> they would be making projects, business ventures, or volunteering

This is not what actually happens in practice. There is no sudden outbreak of productive activity because people have more free time. If this was going to occur there would be mountains of empirical evidence for it by now because this situation isn't rare.

I know many people with a lot of free time. In the vast majority of cases, people spend their free time in almost exactly the same way they spent their free time when they had less of it. Binging on social media, television, or games? Now they just do more of it for longer. The people that volunteer more were already doing it, and they are in the small minority.

People should probably work less but the idea that this will generate productive activity is a rationalization against all evidence.

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spartanatreyu an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> There is no sudden outbreak of productive activity because people have more free time.

I can't recall which studies they were, but I was under the impression that with a sudden expansion of free time, the earliest productivity gains don't occur until months later at the earliest.

I think the effect came up in long-term UBI trial participants, and those that acquired sudden wealth from inheritance / lottery / stocks / etc...

There tends to be a decompression stage after leaving work environment that didn't suit the person, then a deconstruction / rebuilding / searching stage afterwards.

I think it's also common for large lottery winners to become depressed because they have trouble searching for what to do afterwards.

	▲	Aurornis an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> I think the effect came up in long-term UBI trial participants, The failure of UBI trials to show these effects has been one of the noteworthy developments in the UBI topic in recent years. There were several studies that tried really hard to demonstrate that UBI would increase the rate of business creation and similar metrics. The last one I remember reading was trying to show that the long-term cash recipients reported a marginally higher rate of thinking about maybe starting a business, but they weren't actually doing it.

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

This has been my experience as well. My stock advice to people who want to save money is to simply work more. Not because the marginal hours will be meaningfully worth it, but because it stops them from spending money by default.

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globalnode 5 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

i think people trying to argue that we would be more productive is a symptom of the productivity disease. where all we value is productivity and thats the only way we can justify more non-work time. i personally just think we should all have more time to do what we want, whether that is being productive on personal projects, talking to people, playing games, or doing nothing. happier people right? why should 10% of the richest people enslave the rest of us.