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Comment by rorykoehler | Hacker News Reader

This sums up perfectly why I’m pro universal basic income. How many people do this? Think of all the collective brain cycles wasted. We’re stealing from our future. You’re clearly smart and capable. Work you don’t find rewarding stole your motivation. If you could work on projects that reflect the world you want to live in you would create something much more valuable top society than whatever it is you’re half assing now.

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I agree, but I think the reason we're unlikely to see something like this no matter how much evidence we present that it is better for everyone is that people with money and power generally got there because they craved money and power. Owning people's time, even if that time isn't being spent productively for them, is as close as they can get to owning people themselves and they desperately crave the power to own people.

I'm not for UBI but I totally get & agree with the reasoning behind it; including yours here which I think is pretty dead on as to why it would be beneficial (in theory). In fact the "stealing from our future" part jumped out at me as similar to the way I think of societal debt cycles (the kind Ray Dalio talks about in his books - short-and long-term [~10yr; ~100yr] cyclical sine waves of waxing & waning [in/de]flation). You probably would avoid taking on a ton of debt during the peak of a given credit cycle (when rates are at their highest %), especially if you know you're simply fking yourself that much harder than if you were to take on the debt at some point in the future, when rates are much more likely to be low, and thus save you a ton of money in the long run.

Same thing with putting in extra effort at work. No reason to actually take on the extra hustle if it pays off minimally when all is said & done anyway. Better to say no thank you, I'd rather not take on a burden of effort-debt yet and wait till it makes significantly more sense to do so

I don't know who's downvoting you, but this is also why I support UBI.

One of my biggest fears is that by the time I can stop working, I won't have any will left to pursue passionate endeavors that would benefit society.

Even if I just didn't need to worry about health insurance cost, that would be enough to shorten my financial independence timeline by years.

If I had sufficient UBI to cover basic expenses for the year, I would quit right now.

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