It's called a basic income because it's subsistence living. Most people won't just live off it and do nothing. And those that would, well, they aren't really going to do much anyway if you force them to work, other than the bare minimum of the most menial labor.

So far every experiment in UBI has shown that almost everyone getting it does something useful with the money and doesn't just sit on it.

And frankly, I have no problem with paying someone to sit on their ass drawing lines, if it means they aren't starving and homeless.

> And frankly, I have no problem with paying someone to sit on their ass drawing lines, if it means they aren't starving and homeless.

Why don't you? I am sure that you can support at least one such person with your income

I do actually. I support a couple of people with enough income to keep them from being starving and homeless. One I'm not even related to.

Same, more or less. It's good to see my mentality isn't unique. Reducing human suffering is a noble goal.

Good on you!

Please don't expect everyone else to have the same generosity

That’s the beauty of UBI! No one has to be generous. It’s paid through taxes so everyone pays based on their means and ability.

He clearly doesn't expect everyone to be generous, hence why he advocates for UBI. UBI would be mandated and would therefore force participation from those without such generosity (according to their means, of course). By claiming that he holds a viewpoint which he obviously does not you've utterly failed to refute his argument. Perhaps you should seriously consider why his argument works and yours doesn't. You may come to a surprising change in your point of view.

This is the thing with automation, we're on a path to destroy most jobs that you can earn a living from self driving cars, automated kitchens (and ghost kitchens) self checkout, automated bookkeeping and mid level managerial positions, all of those are more or less set to be automated on the close future

Even if that only kill half the positions, we're still looking to a situation where humans overall don't have anything attractive to the market, if you can't earn a living wht would you do?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

> I don't want to pay for someone's food and board so they can draw lines on paper (which won't sell) all day.

Quite a few of us already do that for people who don't even so much as draw lines on paper. (cough cough landlords cough cough)

i don’t think your point is a valid retort; when you’re paying a landlord you are receiving something of value that you want for yourself, just like when you pay for a cheeseburger.

> when you’re paying a landlord you are receiving something of value that you want for yourself

No I don't. I receive a temporary lease to something of value that is fundamentally necessary for meaningful existence in modern society. Landlords are pure middlemen - and while there's a place for middlemen in society to provide initial capital, at some point that value dwindles down to zero as that initial investment is repaid, and then dwindles past zero as the landlord continues to parasitically rent-seek despite contributing nothing that the tenants themselves could accomplish for far cheaper.

Your retort to my retort would be valid (or at least actually equivalent to your cheeseburger analogy) if - in exchange for my rent checks every month - I received ownership stake in the property and/or the company that owns it. Such an arrangement has more in common with a housing cooperative than with a typical landlord/tenant relationship.

so is a subscription to appletv or netflix analogous to a landlord? i’m really trying to understand your worldview.

This focus on other people "earning it" almost seems religious to me at this point in our evolution, especially as we look forward towards automation potentially creating plenty. If we need people to work jobs, great, but why confabulate jobs just so people you can feel good that other people aren't getting their food and board paid for?

Also, many of the richest people didn't even earn it. They inherited it because some ancestor of their earned it, or stole it.

I agree with this sentiment, always have, but I always like to probe for issues with it.

When "earning it" takes much more than it used to due to technological shifts or otherwise, the only ones who can afford to walk the path toward mastery are the very well-off. This of course violates the modern western liberal ethos of equality for all, particularly in regards to educational pursuits.

We end up with a McDonald's worker class, their menial profession determined from birth, and their noble masters.

Maybe c'est la vie and there's nothing we should or even can do about it. But it's unpleasant, to say the least, knowing there's an entire class who's destined from birth to perform cheap menial labor their whole lives, without the slightest hope of doing anything else. After all, slavery is necessary for civilization, always has been.

seems like you're missing the main idea behind ubi? if automation gets good enough at enough things, there might not be jobs for everyone to do. if, when, where, and how the above might happen are up for debate - but your post just sounds like typical anti-welfare nonsense

I work in tech, and while it's mostly meetings and leaning on some knowledge of various Java and SQL use cases, as well as some niche knowledge of crappy languages like D, I probably don't work as hard as someone scrubbing the toilets or making the beds in the local Marriot hotel.

I can accrue money doing what I'm doing - they can't.

>If you want wealth, earn it.

A lovely principle. We can start by taxing all inherited wealth and using it to compensate people who do essential but underpaid jobs, like teachers.

So what'll you do when your job is taken by robots?

Perhaps seek recourse in one of the vast lucrative industries created from scratch in your lifetime (video games, b2b software, smartphones, internetworking, robots, ... )?

If there is no demand for the output of the machine, the machine will output nothing.