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Comment by lastyearman | Hacker News Reader

There is no such thing as free money. If you're not creating more work (or more productive work) then it is simply taking from someone and giving to someone else.

However, the point is that through automation we're creating more work and from who we're taking is the robots. If there are no new automation or robots to take from, then it is most likely that we're going to take from middle class, either directly or indirectly.

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I get the premise behind your answer I believe. What I am asking is, what's to stop the markets (especially in the US where greed reigns) from increasing the cost of things such as food and shelter artificially b/c of this free money, making this "basic income" all but useless? Meaning at some point it wont even cover the most basic and modest of necessities.

Costs could inflate in the way you say, it all depends on the health of the particular market (e.g. how resistant the market is to collusion/price fixing).

If you wanted a more reliable way to ensure UBI would remain effective, one way would be to treat it as a separate currency that could only be used for the necessities of life. Moves could then be taken to limit profits made on these goods without distorting prices in the rest of the economy. Could also couple this with government support to encourage automation and other savings in these industries. I'd argue both of these changes in combination can result in a UBI system that is protected against price hikes.

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