Yeah, I don't think you deserve downvotes either. Your skepticism is perfectly reasonable, and you explained it well.
I've never been to Kenya, but I have spent a lot of time in countries with roughly similar levels of development. I'm skeptical too. But I would love to be wrong. And I think it is awesome to run this experiment.
The reason that I'm a little skeptical is that a lot of the big obstacles to entrepreneurship and investing in long-term social improvements come from big structural challenges that having more money in your pocket doesn't necessarily fix. For example, government corruption, lack of a good justice system to enforce contracts, lack of physical infrastructure to allow people and goods and people to move around the country, lack of access to banking resources. Those problems kind of need to be tackled at a higher level, and giving random individuals either money or goods doesn't really solve them. UBI seems like it could be much more effective in countries that don't face as many of those structural problems.
I've never been to Kenya, but I have spent a lot of time in countries with roughly similar levels of development. I'm skeptical too. But I would love to be wrong. And I think it is awesome to run this experiment.
The reason that I'm a little skeptical is that a lot of the big obstacles to entrepreneurship and investing in long-term social improvements come from big structural challenges that having more money in your pocket doesn't necessarily fix. For example, government corruption, lack of a good justice system to enforce contracts, lack of physical infrastructure to allow people and goods and people to move around the country, lack of access to banking resources. Those problems kind of need to be tackled at a higher level, and giving random individuals either money or goods doesn't really solve them. UBI seems like it could be much more effective in countries that don't face as many of those structural problems.