[Jedd]

I don't think you can usefully equate 'UBI' to a single outcome of UBI.

One of the goals of UBI, as I interpret it, is to reduce the cost of living closer to zero.

And that's the literal cost of living - not the macroeconomist's use of the term. That phrase, once you contemplate it, is a ludicrous reflection of how our society has gone wrong.

Why should it cost to live?

(You can consider the answer in terms of > 11kya anthropology, or in terms of our current, advanced food production capabilities + other technologies - take your pick.)

[slowmovintarget]

> Why should it cost to live?

Because that's how life works. With sufficient energy input into a system, the system can sustain complexity. Sun -> single-celled life -> plants -> animals. The food chain is an economy of energy. Money is a proxy for many different kinds of energy. It will never be cost-free to live, not for single-celled life, not for us.

A Universal Basic Income absent substantial other changes in our economy, would be a disaster because we no longer have a closed economy. It would simply flow out to other nations. UBI + open borders + bureaucratic dictatorship sends us right back into serfdom...

There used to be restrictions on the number of serfs allowed for a single geography, because the lord was expected to provide for them (schools and hospitals... etc.). We're replacing an oligarch with a bureaucracy which is just a transitive oligarchy as the bureaucracies ultimately get captured (Big Tech, Big Oil, Big you-name-it). All good intentions erode over time to neglect and malice, especially in systems where nepotism and dynasty rule instead of merit.

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have."

[fuzzfactor]

Very good points.

You're right, it does tend toward medieval when the serfs have less agency than the landed gentry.

>Why should it cost to live?

We would have to get out our slide rules, or maybe go back to them ;)

Well if previous generations productively built the richest country because of the most widespread opportunity (without taxing income) in historical times, and prevailed handily like no other when challenged by financially devastating world-wide conflict, with plenty of time to invest the surplus wisely and let it appreciate, you would expect by now everybody would be able to coast, but Nooo . . .

The government dropped the ball and it was already big enough to take away everything you had.

In complete defiance of what all those generations had in mind for us now, and everything every American had ever worked for.

That's why the cost of living is not lower, if not zero, or even negative, if only slightly better choices would have been made. Compounded over all this time !! And that's with only better stewardship of the percentage taken out of laborers' pay once that got going, without even considering the wealth of the citizens that had been built up before the quest for revenue did a 180 and turned on internal targets.

[Jedd]

My dude, that is a despairing world view you have there.

First, no UBI proponents are suggesting that it be

a) combined with a bureaucratic dictatorship, and

b) implemented absent significant concurrent social and financial changes.

Your phrasing makes me think you're based in the USA, and so I can understand some of the societal norms that might have led you to believe we can't have a better quality of life, a better society, simply because amoeba have to hunt their prey to survive.

We -- intelligent life forms with breathtakingly advanced technologies (compared to what we would need to just live) -- can do much better.

[HPsquared]

Surely cost of living, expressed as hours of labour, remains the same regardless. Anyone can reduce their cost of living by reducing the standard of living.

[Jedd]

Your premise is patently not true.