Hello, Lovely Human,

Happy November ;-)

This month I am sure you have noticed all the AI companies talking about pledging a share of their profits to the public. The promise of throwing free money at everyone to solve the impending loss of jobs is the norm these days.

Elon, one of the richest men in the world, stood on a stage in Washington and said work will be optional and money will stop being relevant at some point. Hmmmmm….

The whole conversation about AI taking our jobs has turned into a conversation about AI paying us an allowance.

Some know it as universal basic income (UBI). Every human being gets their basic things covered, and they can pursue whatever they want to pursue. Remember that saying from our grandparents? Idle hands are……

Here is my problem with throwing money at a much deeper issue.

It does not work. We have decades of evidence.

Just take a look at unemployment income. You lose your job, and in many countries a check covers your expenses for up to a year. When France extended unemployment benefits from 7 to 15 months, people stayed out of work about two and a half months longer, and the jobs they finally found were no better (Institut des politiques publiques).

Want more proof?

Lottery winners. A study of Florida lottery winners found that people who won $50,000 to $150,000 were just as likely to go bankrupt within five years as people who won a few thousand. The money only postponed it (Review of Economics and Statistics, 2011).

Money alone, without belonging, does not improve our lives beyond a certain amount.

I have been thinking about this for a while now. I have experimented with different forms of UBI for our GLEAC community, and I have decided there is a model that works. First, the word. UBI should be called Universal Belonging Income. It consists of money, plus community, social, network, purpose and domain capital, all which give you a sense of belonging.

Belonging makes us happier, healthier, and we live longer.

The people who have lived the longest in the world, in Japan, Italy and beyond, are the ones with the most belonging. Go look them up and you will see I am right.

What does this mean for all of us? If money will stop mattering, where do you belong? Who are the people you learn and grow with? What are the places, people and things that give you purpose?

I would be focusing hardest on these areas of my life right now. And while they are all saying the money will come, I would also save up a lot right now and stash it away, just in case we all need to make a run for it from these AI agents to some part of the world where we truly belong.

Why is the GLEAC community like no other? Quiet Capital. It's everything that never shows up on a balance sheet. Who trusts you. What you know. Who picks up when you call. Here's one of many examples of what it looked like inside our community this week.

Religious Focus: Stoicism

Every month we pick one religion or way of living. It allows us to open our minds and be mindful of how we and others live better, healthier, joyful and meaningful lives.

Last week we sat with phantasiai, the Stoic pause between a thought and your agreement with it, and Beatriz the Porto night nurse. This week, the Stoics on money, and what it cannot buy.

Giulia Ferrante is fifty eight, and in March she did what every small business owner on her street in Naples dreams about. She sold the bakery.

Three generations of Ferrantes had unlocked that door at 4:30 every morning. A chain from Milan paid enough that Giulia will never have to work again. Her accountant shook her hand. Her children threw her a party.

By June she was sleeping until eleven.

By August she no longer knew the names of the people on her own street. The man who used to bring her the first espresso of the day had stopped waving, not out of unkindness, but because she was simply never there at the hour he walked past. Nobody needed her at 4:30. Nobody needed her at all.

"I am rich," she told her sister on the phone, "and I have never felt so poor."

Her sister, a retired literature teacher, did not argue. She posted Giulia a battered copy of Seneca's letters with one page folded down.

Seneca knew something about this. He was one of the wealthiest men in Rome, adviser to an emperor, and he spent his last years writing letters about what money cannot do. In his second letter to his friend Lucilius he wrote that it is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, who is poor. The Stoics even had a name for wealth. They called it a preferred indifferent: sensible to choose, pleasant to have, and no foundation for a life. It cannot make you good. It cannot make you whole. And it cannot make you needed.

In his ninth letter Seneca went further. The wise person, he said, is self sufficient, and still wants friends. Not to survive. To live.

Giulia read it twice. The next morning she set an alarm for 4:00.

She walked to the old shop. The new manager was a nervous young man from Caserta who was losing the morning rush because the dough was never ready in time. Giulia did not ask permission. She put on an apron and showed his apprentice, a quiet girl of nineteen called Assunta, how her grandmother fed the lievito madre, the mother dough, and how you know by the smell when it is ready.

She came back the next day, and the next. Nobody paid her. The man with the espresso started waving again.

Marcus Aurelius put it simply in his private notebook: what is not good for the hive is not good for the bee. The Stoics never believed you could flourish alone, however full your account. They believed you were born into a web of roles, daughter, neighbour, citizen, teacher, and that a good life is the honest performance of them.

Giulia still has her money. She has also, she says, got her name back.

Guiding question:

If your money were taken care of forever, who would notice if you stopped showing up at 4:30?

Count your belonging before you count your money.

1. Say your number out loud.
Write down the amount that would cover your life, the one you have maybe never said with a straight face. Name it. It matters, and you are allowed to want it.

2. Imagine the check has arrived.
Your basic needs are covered for the next ten years. Write the three things you would still get up for at 7am, and the names of the people in the room with you.

3. Audit your income for belonging.
Look at where your money comes from today. Which source also gives you people, purpose, or a place to be seen? Give that one an extra hour this week.

Cash pays the bills. Belonging pays the rest.