Drex Citizen as a Right to Metabolic Income
Proposals for a National Law of the JIWASA Citizen

First-Person Consciousness — Brain Bee

“When does money actually enter my body?”

Before I was a taxpayer, a voter, or a “user of the financial system”, I was a single egg cell.

At that beginning, there was no salary, no card, no credit limit: there was only metabolism.
Energy coming in, residues going out, everything regulated by a larger body – my mother’s body.
I didn’t “earn” anything: I belonged to a system that kept me alive.

In early childhood, my consciousness was born from this dialogue between body and world:
the food that did or did not arrive on the table, the bus that came or didn’t, the medicine we could or could not afford. Long before I learned the word “economy”, I already felt in my stomach and chest that money is a translation of energy flow: when it is missing, the whole family’s body tightens.

Then digital adolescence arrived.

I learned that freedom was “being able to buy”: more data, more screens, more things.
Social media taught me to believe that my value is measured in consumption, followers, and “productivity”. The blind faith that once attached itself to distant gods moved to new altars: influencers, miracle traders, passive-income coaches, and political leaders promising everything without touching the structure that makes us sick.

Meanwhile, I discover that:

• the Central Bank creates Drex, a central bank digital currency, to make the system more efficient and inclusive;
  
  

• studies show that central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) can increase financial inclusion and credit for the poorest, if well designed;
  
  

• research on basic income and cash transfers indicates that giving money directly to people reduces poverty, improves health and education, and in many cases supports economic growth.
  
  

I realise I am standing at a bifurcation:

• either I accept money as a scarce privilege controlled by a few;
  
  

• or I recognise that, in a truly JIWASA State, money needs to become what it has always been biologically: energy distributed through the whole body, not just accumulated in a few organs.
  
  

From this perception comes the idea of Drex Citizen as a Right to Metabolic Income:
not charity, not “minimum income”, but a legal recognition that the citizen is the basic unit and co-owner of the State, and that the State must return, as a daily flow, part of the metabolism that society as a whole produces.

1. Money, body and social metabolism

In the language of my body, “income” is something that either arrives or doesn’t.
In the language of the JIWASA State, what matters is metabolic income:

• Income is what I receive as an individual in the market (wage, benefit, gig work).
  
  

• Metabolic income is the minimum flow of energy that the State, as a collective body, guarantees to each citizen-cell so that this cell can say “no” to exploitation, humiliation and modern forms of servitude.
  
  

The 1988 Constitution already points in this direction when it:

• grounds the Republic in citizenship and human dignity (Art. 1, II and III);
  
  

• defines as fundamental objectives building a free, just and solidary society; eradicating poverty; and reducing inequalities (Art. 3);
  
  

• recognises social rights such as education, health, work, housing, food, transport, leisure, social security, and protection of motherhood and childhood (Art. 6);
  
  

• states that the economic order is founded on the valorisation of human work and social justice (Art. 170) and that the social order aims at well-being and social justice (Art. 193).
  
  

In other words: the Constitution already knows that without a minimum metabolism, there is no real citizenship.
What it has not yet done explicitly is this: to affirm a right to basic metabolic income, delivered daily through a public digital infrastructure – Drex.

2. What Drex is today – and what is still missing

Drex is Brazil’s central bank digital currency – a “digital real” issued and guaranteed by the Central Bank, designed to operate fully electronically on a permissioned distributed ledger, with wholesale and retail layers.

According to the Central Bank itself, its goals include:

• increasing efficiency in payments and credit;
  
  

• fostering financial innovation (tokenisation, smart contracts, regulated DeFi);
  
  

• broadening financial inclusion, especially for unbanked or underbanked citizens.
  
  

Internationally, IMF studies show that CBDCs can promote financial inclusion and expand access to credit, provided that:

• there is a significant unbanked population;
  
  

• the digital currency is genuinely useful in everyday transactions;
  
  

• the design mitigates risks such as bank disintermediation.
  
  

So Drex already has the structural potential to reshape monetary flows in Brazil.

What is missing is to give this digital system a clear metabolic purpose:

Instead of just making transactions cheaper and enabling new financial products,
use Drex as the constitutional channel for a daily right to metabolic income: the Drex Citizen.

3. From “minimum income” to “metabolic income”: the conceptual shift

I am not talking about one more targeted programme with complex registration, queues and humiliation.

