Someone needs to make a website explaining why UBI doesn't work conceptually because this comes up over and over again on HN.

You cannot make UBI work from money saved by removing means testing. Even UBI is a welfare scheme and would require significant bureaucratic hoop jumping to check that a person claiming it isn't:

• Dead

• Non-citizen

• Already claiming it under a different name/bank account/etc

• In prison

• Moved abroad

and so on. All that is expensive, and yet the overheads of even existing welfare systems just aren't high compared to the amounts they pay out. Getting rid of means testing doesn't magically make the numbers balance.

Geohot is correct. UBI seems to only appeal to people who don't understand how the economy works. You can't have an economy in which one person earns all the money by definition.

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deaux an hour ago | parent | next [-]

This is a complete non-issue in basically every wealthy country bar potentially the US, all five things you named are already known to the government at all times. They also apply the exact same way to any other scheme, there's nothing new about it.

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mike_hearn an hour ago | parent [-]

Quite a few governments have trouble verifying identity reliably. But to the extent they can do it, it's because there are lots of people employed to do so. The UBI thesis outline above is that you can find the money to pay for it by eliminating all those job roles from the government, so you can't use their existence to justify UBI as affordable.

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deaux 42 minutes ago | parent [-]

Let's look at other wealthy countries with large economies.

Germany, Japan, UK, France, Italy, Canada, Spain, Australia, South Korea, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Taiwan..

Which of these have trouble verifying identity reliably, to the extent that it would be a meaningful obstacle to UBI?

	▲	mike_hearn 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Even if governments were perfect at ID verification it wouldn't change the argument above, right? Being perfect at verifying UBI eligibility would require a large government infrastructure, just like today, so you can't claim that the U part makes it super cheap to administer. But no government is close to perfect. Here are some examples for your edification. The UK doesn't even know how many people are living there, and it's an island. There's no centralized identity scheme and during COVID more people came forward for vaccination in some age bands than theoretically existed at all. Germany fails at reliably verifying that people who turn up for a language test as part of naturalization are the same people being given citizenship: https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/69787/germany-police-ar... All countries struggle with basics like "is the recipient of the welfare dead". Here's a specific case where Italy didn't notice it should stop paying out a state pension (a form of UBI) for years after death, with the fraudster only getting busted when he tried to dress up as his own mother: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/25/italian-man-dr... Paying out money to dead people is a very common problem. Here's an EU report on all the basic ways countries get defrauded by failing to track basic facts about identities: https://www.ela.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2025-03/SSC_fi... "Common fraud and error cases include falsified documents (birth, marriage and death certificates), identity fraud and falsified non-payment certificates" Even in UBI, there would be a strong expectation that each person only receives it once. But checking stuff like that requires a huge bureaucracy.

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graemep an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In the UK a lot of that is solved by using the NI number that everyone has to have to work, claim benefits, get a state pension, or pay tax.

For people who are employed it could be done by existing systems already used to calculate tax (which is deducted automatically by employers here so the systems to do calculations exist).

Self-employed people already have to register with HMRC.

For the rest it is a far, far simpler than the requirements of the benefits system and less prone to fraud.

> You cannot make UBI work from money saved by removing means testing.

No one claims it can be made to work using ONLY money saved from means testing. Something like removing means tested benefits together with lowering tax thresholds could work though.

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jrimbault an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Except a lot of actual, very smart, economists are for UBI or similar arrangements (it's not a settled matter). And geohot might be smart, but he's just a self described hacker.

If we're going to use authority arguments.

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imtringued an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

UBI in the form of CO2 dividends works extremely well. Be more creative about the potential applications of the pay out mechanism.

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flammafex 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Guess we'll starve then. Good luck dealing with hundreds of millions of hungry angry people.

	▲	mike_hearn an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The idea you're suggesting here is 19th century era Marxism, and isn't based on historical or economic realities. There has never been a famine caused by new technologies creating unemployment, and food security is much higher now than at any other time in the past.

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fragmede an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I'll come out and get kicked out of communism club to say that I don't support UBI on the basic fact that money is exchanged for goods and services is just so foundational that I can't support UBI. I think everybody should have a roof over their heads and 3 square meals a day, but UBI isn't the way to get there.

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Obscurity4340 32 minutes ago | parent [-]

Well what is then? Respectfully, please have an alternative or otherwise how is this not astroturfing

	▲	fragmede 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Astroturfing? If I don't have an alternative, I'm secretly being paid by "them" to tear down UBI? Who would "them" even be? How would that even work? Anyway, subsidized jobs programs is my answer. Pay people to do jobs. Plant trees! There's so many places that could use some reforesting. There's no shortage of work to do.