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Comment by authorfly | Hacker News Reader

I do have a different opinion to you, and it was formed during the pandemic when there were UBI-like circumstances for me and my friend group. Those who didn't need to work any more, became rather depressed, quite quickly, compared to those who kept working. And it changed my view on UBI. Maybe in your friend group that was different or your country didn't follow such an approach?

What's the difference between working on several games or focusing and finished one to you?

Would you work on these things enough to produce finished projects if you had UBI? For more than a while?

I think at some life stages, like parenthood or childhood, UBI makes sense. At others, when you are finding yourself - having a responsibility is useful.

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> Those who didn't need to work any more, became rather depressed, quite quickly, compared to those who kept working.

I'm going to be completely honest with you, I really think you need to consider other reasons why people might be depressed in the situation that occurred during the pandemic. I don't know anyone who was doing particularly well, including those working (heck, people at my job at the time were struggling pretty badly with mental health to the point where they started reaching out to us.)

I'm not even saying this as a person that has a strong opinion on UBI, and I am sure some people sincerely believe not having a job was a major detriment for them. I absolutely think it did help me, but the way I see it, it helped because it was something to cling onto for a bit of normalcy, and of course, a bit of social interaction. Outside of the pandemic, a job is not nearly as critical for those two things.

I also do personally think that I still broadly like having a job, and I have had almost no gaps in employment since I started working professionally. That said, if money were no object, I would absolutely take breaks off of professional work for months at a time. For me, I find both professional work and hobby work important in very different ways, and wish I had dedicated time for both. Anecdotally I've definitely known engineers who periodically take months or even a year off of work when they get the opportunity and it seems to be a very healthy thing for them.

The existence of UBI would maybe tempt people to rely on it even if it is detrimental to their lives, but I think it's wrong to draw the conclusion that it's bad because jobs can be a source of fulfillment for many. In the future it's very possible we're going to need to approach the problem from another angle anyways, since there's simply no guarantee there will be meaningful work for us all in the future. (I'm not really convinced there won't be, but it feels unreasonable to consider it outside the realm of reasonable possibility.)

> I don't know anyone who was doing particularly well, including those working...

I and many others did great. I think someone should do a study of the experiences of introverts vs extroverts and you'll find the latter suffered more and many of the former had a better quality of life as a result.

Working from home was simply a huge boost for many. We suddenly found more time to do our personal projects. Got to work less without dropping productivity etc.

I think you are missing my point. Actually, ever since the pandemic, I prefer WFH/remote work. I mean, I actually did like working in an office for reasons, but there's no doubt about it: I am an introvert.

But being an introvert didn't fix anything else. I had to constantly cycle through masks, got harassed by random strangers when going to the store, had my medical appointments delayed for several months, people I knew were dying, there were shortages of basically everything, and the news cycle was full of panic and anger. And the pre-existing problems with the Internet somehow got even worse.

Maybe it's because I live in a rural area, but life here really was great. The impact of the pandemic was really confined to prices increasing. Nobody really got that sick in my community. We all sort of just spent WAAAAYYYY more time with each other.

As long as we avoided the news.

> I had to constantly cycle through masks

I'll grant they were a pain. I don't miss them. They didn't make my life miserable, though.

> got harassed by random strangers when going to the store

Why? Not my experience at all (unless you were refusing to wear a mask).

> had my medical appointments delayed for several months

I can see that being a major problem if you have medical conditions.

> people I knew were dying

Same here. It definitely sucked, but I didn't get depressed by it. I think it comes down to expectations in life. If you go through life thinking "people in their 30s aren't supposed to die", then yes, I can see it being depressing. If you go through life with "one can die any time - be it from disease or a car accident", then a pandemic isn't much of a shock.

To give a different perspective: Long before the pandemic, people I knew died in places like Palestine and Iraq due to conflicts. Yet the whole world lived a happy life despite it. Is this all that different?

And go back a century or more, and people around you dying from disease was the norm (think tuberculosis, etc). That didn't prevent people from having a happy life, and did not make them depressed. It's not (primarily) the circumstances that lead to the depression, but the narrative one has around them.

> there were shortages of basically everything

I got lucky. We happened to accidentally buy an extra set of Clorox wipes just prior to the pandemic. We were going to return them and then the pandemic hit. I was never short.

