>Give fishing rod, not a fish. I know you're speaking pretty abstractly, but let me run with it for a bit to illustrate the case for basic income: Better yet,

>Give fishing rod, not a fish. I know you're speaking pretty abstractly, but let me run with it for a bit to illustrate the case for basic income: Better yet, is give money and let the person decide whether to buy a fishing rod or a fish. Which one is better depends on a lot of uncertain and hard to observe (for an outsider) factors like: * how badly an immediate fish is needed * how viable is it for the person to learn to fish? * how useful a fishing rod would be given the environment (people close to a river that has lots of fish probably have more use for a fishing rod) * what the opportunity cost of a person's time is (if they have another good alternative job then they would logically prefer the fish as supplementary income rather than a fishing rod which must replace their old job)