Michael Bohmeyer, center, riding his bicycle in the office of “My Basic Income,” the website he founded to provide a monthly basic income for 600 randomly selected people. Moving helps him think, he said. Lena Mucha for The New York Times

In the fifth paragraph of this article, which I started to get a better understanding of the European approach to universal basic income, my attention was caught by a simile:

“We have a lot of ‘citizen scientists’ counting birds, and giving the data to scientists. This is like that, but for civil society.”

Since we have featured so many stories and articles about bird-focused citizen science, the simile caused a smile. An article about a curious entrepreneur using the citizen science approach creatively to study a civil society question–that’s interesting. So I continued to the end of the article, and recommend it here for your consideration, even if it is not on a topic we normally focus on. I remain curious about the question, like Michael Bohmeyer as quoted in the last paragraph of the article:

…Of course, he added, the only way to see if basic income works is to test it. “We really want to find out,” he said. “I’d be happy if it turns out this is a bad idea. I’d be free to do something else.”

Read the whole article here.