> That opened up a lot of quirky social possibilities because the floor for survival was so low in Berlin.

All those quirky possibilities are a tragically underappreciated consequence of having a low cost of living in a place where you'd actually want to live.

I'm agnostic as to whether we try to achieve that through some sort of basic income or by other means - I just really hope that we try, both to alleviate poverty and to see the explosion of cultural and technological innovation that will surely follow.