Hand sanitizer shortages sucked. We certainly conserved our use, and were fortunate never to run out.

As for everything else, I didn't deal with any serious shortages. Somehow always found paper towels, bathroom rolls, soap, etc. And things like cars/appliance shortages - these are not meaningful quality of life things for me.

> and the news cycle was full of panic and anger

If this caused you depression, I say this with the utmost sincerity: I hope you learned the lesson not to waste much time with the news. I was a news junkie for many years, and had cured myself of it years before the pandemic hit (and thankfully never jumped on the social media bandwagon). Video news is the worst, and has almost no redeeming value. You can get much, much more from text sources.

At the end of the day, it wasn't the pandemic but the news media that caused you problems.

> And the pre-existing problems with the Internet somehow got even worse.

I guess I'm fortunate in that my Internet never had problems.

The other obvious difference between you and me: You seem to have experience with remote work prior to the pandemic, so your baseline was clearly different. For people like me, the pandemic was the cause of my appreciating remote work.

BTW, I'm not claiming it was great for the majority. Merely pointing out that for many - albeit a minority - it was an improvement on life.

Being able to go for walks on days of nice weather in nice neighborhoods during work hours can be a major improvement on one's mood.

As an introvert who fell quickly into depression at the start of the pandemic, I'm having a very difficult time seeing this comment as anything but gaslighting.

EDIT: Instead of trying to persuade you that the pandemic was a bad thing, I'll just say that perhaps your wonderful work-from home experience was different than a lot of other people.

> Instead of trying to persuade you that the pandemic was a bad thing

Never said it wasn't. I lost people I know to COVID.

> I'll just say that perhaps your wonderful work-from home experience was different than a lot of other people.

I'm not denying that either.

I think you're misreading my comment as saying "For the majority of introverts, it was better than before". I am not asserting any such thing. I am saying that for some, it was better.

You just need to scan HN comments from that time period to find plenty of people who enjoyed their work from home experience during the pandemic.

BTW, I refused to work from home prior to the pandemic. At times I made it a condition of employment that I leave my laptop at work when I went home. So this is definitely not coming from a guy who always liked working from home. When I had to, though, I found the experience to be far superior than commuting every day and dealing with nosy managers.

There is not doubt in my mind that if we somehow implemented a UBI in a way that would not just result in inflation of rent and everyday goods, the vast majority of people would simply stop working, get bored, depressed, and more likely go looking for mischief before they started working on useful or interesting hobby projects.

Whats more, if you drop out of work to live on the UBI, by definition, you are the poorest person in the country, and if that is not a reason to be depressed I don't know what is.

> There is not doubt in my mind that if we somehow implemented a UBI in a way that would not just result in inflation of rent and everyday goods, the vast majority of people would simply stop working, get bored, depressed, and more likely go looking for mischief before they started working on useful or interesting hobby projects.

I've taken quite a bit of time off between jobs and lived off minimal savings (over a year several times now) and I've experienced exactly what you describe - the boredom and depression. However, I also came out the other side and now I wish this for everyone.

The boredom and depression was because I was operating from the typical mode of being where there was a belief that my only value was that which I could provide to society. This was a belief that's indoctrinated in us from a very young age - through school, grades, parents, and work.

Once this belief fell away, a new kind of motivation has opened up - the curiosity I felt as a kid to create and explore and experiment and follow my interest. The joy of simply being alive, being allowed to live this life without having to perform for anyone, force a persona, or act a particular role.

The thing is, to lose that belief that only a job/work/career can provide us fulfilment, you have to be willing to go through and sit with the depression and grief of realising that that belief was a lie all along.

I only wish I had the stability to do this. I have family relying on me to pay the bills.

How did you do this (unless you got paid massive bucks) and afford to keep a family?

Yes, it was a lot easier to do this as a single guy without a family and pretty minimal material desires.

Mostly it was just living from savings - the first time was a working holiday overseas doing seasonal work with long stretches of time off in between. Later on in my career I was able to save more by keeping my standard of living low (and not buying a house, perhaps unfortunately).

Ultimately I don't think you need to quit everything to see through these beliefs. Meditation was a big part of the process for me and I didn't spend that long doing it. If you watch the mind close enough it becomes clear that so much of what seems so true and real is nothing more than a belief.

