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You can also find out that you love it despite the novels (or software or paintings or poems or whatever) not being interesting for almost anyone else or even b

You can also find out that you love it despite the novels (or software or paintings or poems or whatever) not being interesting for almost anyone else or even being available to anyone, but as you don't need the money you can keep doing that (and only that) and society simply loses out on whatever you're doing currently. The key part of what people would work on without needing to worry about money is that there is literally zero reason to assume that the thing worked on would be useful to society in any way whatsoever, it can be useless or even detrimental to it - the current mechanism of monetary compensation is the thing aligning the work to interests of others, remove it and you can't expect that alignment to persist. Unconditional income is a solution to the problem when we don't need people's labor anymore - it makes all sense when people can just go off and do whatever without worrying if it benefits others enough to justify the basic goods and services they need, and the society is okay with that. But while we still do need the labor of most people, there needs to be motivation to guide that labor to the specific things society needs.

guidoism 3y ago
I think there's a huge difference between everyone having unlimited material goods Star Trek style and UBI being a floor for everyone. I think of UBI as a floor that I can go below no matter how bad I screw up. If I start a company and max out my credit cards to fund it and it goes belly up then no matter how much I still owe to Chase I will still get my $1000/month to pay the rent and put food in my belly. But I will still want luxury goods and I'm willing to work for them most of the time. I want a phone upgrade every few years which might be a luxury I couldn't afford under UBI. I like flying airplanes and certainly would need to work to pay for that hobby. But if I get burnt out and want to read books for a year then I could do that too!
TaylorAlexander 3y ago
> there is literally zero reason to assume that the thing worked on would be useful to society in any way whatsoever, it can be useless or even detrimental to it - the current mechanism of monetary compensation is the thing aligning the work to interests of others, remove it and you can't expect that alignment to persist. I think a strong argument can be made that the current system does not necessarily align the work being done with the interests of others in a broad or universal sense. Think about a corporation with a very useful drug whose patent is about to expire. Allowing the drug to go generic would be in the best interests of many poor sick people all over the world (patent harmonization means even poor countries must follow US patent law or get locked out of global systems). However companies often find legal tricks they can use to effectively renew the patents for their drugs. This aligns with the interests of some people - the shareholders for example, but is detrimental to the interests of sick poor people all over the world. And this isn’t a hypothetical, this just happened again two weeks ago with Johnson and Johnson and only a coordinated pressure campaign from some high profile YouTubers was able to get the company to relax their plans: https://youtu.be/tMhgw5SW0h4 https://youtu.be/tMhgw5SW0h4 However when there is no profit motive, people often work on problems that they personally need to solve, and there is often good alignment with the work they are doing and the needs of others. More broadly, we can say that the current system does not necessarily align the work being done with the needs of most people, and that alternative ways of aligning that work must be possible.

guidoism 3y ago

I think there's a huge difference between everyone having unlimited material goods Star Trek style and UBI being a floor for everyone. I think of UBI as a floor that I can go below no matter how bad I screw up. If I start a company and max out my credit cards to fund it and it goes belly up then no matter how much I still owe to Chase I will still get my $1000/month to pay the rent and put food in my belly. But I will still want luxury goods and I'm willing to work for them most of the time. I want a phone upgrade every few years which might be a luxury I couldn't afford under UBI. I like flying airplanes and certainly would need to work to pay for that hobby. But if I get burnt out and want to read books for a year then I could do that too!

TaylorAlexander 3y ago

> there is literally zero reason to assume that the thing worked on would be useful to society in any way whatsoever, it can be useless or even detrimental to it - the current mechanism of monetary compensation is the thing aligning the work to interests of others, remove it and you can't expect that alignment to persist. I think a strong argument can be made that the current system does not necessarily align the work being done with the interests of others in a broad or universal sense. Think about a corporation with a very useful drug whose patent is about to expire. Allowing the drug to go generic would be in the best interests of many poor sick people all over the world (patent harmonization means even poor countries must follow US patent law or get locked out of global systems). However companies often find legal tricks they can use to effectively renew the patents for their drugs. This aligns with the interests of some people - the shareholders for example, but is detrimental to the interests of sick poor people all over the world. And this isn’t a hypothetical, this just happened again two weeks ago with Johnson and Johnson and only a coordinated pressure campaign from some high profile YouTubers was able to get the company to relax their plans: https://youtu.be/tMhgw5SW0h4 https://youtu.be/tMhgw5SW0h4 However when there is no profit motive, people often work on problems that they personally need to solve, and there is often good alignment with the work they are doing and the needs of others. More broadly, we can say that the current system does not necessarily align the work being done with the needs of most people, and that alternative ways of aligning that work must be possible.