Techville and the price of being measured

In the fictional city of Techville, the idea arrived wrapped in optimism and spreadsheets. A proposal circulated among policymakers, technologists, and economists: since data fuels the digital economy, citizens should be paid for it. A minimum income, calculated from the value of what people share. Less money, more data. Eventually, perhaps, no money at all.

The proposal sounded progressive, even humane. And that was precisely what made it dangerous.

At first glance, the logic seemed impeccable. Platforms profit from personal data; citizens receive little in return. Why not correct the imbalance? Why not transform exploitation into compensation?

But Techville’s philosophers raised an uncomfortable question: “What happens when being human becomes a revenue stream?” Paying people for their data does not liberate them from commodification — it completes it. What once happened invisibly would now happen openly and permanently. The injustice would not disappear; it would be normalized. The irony was sharp: in the name of dignity, the human being would finally be priced.

In Techville’s debate halls, supporters celebrated a future where people would be “paid to exist.” No bosses, no wages, no stress. But existence is not labor — and treating it as such carries moral consequences. Once income depends on measurable output, even data output, existence becomes conditional. The question shifts subtly from “who you are” to “what you generate.”

Silence, restraint, privacy — these suddenly appear unproductive.

The most troubling irony was this: a system designed to relieve economic pressure would, in practice, pressure people to reveal more, share more, expose more. Consent would remain formal, but necessity would do the convincing.

Techville’s proposal insisted on voluntariness. Citizens could choose how much data to share. Yet ethics does not end at formal choice. A choice made under economic dependency is not neutral. When basic security depends on participation, refusal becomes costly.

In such a system, privacy transforms from a right into a luxury. The poor disclose. The comfortable withhold. Inequality reappears — not in money, but in exposure. A policy meant to democratize value risks stratifying dignity.

Supporters argued that money itself was obsolete. Digital efficiency would replace it. Algorithms would allocate resources better than markets. But money, for all its flaws, has one ethical advantage: it is abstract. It does not require intimacy. A salary does not demand access to one’s thoughts, movements, or relationships. Data does.

In Techville, critics warned that replacing money with data would collapse the boundary between economic participation and personal life. Every action becomes relevant. Every habit, valuable. Every deviation, suspicious. Without money, there would be no distance — only exposure.

Perhaps the most devastating consequence of the data-income hypothesis is what it leaves out. Not everything meaningful produces useful data. Not everything valuable can be optimized. Love that resists patterns. Faith that defies prediction. Suffering that should not be analyzed.

Ethicists argued that once data becomes currency, what cannot be measured begins to fade — not legally, but culturally. It becomes irrelevant. Human dignity, however, is rooted precisely in what escapes calculation.

The promise of guaranteed income often masked a deeper dependence — not on employers, but on systems. If income flows from data valuation, power flows to those who design the metrics. Who decides which data counts? Which behaviors matter? Which patterns deserve reward?

In Techville, the answer was clear: not citizens, but platforms and institutions. The system would not eliminate intermediaries. It would entrench them.

Supporters spoke of “ethical data markets.” But critics pointed out the contradiction: ethics begins where something is not for sale. Once dignity is monetized — even politely — it ceases to be unconditional. History reminds us that many injustices were once justified as fair compensation. The problem was never payment alone, but what payment made acceptable.

Techville ultimately rejected the data-income experiment, not out of nostalgia, but out of ethical clarity. Human dignity requires economic security without surveillance, participation without exposure, and rights without metrics.

Technology can and should support redistribution and welfare. But it must not redefine the human being as a data-producing asset. A minimum income, if adopted, must be grounded in citizenship, not disclosure — in belonging, not extraction.

The debate ended quietly. No dramatic vote. Just recognition that not every innovation deserves implementation. A world without money may sound humane. A world where survival depends on being measured is not. The true ethical challenge of AI is not how to pay people for their data, but how to protect them from becoming it. Progress does not mean turning everything into value. Sometimes, it means having the courage to say: “This is not for sale.”

• Rafael Hernandez de Santiago, viscount of Espes, is a Spanish national residing in Saudi Arabia and working at the Gulf Research Center.