I disagree with your first points. I believe the majority of people are trying to get ahead, not just subsist. Why else do so many people work so hard? I think it goes to the myth that the poor in the US are poor because they don't work hard. IMO, I've known so many people with teo jobs, ut has a lot more to do with making $25k/yr for full time work. The median income is low, pay is low.

OTOH, I think you also neglect what benefit UBI would have to those who are currently the poorest. Child poverty, poverty, are big problems for millions of Americans.

You can just take money from the rich and give it to the poor. That doesn't have anything to do with UBI. And many of us live in a democracy, so if we all get on the same page, we can decide to just do that.

UBI is some bullshit handwaving to try make social safety nets sound fair. (We give the money to everybody!). We should just stop kidding ourselves and build a more caring and supporting society.

> You can just take money from the rich and give it to the poor. That doesn't have anything to do with UBI.

The reason to write that first sentence is because I pointed out that UBI helps those making less than UBI. Of course then it is pertinent to UBI in so far as it is a mechanism to achieve that goal.

Your original claim that UBI would cause laziness and depression is not further supported by making more claims that UBI is there solely to seem fair.

An argument that I have heard for UBI is: UBI is more effective than social safety nets that are doled out by merit, decided by committee. If you recall the so-called "death panels", government committees who decide who gets what healthcare, there is essentially that with various social programs. UBI has the virtue of simplicity, and uniformity helps ensure reach and therefore efficacy.

I am personally unsure whether UBI is the most effective way to build a supportive society, or if it is as good as its proponents claim. Though, neither do I think (respectfully) that your claims about UBI are well supported either

>Your original claim that UBI would cause laziness and depression is not further supported by making more claims that UBI is there solely to seem fair.

Sorry, I was attempting to make two separate claims, both perhaps over generalizations for the sake of impact.

Except the research shows almost exactly the opposite?

Research doesn’t show the government providing cheap or free money doesn’t inflate prices? We’ve just lived through four years of insane government spending correlated with the highest inflation in over 40 years.

This is an experiment that has been tried and always has the same results: the cost of an item increases by approximately the amount of the subsidy the government provides. UBI experiments “work” because they are elevating the income of a small portion of the population above their peers. It’s not actually universal.

> Research doesn’t show the government providing cheap or free money doesn’t inflate prices?

The post being replied to said:

So, the response saying that the research doesn't support that conclusion is not about the "that would not just result in" there, it's about countering the remainder of that point. Most people will not choose to do absolutely nothing. (And if some people do, that's fine!)

That's separate from the many arguments that UBI is not inherently inflationary, which neither the post you replied to or the post it replied to were making.

> the cost of an item increases by approximately the amount of the subsidy the government provides.

Vis-a-vis food stamps and unemployment checks, I don't think you can draw the correlation you think exists. Particularly past a certain level of poverty, the state ends up spending more to manage the consequences of unemployment than it saves by refusing to fix it. UBI in this case perpetuates inequity but it also greases the wheels of a down-and-out working population that can be motivated by higher standards of living.

From a net-gain perspective, developed nations investing in themselves like this makes sense. The alternative is letting the middle class rot, which is something that only the upper-class would stand to gain from.

Heck, I'm convinced even the upper class benefits long term from the kind of investment you're talking about, for a bunch of reasons.

To name just two examples: Technological progress happens more smoothly when there are mass markets. Society is healthier and safer when everybody feels like they have a stake in it.

can you elaborate?

Not everyone links their level of wealth to their self esteem. Different strokes for different folks.

So there's always inevitably at least one poorest person in the country who is automatically depressed? Omelas is a law of nature?

Well, the way I see it, there is a real possibility that we're going to have to figure out what to do after that happens some day. There's no fundamental law of nature that guarantees we'll have enough work to keep the vast majority of people working.

It already feels like many of the jobs that exist today are bullshit, and knowing that your job is bullshit is not exactly good for your mental health, either.

As others commented there can be a dozen other reason to be depressed under the pandemic other than UBI like revenues.

Also UBI does not stop you from doing work. UBI does not want to be a complete replacement of work related revenues, just the basic needs are covered. So if you have a minimum of ambition, you'll go for a job. UBI is just your safety net, so you must not become something that you feel is a slave or stuck in with bad people just to pay rent. Quite different story compared to what you painted here like people just don't work. Also would be interesting to see this unfolding for 10 years. Maybe humans are just lazy but quite the opposite can happen as well and those stories will drag people along. Of course some of us are going to fuck it up that's for sure.