Research on social protection in the Global South shows that:

• cash-transfer programmes, including conditional ones, reduce poverty, improve child health and education, and strengthen families’ capacity to invest;
  
  

• each 1 unit of currency transferred to poor households can generate up to 2.5 units of local economic impact;
  
  

• there is no strong evidence that cash transfers lead to widespread “laziness”; in many cases, they increase the ability to search for better jobs and to start small businesses.
  
  

At the same time, recent macroeconomic work indicates that universal basic income schemes can boost aggregate output and reduce inequality, depending on how they are financed.

But I’m not interested in simply importing the label “universal basic income”.
I want something rooted in the social physiology of the Brazilian State:

• It is not “income” as a discretionary benefit.
  
  

• It is metabolic income as a right, because the citizen is a metabolic shareholder of the State.
  
  

So I propose:

Citizen Metabolic Income: a daily flow, paid in Drex, to every adult Brazilian citizen, forming a minimum unconditional economic energy level that ensures:

• the ability to refuse degrading work;
  
  

• the possibility to study, care, create, and undertake;
  
  

• a minimal immunity to economic blackmail and blind faith in saviours.
  
  

4. Proposals for a National Law of the JIWASA Citizen

4.1. Core principles

A National Law of the JIWASA Citizen should rest on four pillars:

1. Citizenship as State co-ownership
   
   

• The citizen is not a “beneficiary”: they are a metabolic co-owner of the State body.
  
  

2. Right to metabolic income
   
   

• Guaranteed in Drex, daily, unconditional, individual, and non-seizable.
  
  

3. Public, secure digital architecture
   
   

• Use of Drex and open finance under Central Bank regulation, with “inclusion by design”.
  
  

4. JIWASA as political pronoun
   
   

• The law should recognise explicitly that the State is an expanded “we”, not an entity above the people.
  
  

4.2. Key provisions (a skeletal draft)

Some articles I would include in this law:

1. Definition of metabolic income
   
   

• Legally recognise the Right to Citizen Metabolic Income, not tied to employment, but articulated with education and health policies.
  
  

2. Citizen Drex Account
   
   

• Establish that every tax ID (CPF) automatically has a Citizen Drex wallet, operated by authorised institutions but regulated with guarantees of:
  
  

• zero fees for basic transactions;
  
  

• offline or low-connectivity access solutions where possible;
  
  

• inclusive support for people with low digital literacy.
  
  

3. Protection against predatory debt
   
   

• Ban the use of metabolic income as collateral for predatory credit;
  
  

• forbid automatic deductions of loans from this income;
  
  

• require full transparency and interest-rate caps for any product intersecting with the Citizen Drex account.
  
  

4. Funding sources – the State’s metabolism
   The Drex Citizen fund should be fed by:
   
   

• a share of taxes on natural-resource extraction (mining, oil);
  
  

• revenues from JIWASA carbon credits and regional zero-waste savings;
  
  

• progressive taxation on large fortunes and high-frequency financial gains;
  
  

• dedicated levies on data mining and digital platforms that monetise human attention and behaviour.
  
  

5. JIWASA governance
   
   

• Creation of a National Council of the JIWASA Citizen, with participation of:
  
  

• randomly selected citizens (metabolic deliberative democracy);
  
  

• representatives from states and municipalities;
  
  

• researchers in economics, neuroscience, law and technology;
  
  

• the Public Defender’s Office, Public Prosecutor’s Office and civil society.
  
  

6. Transparency and Future Memory
   
   

• Mandate annual public reports showing:
  
  

• the impact of metabolic income on poverty, inequality, health, education and political participation;
  
  

• long-term projections (20–30 years) – the system’s “Future Memory”.
  
  

5. Constitutional anchoring for JIWASA

This law would not be “revolution against the Constitution”. On the contrary: it would be the Constitution taking a deep breath in the 21st century.

• Art. 1, II and III – Citizenship and human dignity
  → Drex Citizen turns dignity from an abstract ideal into a daily flow of economic energy.
  
  

• Art. 3 – Eradicate poverty, reduce inequalities, build a free, just, solidary society
  → Well-designed cash transfers, integrated with financial inclusion, are direct instruments to achieve these goals, as Brazilian and international evidence show.
  
  

• Art. 6 – Social rights
  → Metabolic income is the baseline layer that makes social rights materially accessible (without food and minimal autonomy, nobody studies or seeks health care on equal terms).
  
