Enough with Basic Income

Many (all?) libertarians lean left on a great many social issue and consider the social part of libertarianism as important if not more important than the right leaning economic part. I think the term "libertarian right" while not an incorrect term at face value -- there are in fact right leaning Libertarians just as some Democrats are further left than others -- is miss-leading and can potential lead to misconceptions about Libertarians as similar to Republicans. I for one share much more in common with the Democrats but I am very definitely a Libertarian.

I think many of us would prefer you just use the term Libertarian and leave off left or right.

Edit: or perhaps if you were in-deed referring to the conservative party, add some clarity and say "Republicans that lean Libertarian"

Actually, it is more economically unsound to maintain poverty in the midst of plenty (i.e, in the US there lies ~6 empty homes for every homeless person), if you consider the external effects. Poverty inevitably leads to violence, drug abuse, disease, overpopulation, war, and other erratic behaviors.

How much more do we spend on bureaucracy in vain attempts to mitigate these resulting effects? Prevention is far more cost effective than maintenance in this case.

Economists will undoubtedly turn up their noses when not so well learned people like me start explaining our position because it is clearly too stupid for them. If we have $100 available and three people: one who doesn't need any money, one who needs $20, and one who needs $50 to survive, clearly it is best to give nothing to the first person, #20 to the second person, and $50 to the third person. Look, we were economically efficient and now $30 can go towards maintaining the system! What I propose is that the $100 should be divided more like $33 each with just $1 going towards maintaining the project itself.

This came up before when talking about college education and whether the government should subsidize college education for the wealthy. My answer is yes! Of course, the government should pay for college for everyone, even if that person is Bill Gates' son. Similarly, should the government pay for Bill Gates' health care expenses under a single payer universal health care system? I say again Yes! We should not discriminate against the wealthy. Sure, it might result is less care for the poor but at the end of the day, I think it is better for everyone.

I know that UBI, on paper, looks like it’s a good answer to many of the challenges listed at the end. But I don’t think that UBI, once put in place, would be as strong, politically, as other universal programs such as universal social insurance: => Round #1: new left-wing government enacts UBI with appropriate funding. => Round #2: left-wing government loses elections, new right-wing government decides to target UBI on the poor in order to master the costs. UBI becomes BI without the "U". => Round #3: the rich find that their taxes are too high and denounce the BI-claiming poor as welfare queens, contributing to the right-wing government winning reelection and weakening BI even more.

There are two kinds of universal benefits: the rich (and the middle class) all need universal health insurance (in case they have cancer), but they don’t really need UBI because they earn enough money from other sources.

So I’m not sure why, even if they’re supportive at the beginning, they would keep on supporting UBI under the inevitable ideological and financial pressure that comes with a polarized democratic society.

Considering this perspective, my understanding is that all the energy thrown in BI-related discussions is wasted while it could be invested in favor of universal health insurance for instance (which the US still lacks even with Obamacare, and which could benefit for the attention and design skills from the tech community).