Interesting that I observed the opposite. During the pandemic people I know who had to work were sent into extreme psychological dysfunction that they're still dealing with the fallout that followed. Those that didn't need to work flourished.

I doubt it was the UBI-like aspect of the pandemic that caused the depressive states. Isolation, less active lifestyles, locked inside. Imagine UBI, but with the opposite of all of those!

I have seen it. Take a good look at the Australian government funding central Australian communities and the crime and abuse outcomes in that area.

It will break your heart.

The U.S. has Indian reservations. They're not known for being havens for self-actualization.

That's why in the sci-fi, utopian economics of the Star Trek Federation they have a "participation based" UBI, where your ticket to the Federation's generous UBI (made possible by effectively infinite material resources) is contingent upon you doing something productive. You can't just sit on your ass all day and collect it.

Now how they measure/judge what's "productive" and the fact that it works at all is what makes it sci-fi, but it highlights that responsibility is critical, even in a utopia.

Star Trek mostly just kind of handwaves this sort of thing rather than actually explaining how it works, which is probably the right narrative decision because it's usually beside whatever point the story is trying to make.

Star Trek handwaves away pretty much all questions about its utopian economics. What's the point in Picard's family owning a vineyard in a world with replicators that can make perfectly aged wine for you in seconds?

I think that almost every episode featuring food from replicators always has someone lamenting that it isn’t the real thing though. So tastes vary. There is tradition. Point enough to have a be vineyard.

Also, what if _everyone_ wants a vineyard in France? Land is still finite, how does one allocate something like that?

Just replicate more France

I love that answer. It reminds me of how Futurama explained space travel:

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/146355/how-do-they...

So in Star Trek artisinal work/projects would not exist?

It's not a Universal Basic Income if it's not Universal.

It's been a while since I watched the series admittedly. IIRC it's honor, influence, and prestige that motivates the people working for the federation.

UBI is a failure of imagination for jobs programs. Don't get me wrong, as a society we should take care of everyone so that no one dies of starvation or freezes to death, but don't just give people handouts, pay people to do stuff. Even something as simple as planting trees.

I think jobs programs are a failure of society to imagine what true abundance looks like, and how abundant our lives are.

In the US, we produce and throw away so much food that overconsumption is vastly more deadly than underconsumption. Hell, we even put corn ethanol into our petro products just to keep the farmland in use.

We could have “universal basic food stamps” pretty much immediately. Affordably too - society is collectively already paying for a multiple of all consumption needs (just out of pocket instead of via government subsidy). People could work for extra income for their specialty foods.

> pay people to do stuff

UBI allows people to choose what stuff they consider productive. UBI means anyone can work on a startup, or try to start a project, or try an artistic endeavor, or do research. UBI means everyone can afford to take some risks and still have a fallback plan.

UBI means you don't have to be productive or take any risks. Just sit back and collect the dole and drink beer and enjoy the sun. Or fentanyl. I'm not against giving people a chance or taking care of people when they're down. I don't think UBI is the way to accomplish that though, and that a well funded, and properly managed jobs programs would do more to improve society, and is more tractable, than giving everybody a magic money fountain.

> UBI means you don't have to be productive or take any risks.

And that's a great thing. My comment is about what it allows people to do and what they can do, not about forcing them to do anything.

If some subset of people choose to relax, temporarily or otherwise, rather than go work a low-paying job, so be it. That's not just an "acceptable negative", that's a positive, that people can do that.

UBI shouldn't be set at a level that makes it comfortable to have zero income forever. UBI should be set at a level that makes it reliably survivable to have zero income. There will always be incentives to work, and there will always be people who choose not to, and both of those things are fine.

> properly managed jobs programs

The difference I was highlighting between UBI and a jobs program is precisely that UBI doesn't require defining what qualifies as a job, and supports trying novel things that don't immediately pay out enough to support you. You don't need make-work jobs, you don't have the problem of people being automated out of a job (so automation is much more often a good thing), you have a massive renaissance in startups and ventures of all sorts, you have lower administrative costs because you don't have means testing or ...

