| If people don't work on anything once they get UBI this isn't really a problem. Currently, there are many many people who already don't do anything. They only do a little as possible to avoid getting fired OR they do periodically get fired from every job they ever hold once their employers realize they're always going to be a drain on productivity. Having these people on UBI would actually allow productivity to rise. However, I'm really concerned about UBI because: 1) One way to get more money on UBI is to convince others to give you their money. Many people on UBI will stop producing positive or neutral work and start finding ways to trick their fellow citizens into giving them their money. We will still need some sort of welfare to provide food to people who are tricked into giving away all their money for worthless services or items. 2) Some people have terrible planning skills and just want to be happy now. They'll spend all of their UBI on worthless items and go hungry until the start of the next month. Worse, they'll spend their children's UBI allocation on worthless items as well (or trick their children into doing it if it turns out parents don't get direct access to their children's allocation). We will still need welfare to feed the children of these people. 3) Some people will decide that their calling in life is now to cause problems for others. The food check comes once a month, so now their full time job is dressing up as a clown and terrorizing random people. Don't have to get up for work? Be really loud until 4am. The people who actually do have to get up for work will naturally get the option to live in a gated community because we need the few that actually do produce more than ever. This very well may cause society to schism into people who work and people who don't. 4) The potential long term effects are pretty scary. If you never have to work will you worry about education, socialization, or how to function in a society? How many people will decide to never learn any skills whatsoever? Sure, we could build up a lot of automation to take care of these people, but the result is going to be a massive schism where some people only know how to take their UBI money card to the food silo. And their children are probably going to be in the same bucket. Ultimately, I think we as a society have a responsibility to use our plenty to help those who are going without. However, I'm not convinced that UBI is the right way to make this happen. |
The most important tool there is a good education, which is mandatory for even the children of the laziest and most shiftless. That's where they get exposed to the possibilities of what they could do, and be engaged by. They'll be presented with role models in the form of teachers, who do get up and do work every day, and live better lives because of it.
Maybe they'll create nothing more than pointless forms of art. But even so, what would be wrong with that? Movies and video games are both pointless idleness, but they create genuine joy, and there were lots of mis-steps as people learned what forms of them would be worth doing. Similarly, a lot of the most advanced science seemed like navel-gazing until it turned into transistors and lasers and GPS.
I don't mean to be blandly utopian. There are many ways UBI can fail, and we will probably do all of them in varying experiments. But neither would I be so dystopian about people doing nothing at all with their lives. People enjoy comforts and they enjoy having purpose. Between the way our existing technology creates more than enough food and shelter at little cost, and the desire of many people to improve their lot in ways that also continue to move society forward, I think we can afford to experiment with letting some people live lives of complete (but unenviable) idleness.