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by avanderveen 2296 days ago
> non-productive for society

Why? I feel like a lot of people want to do things that are productive for society, that we have too little of right now. Things like producing art of all forms, building things, increasing their level of communication with those around them, participating in community events and activities, etc. Sure, these things aren't economically productive, but they're still productive for society, which is the gap that I'd like to see filled, whether by UBI or other forms of providing more security for the general population.
2 comments
ajsnigrutin 2295 days ago
> Sure, these things aren't economically productive

The problem with UBI is, that you need people to be economically productive, to create money for fudning the UBI.

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allovernow 2296 days ago
>Why? I feel like a lot of people want to do things that are productive for society

Most of the things that are productive for society require study and practice of skills that aren't particularly interesting to the vast majority of people.

>Sure, these things aren't economically productive

The vast majority of things that are productive for society are economically productive. That's why people pay for things.

We don't need UBI to go toward funding artists and musicians. That's a waste of resources. Particularly considering that far too many people are likely to choose the easy way out, pursuing "what they love", i.e. soft skills like art and music. You also drastically underestimate the number people who are perfectly content with doing drugs and watching TV/playing video games all day.

Unfortunately while resources are scarce, human nature is such that people require incentives to do the things that need to be done.

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strgcmc 2296 days ago
As a slightly different kind of counter-example, see this recent post about "hard problems": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22425745

IMO, UBI can actually encourage innovation and productive work, on "hard problems" that are not economically viable in a short-enough time-frame or lucrative enough for VCs, but for which society would certainly benefit from.

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