I was thinking the other night, what if, instead of universal basic income, we paid people a subsistence wage to be students or apprentices? This has the positive benefit of encouraging the spread of information and a culture of self-improvement. Additionally, since it involves some "work" the argument that it would create freeloaders is greatly mitigated.<p>The only problem with this idea now is that our higher education system is way too slow, inflexible and bureaucratic. This idea requires a much higher density of community colleges than currently exists, though with the aid of MOOC they could be much smaller and leaner than the current community college model.