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I’m really curious how UBI would interact with the base emotional responses that drove a lot of our politics. The anti-freeloader impulse is one of the easiest

I’m really curious how UBI would interact with the base emotional responses that drove a lot of our politics. The anti-freeloader impulse is one of the easiest ways to spur people to action. Would that go away or be intensified under UBI? would people cease to be charitable after a tragedy because they expect UBI to handle it?

_vqpz 9mo ago
Are people charitable after tragedies now? Anecdotally, most people I know don't feel like they make enough to make donations to others.
beeflet 9mo ago
I think it is a moot question because UBI and automation will destroy society as we know it through uncontrolled, malthusian growth. I don't think we will last long enough to see what long-term culture that results in. With infinite welfare, the dominant culture will be the one that is able to reproduce as much as possible, perhaps through cloning? We are already seeing IVF, surrogate mothers and other sorts of cloning/eugenics sexual strategies emerge, just not on a dominant level yet. If it wasn't for cloning, I would say it would look more like Calhoun's rat utopia due to sex-based competition. >The anti-freeloader impulse is one of the easiest ways to spur people to action. I would say this depends on culture. Only industrious countries tend to have culture with this impulse.
- foltik 9mo ago
  People aren’t rats. Overall fertility is strongly regulated by education level, labor opportunities, cultural norms, etc. If “infinite welfare” unavoidably led to a reproductive feedback loop, the richest, safest societies would already be there, which we don’t see. Your comment seems to rest on the unstated assumption that hierarchy between humans is an essential stabilizing force, and that abundance without it is unsustainable. I don’t think that’s an empirically settled conclusion.
  - EMIRELADERO 9mo ago
    Exactly. Here's Orwell speaking on the whole thing: > "An argument that Socialists ought to be prepared to meet, since it is brought up constantly both by Christian apologists and by neo-pessimists such as James Burnham, is the alleged immutability of ‘human nature’. Socialists are accused—I think without justification—of assuming that Man is perfectible, and it is then pointed out that human history is in fact one long tale of greed, robbery and oppression. Man, it is said, will always try to get the better of his neighbour, he will always hog as much property as possible for himself and his family. Man is of his nature sinful, and cannot be made virtuous by Act of Parliament. Therefore, though economic exploitation can be controlled to some extent, the classless society is for ever impossible. > "The proper answer, it seems to me, is that this argument belongs to the Stone Age. It presupposes that material goods will always be desperately scarce. The power hunger of human beings does indeed present a serious problem, but there is no reason for thinking that the greed for mere wealth is a permanent human characteristic. We are selfish in economic matters because we all live in terror of poverty. But when a commodity is not scarce, no one tries to grab more than his fair share of it. No one tries to make a corner in air, for instance. The millionaire as well as the beggar is content with just so much air as he can breathe. Or, again, water. In this country we are not troubled by lack of water. If anything we have too much of it, especially on Bank Holidays. As a result water hardly enters into our consciousness. Yet in dried-up countries like North Africa, what jealousies, what hatreds, what appalling crimes the lack of water can cause! So also with any other kind of goods. If they were made plentiful, as they so easily might be, there is no reason to think that the supposed acquisitive instincts of the human being could not be bred out in a couple of generations. And after all, if human nature never changes, why is it that we not only don’t practise cannibalism any longer, but don’t even want to?"
    - beeflet 9mo ago
      >If they were made plentiful, as they so easily might be, there is no reason to think that the supposed acquisitive instincts of the human being could not be bred out in a couple of generations. How would this be bred out without artificially controlling reproduction? What is the action here? The idea that individual pressure for resources would trickle down inter-generationally is lamarckian! Under a regime of UBI and Reproductive "Freedom", the most successful genes will simply be the ones that choose to reproduce the most, because there are no longer any social or resource limitations on reproduction. You get a totally opposite effect, where the reproductively greediest are the most successful at reproduction. It is a tragedy of the commons.
- corranh 9mo ago
