[winfred]

The way I see it, we already have that world, with capitalism functioning as a filter.

I worked my ass off to reach financial independence, now I'm dedicating the rest of my life towards helping other people.

I've proven to be capable of using the system to a degree where I can do whatever I want, which allows me the freedom to help other people full time.

It's not a perfect system, but I doubt UBI will be much better. At least capitalism filters out many of the people who shouldn't be helping others.

Helping those in need isn't something everyone should be doing. Not every needy person should be helped and helping others in desperate need incurs a mental cost that's not easy to carry.

[duncan-donuts]

Why should any single person carry the weight of the person in desperate need? UBI + healthcare implies that there’s a social safety net that creates an entire network of people to carry this weight. I don’t have a clue if any implementations would successfully do this but to just throw people in desperate need to the wolves is inhumane.

[winfred]

I don't think people would prosper under such a system. Free health care, yes, free education, yes. Retirement for all, take care of the disabled, yes.

But in my opinion, in today's society, if you take away the need for people to struggle (which UBI will do) they often end up in a worse mental and physical shape than if you make them suffer a bit. Just the way natural selection programmed us. "All basic needs are met <- conserve energy".

I can imagine a educational system where we prepare our children from childhood for UBI and it will work.

But given how rudimentary most education still is I don't see that happen anytime soon. Maybe in 100 years.

[michaelmrose]

>But in my opinion, in today's society, if you take away the need for people to struggle (which UBI will do) they often end up in a worse mental and physical shape than if you make them suffer a bit.

This is exactly the opposite of how people actually work people excel when given support and opportunity to grow. Adversity especially insofar as fear of basic needs being met isn't inspiring it's stunting.

Anything else is a basic dysfunction in understanding people fed by survivorship bias. Imagine if you met someone who was sure that plant growth was maximized by periodically holding a lighter to one or another of the leaves because all the surviving plants had gone through that. Your understanding is every bit as ridiculous.

We can find sufficient challenge and adversity as we need to move us in our own selves, relationships, and field of endeavor.

[luckylion]

> people excel when given support and opportunity to grow.

Some people do. Many don't, they'll take that support and rest on it. Plenty of European Countries have UBI for all intents and purposes (free health care, housing, utilities, enough cash money for everything else including entertainment and communication). People don't excel, and plenty don't bother to contribute, because it's not necessary.

> We can find sufficient challenge and adversity as we need to move us in our own selves, relationships, and field of endeavor.

You're looking at a tiny subset of people that wouldn't stop working (but maybe work on different things) if they won the lottery, and extrapolate from them on to the general population. Not everybody is like that. Any solutions that pretend that they are will fail.

[michaelmrose]

I don't think people having their basic needs met is in any way equivalent to winning the lottery. When you win the lottery you can have anything financially that you like for the rest of your life or until you blow all your money. With UBI you can have a minimalistic life devoid of most luxury or ease.

The kind of person who doesn't bother to contribute is probably the kind of person who would be contributing by making fries or checking you out at walmart. These contributions can be replaced by automation and nothing of value will be lost meanwhile some portion of the people will use their time that would have been thrown away at walmart to actually contribute.

If 90% of the team at walmart was replaced by robots and 10% found more meaningful ways to contribute it would be a net gain.

> You're looking at a tiny subset of people that wouldn't stop working (but maybe work on different things) if they won the lottery, and extrapolate from them on to the general population. Not everybody is like that. Any solutions that pretend that they are will fail.

If you offered most people a poverty wage of 2k monthly and netflix and the opportunity to earn 2k + whatever they could earn in addition doing something with their life 90% would chose the latter given the option especially if free education were available to get from A to B. Most people want to feel their life is meaningful. If you don't understand that then you don't understand people in the slightest.

[duncan-donuts]

If UBI is what you’re hung up on I think there’s a lot of Americans that would gladly take free education, healthcare, and retirement. Healthcare shouldn’t be a thing people should struggle through.

[wizzwizz4]

Much of that “desperate need” is created, or worsened, by capitalism.¹

It isn't just a matter of “working hard”. Say you're a brilliantly capable developer for three months out of every year, have around four months of chronic pain and bad mental health unpredictably breaking up the remaining time. Unless you're wealthy, capitalism doesn't let you get to a situation where your bad mental health doesn't disrupt that five month stretch where you could be doing worthwhile things – even if you would make enough money in those three months to support yourself, when most of it's going into paying off the debt you got into because you lost your job and had to eat, it's difficult to do so.

Think this is a bit much? Okay, how about this: you're in jail on suspicion of committing some crime or other. This lasts 1½ weeks, before they realise that no, actually, you weren't guilty. But in the meantime, you've lost your job, and without the savings you'd usually gather prior to job-hopping… what then?

You might've worked really, really hard to get where you are. For many, working really, really hard simply isn't enough.

---

¹: “Capitalism” here is shorthand for “society being structured under the assumption that capitalism is a fully-general ideal solution for allocating all resources, and there are only a handful of narrow examples where it makes sense to do something else”. There's nothing inherent to capitalism that causes these things, any more than a chainsaw is responsible for felled trees. But this is pedantry, so I kept it out of the first sentence.

[einpoklum]

> I worked my ass off to reach financial independence

This is a false pursuit, and in a sense a vacuous statement.

You are never independent of society around you. You are in constant need of others doing that invisible and visible labor - in production and in services - to maintain your way of life.

It's only with Capitalism being the way it is that you need to "work your ass off" to not be financially dependent on your parents, or at the risk of a crisis and collapse upon losing your job etc.

[ianbutler]

Not really capitalism's fault. Regulatory capture, weak laws that let that happen, government corruption, lobbying laws and other things are more to blame.

The USA was still a capitalist society when the American dream was alive and well with a thriving middle class. Meanwhile nations with planned economies, abolished land ownership and worker owned means of production were starving and seeing general iniquity.

Now those protections that gave us a thriving middle class and general economic prosperity have been largely gutted and our government generally subverted.

My point is, the ills of a country are likely the cause of governmental failings and destabilization exploited by the ruling class of the system to entrench themselves and expand their interests at the expense of the general public, regardless of what that that system is. It can happen to any system of governance paired with any economic system.

I think we should be cleaning our government up and taking that power back, but that by putting the blame squarely on capitalism you're missing the forest for the trees. The problem is allowing whatever naturally formed ruling class in an economic and or political ecosystem from concentrating too much power, and potentially resources [1], in the first place.

[1] Though I'm skeptical of this but in so much as resources equate to power maybe it's necessary.

[bavell]

Completely agreed. I see too many people jumping on the "Capitalism is the root of all evil" bandwagon too easily without critical thought. Like you, I see our current problems arising due to the usual historical culprits of corruption and shifting balance of power within a system of government. All systems of government are subject to these forces and while it's true our current system is clogged with crap, it's not capitalism we should be blaming.

[firedating]

I disagree that pursuing financial independence is a false pursuit.

"Financial independence" != "independence from the society". No one claims to be independent of the society. One just does not have to earn money anymore.

I agree that money are worthless without places to spend them and someone producing stuff to buy. This does not make financial independence less useful though.