> Give the average person money without structure, instruction or necessity and they cease to be productive in any sense of the word. We know they'll be (re)pr

> Give the average person money without structure, instruction or necessity and they cease to be productive in any sense of the word. We know they'll be (re)productive in one sense of the word :P But in all seriousness, everything we know presumes a world where people are expected to work and a good deal of self esteem is tied to work. In a future where machines are primarily responsible for the majority of the things that people do today, that won't be the case. Some people might lack the drive to occupy themselves with something useful, but that's okay...we wouldn't be relying on them for anything anyways. But many others would occupy themselves with some sort of creative activity. Whereas many people tend to focus on all those freeloaders receiving UBI and not giving anything substantial back to society, I choose to focus on the freedom that UBI provides to those that do want to be productive. When YC gave a call for research on UBI, everyone assumed it was an assuagement of guilt thing where they wanted to prepare for a world where they've disrupted everyone out of their jobs. But I don't think that's why YC is interested in UBI, or at least it shouldn't be. I think they want UBI because of how much easier it would then be to become a founder. Ramen profitable would suddenly mean the business actually being able to lose money each month. A break-even business where founders took no salary would have an infinite runway. First hires could be compensated solely in equity and YC could seed with lesser amounts of money since the amount of money spent on employees would go down significantly. Paying rent rent and buying food for the founders of a company increases the challenges that need to be overcome and means that starting something becomes unthinkable to many people with family obligations. Imagine if that challenge and that fear over supporting one's family disappeared. How many world-changing startups are we missing out on because someone with a killer idea is too afraid of failure to try? In short, I see UBI helping creative members of society create so much more easily than they do today that I have no problem believing they'd more than make up for people that simply took their UBI and did nothing.