UBI is like printing money - the last stage before a country's hyper-inflationary collapse.
Instead of inflation & printing money, we should instead be thinking of salt - once a valuable commodity, nowadays so cheap people are literally giving it away (restaurants don't charge for it).
With enough technological development, almost every necessity of life can be as cheap (and cheaper) as salt. Except medicine, because people will always want to live longer, but even there technology helps - poor people in first-world countries have access to much better healthcare than even the riches human 100 years ago.
>make basic life cheap and efficient
I'm interested in your take on how we exercise total control over the cost of living without any sort of bureaucratic processes being implemented?
If vendors are required to accept UBI credit for certain goods and services and must then collect payment from the government, the government is able to restrict inflation by refusing to pay inflated prices.
A "UBI-like system" has such broad range and flexibility of design and implementation that to dismiss it entirely while suggesting (im not sure exactly what to call your suggestion) market manipulation? is ludicrous.
There is a finite amount of work that needs to be done to sustain the necessities for everyone. basic life IS cheap and efficient, but we arent allowed to pay for what it is. I cant buy a simple small house for cheap, because someone who already has a house can afford to pay more and then rent it to me instead.
There NEEDS to be a centralized power separating out basic needs purchasing from "extra" purchasing. All of the "extra" economic activity should be more expensive and the basic needs purchasing should be cheaper. You cannot accomplish that without government. you need centralized power to enforce it.
We must rely on social contracts to stabilize human interaction enough for an economic system to even be possible. Buying and Selling is meaningless when Looting and Destruction are nonpunishable. A social contract is meaningless if we do not punish people for breaking them. A government is a collection of such contracts. The US government differentiates these contracts by various types and instills a separation of powers as a public framework for dealing with dangers of centralized power. Mafias have no such considerations
Power still continues to consolidate among "mafia"s. They are less effective directly as a result of public centralized powers. I believe the next evolution in this war is the differentiation between what people need and what people want. They should not operate under the same economic model. If I WANT the food you NEED to eat, I should let you have it and pursue purchasing it from you instead. that should be a social contract.
This should be common sense, but in the world we live in there is no visibility to what is needed vs what is wanted. People would be incentivized to claiming a NEED on as much as possible. "Bad" Public centralized power used to enforce reasonable claims to NEEDs is the only way forward given the nature of our reality. "Only way" sounds limiting, but of course there are a million+ different ways we can go about it.