All the cases of people suddenly finding themselves with an obsolete skillset? They'd be able to afford to take a year off to reinvent themselves and become more productive again, rather than having to immediately jump on whatever work they can get.

> and is more tractable

I've seen many cases made that UBI is an easier sell across the political spectrum than jobs programs or welfare programs would be. Lower administrative costs, smaller public sector, net win for the economy, higher likelihood of more people becoming more successful and depending on it less...

> My comment is about what it allows people to do and what they can do, not about forcing them to do anything.

You're describing properly motivated people. Those people, properly motivated, have found ways to do the same without UBI.

(And I suppose lazy people tend to find ways to be lazy without UBI as well.)

> You're describing properly motivated people. Those people, properly motivated, have found ways to do the same without UBI.

Those two sets are not identical; many motivated people nonetheless do not have the resources to take a risk and still have something to fall back on, or to take a long time learning something that will not immediately pay off.

Slate Star Codex made an argument against it here https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/Basic-Income-Not-Basi...

It's been a few years but my recollection is something like:

1. The jobs that are crappy enough for jobs programs are not useful jobs to be done anyway.

2. The overhead involved in having a job (Transportation, childcare, all kinds of second-order negatives on your life) can easily outweigh shitty salaries. Also jobs programs would be worse for people with kids, unless you add more child tax credit to prop up that side of the stool.

3. Having a job takes away free time that otherwise could be used for training or education. Planting trees by hand in the sun is not going to look like anything on anyone's resume. You could put another leg on the stool by having a college grant program or something, but it's another step away from jobs and towards UBI

If you're going to pay people to do something pointless, maybe just pay them to exist anyway?

Why do they have to be crappy? Why wouldn't childcare be a job in the jobs program? Or teaching? or driver? Scott Alexander doesn't think deeply or fully address that in that piece, choosing instead to use a strawman to say it just won't work, but less critically that UBI somehow magically would.

Would you be willing to trust your child to the care of someone who is unwilling or incapable of finding work outside the jobs program?

For any useful job you can think of, ask yourself: What's stopping the unemployed from doing that job right now? They could already be making decent money driving or caring, so why aren't they?

I'm less worried about the current unemployed; that's a whole other can of worms. I'm more worried concerned about a supposed AI job-pocalypse where everyone (including me) can't find a job because AI robots can perform the role I currently perform, for cheaper, and tirelessly.

For the jobs that immediately come to mind, the reason there's no one working then is because I don't have the money to pay for them. I'd love to have a driver and a carer; There's a number of businesses I want to start but I don't have the money to hire people to do things so they limp along with the time and effort I'm able to give them after my main job.

How about reforming the WPA [1] and build free basic housing. Let the for profit house building corporations handle the luxury stuff. Actually, that's all they are interested in doing anyways.

We should stop begging them to build what we need and just do it ourselves.

1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administratio...

Your friends are not working because of people are so used to the “rails” that a job guides them and spoon feed them what exactly to do and with what consequences, this is why UBI isn’t gonna be what that commenter fantasies about. Most people does not have the will power to force and give themselves consequences and stick to it, because they are their own boss.

I expect that advances in AI and robotics will make most human labor obsolete (economically unviable) in the next few decades. I expect widespread adoption of UBI as a consequence.

I have also considered the fact that most people just sort of "drift" if there isn't an external system forcing them to stay on track. I suspect we're going to see "fake jobs" subsidized by the system for the sake of maintaining widespread sanity.

Well fake jobs isn't quite the right name, rather they'd be real jobs but a portion of the UBI budget (or wherever it comes from) would be spent maintaining a human economy for the people (most people?) who apparently require such a system to stay sane. I say fake because they wouldn't be economically viable without the subsidy.

Of course, work isn't the only way to stay busy or sane. I think we'll also see a lot more hobby groups and general community gatherings.

The minimum wage was meant to be a "universal basic wage", and it has been corroded to uselessness over time.

$7.25 an hour

What is different in modern times that would prevent the same from happening to UBI?

Is there an actual reference to the idea that the minimum wage was meant to be a "universal basic wage"? Is this in the original congressional debates, the legislation, comments by Roosevelt? (Searching for references to the phrase, I couldn't find anything from the timeframe of when the legislation was enacted.)

>and it has been corroded to uselessness over time.

