This is policy and PR hacking in lieu of having incredibly deep pockets. Sorry to tell you that real life is messy. Think of it as growth hacking. This is a sales endeavor. You must sell that the current form of capitalism is fundamentally broken.

This is no different than contributing to the "right" Congressional candidates with few dollars so they control hundreds of billions of dollars of policy (or in this case, trillions of dollars). This isn't anything new or weird. NGOs face this issue all the time, having to prove out models before they'll get gov or foundation funding.

But you can’t prove anything about universal income without the universal part. As without it it’s not the same thing and we don’t know if it’ll have the same effects.

You can approximate. Close enough. It's going to be impossible to implement without testing the concept.

I'm not here to convince you, and if you're not a policymaker or the Fed, I don't have to.

But the 'universal' part is the main thing people including policy makers have an issue with, and that's the bit not being tested.

Ehh, India is dipping their toes in without going full monty. It can be done progressively.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23258277 (HN: Indian farmers to get direct cash benefits)

And now in Spain.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23351708 (HN: Spain approves national minimum income scheme)

So your posterior probabilities on most things will shift zero post intervention? Interesting.

I'm a UBI opponent, a short term HM proponent, but I think my posterior probabilities would shift depending on the size of the effect and the duration over which the experiment was performed.