out. When in reality, all the talk about digital slavery and the Total State controlling every aspect of your life will only make a lesser version more readily acceptable. Many financial commentators and marketers, radicalize the idea that the government is out to control you. That way, you need to buy their product. Of course this is the way, because we are always either moving toward something, or away from something. In the case of a potential, all-controlling fascist entity, we want to move away. However, it will be a lesser, lighter version of slavery that we’ll want to move toward. It will make the implementation of UBI more acceptable.
Open AI’s Sam Altman has already sponsored study after study confirming the positive effects of UBI. Now it is only a matter of seeing what the masses are willing to exchange for the service.
How UBI Will Become Eagerly Accepted
To understand how Universal Basic Income, along with Digital IDs and CBDCs, will become popular, not imposed, you have to step outside the usual arguments. The debates about UBI being “too expensive,” “inflationary,” or a “work deterrent” are smokescreens. They frame UBI as a policy proposal still undergoing cost-benefit analysis. But by the time UBI is rolled out, it won’t be presented as a proposal. It will be presented as a lifeline.
And people do not scrutinize lifelines—they grab them.
The bigger picture is this:
When fear of a totalizing, dystopian system reaches saturation, a softer version of the same thing begins to look reasonable, even humane. This is exactly how the acceptance arc works. The public is conditioned to imagine the worst so that the “lite” version feels like a compromise. It becomes salvation, not domination.
This dynamic mirrors an older system: not slavery, but serfdom.
Slavery is absolute. A slave can be bought, sold, denied marriage, stripped of rights, and worked without recourse. Serfdom, by contrast, is a condition of dependency wrapped in the appearance of rights. In Medieval Europe, Serfs—even the unfree ministeriales—still had legal protections. They had defined obligations, not arbitrary ones. They could marry, own personal property, and in many cases were compensated. They were not owned as bodies; they were attached—legally and economically—to an estate.
In other words, the serf was not free, but the serf was not a slave. And that distinction made the system endure for centuries.
Serfdom, Not Slavery
UBI will follow this model almost perfectly.
It won’t look like the “digital slavery” people fear. It will look like a benevolent exchange: voluntary, fair, and stabilizing.
You will not be “owned.” You will just be economically tied to the State’s infrastructure.
You will retain your civil rights, but only as expressed through a Digital ID.
You will still transact, but only via CBDC rails that can monitor, guide, and shape behavior quietly through incentives.
Most importantly: your dependency on the State will be framed as empowerment.
The line between guarantee and control will be invisible because it will feel optional. It will feel earned. It will feel safe.
UBI will not be sold as domination. It will be marketed as a right—like healthcare, like education, like electricity. And after enough AI-driven job displacement, enough economic stress, and enough moralizing from technocrats and celebrities alike, the public will ask for it. They’ll demand relief, not autonomy.
Sam Altman’s ongoing UBI trials and studies have been like every other entrepreneurial innovation. They have been a slow onboarding designed to show that the exchange can work, that the public will trade data, identity, and behavioral transparency for income security.
In short, here’s the defining difference: slavery requires force. Serfdom requires consent.
The future itself won’t be built on chains. It will be built on subscriptions.
UBI will be eagerly accepted because it will appear to offer stability without tyranny, rights without risk, and security without sacrifice—so long as you don’t look too closely at the fine print beneath the freedom. Medieval peasants didn’t think they were slaves. Neither will the masses.
