And most of the ones pursuing their passions will do redundant, useless crap like countless blogs and TikTok videos.
We are the result of evolution and without evolutionary pressure we will fail.
The assumption that a company cranking out an iPhone every year is inherently "better for the evolution of humanity" than more people writing or making videos is one I'd question.
Evolutionary pressure seems to mainly create animals that focus more plainly on food and reproduction than modern humanity, after all!
I'm suggesting that "useful to a business" is currently over-prioritized compared to "useful to an individual." (And yes, it's driven by consumers, but if one's basic needs were met without working 8+ hours a day, maybe those individuals would have different preferences.)
And I think the claim that it's evolutionary necessary for us to have today's model of firms and full time employment is particularly out there.
Perhaps it's been a long day, and for some reason I'm not seeing this?
Dubious assumption indeed.
Given time off and no obligations, I always intend to use all of it on that... but damned if I don't start doing useful things on day 2, instead.
[EDIT] FYI, last I heard, states have been quietly letting people scam their way onto the disability rolls to make up for our official social safety net being totally inadequate, after the '08 financial crisis. You might look into that.
I have a friend I made in college who is now on disability. She's using the time to learn and create, and preparing to start a business teaching others what they know. They could easily smoke weed and play video games all day, but that gets old very quickly.
And to add on to that - what makes you think UBI simply won't cause rents to go up to match? We have strong evidence from the current inflation situation that broad based wage gains get eaten up by price increases of goods with limited supply (i.e. the housing situation in every coastal city). Existing UBI experiments aren't widespread enough to materially shift the housing market. You can't go off evidence from giving a few hundred people extra money. And basic economics tells us that oligopolies (the rental market in coastal cities) extract all consumer surplus (the UBI money) because an oligopoly is not a properly functioning market.
As natural life, everything we do is inherently natural.
Who cares if they do nothing, write blogs, and post to TikTok? This feels like a get off my lawn type of grievance.
We have endured far worse as a species than a mass of people with time and money to do whatever they want. It is pure arrogance to even meekly assert _you_, someone occupying such a thin sliver of time in human history knows what precise machinations will irreversibly ruin us as a species.
As opposed to the army of software engineers developing the platforms to post said useless crap?