Hacker News Reader

Comment by winfred | Hacker News Reader

I don't think people would prosper under such a system. Free health care, yes, free education, yes. Retirement for all, take care of the disabled, yes.

But in my opinion, in today's society, if you take away the need for people to struggle (which UBI will do) they often end up in a worse mental and physical shape than if you make them suffer a bit. Just the way natural selection programmed us. "All basic needs are met <- conserve energy".

I can imagine a educational system where we prepare our children from childhood for UBI and it will work.

But given how rudimentary most education still is I don't see that happen anytime soon. Maybe in 100 years.

View on HN

>But in my opinion, in today's society, if you take away the need for people to struggle (which UBI will do) they often end up in a worse mental and physical shape than if you make them suffer a bit.

This is exactly the opposite of how people actually work people excel when given support and opportunity to grow. Adversity especially insofar as fear of basic needs being met isn't inspiring it's stunting.

Anything else is a basic dysfunction in understanding people fed by survivorship bias. Imagine if you met someone who was sure that plant growth was maximized by periodically holding a lighter to one or another of the leaves because all the surviving plants had gone through that. Your understanding is every bit as ridiculous.

We can find sufficient challenge and adversity as we need to move us in our own selves, relationships, and field of endeavor.

> people excel when given support and opportunity to grow.

Some people do. Many don't, they'll take that support and rest on it. Plenty of European Countries have UBI for all intents and purposes (free health care, housing, utilities, enough cash money for everything else including entertainment and communication). People don't excel, and plenty don't bother to contribute, because it's not necessary.

> We can find sufficient challenge and adversity as we need to move us in our own selves, relationships, and field of endeavor.

You're looking at a tiny subset of people that wouldn't stop working (but maybe work on different things) if they won the lottery, and extrapolate from them on to the general population. Not everybody is like that. Any solutions that pretend that they are will fail.

I don't think people having their basic needs met is in any way equivalent to winning the lottery. When you win the lottery you can have anything financially that you like for the rest of your life or until you blow all your money. With UBI you can have a minimalistic life devoid of most luxury or ease.

The kind of person who doesn't bother to contribute is probably the kind of person who would be contributing by making fries or checking you out at walmart. These contributions can be replaced by automation and nothing of value will be lost meanwhile some portion of the people will use their time that would have been thrown away at walmart to actually contribute.

If 90% of the team at walmart was replaced by robots and 10% found more meaningful ways to contribute it would be a net gain.

> You're looking at a tiny subset of people that wouldn't stop working (but maybe work on different things) if they won the lottery, and extrapolate from them on to the general population. Not everybody is like that. Any solutions that pretend that they are will fail.

If you offered most people a poverty wage of 2k monthly and netflix and the opportunity to earn 2k + whatever they could earn in addition doing something with their life 90% would chose the latter given the option especially if free education were available to get from A to B. Most people want to feel their life is meaningful. If you don't understand that then you don't understand people in the slightest.

If UBI is what you’re hung up on I think there’s a lot of Americans that would gladly take free education, healthcare, and retirement. Healthcare shouldn’t be a thing people should struggle through.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com