  Population is declining in many parts of the world while productivity is increasing. That doesn’t sound like a world of scarcity. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/business/china-population-data.html?unlocked_article_code=1.FlA.-owj.6_RuqGV0CZtW&smid=nytcore-ios-share https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/business/china-population...
  - beeflet 9mo ago
    We live in a world that is largely still pre-cloning and pre-surrogacy. It will take a couple generations for these new sexual strategies to propagate (for example https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-chinese-billionaires-having-dozens-of-us-born-babies-via-surrogate/ar-AA1Siy0B https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-chinese-billionaire...). I would describe the current state of disaster, where reproduction is limited by sexual competition and not by resources as similar calhoun's rat utopia. In the western world, it is also driven by market factors such as land ownership and cultural expectations around that. Whereas in china there are population limits resulting from the one-child policy (anti-malthusian policy). I maintain that my position in my previous comment is true in the large despite these local effects. In countries where you have a welfare system, you tend to see new strategies emerge after a couple of generations. In the USA, a significant number of african-american households are dependent on EBT. In Israel, the population of "Haredi" ultra-orthodox subgroup is subsidized and has grown year over year (https://youtu.be/ST_eZwBIMDA https://youtu.be/ST_eZwBIMDA). I suggest that it is largely a social effect, because it is effected by the rate of cultural diffusion between the welfare/reproduction maximizing subgroup and the broader society. But it still represents an adaptation.
jandrewrogers 9mo ago
Monkey status games don't disappear just because everyone gets free money and no one has a job. They just take a different and more destructive form. One of the benefits of status being associated with making money is that it tends to drive positive-sum productive behavior rather than zero-sum destructive behavior.
steveBK123 9mo ago
Right the problem with UBI is the people being productive in some way to fund it will always see the level of benefits as too much and those on the receiving end will see the benefits as too little. So as a higher % of people are on the receiving end, it creates a spiral of unfundable benefits demands. Look at France, it seems like the biggest protests now are when it is suggested their retirement program is unsustainable and they should phase in a higher retirement age. And these programs across the west are becoming unsustainable because retirement ages were set decades ago at levels 0-10 years below life expectancy, and that gap has now grown to 20 years with a lower employed:retired ratio.
jmyeet 9mo ago
The charity question is easy to dispense with because it's been well-studied: the poor give more of their income to charitable causes than middle class or rich people. "Charity" for the wealthy is really nothing to do with charity. It's a social-climbing game and part of a coordinated PR/media campaign. Charity will get you into rooms with people with true wealth and power far easier than anything else you can do. Not all UBIs are created equal. Broadly speaking, there are left-wing and right-wing forms of UBI. The left-wing UBI is a form of wealth redistribution to reduce extreme wealth inequality. It means giving people enough to meet their needs and have a basic quality of life. This probably won't work if the rest of society remains the same. For example, consider military personnel. If you don't live in barracks you get BAH. Landlords around a base know this so will always know what to charge. Increase the BAH and the rents go up. You would likely have similar problems with UBI unless you also solve the supply of these kinds of needs as well. The right-wing form of UBI is simply an excuse to destroy the social welfare state and social safety net. Proponents will argue it's more efficient to simply replace everything like disability pensions, food stamps, Medicaid, etc with a UBI payment and letting people twist in the wind of private sector providers for everything. That might make sense but, for example, living with a disability makes everything more expensive and you might have few or no options for work. We also allow disabled people to get paid sub-minimum wage as yet another form of exploitation. As another example, we allow employers to pay below a living wage them SNAP benefits, which is twofold corporate welfare. It reduces Walmart's labor costs AND they end up spending SNAP at Walmart. And then we make political decisions about what they can spend SNAP on. So it's a likely outcome that any right-wing UBI implementation will end up deciding what you can and can't spend money on.

