Automation should lead to the end of work. The end result should be that everything we want is produced for us and humans wony be forced to do labor, at which point we can focus on doing what we _actually_ want to do.
And if you want more then you'll have to work in some high skilled job to earn extra money on top of UBI. But there won't be enough such jobs for everyone, so there will be fierce competion for these jobs, because those who'll be able to work will enjoy a higher standard of living than people on UBI.
Then people would want to work to regain at least their previous standard of living.
The purpose of UBI as I understand it would be to provide a stable floor of income for people independent of employment. I think of it as being like a minimum wage - not high enough for a middle class standard of living, but hopefully higher than the poverty line. Enough to keep food on the table.
There are arguments that UBI is not attainable/sustainable, but that's different then getting the definition wrong
I think shelter, clothes, internet, and food would be a reasonable modern standard but that shelter doesn't have to mean a 3000 sq ft house, and internet doesn't mean they have the fastest connection speed possible in the area, and food doesn't mean steak and lobster every night.
That standard should increase as technology improves, for instance if we did this in the 90s having internet access would have been a luxury and not a requirement for being part of society, but it doesn't have to be something luxurious compared to the time period its paid out in
Or try your hand at entrepreneurship, since you've got a net. Or write a book, which you turn into passive income. Or, or, or...
A UBI should take us to a place where jobs are optional. This is an unambiguous net good, IMO.
Plus UBI probably creates a disincentive for work. This is not just some hypothesis. In trials of UBI people receiving UBI worked less. Fewer people working -> less tax revenue -> less money available to finance UBI.
UBI isn't a panacea or a route to utopia. Jobs can't be optional until we have some sort of robotic labor force, which is a long way off.
Isn't that around the amount YC typically puts into a project?
Hasn't the internet proven how cheap entrepreneurship can be?
Not having to burn yourself out just to feed and shelter yourself would afford you vastly more opportunity to find a niche that you can make an extra buck in, if you're inclined and motivated that way.
I don't see why this is such an un-obvious notion, or why people seem not to think that could net us a far richer economy — of goods, services, and ideas — than the one we've got, where you on the whole only get what someone who already has money (either the founder or their backers) decides to make.
It is a mental state and a type of personality. You can be one and be successful starting with 0 dollars.
Entrepreneurs don't even need office space, and can get going with extremely limited equipment.
Honestly you have a profound misunderstanding of what an entrepreneur actually is.
Not if you spend it on office equipment. The $20k buys you $20k worth of free time in your life to work on your personal projects, ideas, hobbies without your life falling apart as a consequence.
That's enough time to set up a small leather-working shop in your garage, or build an app, or start a podcast, or write a few chapters of a book.
How often has automation in the past led to the unemployed leading lives of intellectual pursuit and luxury? Never. Typically those made surplus to requirement are left to scrape by in meager poverty, as has happened in the American rust belt and Appalachia, because automation has lowered their value in society to be barely worth the cost of keeping them alive.
We need to prepare for that, rather than hoping for a utopian, post-scarcity fantasy that isn't going to happen.
"Who will pay for all this?!" is the usual outcry. Ignoring the very premise that automation has taken over the role of producing all this. Its a circular argument that has roots in the Protestant Work Ethic (independent of Capitalism) where "If I have to work, they everybody has to work dad gum it!"
In the US, that's going to be a difficult sell. States threatened to secede over the ACA and that was nowhere near as "socialist" as a universal income or right to food and shelter would be.
It could happen, but it seems like it would take a serious social and political upheaval, and the winds currently seem to be blowing in the other direction entirely. I hope it doesn't take something on the scale of the Great Depression to bring it about.
And before anyone calls that hyperbole, I don't see how refusing to provide some sort of garunteed welfare that provides food and housing is not "if you're poor you are gonna starve" in a system where access to food and shelter is tied to your income