<i>&gt; I think basic income is important to do but decreasing the cost of living is a critical component as well.</i><p>I think startups should focus on the second, not the first. The reason is that the second is a technical problem, or rather a lot of different technical problems, all of which are exactly the sorts of things that startups can tackle and succeed in solving.<p>The first problem, however, is a political problem. Startups are not the right tool to use to address political problems. That&#x27;s not to say that startups can&#x27;t play a role: they certainly can. But the role they play is to solve the second problem, and thereby make the first problem a non-problem. If all of the necessities of life were essentially free, because they were no longer scarce (for example, if food were as easy to obtain as air), then there would be no need for basic income because there would be no need for income. So startups can&#x27;t solve the political problem in the usual sense; but they can &quot;solve&quot; it by making it no longer exist.