Because one line of thought leads to: "I couldn't do anything, the game was rigged from the start" and the other leads to "I didn't do as much as I could have done."
The game is rigged. But that merely makes it less likely that someone who's on the wrong side can succeed, not impossible. You do have to do as much as you can, with what you're given, regardless of what it is.
The real key, though, is that this tells us what we, as a society, need to change. If we genuinely value entrepreneurship and innovation, we need to create a universal safety net that lets people take risks, try things, and fail, again and again, without ending up destitute, because we know that is what leads to eventually creating a successful business.
People need a way to limit downsides, not have zero downside.
It’s like giving a student a service chance at a test to help ensure they learn the material. But giving them unlimited attempts with no risk doesn’t create the same environment.
Having something like universal basic income absolutely does not reduce the risk to zero. What it does is it reduces the penalty for failure—failure which is often largely out of your hands. Rather than such failures meaning you lose your life savings, have no job, and are months/weeks/days from homelessness, they would mean you are making only the minimum needed to sustain housing, food, and clothing. For most people, particularly those of the type to try starting their own business, that still won't be enough to be happy.
The threat of death by exposure and starvation should not be what drives us to do better. We, as a society, should have moved past that already.
They don't prevent you losing those things if you invested your life savings in the company, and you mortgaged your home to invest more. Which are both things that people trying to get companies off the ground do, especially if they don't otherwise have the means to do so.
If you're considering the primary purpose of a UBI as being encouraging entrepreneurship, then sure, they're not that efficient. I do not consider that to be its primary purpose, nor have I yet spoken to anyone who does. It is one of many, many benefits to a UBI that should be considered.
My favorite realization from actually playing cards. We used to play a lot of rummy on vacations as a family. Like a lot.
I kept losing. Hard. Absolutely destroyed. If only I could get this one card to complete my hand, I’d win every time. But it just wouldn’t come! I had terrible luck. Someone else always ended up winning before I got the one card I needed to make the high score and beat everyone else into submission. It was infuriating.
After a while I changed tactics. No waiting. Make a play on every play. Something, anything, with whatever cards you’ve got. Find a way to make the card you just picked up work.
Suddenly I was winning almost every game. Everyone complained how much it sucks to play cards with me. How does this kid always get exactly the perfect card!?
Now I’m banned from playing cards with family. Last time I played rummy was with my girlfriend’s family over Christmas a few years ago. They banned me immediately. Cards never come up again in conversation lol.
It really isn’t about the cards. They’re just the ingredient.
Anyone can win with a perfect hand; the skill comes in dealing with the imperfect hands. True in life, too.
Bridge is nice that you can compensate for skill somewhat by handicapping, and the less-skilled players can still get a great hand and win sometimes. I always say "bridge is a fun game to lose" - and that's a really important part of a game you want to play.
Which is why abstract and complicated bidding systems dominate the game, which gives it that lovely, steep initial learning curve.
To make rummy a good metaphor for this discussion, you need to modify the normal $1/point rummy gambling rules; say making gin gives you $1000 bonus from the house or something. (There's a resemblance to quiddich here, I think.) Anyway, now you have the two extreme strategies: knock if you can, which gets you a few dollars each time, or try exclusively for gin, which usually costs you money on each hand but sometimes pays off. If you're skint, the gin strategy won't work since you can't stay in the game long enough. If you're flush, the knock strategy is uninteresting because a few dollars doesn't make a difference.
Now make that bonus $10,000,000,000 and you're making some unicorns, Harry!
There is still quite some mobility, but it effectively makes for different optimal tactics within the same game as your unfair start position determines whether it's best to risk things or not, what score is achievable depending on your position, etc and IMHO it has quite some parallels with real life decision making.