Universal Basic Income (UBI) has gained traction as an idea among the reformicon/technocratic Right in the United States. For example, Charles Murray recently wrote a lengthy piece on the cover of the Review section of the Wall Street Journal on the subject. The concept of the UBI as a replacement for the welfare state on the Right has been mainly on the libertarian wing, where the UBI promotes poverty reduction without restricting liberty as much as the typical welfare state alternatives of conditional grants. The reason for the Right’s new found love of UBI is the risk that automation poses to the social fabric of society. When 47% of today’s jobs are subject to automation over the next 20 years, issues of morality and equity are presented front and center.

With half the nation not only unemployed, but unemployable, what does it do to an American polity that has the poster child for Weber’s Protestant Ethic? What Murray does no appreciate in his article is the risk to the constitutional order that a UBI poses. The dangers of faction, something Madison warned about and sold the Constitution as a solution for in Federalist 10, will be acute.

Madison described two dangers of faction: (1) tyranny of the minority (mainly a propertied ruling class) and (2) tyranny of a majority (mob rule). The new constitution was meant to tame faction through the mechanisms of divided and limited government, an independent judiciary, and representative and deliberative democracy.

Madison’s primary concern were with violent factions composed of land owners and the unpropertied, creditors and debtors, and geographic diversity (large versus small states and North vs. South). UBI carries tremendous risks for abuse through the democratic process. First, while the numbers proposed by Murray (an annual basic income of $30,000 with elimination of UBI at $40,000 of private income) will likely erode the likelihood of entering the workforce for those who could be employable, who is to say that the “dolists” who live off the UBI will not become the new unpropertied faction that will seek to exert their political influence to increase that dole to a more generous amount over time. Electoral politics is built around campaign promises and log rolling. It is unlikely the current institutions could restrain electoral majorities in the quest for “soaking the rich.”

Any UBI introduction will likely have to be via Constitutional amendment with anti-democratic protections installed to make it work. Otherwise, faction could tear the republic apart. It may also have to change the way the government funds itself. The repeal of an income tax and a substitution of a tax on capital may need to be implemented—i.e., tax the owners of the robots rather than the workers. The challenge there, is that it is essentially a tax on productivity gains, which will limit the increase in prosperity over time. Technology has not made republicanism obsolete, but it does pose challenges for the 21st century.