The solutions I propose in this book are based on a collection of best practices. These practices aren’t just choices offered by the system–they are the default settings baked into the system. Their purpose is to maximize the well-being of individuals and communities. These choices are the default settings that you can opt out of when necessary.

One of the best financial practices in the world is the use of the subscription model, which has gained quite the momentum, especially in the way digital services are sold. There is good reason for this. The subscription model provides a stable and predictable flow of goods, service and revenue for both sides of the transaction. This alone is reason enough for us to adopt it as our default payment model.

Instead of citizens spending their basic income haphazardly whenever they happen to need money, our solution requires that the basic income is spent as advance subscriptions for the goods and services we will need in the future. This practice is meant to strengthen the demand side economy by guaranteeing a steady flow of income to those projects we rely on the most. Perhaps even more importantly, subscriptions help stabilize the flow of money in circulation to a steady pace, resembling the way circulation works in our bodies.

The subscription model requires that every citizen and business creates a prioritized list of subscriptions that determines in which order they spend any money that is deposited into their account, be it in the form of the weekly basic income or any money they earn from their own work.

The list of possible subscriptions should always exceed the maximum amount of money that can theoretically be earned by the account to make sure that every monetary unit that is spent has a next address. Only this way can we guarantee that the money in our economy flows without interruptions.

Listing your own needs in priority order is not necessarily as carefree as just randomly shopping here and there without any commitment. Forcing you to make premeditated choices does, however, help you keep track of your personal finances and directs your resources towards more sustainable ends than shopping on the spur of the moment. The cumulative system-wide benefit this practice provides everybody outweighs any inconvenience it produces to an individual many times over.

What is the purpose of all this? The store can advance the money they receive from your subscriptions directly to their own subscriptions before you even enter the store. The store can immediately pay their worker, who can immediately pay their landlord and so forth. This way your money moves all the way to the very beginning of the supply chain where the goods and services originate from. This powerful demand signal reaches through the whole supply chain before any goods and services have ever exchanged hands.

This helps create a continuously flowing currency, which can’t be hidden under a mattress by anybody. Enabling continuous flow is important to ensure the vigorous velocity of money, which characterizes economies under a virtuous economic cycle.

If we again visualize our money as a valuable flowing liquid, subscriptions should be visualized as the pipes that direct where that liquid is going. If all of us, businesses included, built an extensive network of pipes to indicate where we would send our money in the event we would receive some, our computers could easily simulate the complete flow of all the individual basic income streams as they course through the economy.

Adding the demand side subscriptions and connecting them with supply side cells generates a hermetically sealed network that provides tremendous predictive power of the collective behavior of the whole economy. From now on forecasting the economy doesn’t have to be more uncertain than predicting the weather. The entire flow of all the various revenue streams can be modeled in advance and their cumulative effect can be easily simulated.

The recipient of the money will give the subscriber credit for the amount of the subscription, which can be redeemed at a later date. Crediting the subscriber allows the recipient of the money to spend it immediately on the next priority in their own list of subscriptions.

By creating a two-way credit/debit relationship between the subscriber and the recipient at the opposite ends of the pipe, the flow of money doesn’t have to wait for any actual goods and services to change hands. This allows the money to circulate through the whole economy in a flash instead of weeks and months. The two-way credits can only be redeemed in the form of goods and services and thus cannot thus enter the economy in the form of money any more. Once the subscribed goods or services are redeemed, the credit is used up.

This two-way credit/debit solution allows us, for the first time, to separate a monetary unit’s store for value function from its means of exchange function. By leaving behind the store for value as a two-way credit/debit relationship, the means of change can proceed to facilitate the next transaction. This practice increases the velocity of money while keeping the amount of money in circulation stable.

Subscriptions are very beneficial in so many other ways as well. If we observe the businesses that use the subscription model, we notice how sustainable they are and how they benefit both parties.

Employees earning a monthly salary, for example, rely on the subscription model. An employee can trust that they have work next month and they know in advance how much they are going to be paid for it. An employer, on the other hand, can trust that their business can run without interruptions since they have the right amount of people who have promised to work for them. This arrangement works much better for both parties than if the employer and the employee tried to find each other anew every day.

Many other things in our economy are based on the subscription model, including rental payments, and numerous electronic services are paid in subscription form. Subscriptions create predictability and financial stability, which create a solid foundation for all businesses.

The opposite of the subscription model is spot trading, in which trades happen only once and without preconditions according to the current market price. Our neighborhood grocer, for example, relies on these one-time purchases. No customer has agreed to buy anything beforehand, but they can purchase anything that is on sale at the given price. Without any commitments customers can choose whatever store they want. Probability and happenstance dictate sales.

This lack of guarantees creates expenses for the store owner. Expiring products generate big losses. The losses are made worse when the owner is forced to use past weeks’ demand to determine how much to order of which products in the future. To prevent the store from running out of anything, the orders are usually overestimated. The loss this creates in expiring products is massive and the costs are included in the price of all products. It is fair to say that given the choice, most shopkeepers would choose the subscription model over their current business model. Most would be happy to grant a discount to their subscribers.

To create an incentive to use subscriptions, all subscriptions should carry at least a 10% discount on all purchases made with them. To attract more business, vendors can increase the discount in 5% increments as high as they want. If you have a weekly subscription to your local grocer for 10 units, every Monday this amount is added to your store credit. In return the store gives you at least a 10% discount on all purchases. This is a win-win arrangement for both parties.

The store credit represents the store owner’s debt to the subscriber. The debt is repaid with goods and services from the store. Next time you visit the store, you can purchase goods and service with your accumulated credit. Like with a debit card today, as soon as you make a purchase from the store, this purchase is deducted from your credit. The discount incentivizes everybody to participate in the subscription model as it is highly beneficial for the whole community.

But since we can’t plan our whole life in advance, everything can’t be subscribed to in advance. Purchases made outside of the subscription model create a one-time payment, which is paid from next week’s basic income before any other subscription. This purchase, which we have already redeemed, thus becomes our first priority and it will displace something else lower on the list from getting funded.

In practice the money we create only exists in these two-way debt relationships and never as deposits in our account. This is due to the fact that all of the UBI has to be spent on advance subscriptions, which will automatically deplete the account of any money that is credited to it. The impulse purchases from last week are placed at the top of the payment hierarchy this week, which is when they are paid out. A credit is a way to record the flow of money as it has passed by the account of a metabolic node, while a deposit in an account is a recording of static money that doesn’t move.

To inform you of how much you have in savings, the system simply adds up all the outstanding credits you have stored in various subscriptions. To ensure accurate accounting, all the unredeemed credits you have issued to your own subscribers will naturally be deducted from this figure.

Transforming purchases into advance subscriptions will change the economy dramatically for the better. It will help switch the economy from a resource wasting, supply-driven economy to a demand-based economy in which all consumption is consciously planned ahead.

Since the system we design is built on the principle of constant flow, money should never be allowed to stand still. This reduces the velocity of money and creates hiccups in its steady circulation. The damage this would do to the economy outweighs many times over the benefit of being able to store value in your own account. If you want to save money, you can create a subscription to a bank that practices full-reserve banking at zero interest. This bank will forward this money directly to a pre-approved lender so the money doesn’t stand still.