[carapace]

A thought experiment: Assume a near-future world where automation can provide a decent standard of living for everyone. Further assume there is a part of the population that just slacks off. Would you be in favor of some sort of punishment to make those folks conform to your standard of not wasting their lives?

[hahooooo]

My main point is that people tend to view everyone as themselves. So intellectuals tend to view everyone as intellectuals.

So we think that if only I'd have guaranteed income, I'd finally get around to fixing Firefox, or making an Open Source Google, or whatever. Therefore, it would be better for society if people would be free to leave "useless work" and innovate instead.

But once you see the "real world," you realize that it's not going to happen. Most people would just sit at home playing CS or chatting on FB.

Now once humanity is retired, and of no more use (singularity), then sure, why not. It'll be the AIs innovating everything, running everything, and no one will be doing anything useful anyways.

But until that point, I don't know if we can realistically afford three quarters of the population to just go into early retirement.

[carapace]

Heh, cool, I agree with you. :-)

I'm one of those who views UBI as a way of dealing with productivity explosion implied by (some models of) the singularity (as opposed to a form of welfare.) It seems a realistic option, and more desirable than e.g. slavery or genocide, once things are getting closer to the limit, eh?