Comingle is an interesting experiment. It attempts to create something resembling a basic income without waiting for the federal government to establish one. That alone makes it worth paying attention to. Voluntary, nongovernmental approaches to basic income deserve considerably more experimentation. They may even offer advantages over federally implemented UBI programs, which could produce unintended economic, political, or administrative consequences. That larger comparison is a subject of its own, however. The more immediate question is what privatized basic income could become, and whether Comingle represents only one model among many that should be developed.
Comingle is a nonprofit experimenting with a specific approach. There is no reason it should stop doing so. If its organization and participants prefer its existing model, they should be free to continue developing it. At the same time, the broader movement toward privatized basic income should not become centered on any single formula. Comingle can exist alongside many alternatives.
Comingle May Be Too Rigid for Many Potential Participants
Comingle’s basic model asks participating members to pledge 7 percent of their income, while pooled contributions are redistributed among members. Participation in Comingle itself is voluntary. Nobody is compelled to join. But for an income-earning person who does join as a participating member, the 7 percent contribution formula is a central part of the system.
For some people, that may be an attractive form of mutual commitment. For others, 7 percent of income is a substantial amount and creates a significant barrier to participation. Someone might strongly support universal basic income, want to participate in a voluntary basic income network, and still have no interest in committing 7 percent of personal income to that network.
Voluntary Could Mean Much More Than Choosing Whether to Join
There is an important distinction between voluntarily joining a system and having flexibility within that system. Privatized UBI could allow people to choose not only whether they participate, but also whether they contribute and how much they contribute.
Why not permit a participant to contribute 1 percent? Or 0.25 percent? Or $10 per month? Why not permit one-time contributions? Why not allow someone to contribute nothing while still receiving whatever basic income the system can sustainably provide?
One person might contribute $100 once a year. Another might contribute $5 every week. Someone else might automatically contribute a small percentage of investment income or savings interest. A wealthy participant might contribute considerably more. Businesses, nonprofits, foundations, cooperatives, and financial institutions could provide additional funding.
The point is not that Comingle needs to adopt all of these possibilities. Comingle should be able to test the model its organizers believe is worth testing. The larger point is that privatized UBI needs a much broader ecosystem of experimentation.
Imagine Basic Income Through a Credit Union
Consider a different model. Imagine a legitimate national credit union that eligible people throughout the United States could join online within a few minutes. Membership could also provide access to a basic income system. Perhaps the minimum required contribution would be exactly zero dollars.
A participant could join, establish an account, verify an identity, and become part of the network without promising a percentage of future income. Those who wanted to contribute could do so. Those who did not want to contribute could still participate and receive whatever distribution the system was capable of providing.
The credit union might offer savings products similar to high-yield savings accounts. Members could voluntarily elect to send a small percentage of their interest into a basic income trust. Perhaps some portion of institutional revenue could also support the trust. Outside donors could contribute. Businesses could participate. Philanthropic organizations could add capital. Other funding mechanisms could develop as the system matured.
The trust could potentially be structured for long-term existence rather than simply collecting money and immediately redistributing everything it receives. Some assets could accumulate and produce investment returns. The exact structure would require careful financial, legal, and regulatory work, but the underlying idea is relatively simple: create an institution capable of supporting a basic income indefinitely and potentially increasing that income over time.
A Tiny Basic Income Could Still Matter
Such a system would not need to begin by promising everyone $1,000 or $2,000 every month. It could begin much smaller.
Suppose the first distributions were only a few dollars. That would not eliminate poverty or replace employment income, but it would demonstrate that the mechanism existed and functioned. As membership, assets, voluntary contributions, institutional participation, and investment returns grew, the distribution could potentially grow with them.
This changes the central question. Instead of asking how a new organization could immediately fund a massive national UBI, the question becomes how to create a durable mechanism that can exist indefinitely and potentially become larger.
A basic income system does not need to begin large in order to have long-term significance.
Lower Friction Could Create Very Different Growth
No particular privatized UBI model can be assumed to grow exponentially. The right combination of features, however, might create substantially more potential for rapid grassroots growth than a system requiring a significant financial commitment before participation.
Imagine a simple message spreading through TikTok, YouTube, podcasts, social networks, and ordinary word of mouth: there is a legitimate national basic income network, joining online is easy, participation costs nothing, contributions are optional, and every qualified participant receives a distribution.
That proposition has very little friction.
Online networks have repeatedly demonstrated how quickly compelling ideas and services can spread. A financial institution cannot be treated exactly like a social-media application, and financial systems require greater safeguards and regulation. Still, there is no obvious reason a well-designed cooperative financial network could not benefit from powerful network effects.
Such growth would never be guaranteed. The important point is that a low-friction model could create the conditions under which viral grassroots adoption becomes much more plausible.
The Funding Problem Still Has to Be Solved
There is an obvious difficulty with allowing people to participate without contributing. If millions of people can join at a zero percent contribution rate, the system still needs money to distribute.
That challenge should encourage experimentation rather than prematurely establish one contribution formula as the answer. A zero-contribution option increases accessibility, but it also makes sustainable financing especially important.
A system might combine voluntary member contributions, charitable donations, institutional funding, investment returns, business revenue sharing, credit union revenue, permanent endowments, or mechanisms that have not yet been developed. Some approaches would almost certainly fail. Some might remain small. Others could uncover surprisingly effective ways to finance recurring distributions.
The best model does not necessarily need to be identified in advance. It can be discovered through experimentation.
Privatized UBI Should Be an Ecosystem
This is where the larger constructive critique of Comingle becomes important. The future of privatized UBI should probably not depend on finding one organization with one universal formula. It could instead develop as an ecosystem.
There could eventually be dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of experiments. One might operate through a credit union. Another might use a nonprofit trust. Another could distribute a percentage of business revenue. Another might rely heavily on an endowment. Some could be local. Others could operate nationally or internationally. A person might even receive distributions from several systems at the same time.
These models could compete, cooperate, copy successful ideas, share infrastructure, and improve over time. Most experiments might never become particularly large. That would be expected. Innovation often involves trying many approaches and allowing successful features to spread.
Perhaps one model would eventually discover an unusually effective combination of voluntary funding, nearly frictionless participation, institutional credibility, transparency, automation, and network effects. Such a model might have considerably greater potential for grassroots growth than current experiments. There is no guarantee that this would happen, but there is also little reason to prevent the experimentation that might make it possible.
Comingle Can Be One Experiment Without Being the Final Model
None of this requires dismissing Comingle. Comingle is valuable partly because it represents an actual attempt to create voluntary income redistribution rather than treating basic income exclusively as a proposal for future government policy.
Its 7 percent model may work well for people who value a stronger mutual contribution requirement. Those participants should have the opportunity to use it, and Comingle should be free to continue developing the model if that remains its mission.
The limitation appears when one model begins to represent the boundaries of what privatized UBI is imagined to be. There is a much larger design space available. Participation could be nearly frictionless. Receiving a distribution could be separated from an obligation to contribute. Contribution amounts could be flexible. Long-term asset trusts could supplement donations. Credit unions and other institutions could experiment with sustainable funding mechanisms. Different systems could compete and coexist.
Comingle represents one answer to the question of how basic income might be created without waiting for the federal government. It should continue to exist as one experiment if its participants find it valuable. The more exciting possibility is that many additional answers could emerge alongside it. Somewhere among those experiments may be a model with much greater potential to spread through grassroots participation, accumulate durable financial resources, and provide an increasingly meaningful basic income over time.
