There are things that individuals, left to their own preferences and entrepreneurial habits, will never create.
It will mean that people won't be wage slaves if they don't want to, and can quit a shitty job or a shitty manager. It means that folks can miss work if the are sick. Or not go broke while getting education, both formal and informal. Folks might not work at a job they hate just to get food on the table and be slightly-over-broke. People can demand vacation time. But it'll still be worth it to go to work to have more money than UBI gives, even if some folks don't participate.
You prefer to have nuclear physicists digging ditches like parent poster..?
There's plenty of people doing stuff at home, even on crazy projects. Zhang solved the twin prime conjecture while he worked at subway because he couldn't get an academic job[0]. I think many also know Grigori Perelman[1] turning down the Fields Medal. There's the nuclear boy scout. Michio Kaku built an accelerator as a teenager. How many SV startups came out of garages? It is so weird to hear the GP comment on a site where we glorify those that rose from shoestring budgets. In fact, what is more American than that kind of story? Maybe the dream died, but maybe it shouldn't have.
[0] https://gizmodo.com/a-former-subway-worker-made-a-breakthrou...
Michel started a prototype fusion reactor in a shed that turned into General Fusion. Einstein was of course a patent clerk. It all starts somewhere.
I’m however positive, in the case of essential infrastructure, enough people - engineers, technicians and the like will happily work together despite being provided UBI.
Same with health care and other essential professions.
They’ll do it no matter governmental or ”private” initiatives.
A lot of us would probably direct our effort more in unison to creating a better world once the basics are of no concern.
In the end all we need to do is to cooperate. It’s what we’ve evolved to do. UBI is kind of the final step here - realize it’s not a zero sum game.
Can you not see a lot of cooperatives and interesting governmental initiatives arising due to UBI? I certainly can.
Just less people willing to do the work.
Once you get people on the dole, they will continually ask for more while still doing nothing. And because we live in a democracy, they'll vote in whoever will give them more and more money for free.
How's that for a bombshell that will totally destroy our GDP, happiness, sense of self worth and ultimately our society?
The other big problem here is that when people do get money for free, the incentive is to vote more money for yourself. When most of the population is working, this isn't a problem, but once you get over 50% of the population who is expecting the government to pay their way, the country will just be a big free for all, everyone trying to grab as much as they can.
I could be wrong, but IMO the risk of it playing out this way and destroying the entire country is not insignificant.
Of course not. We live in a capitalistic society where people want to get ahead and make a better life for themselves. Raising the economic floor from $0 to $12k/yr (~poverty line) is juuust enough for people falling through the cracks to get back on their feet and become productive members of society again.
Will some tiny fraction of people be satisfied living in a shithole apartment, eating garbage and trolling on the internet all day? Sure. I'm willing to accept that negligible cost in exchange for the massive social benefits.
I think you do have a valid point regarding people voting for more money over time. I don't see this as big of a problem as you do but I acknowledge it's something that needs to be considered.
Are you trying to say I'm some sort of clown who unintentionally make people laugh when I speak my beliefs? Can you at least acknowledge that we may both be intelligent people who disagree? This sort of statement really shows your inability to consider opposing viewpoints in an objective way, IMO.
> Do you really think people will be satisfied making barely enough money to survive? Just enough to live at the poverty line?
> Of course not. We live in a capitalistic society where people want to get ahead and make a better life for themselves. Raising the economic floor from $0 to $12k/yr (~poverty line) is juuust enough for people falling through the cracks to get back on their feet and become productive members of society again.
> Will some tiny fraction of people be satisfied living in a shithole apartment, eating garbage and trolling on the internet all day? Sure. I'm willing to accept that negligible cost in exchange for the massive social benefits.
This is a straw man, since we've already seen that realistically, this is not how UBI would be implemented. The proposed "Heroes" act already had a (now removed) clause to give people $2000 per month, on top of all the other benefits they are already receiving, which goes to show that politicians who favor this aren't thinking in terms of the bare minimum to meet the poverty line, nor seem to care about how much it costs.
> I think you do have a valid point regarding people voting for more money over time. I don't see this as big of a problem as you do but I acknowledge it's something that needs to be considered.
What do think happens if you're wrong and doing this would cause a feedback loop of more and more benefits, spending, and money printing? You're going all in with the country at stake, with a vague hand wavy dismissal of the consequences.
Well, I'm a person, and you made me laugh, so, while I wouldn't actively employ that description, I wouldn't say that (apart from quite probably the “clown” part) it's wrong in any salient detail.
> Can you at least acknowledge that we may both be intelligent people who disagree?
Sure, but that's not mutually incompatible with the preceding option. Intelligent people can be wildly misguided on a topic, intelligence doesn't imply being informed, having spent the effort to think something through well (though it reduces the amount of effort required), or any of a number of other things that are needed to avoid that problem.
> The proposed "Heroes" act already had a (now removed)
“Now removed” is a hint that even as a temporary emergency measure, the form in that proposal is not the form it would likely be in were it to pass.
> clausee to give people $2000 per month, on top of all the other benefits they are already receiving
While it has some superficial similarity to a UBI, the HEROES act proposal was a temporary recurring stimulus payment, an ongoing money pump to get the economy going not a UBI. It was consciously, by design not sustainable beyond a limited emergency period with unusual economic conditions, and it's design reflected that. Just like the massive short-term trickle-down subsidies pumped into corporations and the banking sector, but this was bottom-up.
> What do think happens if you're wrong and doing this would cause a feedback loop of more and more benefits, spending, and money printing?
People concerned about that ought to support implementing it with the relatively trivial-to-implement negative feedback controls which prevent that.
> People concerned about that ought to support implementing it with the relatively trivial-to-implement negative feedback controls which prevent that.
I just don't see how that's trivial to implement at at all. What "negative feedback controls" are you referring to?
The simplest is just setting a fixed nominal benefit without any indexing, but this has the problem that active choice to increase benefits is expected, so the still fairly trivial, but less crude negative feedback method is to tie aggregate benefits to a revenue stream you expect to generally grow with the economy (to get a little bit beyond the trivial level, you can add some reserves and buffering for short-term fluctuations.)
Because of the natural effect of price levels on real benefit levels, a runaway scenario is really only possible with inflation indexing or something effectively similar.
When their reward is a real stake in the profits generated by the project.