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I believe we're not at the productivity level that UBI requires, and those "pseudo-jobs" are a waste that could be redirected to some more constructive endeavor.

Even if you oppose consumerism and building stuff or whatnot, that wasted effort could be directed towards making products more sustainable or making better recycling supply chains or building nuclear power plants or whatnot.

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2 days ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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bee_rider 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

If we’re productive enough to pay them to construct roadblocks, surely we’re productive enough to pay them to do nothing.

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Nevermark 2 days ago | parent [-]

I do believe that a tiny uncomfortable UBI would increase the overall economy, and benefit individual businesses by pre-weeding out a lot of posers.

If someone can get by on $500/month, and not feel the need to make the effort to live better, it would be a service to all to give that to them.

And on the other hand, a small fallback that makes it easier for individuals going through a rough spot to come back also helps the overall economy and individual businesses.

Finally, if we had a basic program like this started, the number could go up with overall economic productivity. Slow at first, but as the AI/machine economy takes off, especially with practical accessibility to off planet resources, a tiny fraction of the economic output would make everyone rich by today's standards, just at the time when human labor's economic value heads to zero.

	▲	jart 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		The US already spends $1000/month per citizen on entitlements. If you just give everyone $500/month instead, you'd eliminate the deficit and have a few hundred billion leftover to spend on colonizing planets.