Earlier this month, Finland launched its much-anticipated universal basic income (UBI) experiment. Media accounts of the new program have been roundly glowing, a fact not lost on Finnish leaders looking to build up the country’s image as Socially Innovative Finland.

Much of this positive international attention is justified. Finland is on the bleeding edge of an increasingly popular idea about how the welfare state should evolve. But Finland’s experiment has its dark sides as well, especially for those who are concerned that a poorly designed UBI could undercut the welfare state without truly liberating anyone.

The technical details of Finland’s UBI experiment are straightforward. Kela, the country’s social insurance agency, randomly selected two thousand Finnish citizens between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-eight who were receiving benefits from either the basic unemployment allowance or the labor market subsidy program. Typically, people enrolled in these two programs have been unemployed for long periods of time and therefore do not qualify for benefits from Finland’s more generous earnings-related unemployment benefit system.