> Can anybody provide some references to any sort of scholarly work on this concept?
I didn't realize this concept wasn't self evident. If you have a million dollars, but the economy doesn't value dollars, you have no wealth. I don't have any scholarly references but I would guess you would find discussion of this in the philosophy of economics.
> What does 'intrinsically beholden' mean? These seem like arbitrary and poorly defined assertions to me.
Beholden means "owing thanks or having a duty to someone". 'Intrinsic' (like 'Natural') is a rather empty word, but I was intending it to express that the beholdenment to society arises from the wealth's reliance on society for its existence.
Since the value and existence of your wealth is due to your presence within an economy and society, you are beholden for your wealth to that economy and society in that your wealth would not exist without that economy and society.
> Do you imagine it enough to provide food, shelter, clothing?
Eventually? Yes. I would personally slowly phase in the minimum income as I phased out the minimum wage. Ideally this would cover basic needs and then it would be up to society to determine how much past basic needs would be covered.
> If so explain what other mechanisms would prevent the emergence of a large group of people who simply lived off the efforts of others as a choice.
We all 'live off the efforts of others'. I do not farm the food that I eat, nor do I enforce the laws that allow me to live in safety.
I think what you mean instead, is probably more along the lines of 'live without working'.
Our current model of being dependent on perpetual growth is unsustainable. We already do not have enough low skill jobs for our low skill population. As automation and machine learning take more and more jobs, this problem will only become worse. The new jobs that are being added, tend to be higher skilled knowledge economy jobs.
Thus, we are left with two choices:
1) don't allow people who don't work to live
2) allow people who live without working.
Since I don't support genocide, I feel we have to go with option 2), and the best way of doing that is providing a Minimum Income.
I would also point out, that there is a great deal of work that gets done without expectation of financial reward. This ranges from volunteering time working on open source software, to creating art, to caring for sick friends and relatives. Thus I don't buy into the "work only happens when people are paid" and I think plenty of value will be produced by people who rely on minimum income.
Besides money: Boredom, Social Status, Altruism and Passion can all be strong motivations to work.
A final point here is that by replacing the minimum wage with a minimum income, we greatly increase the number of jobs that can be profitably created. I may not be able to afford to pay the current minimum wage to have a gardener take care of my yard, but with a lower minimum wage I might.
> What mechanism would keep that sort of system in equilibrium rather than the consuming group growing and the producing group shrinking and the resulting tensions escalating?
This is not an easy problem, but I would point out that we have a similar problem with wealth distribution currently.
As far as reducing tensions, I think we need to make an effort to keep classes from segregating themselves socially.
As far as maintaining equilibirium, I don't have any easy answers but I do believe they exist and probably involve some clever use of markets to maintain the equilibirium.
A slow initial introduction of the minimum income helps find tools to maintain the equilibrium as we go.
> And don't we want to construct a system that moves towards a state that maximizes the number of self-sufficient people rather maximizing the number of dependent people?
Like I said before, we are almost all dependent on each other and very few of us are truly self-sufficient.
I don't want to maximize the number of self-sufficient people. I want to maximize the number of people who have the opportunity to do what they love. I want to maximize the amount of enjoyable work that is accomplished.