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BRIEF · shorter-working-life-ubi-contrast-brief · May 22, 2026

UBI Contrast Brief

Why this framework begins with time, not income

A companion brief to The Shorter Working Life stack clarifying how the project differs from universal basic income. It explains that while both frameworks respond to labor disruption, automation, and productivity change, The Shorter Working Life begins by reducing the amount of labor that remains structurally required across a lifetime rather than by starting with income transfer.

The Approach

Scott Jellen is an independent researcher focused on protocol design, rights modeling, and interoperability across digital and public systems. His flagship work, the Universal Sports Graph (USG), defines a neutral infrastructure layer for representing sports rights through published RFCs and a versioned reference registry. Additional briefs and whitepapers explore how incentive clarity and structural design shape scalable institutions.

© 2026 Scott Jellen. Licensing varies by publication.