So how do you handle a growing population size with an ever-shrinking job base? Do you force birth control on people who do not meet a certain level of financial independence? Do you take kids away from parents who lose that financial independence? Do you let people starve and freeze to death?
There is a mythos that everybody can just create and run their own startup, and the world can be fed on startups of O(1) size. I don't believe it (though I believe it can go a long way towards solving the problem), and, even if I did, startups still fail and people still need food, housing and warmth.
Governments don't have to take money from anyone to make this happen. They can just print it. Of course it amounts to the same thing, but everybody's money is dependent on the underlying financial system that is backed by governments (crypto-currencies are, slowly, making this less true).
I wonder how it would turn out if there was a single fund created to provide this living arrangement. Everybody is allowed to donate whatever they want to it (with no benefit other than knowing that they donated), then, any shortfall is met by printing the money, devaluing the currency in use equally for all.
I don't know that it's a good idea; it should be tested first, and, if it fails, we throw it out (unlike so many "big" ideas where, if and when it fails, the reason is always that "we didn't do it big enough, so we have to throw more at it"). The success criteria need to be well defined, but not politically motivated like so many ideas for providing for the poor. Like I said, I don't know how to get there from here.
My issue still is that these costs will only increase over time.
My argument is predicated on the idea that the cost of living will steadily decrease over time. If the cost of shipping approaches zero because everything can be JIT manufactured locally and the social interaction values of living in a city dwindle due to continually improved online interaction, the cost of living becomes food and shelter which don't need to be centralized in expensive cities.
Localized JIT manufacturing is going to massively upset the global economy. I don't see a way out short of massive government efforts to prevent technological progress (which I expect to see), but technology will march forward anyway. Is it better to move towards a new economic model that accounts for it or just deal with the revolution when 75% of people are unemployed?
The biggest risk factor, IMO, is cost of energy. We need it to be going down significantly, because it will take cheap energy to drive the JIT manufacturing that enables a very inexpensive minimum cost of living. I really do think we are in a race between a social collapse due to unemployment, hunger, and social disparity and copious free energy. And I think social collapse is currently winning, so if we could hold that off for a bit, both through reducing social unease and increasing funding in energy research, I'd really be OK with that.
The single worst thing you can do for someone disadvantaged is to give them a reason to stay exactly where they are in life (and no incentive to succeed at something more). A basic income does exactly this.
No, the single worst thing you can do is let them starve or freeze to death, because then their one and only life is over. And that literally happens to poor people. I consider this argument the "the poor are only poor because they are lazy, so anything that makes them more lazy will only make them worse" argument. And I believe it is a lazy argument in itself.
I've scrounged through cupboards hoping there was anything in them while my parents drank away whatever money they got. I get the potential negatives better than most people around here. But I also know that there are a lot of people who were just not fortunate to be born in the right place to the right parents with the right opportunities right in front of them.
I went to school and to college, paid for by the tax payer mostly, because I worked hard (actually, most people in the US went to college mostly paid for by the tax payer, regardless of how hard they worked). Should I have been told to piss off because my parents couldn't pay for me to go to college? I had a high school diploma, so I had "enough", right?
Where do you draw the line? How do you determine who is good enough and who isn't? All I'm saying is the answer to the first question is no, I shouldn't have (I've provided far more value than I cost) and the answer to the rest is it is a waste of time to even try to answer them.