these are the exact same arguments people make against something like UBI or really any public benefits. "starving people feel motivated to eat food, so they work to make money to buy food. therefore starving people is the correct thing to do because I believe that if we give people food they will be lazy"

I have personally seen a handful of people in tech and tech influencers argue that if people had all their basic necessities met, then they wouldn't be motivated to do anything and they would just play video games all day.

To me, this is a profoundly privileged opinion to have that follows this exact same hyper-idealistic thinking pattern. It comes from these "first principles" that are naive at best. In reality it is more so the bias of the person showing through, we can analyze these systems, look at the data and we won't be coming to these conclusions.

These "first principles" are not based on data or understanding. They are based on emotions, personal experience and biases. ie "I was lazy as college student, therefore all people are lazy.. therefore if people had their needs met, they would also be lazy like I was... therefore depriving people of basic necessities is actually the justified thing to do" I say from my multi-million dollar house in North Dakota with my 300k a year salary and cushy full-time youtube platform.