  

• Art. 170 and 193 – Economic and social order
  → By guaranteeing a metabolic floor, the State:
  
  

• stabilises internal demand;
  
  

• reduces political volatility;
  
  

• strengthens social justice not only ex-post, by repair, but ex-ante, by designing the flow of income.
  
  

In JIWASA language:
the Law of the JIWASA Citizen is how the State recognises that “all power emanates from the people” not only as an opening sentence, but as budget, code and Drex protocol.

6. Why this strengthens economic development (not the opposite)

Some will say: “if you give money to everyone, the country will go bankrupt”.

What do post-2020 findings say?

• Broad reviews on universal basic income show that such programmes tend to reduce inequality, improve well-being and do not significantly reduce labour supply; in some cases, they actually increase entrepreneurship and productivity.
  
  

• Recent macroeconomic studies indicate that fiscally neutral UBI reforms can increase aggregate output and reduce income and consumption inequality.
  
  

• Social-protection research shows that cash transfers have strong multiplier effects in local economies and are crucial not only to absorb shocks (like the pandemic) but also to sustain long-term growth.
  
  

• In Brazil, analyses of the Emergency Aid during COVID-19 show a strong impact in reducing poverty and sustaining demand, precisely when the economy was at risk of deeper contraction.
  
  

On the financial-infrastructure side, Drex:

• reduces transaction costs;
  
  

• increases efficiency;
  
  

• enables programmable, instant, auditable payments;
  
  

• and, according to the Central Bank, is meant to democratise access and broaden financial inclusion.
  
  

When I put these two layers together – flow-based social protection and public digital infrastructure – the result, economically, is not fragility; it is metabolic robustness:

• fewer people on the edge of financial collapse;
  
  

• more stable consumption;
  
  

• more freedom to refuse exploitative jobs and to seek education;
  
  

• more space for grounded innovation, not just high-frequency financial engineering.
  
  

In simple terms:
a responsible State that assumes the right to metabolic income tends to generate more stable, less unequal and less politically explosive economic development.

7. Future Memory: from the isolated “I” to the JIWASA Citizen

I return to my first-person consciousness:

• I, who was a single egg cell, sustained by a larger body;
  
  

• I, who grew in a system that measures my value in consumption;
  
  

• I, who was taught to have blind faith in narratives of pure merit and artificial scarcity.
  
  

When I say “JIWASA Citizen”, I am letting part of this isolated ego-self die to assume another identity:

I am the State.
I am metabolism.
If the State abandons me, it is abandoning a part of itself.

The National Law of the JIWASA Citizen I am proposing is, at the same time:

• a legal tool;
  
  

• a Drex-based digital infrastructure;
  
  

• and a pedagogical act: teaching, in practice, that money is collective energy, and that the State is not an abstract thing above me, but a “we” that pulses together with my body.
  
  

This is the kind of law I would like to see a councilor, state representative, federal deputy or senator defend:

• not as an empty promise of “money for everyone”,
  
  

• but as concrete metabolic architecture so that the 1988 Constitution can finally be fulfilled –
  in the brain, in the pocket and in the chest of every JIWASA citizen.
  
  

Post-2020 References

(Drex, CBDC, financial inclusion, basic income and social protection)

1. Banco Central do Brasil. Relatório Anual 2023 – Section on Drex and financial inclusion. 2023.
   
   

2. Banco Central do Brasil. Note on the second phase of the Drex Pilot. 2024.
   
   

3. Abreu, A. S. et al. Applying Design Principles to Brazilian Central Bank Digital Currency (Drex). AMCIS, 2025.
   
   

4. Hamsa. What is Drex? The Complete Guide. 2024.
   
   

5. Tan, B. J. Central Bank Digital Currency and Financial Inclusion. IMF Working Paper, 2023.
   
   

6. Lannquist, A. Central Bank Digital Currency’s Role in Promoting Financial Inclusion. IMF Fintech Note, 2023.
   
   

7. Luduvice, A. V. D. The Macroeconomic Effects of Universal Basic Income. Journal of Macroeconomics, 2024.
   
   

8. Hasdell, R. What We Know About Universal Basic Income. Umbrella Review, 2020.
   
   

9. Banerjee, A. et al. Social Protection in the Developing World. 2024.
   
   

10. World Bank. Social Protection Overview. 2025.
    
    

11. Nazareno, L. et al. The Impact of Conditional Cash Transfers on Poverty and Inequality: Evidence from Brazil’s Emergency Aid Program. 2023.
    
    

12. Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil de 1988 – consolidated texts and official commentaries.