Universal Basic Income’s still a hot topic, even if it isn’t a major talking point of presidential candidates this cycle. It’s widely seen as the natural future of an economy that produces too much to charge, and a tool to help raise the floor of the average person’s quality of life. It’s not a quick-fix, nor is it something to expect to work flawlessly once implemented. I truly believe that when (yes, I’m not going with if) UBI is implemented as a major, effectively permanent element of a nation’s economy that it will be as transformative to the population living there as the implementation of currency was to that same population’s ancestors so many generations ago.

I’ll be a heavy benefactor of UBI, no doubt. I’m motivated only as much as I need to be to perpetuate a comfortable existence, and I’m proactive only as much as I must be so that I can fall into laziness after all tasks are complete for the time being. I’m the floor, baby—and UBI will raise me up considerably. Implemented properly, it won’t lead to massive inflation or a debasement of the currency. But people will adapt quickly to the notion that there’s an economic floor now, particularly if they can comfortably exist on that floor. We’ll become dependent on the new economic normal, even the ‘we’ that does not actively use or even receive their UBI. That’s how an economy works—every piece is linked to the other in some indelible way.

Imagine if you will, that one day years or even decades after UBI is implemented, that the powers that be decide to adjust its value considerably. Maybe double, or halve it. Maybe UBI is rescinded outright. The populace would’ve become dependent on it, in ways that we can’t rightly predict. It’d be like suddenly declaring to all citizens of the US that currency no longer has value and cannot be accepted as legal tender anymore. In short, total panic and uncertainty, and that’s a rather milquetoast euphemism.

I hope to see UBI; I don’t believe there’s any other system that practically speaking will be able to facilitate a relatively smooth transition to an economy where things that now have a cost, or a price, no longer have one. But it needs to be treated as sacrosanct as the concept of currency is now—and more importantly, UBI needs to not be beholden to any single independent entity. No one company, state or even nation must be able to decide its fate or even make adjustments to it; essentially, UBI—when implemented as a widespread, permanent solution—needs to be in UN bucks or not at all.

Also, economists are all modern day voodoo preachers.