>I believe basic human nature includes curiosity. Living in a society means one will naturally seek the appreciation, acceptance and respect of their peers. I think these alone will eventually lead most people to contribute something useful to our world one way or another.

As someone living in a small third world welfare state, I can't help but laugh at the naiveté that can lead someone to believe something like that.

In here, and I don't believe the rest of the world can be that much different, the overwhelming majority of people with their basic needs covered by the state dedicate themselves to a routine of TV, social media and other social rituals of all kinds, all devoid of intellectual pursuit. The few who do look into self-improvement are the same ones that have done it regardless of the economic condition of the lower class of their time; most of this very small minority managing to make it into the middle or upper class with or without welfare checks.

>In here, and I don't believe the rest of the world can be that much different, the overwhelming majority of people with their basic needs covered by the state dedicate themselves to a routine of TV, social media and other social rituals of all kinds, all devoid of intellectual pursuit.

So what? Why is the purpose of other people's lives to serve your idea of nobility?

Wow. That's a huge straw man if ever I've seen one.

I will entertain you, however:

We aren't talking about anyone's "life purpose", whatever the hell that means.

We are talking about having the state (and for a quick reminder, that means citizens producing value, not a magical entity that pulls money with value out of hat) fund people with no desire to create value. Not just people going through a rough time, not people unable to give back, but people who will take, yet willingly not give back. They're free to do live their lives as they see fit within the law, but no one can expect for the rest of society to fund their chosen lifestyle.

If you feel like they deserve income, you can gather like-minded people and open a charity that does just that.

EDIT: Those chiming in with a downvote, I'd appreciate if you explain where I'm so wrong.

Well, I didn't downvote you, but I do feel like your comment ignores the elephant in the room. Your model ("takers rob makers with state") implicitly assumes something like a Labor Theory of Value, in which "value creation" always and only requires that a human being perform painful, undesirable labor. Within that model, the 20th century gave us all sorts of debates regarding job guarantees, job-creation programs by the government for stimulus, privatization, socialization, et cetera.

The whole point of proposing UBI, however, is that we now (almost) universally agree that the LTV is just plain false, and much "value creation" actually involves machines doing the work. We believe that if we impose work requirements by force on humans by depriving them of machines of their own, forcing them to compete with machines to survive, there will be immense human suffering for completely arbitrary reasons.

UBI is thus the moderate proposal to deal with the issue. The radical proposal is to give everyone whole or partial ownership of enough machines to supply for themselves, perhaps through some collective-ownership arrangement like a cooperative, commons trust, or the state.

"The few who do look into self-improvement are the same ones that have done it regardless of the economic condition of the lower class of their time..."

Citation needed. Otherwise, it's not even anecdata. If your perspective from "...a small third world welfare state..." is to be informative, please expand and explain.

> Otherwise, it's not even anecdata

While it's no comprehensive study, it is very much anecdata, for it's how my parents, parts of my family and plenty of people I know have managed to climb out of poverty of all degrees before there was a welfare system. Hunger and work did not deter them. The word "mutante" (mutant) is often used to describe this kind of people, for how they decide to break the norm despite the environment.

Growing up in a poor/lower middle-class neighborhood I haven't seen this change for the better with the welfare system. But I have seen people quitting their jobs to qualify for welfare.

As I mentioned in another comment, I'm not opposed to a well-designed social safety net for those who can't get back into the workforce nor train themselves to do so, but rest assured, UBI or anything that allows people who are perfectly capable of working, the possibility to leech off the welfare system (read: their fellow citizens) permanently without giving back, is nothing short of a disgrace for society.

Thank you for expanding on your post.

Are you suggesting the majority of those people are completely, utterly useless?

Useful contributions don't necessarily have to be intellectual. They may be able and happy to provide art, joyful company, social skills, physical assistance (eg. getting groceries, moving equipment) or other support to those in need.

That moves the goalposts. Sure, I can't think of a human being that can be categorized as completely useless, that doesn't mean that an UBI program is sustainable for society just because "no one is absolutely, completely useless".

In fact there is no shortage of individuals who, despite being outside of the category of "useless" by technicalities, dedicate their state-funded free time in making society worse.

