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It's not far-fetched to suggest there is a "deep state" in Washington. Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower looked at the nexus of the Pentagon and arms manufacturers and coined the phrase the "military-industrial complex." Today's observers also point to the collusion of corporate interests and D.C. power brokers as the true guiding hand in American politics.

The Trump White House already seems to be at war with what it would say is the "deep state:" thousands of federal government bureaucrats faced with the awkward reality of working for a president who campaigned loudly against Washington officialdom and promised to "drain the swamp" when in power. This week, almost 1,000 American diplomats signed a dissent memo against Trump's executive order on immigration, prompting White House press secretary Sean Spicer to icily declare that "career bureaucrats" can "either get with the program or they can go." And Trump's public spat with Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, an Obama appointee who sought to defy his immigration order, ended with him firing Yates in an angry, chilling memo that claimed she "betrayed the Department of Justice."

Right now other people are making lots of money on our data. So much money. I think the one that stands out for me is a company called Palantir, founded by Peter Thiel in 2003. It’s actually one of Silicon Valley’s biggest success stories, and is worth more than Twitter. Most people have never heard of it because it’s all operating completely behind the scenes. This company and companies like it have databases that contain every possible thing you can ever imagine, on you, and who you are, and what you’re interested in. It’s got things like your declared sexuality as well as your true sexuality, things like whether you’ve had a miscarriage, whether you’ve had an abortion. Your feelings on guns, whether you’ve used drugs, like, all of these things are being packaged up, inferred, and sold on for huge profit.

Do we need to develop a brand-new intuition about how to interact with algorithms? It’s not on us to change that as the users. It’s on the people who are designing the algorithms to make their algorithms to fit into existing human intuition.

The ability for everyone to say “No” to any and all employers would have an undeniable effect on bargaining power. It’d mean greater profit sharing, higher wages, shorter days and/or weeks, improved working conditions, more flexibility, etc. UBI can even function as a universal strike fund.

Everyone should have the power to refuse to work for another as a condition for their existence. The right to exist is unconditional, and so no one has the right to command your wage labor with the threat of destitution.What unconditional basic income achieves is nothing less than profoundly historic. UBI is the declaration that all wage labor should be fully voluntary, all work, both paid and unpaid should be recognized, and that the goal of technology is to increase our control over our time.