This is such a weak argument. In order to make a meaningful impact on society, you need mandated programs that require all to contribute. Do you propose that foreign aid, military spending, healthcare all be done on a peer to peer basis as well?
Yes but the point is if you think it is a good idea to give money to poor people, why are you yourself not doing it already? Sure we would be better off if we required everyone to contribute, but helping only, say, 10 people would still be desirable right?
There's a big difference between donating money to the poor and creating a vast society-wide social safety net that enables riskier careers (like entrepreneurship and art) for more people. I support the latter, not the former, and I cannot anywhere near afford the cost of the latter by myself.
Think of it as a new social contract with a modern definition of human dignity that does not include having to toil at a horrible job just to survive. I'd sign up to that.
So, all the hundreds of thousands of people here in America who donate their time to charitable work are wasting their time because it's not "mandated"? The billions of dollars Americans (and, no doubt, Europeans as well) donate voluntarily to charitable causes should instead be confiscated by a tax collector and redistributed systematically to all citizens according to some bureaucratic process which determines eligibility?
No, money should be confiscated by a tax collector and redistributed systematically to all citizens __without__ some bureaucratic process which determines eligibility. That's what basic income means.
So why bother? They collect my money, then send it back to me in the form of a government check? Only, minus a few dollars for overhead and for redistributing to some other guy who doesn't pay any taxes? Why not allow a tax credit for donation to charity, which allows people to (1) feel good by helping fellow human beings, and (2) help those causes they really believe in?
Note that currently the U.S. allows a tax deduction but not credit for charitable giving.
The option you propose is largely what the current system looks like. The proponents of the basic income argue that basic income is better because it massively reduces the overhead of trying to figure out who is eligible and who isn't, and of administering many concurrent schemes designed to solve many specific problems.
A minor point of clarification in regards to the Swiss proposition is that there is no 'eligibility' beyond being a citizen. Not sure how much bureaucratic process is involved in that.
I don't believe he actually said that. I believe what he actually said was that there exist programs of giving which can only be effective when practiced on a large scale.
Taken in context, his statement does not appear to me to be a universal positive claim, so inverting it to a universal negative seems unfair. His point appears to be that this particular idea as well as some others are such that they cannot be effective when the scale is too small.