A couple examples just from my last 2-day visit to a relative in a neighborhood with a high number of welfare recipients: People with houses crumbling down, but with huge sound systems running at full volume at any time of day or night; or those in the same conditions getting stolen motorcycles (buying with taxpayer money from thieves or stealing themselves) and racing in the streets or parading around with their silencers removed.

Doesn't stop there either, when our welfare system was first established, there were plenty of cases of people quitting a productive job to slob around. What for many in first world countries sound like "conservative scaremongering" is reality for us.

Mind you, despite all this I'm not against having a social safety net (albeit the one we have I believe to be an absolute disaster), but UBI is a terrible option that cannot work outside of carefully selected groups of people.

Those may be the very same people who play music, build stages or give water to overly wasted kids at summer festivals. Or they might fix your motorbike better and cheaper than your local mechanic if you asked them to.

Or they might not. Either way, I wouldn't consider them any more harmful to society than those probably millions of people working very hard to shove ads into peoples faces ever more efficiently, or those bankers and accountants looking for loopholes to effectively steal from others. Or corrupt politicians whose only concern is filling their pockets. Or I could name a bunch of other mostly useless leech industries.

My point is, I think you are judging these people from a faulty perspective very much ingrained into our society, where one's usefulness to humanity is primarily judged based on how much money they can get their hands on either by stealing from others or selling their freedom to someone willing to pay for it, regardless of what value they actually contribute (if anything) as long as it's considered legal and they do so as part of the so called "workforce".

UBI would fundamentally change that by allowing people to spend time doing things they consider useful, rather than working for whatever gets food on the table, however useless it may actually be. Of course, for that to work, people need to be open to other people's ideas of useful and the currently dominant view of measuring usefulness in GDP or whatever may become obsolete.

Mind sharing where you live?

Uruguay.

Interesting. As someone who has never been there, I always had a positive impression of Uruguay, and have even remarked on HN that I'd like to live there for a while. What I've read about Uruguay has all been very positive and by many indicators it seems prosperous in comparison to other countries in the region. What's your impression of the country as a whole?

We've enjoyed great global PR, that's for sure. A good bunch of it undeserved.

There was a huge uproar about us legalizing pot. While you can now grow your own cannabis, the most important part: legal sale, is yet to be finalized despite plans starting 5 years ago without power changing hands.

There was another huge PR boost with the story about "Uruguay's poor president José Mujica". His administration ended as one of the worst ever experienced in the country's republican (as in Republic, not the US party) history. Corruption hit new peaks with public enterprise bleeding money into party officials' pockets left and right, something we're still paying via "tarifazos" (annual increases in costs of public infrastructure such as electricity, fuel and telecommunications despite their production costs going down).

Reality is that moving here can be suicide for many, as we're one of the most expensive countries to live in of Latin America (and the world) when you account for salaries. We have a growing culture of crime with a government that's disinterested in fixing it, and often tries to downplay it. Import tariffs are insane (usually 150%+ over retail price), and while citizens can make a few international orders under 200 USD without being taxed (used to be 5, then 4, now they just changed it to 3), it helps little and I expect they will scrap them altogether next year.

And oh my god the bureaucracy. It's the only thing more central to the Uruguayan identity than mate and football. The past couple of leftist administrations and this current one has been all about e-government, yet most interactions with the government will be in a crowded office after waiting an hour waiting for your number to come up on the screen. The little web infrastructure we have is inconsistent across public enterprises, is ridiculously insecure (national ISP, Antel, has a max password length of 8 alphanumeric characters; all sites are made in hacked together PHP and/or ASP.NET by FullStackOverflow programmers and one determined black hat could probably stop the country for a while in a boring weekend) and despite the government's interest in tracking all financial transactions, they're in no rush to implement online payment.

My SO starts studying engineering this year, and with me being a software developer (meaning remote is an option and there's offerings everywhere), our hope is that either a miracle happens or we fuck right off after she gets her diploma. We have a deeply ingrained cultural and political problem that will not allow the country to get out of this hole. But then again, Donald Trump is the leader of the free world; it's fair to expect the unexpectable when it comes to political change.