There have been lots of previous experiments with stuff sort of similar with UBI. While there are many problems with those studies preventing their use as any sort of conclusive proof, they have been predominantly neutral or positive. Yet I don't see that accounted for in the predictions of doom and gloom any of the UBI skeptics. If this experiment goes well, you need to do more than just admit you were wrong about the experiment, you and other skeptics need to lower your confidence in your overall skepticism of UBI.
> while I remain a cryptocurrency skeptic, and a BitCoin skeptic in particular, I expected BitCoin to be totally dead by now, and it is not. I say this to demonstrate that I can indeed eat crow.)
It sounds to me like you have not eaten any crow. If you had you would say: based on my understanding of the forces at play, I thought BitCoin would be dead. BitCoin has thrived instead so my understanding of the forces at play is less than I had estimated. Based on that, I am now less skeptical (or less confident of my skepticism) of the future crypto currencies. (I share your skepticism of the future of BitCoin, but I am far less certain of that skepticism than I used to be for these exact reasons)
I don't think any of them have even raised to the level of "interesting" compared to the scale of what is being proposed ("rework the entire global economy"). I am aware of them. UBI experiments need to be about UBI, not about things that vaguely resemble it. In particular they need to be large enough that the hypothesized bad effects could even be witnessed, as most of them revolve what will happen once people are habituated to it. For them to be useful, you need to not be referring to them in the past tense because they should still be ongoing, and indeed, really just at the beginning of their run. Most of them are the equivalent of claiming free college works because they went into a single small community and promised anyone who wanted to that they could attend the first three weeks of college for free if they liked; the results hardly matter.
"If you had you would say: based on my understanding of the forces at play, I thought BitCoin would be dead. BitCoin has thrived instead so my understanding of the forces at play is less than I had estimated."
I did say that. I just used fewer words.
That would be a valid result of the experiment though, in light of the fact it is completely impossible to implement UBI everywhere at once. UBI isn't useful if there isn't a path from here to there. We have no lack of wonderful utopias whose only problem is that there is no path from here to there. If UBI can't prove itself out on a smaller scale it can on no account be tried on a larger scale. If the worst some bad social engineering idea does is leave a single county worse off, then it will be doing very well as bad social engineering ideas go.
It appears from reading this post that tracking the skills of the community is already part of the plan. There are certainly predictions about this from both sides.
(I'm a skeptic, yes, but I promise to treat the results from this experiment fairly. However, bear in mind that even total success at this level still wouldn't prove to me that we should immediately adopt it at a national level; I'll need to see a larger one. But I will admit that I was at least wrong about this experiment, because I don't expect this to prove out very well either. I also expect a lot of spinning of the results to make them look as good as possible, so I reserve the right to unspin the results.
As a token of such good faith, I offer that while I remain a cryptocurrency skeptic, and a BitCoin skeptic in particular, I expected BitCoin to be totally dead by now, and it is not. I say this to demonstrate that I can indeed eat crow.)