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It's already extremely well established that people will work far beyond what they need to maintain basic necessities. There are all sorts of strong motivations

It's already extremely well established that people will work far beyond what they need to maintain basic necessities. There are all sorts of strong motivations for humans outside of basic survival. In addition if you look at groups with steady income streams and no perverse incentives (ex. retirees, trust funders) the vast majority remains productive in some capacity. If you are making the claim that UBI would so drastically change human behavior as to invalidate all this observed behavior than the burden of proof should be on you.

RestlessMind 9y ago
Burden of proof belongs to those who want to change the system. So if you want to convince fellow citizens to vote for UBI, you will have to convince them that people won't slack off once on UBI. So again, can you please provide objective evidence for your assertions? Eg. "vast majority remains productive in some capacity." - I have no idea whether its true or not. Why should I trust you when you haven't provided any data to support that claim?
- smithsmith 9y ago
  > Burden of proof belongs to those who want to change the system. This is only true if the existing system does not keep on worsening. As the technology progresses human working hours has become more and more. How is this even fair when the whole point of technology is to make human life easier. So the Burden is on the people who want the current system not to change.
  - imartin2k 9y ago
    "Burden of proof belongs to those who want to change the system. " What if it is impossible to bring the proof before the change has been tried? There is essentially no test scenario which can replicate, accurately simulate and predict the behaviour of people when millions of them suddenly receive a UBI. At least if one agrees with the claim I just made, then following your logic, the change could never happen, for the simple reason as advanced proof of the effects is impossible to provide. So you would simply never find out if the proposed system would be better or worse than the current one. Having said that, I do think the article makes a point worth considering.
    - RestlessMind 9y ago
      > At least if one agrees with the claim I just made, then following your logic, the change could never happen... ... big changes could never happen... FTFY! Which is what we are seeing: non-trivial health care changes happened in 2010 after 1965 (45 year gap), needed massive majorities in Congress and incurred huge political backlash. i.e. a smaller step was possible only after all the stars perfectly aligned.

RestlessMind 9y ago

Burden of proof belongs to those who want to change the system. So if you want to convince fellow citizens to vote for UBI, you will have to convince them that people won't slack off once on UBI. So again, can you please provide objective evidence for your assertions? Eg. "vast majority remains productive in some capacity." - I have no idea whether its true or not. Why should I trust you when you haven't provided any data to support that claim?

smithsmith 9y ago
> Burden of proof belongs to those who want to change the system. This is only true if the existing system does not keep on worsening. As the technology progresses human working hours has become more and more. How is this even fair when the whole point of technology is to make human life easier. So the Burden is on the people who want the current system not to change.
- imartin2k 9y ago
  "Burden of proof belongs to those who want to change the system. " What if it is impossible to bring the proof before the change has been tried? There is essentially no test scenario which can replicate, accurately simulate and predict the behaviour of people when millions of them suddenly receive a UBI. At least if one agrees with the claim I just made, then following your logic, the change could never happen, for the simple reason as advanced proof of the effects is impossible to provide. So you would simply never find out if the proposed system would be better or worse than the current one. Having said that, I do think the article makes a point worth considering.
  - RestlessMind 9y ago
    > At least if one agrees with the claim I just made, then following your logic, the change could never happen... ... big changes could never happen... FTFY! Which is what we are seeing: non-trivial health care changes happened in 2010 after 1965 (45 year gap), needed massive majorities in Congress and incurred huge political backlash. i.e. a smaller step was possible only after all the stars perfectly aligned.