UBI Is the Wrong Answer to the Right Problem

Given the current state of affairs, the objective of UBI/UBS seems to be governments (aka representatives elected to office due to funding by those seeking serious ROI) and their political patrons to pacify agitated masses moving out of the workforce due to hyper-automation. At most, UBI plus clear net-zero work like digging and filling back holes in the ground.

Else, more and more useful enterprises are moving toward being handled by private players (political patrons), and governments stay out of it more and more. Not just public education, health, infra, but slowly, even defence and public security. And the roads are to be cleared for private enterprise to pick up because they are supposed to be more efficient at growth than governments. And roads cleared with much more than classical 'laissez faire'. Via policies that spur 'fast and efficient growth', subsidies in natural resource usage, favorable labor laws, tax holidays, and more.

Private players will try to grow, spread, takeover over earth as much as they can, with all the automation that can be used, on the other hand plucking the minimal needed labor from this residual workforce. At terms that are in line with "market demand-supply dynamics".

The remaining ones have will have lost the right (worse, even the will) to complain because they are well fed without needing to do work! It is expected they will not intrude into or complain about the subsidies given to those players running the show. Not complain about the reducing per-capita-resource restrictions they would be slowly cordoned/quarantined to.

They would be expected to patiently wait for development to continue and some of its fruits (mainly numbing entertainment like politics/sports/games/media) to be thrown to them. Occasionally get chances to participate in ceremonies to express gratitude to the generous govt-business society leaders for taking care of them. Otherwise fighting against each other to grab the limited fruits, never organize, continue being vulnerable to society bosses who prefer servile in-fighting masses.

Absolutely true. Even meta-analyses of all UBI experiments to date - encompassing tens of thousands of adults - shows an increase in labour participation, not a decrease.

And if formal, capitalistic, profit-based jobs are no longer available, what barrier do we have against creating social jobs that need doing? Just because the Parasite Class cannot extract obscene amounts of wealth from those jobs doesn’t mean they don’t need doing. It just means there is no profit angle to have in doing them.

If I had no worries about my needs, I would love to work on open-source projects. Failing that, it would be ecosystem restoration or bioremediation. All jobs that can be free of government and capitalism, but which desperately needs bodies to yeet ant the issues at hand.

You really think there would not be a massive increase in the number of coach potatoes, watching netflix and doomscrolling tiktok all day long? Where do they make such optimists? It's almost as if this very website has a strong selection bias, congregating people with higher than average drive, who would never, who just can't imagine not having it. And even if they won't be technically idle, you can bet your ass that the total supply of labor would drop like a rock, and many jobs that are generally beneficial to the society but not glamorous wouldn't be done. You also completely ignore the massive problem which is the shift in the society's collective psychology in regards to work, which the article did mention. Quote:

The problems are significant, however. First, all existing pilots are small in scale, temporary in duration, and limited to populations already experiencing poverty or precarity. None of them test the psychology of a society in which nobody is economically compelled to contribute. Temporary income relief and permanent unconditional income are fundamentally different phenomena — the first is a cushion, the second is a permanent reorientation of the relationship between individuals and economic necessity. The pilots tell us nothing useful about the second.

Currently we collectively derive personal worth from work etc, and the society applies significant pressure on individuals "incentivizing" them to work even if they can't have a dream job, increasing the aggregate amount of work done. We just don't know and can't really imagine what it's like to live in a world where you are entitled to money for existing, no strings attached, pretty much from cradle to grave. Imagine being a kid who grows up in such a world with no real responsibilities, playing vidya all day long, who knows that once he formally reaches adulthood, he can just continue doing nothing. The model of family life is falling apart as we speak, so why bother chasing it? Just lower your expectations and desires - and you are set for life.

The super rich are often idle and project that onto everyone else we should not take the idle richs word as gospel.

Sure we can. As I noted, wealthy people live in this world already. And we don't see all of them turning into couch potatoes once they have passive income equal to UBI. Sure, there's a human tendency to enjoy leisure. But there's also a human tendency to enjoy work. And a human tendency to project negative attributes onto others we don't know. ;-)