On: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

[throwaway22032]

I don't agree with cutting mental health services and don't believe that it is equivalent to giving free money to people.

> they're dead weight in companies and vampires on romantic partners

This is trivially avoidable in both cases. The Offspring have a song that comes to mind.

[gwd → throwaway22032]

> I... don't believe that it is equivalent to giving free money to people.

And I hope two things are clear:

1. I don't like freeloaders either. I don't ever plan to be a freeloader, and I don't like the idea of paying taxes to enable people to choose a lifestyle of taking and not giving. (Obviously there are people who create value for society that's harder to "capture", like working on open-source software or making art; and there are people who have a harder time contributing because of other limitations, not because of choice; we're not talking about those people here.)

2. I don't claim to know that giving free money to people will help. It's possible freeloaders will take money from the government and companies / individuals; it's possible that having free money available will significantly increase the number of freeloaders. We don't know because we haven't tried it.

What I'm asking you to consider, however, is the possibility that 1) the overall benefits to society of UBI are greater than the harms caused by enabling freeloaders; and 2) there's no way to have UBI without enabling freeloaders.

If that's the case, then our options are:

1. Take UBI and its benefits, gritting our teeth at the necessity of enabling freeloaders

2. Miss the benefits of UBI on principle to avoid enabling freeloaders.

If UBI is a net benefit to society, in spite of freeloaders, I'd have to go with #1 instead of #2.

Consider that our current capitalist system enables lots of other types of freeloaders: people who have inherited enough capital that they can live off the profits without doing any work whatsoever, companies or people who have patented something simple and obvious and are then able to extract rents from the people actually making things, people who buy things and sell them milliseconds later. We put up with this kind of freeloading in capitalism because it's hard to prevent it without damaging the benefits that capitalism brings. The same might end up being true for UBI.