_vqpz 9mo ago

Are people charitable after tragedies now? Anecdotally, most people I know don't feel like they make enough to make donations to others.

beeflet 9mo ago

I think it is a moot question because UBI and automation will destroy society as we know it through uncontrolled, malthusian growth. I don't think we will last long enough to see what long-term culture that results in. With infinite welfare, the dominant culture will be the one that is able to reproduce as much as possible, perhaps through cloning? We are already seeing IVF, surrogate mothers and other sorts of cloning/eugenics sexual strategies emerge, just not on a dominant level yet. If it wasn't for cloning, I would say it would look more like Calhoun's rat utopia due to sex-based competition. >The anti-freeloader impulse is one of the easiest ways to spur people to action. I would say this depends on culture. Only industrious countries tend to have culture with this impulse.

foltik 9mo ago
People aren’t rats. Overall fertility is strongly regulated by education level, labor opportunities, cultural norms, etc. If “infinite welfare” unavoidably led to a reproductive feedback loop, the richest, safest societies would already be there, which we don’t see. Your comment seems to rest on the unstated assumption that hierarchy between humans is an essential stabilizing force, and that abundance without it is unsustainable. I don’t think that’s an empirically settled conclusion.
- EMIRELADERO 9mo ago
  Exactly. Here's Orwell speaking on the whole thing: > "An argument that Socialists ought to be prepared to meet, since it is brought up constantly both by Christian apologists and by neo-pessimists such as James Burnham, is the alleged immutability of ‘human nature’. Socialists are accused—I think without justification—of assuming that Man is perfectible, and it is then pointed out that human history is in fact one long tale of greed, robbery and oppression. Man, it is said, will always try to get the better of his neighbour, he will always hog as much property as possible for himself and his family. Man is of his nature sinful, and cannot be made virtuous by Act of Parliament. Therefore, though economic exploitation can be controlled to some extent, the classless society is for ever impossible. > "The proper answer, it seems to me, is that this argument belongs to the Stone Age. It presupposes that material goods will always be desperately scarce. The power hunger of human beings does indeed present a serious problem, but there is no reason for thinking that the greed for mere wealth is a permanent human characteristic. We are selfish in economic matters because we all live in terror of poverty. But when a commodity is not scarce, no one tries to grab more than his fair share of it. No one tries to make a corner in air, for instance. The millionaire as well as the beggar is content with just so much air as he can breathe. Or, again, water. In this country we are not troubled by lack of water. If anything we have too much of it, especially on Bank Holidays. As a result water hardly enters into our consciousness. Yet in dried-up countries like North Africa, what jealousies, what hatreds, what appalling crimes the lack of water can cause! So also with any other kind of goods. If they were made plentiful, as they so easily might be, there is no reason to think that the supposed acquisitive instincts of the human being could not be bred out in a couple of generations. And after all, if human nature never changes, why is it that we not only don’t practise cannibalism any longer, but don’t even want to?"
  - beeflet 9mo ago
    >If they were made plentiful, as they so easily might be, there is no reason to think that the supposed acquisitive instincts of the human being could not be bred out in a couple of generations. How would this be bred out without artificially controlling reproduction? What is the action here? The idea that individual pressure for resources would trickle down inter-generationally is lamarckian! Under a regime of UBI and Reproductive "Freedom", the most successful genes will simply be the ones that choose to reproduce the most, because there are no longer any social or resource limitations on reproduction. You get a totally opposite effect, where the reproductively greediest are the most successful at reproduction. It is a tragedy of the commons.
corranh 9mo ago
Population is declining in many parts of the world while productivity is increasing. That doesn’t sound like a world of scarcity. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/business/china-population-data.html?unlocked_article_code=1.FlA.-owj.6_RuqGV0CZtW&smid=nytcore-ios-share https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/business/china-population...
- beeflet 9mo ago
  We live in a world that is largely still pre-cloning and pre-surrogacy. It will take a couple generations for these new sexual strategies to propagate (for example https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-chinese-billionaires-having-dozens-of-us-born-babies-via-surrogate/ar-AA1Siy0B https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-chinese-billionaire...). I would describe the current state of disaster, where reproduction is limited by sexual competition and not by resources as similar calhoun's rat utopia. In the western world, it is also driven by market factors such as land ownership and cultural expectations around that. Whereas in china there are population limits resulting from the one-child policy (anti-malthusian policy). I maintain that my position in my previous comment is true in the large despite these local effects. In countries where you have a welfare system, you tend to see new strategies emerge after a couple of generations. In the USA, a significant number of african-american households are dependent on EBT. In Israel, the population of "Haredi" ultra-orthodox subgroup is subsidized and has grown year over year (https://youtu.be/ST_eZwBIMDA https://youtu.be/ST_eZwBIMDA). I suggest that it is largely a social effect, because it is effected by the rate of cultural diffusion between the welfare/reproduction maximizing subgroup and the broader society. But it still represents an adaptation.

jandrewrogers 9mo ago

Monkey status games don't disappear just because everyone gets free money and no one has a job. They just take a different and more destructive form. One of the benefits of status being associated with making money is that it tends to drive positive-sum productive behavior rather than zero-sum destructive behavior.

steveBK123 9mo ago

Right the problem with UBI is the people being productive in some way to fund it will always see the level of benefits as too much and those on the receiving end will see the benefits as too little. So as a higher % of people are on the receiving end, it creates a spiral of unfundable benefits demands. Look at France, it seems like the biggest protests now are when it is suggested their retirement program is unsustainable and they should phase in a higher retirement age. And these programs across the west are becoming unsustainable because retirement ages were set decades ago at levels 0-10 years below life expectancy, and that gap has now grown to 20 years with a lower employed:retired ratio.

jmyeet 9mo ago

The charity question is easy to dispense with because it's been well-studied: the poor give more of their income to charitable causes than middle class or rich people. "Charity" for the wealthy is really nothing to do with charity. It's a social-climbing game and part of a coordinated PR/media campaign. Charity will get you into rooms with people with true wealth and power far easier than anything else you can do. Not all UBIs are created equal. Broadly speaking, there are left-wing and right-wing forms of UBI. The left-wing UBI is a form of wealth redistribution to reduce extreme wealth inequality. It means giving people enough to meet their needs and have a basic quality of life. This probably won't work if the rest of society remains the same. For example, consider military personnel. If you don't live in barracks you get BAH. Landlords around a base know this so will always know what to charge. Increase the BAH and the rents go up. You would likely have similar problems with UBI unless you also solve the supply of these kinds of needs as well. The right-wing form of UBI is simply an excuse to destroy the social welfare state and social safety net. Proponents will argue it's more efficient to simply replace everything like disability pensions, food stamps, Medicaid, etc with a UBI payment and letting people twist in the wind of private sector providers for everything. That might make sense but, for example, living with a disability makes everything more expensive and you might have few or no options for work. We also allow disabled people to get paid sub-minimum wage as yet another form of exploitation. As another example, we allow employers to pay below a living wage them SNAP benefits, which is twofold corporate welfare. It reduces Walmart's labor costs AND they end up spending SNAP at Walmart. And then we make political decisions about what they can spend SNAP on. So it's a likely outcome that any right-wing UBI implementation will end up deciding what you can and can't spend money on.