[dv_dt]

Right now a fairly tight circle of people decide for others how to spend vast amounts of time. It's not even very efficient as many jobs carry bullshit hours requirements. So after increasing free time by a large amount, a very small number of people start choosing different areas to innovate in, it still ends up as a large growth area for innovation, or social interaction, or whatever humans value individually instead of what old line accounting values.

[pdonis]

I don't dispute that our current system is inefficient. But the proposed change under discussion (universal basic income) does not just mean "increasing free time by a large amount" while keeping everything else the same. It means increasing free time by a large amount while removing the need for anyone to do productive work. It's the latter that I see as problematic, not the former.

What would a world where we did the former but not the latter look like? It would be something like everyone having to be, at least in some measure, an entrepreneur--everyone would be their own small business, having to figure out what product or service to sell to others in order to make a living, and having to decide for themselves what use of their time would best serve that goal. That might well, in the long run (i.e., after all the upheaval caused by people who were used to having someone else define their business objectives, now having to do it themselves, has died down), be a big improvement over what we have now. But the key incentive of having to make a living is still there.

[dv_dt]

I think you may be under appreciating the "basic" part of universal basic income, as well as the human drive to do better than their own baselines.

The "basic" part means that the level of income is generally set at an austere level. Think of living in the minimal existence of a monk. Some people would do fine with that, and would choose it, but the vast majority of people I believe would elect to work for more.

Humans over their history have always reached for more, including the most extremely wealthy, who basically have a capitalism granted equivalent of UBI, but significant numbers still choose to work.

[pdonis]

> The "basic" part means that the level of income is generally set at an austere level.

And all history shows that that level increases over time to a point where "minimal existence" is enough luxury to be unsustainable. This is by no means the first time that the option of the state doling out basic necessities to everybody has been considered. The Romans had their bread and circuses. Today it would be food stamps and cable TV and Facebook and Twitter. Same difference.