It Is Time For Basic Income

Where is the computer you were using before now? Chances are that someone else is using it, which more than cancels out any perceived efficiency gain. Chances are that you just threw it away, which is more detrimental to the environment than continued use. Maybe it's just collecting dust in your attic, where it will stay useless until any of the above two scenarios happen.

More importantly, I'd like to propose that what drives innovation in computer hardware is largely our attitude towards wastefulness. You couldn't sell and develop new hardware at such a rapid pace if people weren't readily throwing their old stuff away to have it replaced. I'm arguing that the whole process is wasteful, never mind that your machine performs better per Watt. Your old laptop probably had a greater cost to the environment in its manufacturing process and after you got rid of it than whatever energy you spent using it during its lifetime, and even more definitely the cost of manufacturing your current laptop was more than what you save by using it instead of the old one.

Let's get into farming, food production and food packaging if you still aren't convinced.

And who gets to decide which conveniences are "slight" and which benefits are "superficial"? Sounds like nice work if you can get it.

Where is the computer you were using before now? Chances are that someone else is using it

Not likely. Computer recycling centers return the materials to manufacturers so they can be used as raw materials for new production. They don't resell the systems as-is.

Chances are that you just threw it away, which is more detrimental to the environment than continued use.

If your definition of "wasteful" is "putting things in landfills instead of recycling them", you could have just said so.

You couldn't sell and develop new hardware at such a rapid pace if people weren't readily throwing their old stuff away to have it replaced.

This is quite true. But you're failing to ask the next question: why are people readily throwing their old stuff away? Because the new stuff is perceived by them to have better functionality. (This is not just true for computers; it's true for pretty much everything, cars, houses, clothes, etc.) They may be wrong, but who made you the judge of that?

For example, when you say:

the cost of manufacturing your current laptop was more than what you save by using it instead of the old one.

You are completely ignoring the benefit to me of having my current laptop instead of my previous one. You're basically saying that people should be satisfied with old, outdated products that don't work very well compared to new ones, just so that we can avoid manufacturing new ones. If you want to make that tradeoff for yourself, fine, go for it. But if you expect other people to accept your definition of what are "slight conveniences and superficial benefits" that don't justify buying new stuff, you're going to need to do a lot better than just pointing out that people buy a lot of new stuff.

Regarding each of these caveats in turn:

1) There are plenty of projects that we individually may deem socially worthwhile that we don't pay for. Parents raising their children being probably the strongest example, but there are other places where value is simply hard to capture. Incentive to work on these is not decreased by BI.

2) Incentive to work depends on what people are willing to pay you for your labor. If BI ultimately means people are willing/able to pay for more things then the total incentive to work may rise. So far as I'm aware, this is not a settled question (it seems a probable second-order consequence but possibly drowned by inflation, &c...)

3) Anyone currently receiving disability or welfare payments is not merely being paid despite not working, they're effectively being paid not to work. Transitioning to unconditional support will clearly increase their incentive to work.

What all this does in aggregate is not at all clear to me.