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Comment by dreamache | Hacker News Reader

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

UBI has a lot wrong with it, but I'll just start and end with a first principle: Taxation is theft and therefore, government and UBI are immoral.

I advocate for freedom and consent, especially as it pertains to economics. The income I earn through producing goods and services that I exchange voluntarily with other individuals should be mine to keep; all of it. Anything less is not freedom and certainly not consent.

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What about all the goods you consume that you do not pay for, but were developed over the decades, centuries, and millennia and by your contemporaries too: Language, liberty, civil rights, the system of laws, security, roads, economics, finance, wheels, computers, mathematics, much of health care and education. Are you paying the Einstein estate for relativity? King James' translation team for their Bible? Alan Kay for all he did that you use? All the FOSS developers? The Suffragettes for your vote?

If not for taxation, who will pay for the police that keep you safe, the education programs that likely educated you (assuming you had some publicly funded education) and most of your customers, employees, and business partners? Public health that prevents epidemics? The list goes on forever.

I actually agree, income tax is not a good thing. I still support UBI though. In fact I derive it as a natural right from the same principles that motivates private property.

For details checkout geo-libertarianism. But in short the argument is that the common resources, “land”, should be allocated according to the preferences of the commons (see John Locke), not the individual. In practice have land owners pay the would be non-owners it’s full market value for the privilege of being called the owner (see Rawls, Justice as Fairness for this step). Call it a land value tax (see Henry George) or call it land rent. However, since it’s a payment to the commons, not the state, the only thing to do is to divide it fairly as a public dividend.

End result: a fair and proper UBI.

Freedom to me is having the means and ability to follow my heart. I was lucky enough to come from a family that enabled that freedom, and later sold a business that enabled more of it.

Maybe everyone should have those opportunities. Maybe that’s the future. Maybe it’s the bright side of the consolidation of wealth that’s only accelerating.

Economics has made some progress since Biblical times.

Taxation drives the economy. By creating demand for money. No taxes, no economy.

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