Feature? Bug?
We definitely need to scope this out. I don’t know much about Nepal, but – just by coincidence – I recently visited three countries that each experienced massive mobilizations that then withered:
- Egypt, with its Arab Spring;
- Georgia, with its June 13th flash flood;
- and Armenia, with the Electric Yerevan protest.
Why the withering? The explanations advanced by Matthias in the post are all valid. But there could be another one: some activities are just naturally more rewarding than others for “spot” involvement. The case I know best is that of Georgia. That mobilization was led by experienced, skilled activists like @Nick_Davitashvili, @Nino_Japiashvili and other Guerrilla Gardeners; they used the credibility and the network built in previous initiatives, like the sustained effort to protect Vake Park from real estate development.
The volunteers who instantly showed up to shovel mud in the streets of Tbilisi must have gotten a warm feeling of being useful, of making a difference. Being an activist in normal times requires a lot of skills, from comms to diplomacy to fundraising and planning (look at how Nick himself framed his workshop at the Futurespotters 2014 event). But the flood created a space in which all that was not so important: all you needed was to show up with a shovel and rubber boots, and you could start and do something useful right away.
But once the mud had been trucked away, the focus shifted to activities that require much fewer unskilled pairs of hands. Suddenly you needed sanitation experts, civil engineers to assess the damage and so on. People could still volunteer for those tasks, but acquiring the necessary skills requires a large investment.
Where I am going with this is: it is likely that grassroots movements are inherently “layered”. There is a small, highly skilled, highly motivated core of people who devote a lot of their time to them, and are almost professional activists; and a much larger “long tail” of people who will normally do nothing, but who will often become active when the need arises.
What happens to such a world when unconditional basic income is introduced? The income might make people who are already passionate and involved able to get even more involved. But for those who like, say, to play Go it will mean freeing more hours that will be invested to playing Go. Unless a flood, or an earthquake, happens: then everyone will volunteer. Which is what they already do.