Humans will strive to rise to the top in any game we choose to play together.
Competitiveness like this does not require that people are competing for basic needs.
Free people from the Puritan conceit that the majority should struggle and suffer, and observe what happens.
Independent of how you feel about it in other respects, Burning Man offers a fine large scale experimental environment into which observe the social organization that occurs in circumstances of plenty rather than scarcity. (Because it operates on a strictly enforced gift economy. Not barter. Not sale. Never mind people who don't play by the rules for now; as a 25 year attendee I have seen first hand the reality behind the cant.)
Humans will "strive" plenty whether they are fed or not. There are more needs than the ones we can and should provide for all (housing, food, education).
Humans will always find a way to self segregate and award status, whether it's in terms of karma or dollars.
At a social level, dollars too are a consensual fiction and useful primarily as a crude proxy for status and success and desirability. (Not talking about utility, talking about social status.)
I would like to think this as well, but the issue is complex.
I think the fear comes from 2 things.
1) Think about the children of the wealthy, if you are born with a trust fund you essentially already have a UBI. These children tend to grow up and do well. But the pressure on them to produce comes from family/social expectations. These children really DO have serious problems understanding the value of money. The "spoiled rich kid" is a real thing.
2) Now take that same "spoiled rich kid" and put them in a family that doesn't expect anything from them. Without the social pressure associated with the upper classes, will they have the incentive to work as hard?
I think UBI experiment would be interesting. My guess is that 1/3 of people would work just as hard at jobs they hate, trying to get ahead and "play the game". 1/3 of people might still work, but slightly change the course of their lives towards professions that gave them more fulfillment because the need for money was less. But 1/3 of people will absolutely optimize their lives to work as little as they possibly can.
There is nothing wrong with that. The movement towards "minimalism", "tiny houses", and frugality is already in full swing. But lets not delude ourselves, it would absolutely result in lower GDP.
Which is possibly a good thing, allowing humanity more time to adjust as robots take all the jobs.
Thought experiment: lock people up in a permanent Burning Man and measure the time it takes until it resembles a refugee camp more than the Burning Man of a handful of days per year. I do not share your optimism that it would last, and that's already factoring in the very self-selected group of Burning Man participants. Now imagine the same with a random selection of those who don't make up the "working caste" of utopian-UBI. (I do not think any of this would apply to a "regulation free interpolated unemployment benefit" kind of UBI)
I don't think BM itself would last, for sure; the scale of the vent is already greater than many people can hold up to.
That said, I think the gift economy element itself can be separated from all the rest and would stand up.
Maybe the TLDR for my optimism is,
Give humans a competition they can take seriously, e.g. because the social status accrued wins real rewards of various kinds–and we will be happy productive and competitive.
The part of the UBI skepticism I am eager to see tested pragmatically is that this competition must necessarily be for "that amount of money needed to lead a dignified healthy productive life worth living."
IMO the value proposition of the UBI is that we can do have it both ways. Free people from _fear_ first and foremost; then give them a motivation as well.
Maybe another way to put this is: keep the carrot, remove the stick. We've learned from evolutions in parenting that sparing the rod leads to better emotionally adjusted [and productive] kids.
Competitiveness like this does not require that people are competing for basic needs.
Free people from the Puritan conceit that the majority should struggle and suffer, and observe what happens.
Independent of how you feel about it in other respects, Burning Man offers a fine large scale experimental environment into which observe the social organization that occurs in circumstances of plenty rather than scarcity. (Because it operates on a strictly enforced gift economy. Not barter. Not sale. Never mind people who don't play by the rules for now; as a 25 year attendee I have seen first hand the reality behind the cant.)
Humans will "strive" plenty whether they are fed or not. There are more needs than the ones we can and should provide for all (housing, food, education).
Humans will always find a way to self segregate and award status, whether it's in terms of karma or dollars.
At a social level, dollars too are a consensual fiction and useful primarily as a crude proxy for status and success and desirability. (Not talking about utility, talking about social status.)