I highly doubt that’s the case, but I have an open mind and I’d be delighted to be proven wrong.
As I understand it, most societal benefit and technological advancement has come from humans acting selfishly. You develop an idea while seeking profit — not necessarily money; this behaviour far predates money — and society benefits as a side effect (if the development of that idea is in some way beneficial).
That's not what I claiming at all.
What I'm saying is if you want to produce value then go ahead keep producing value for whatever reason, it could be purely for selfish reason for all i care.
But You still have to pay tax for your income though, thats for allowing you to do business.
Of course if you produce value you will be a lot more richer than people who don't produce value, thats an advantage for you.
And for people who can't or won't produce value, fine, here is basic income for you so that you can still fulfil your basic needs.
So its not one happy person at the expense of someone else.
I don’t think “allowing you to do business” is the arbitrary motivator for taxes. Societies deem it more efficient to pool resources for common needs we all have. This is taxes.
Conventional welfare also provides for a person’s “basic needs”, usually with the condition that that person is actively searching for an opportunity to add value.
People need to add value for societies to prosper. Wealth doesn’t just appear. Bear in mind that the only reason, e.g., Sweden can spend so much on welfare is after long periods of wealth creation through Capitalism.
If enough people are on free money with no incentive to work, there isn’t enough wealth generated to pay for the people living on free money.
> And for people who can't or won't produce value, fine, here is basic income for you so that you can still fulfil your basic needs.
Who gets to decide what a basic need is, anyway? Since I’m paying for it through taxes, I would deem your basic needs as shelter, food, and water. Warmth? Luxury. Television? Luxury.
> So its not one happy person at the expense of someone else.
It really is though. There’s no other way to put it. It’s the consumption of wealth on the back of someone else’s labour.
A central point of UBI as a replacement for means-tested welfare is that people without employment always have a financial incentive to work, because they keep the additional income from work rather than having sharp, sometimes more than 100% when aggregated across multiple programs, offsetting reduction in benefits.
It's true that UBI at a poverty support levels can be said to remove economic coercion that can exist to work without welfare (e.g., due to time limited benefits or qualifications besides means testing), but it does not result in people having no incentive to work.
> Conventional welfare also provides for a person’s “basic needs”, usually with the condition that that person is actively searching for an opportunity to add value.
Conventional means-tested welfare has massive inefficient bureaucracy because it works at cross purposes with itself, with means-testing creating a financial disincentive to added work (and duplicating bureaucratic functions already present in the tax system), which it then tries to counteract with behavior testing (which adds another set of layers of bureaucratic functions whose entire purpose is to provide coercion to counteract the work disincentives created by means testing.)0
Is not an issue because one of the main reason for basic income in the first place is the increasing prevalence and advancement of AI and automation. Means we are needing less and less people to work.
>Conventional welfare also provides for a person’s “basic needs”, usually with the condition that that person is actively searching for an opportunity to add value.
What often happen is welfare incentives discourage work. Because entering the labor force or working more hours can lead to a loss in benefits.
>Who gets to decide what a basic need is, anyway?
Government. Of course it's based on research to determine the actual dollar amount.
>It really is though. There’s no other way to put it. It’s the consumption of wealth on the back of someone else’s labour.
Sure, but the thing is no once is forcing you to work, if you think its unfair or you think its better for you not to do work then fine don't work then. Other people will.