The federal minimum wage has basically kept up with inflation since the 1930s. In the states where costs are higher, they generally have higher rates.

Does UBI pay enough to support a ski bum lifestyle? That’s probably what I would do if I had guaranteed income with no job.

During the pandemic, my roommate and I built so much shit.

We built a full wooden camper setup with electrical and plumbing. We sketched and crafted new furniture for our apartment. We designed and built our own hydroponics system.

And we skated a lot and hiked where we could. We did also play a lot of video games.

Super honest feedback on UBI. I'm glad we saw it develop before us with COVID, there is something there that may work, but simple UBI doesn't work evidently

> UBI-like circumstances for me and my friend group

> during the pandemic

Lol you really think generalizing emotional states from a global lockdown is smart?

I'm replying to you since you got the most upvotes :-)

I take issue with your main point: that not having to work and receiving financial aid cause depression. Did anyone receiving the $1400 pandemic check from the government feel down about it? The notion is frankly preposterous.

From this, we can infer that reducing one's labor burden also doesn't cause depression.

So depression might come from elsewhere: maybe boredom, existential angst, who knows. But it's not pertinent to the debate around UBI.

Now, we can talk about the financial toll of paying taxes for UBI, or the risk of inflation (there is none - that comes from increasing the money supply not incomes - although political machinations tend to preserve wealth at the top), or the collapse of various service industries that profit from underemployment. But those are probably best analyzed in simulation, since like with ventures and startups, there is no way to predict the benefits to society if 1% succeed even if 99% fail or are idle.

My personal take is that sentiment for UBI will fall along political lines. We can use other spectrums for reference:

  * female vs male
  * positive reinforcement vs tough love
  * liberal vs conservative

Since HN is mostly composed of tech workers, I'd predict a male-dominated slant with a preference for tough love and conservative values. It would have an inherent bias towards work over caregiving. So the majority of HN might disfavor UBI, regardless of any actual merits it provides.

I decided to get an estimate of UBI support on HN based on the sentiments of the replies here:

https://deepai.org/chat

  please analyze the text from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41638103 (the text follows the news.ycombinator.com forum comment structure).
  divide the text into a list of replies.
  note that any line starting with ">" is a comment from a parent reply.
  determine the sentiment of each reply as to whether it favors UBI or disfavors UBI.
  count the replies favoring UBI, the replies disfavoring UBI, and the replies that are neutral/defensive/etc about UBI.
  
  * Favors UBI: 12 replies
  * Disfavors UBI: 26 replies
  * Neutral/Defensive: 12 replies

Unfortunately, it started saying "I currently cannot access external websites, including the one you provided" so I had to stop at that preliminary estimate.

I also tried changing the first line of the prompt and with manually pasting the page between "<< ... >>":

  please analyze the text between "<<" and ">>" that I've pasted after this prompt (the text was obtained from a news.ycombinator.com forum and follows the same comment structure).

That returned similar results.

https://chatgpt.com/ has an arbitary length limit that can't separate prompt from context data, which makes it generally useless for this type of work. https://iask.ai has similar limitations which negate its usefulness also.

But going by the first estimate, it looks like about 1/4 of HN users favor UBI, 1/2 disfavor UBI, and 1/4 are neutral.

It would be interesting to see this analysis on a larger sample size.

With 50% of HN seemingly disfavoring UBI, since we're essentially thought leaders in tech, it's highly unlikely that society as a whole will vote to adopt UBI.

I think that's ..sad, for lack of a better word.

We're basically saying that even though we know automation better than anyone, we don't believe that it can lead to a decrease in labor, or that its proceeds should be used to benefit everyone.

I think that's an abdication of our role in working to make the world a better place, and why we got started in tech in the first place.

So without a viable plan of action for getting to UBI, it's probably time to form an independent organization outside of public government and private industry. One that's opt-in, with a commitment to contribute a portion of one's future profits to an even payout of UBI, without means testing.

After a lifetime of struggle with countless losses and no big win, despite hard work on a level that most people probably wouldn't believe, I would opt-in in a heartbeat. And I'm going to make it my life's work to focus on manifesting self-actualization for everyone, starting with bringing about UBI. That's how strongly I believe in its potential to change the world for the better, for us and for future generations.

I realized after sleeping on this that without verifying the sentiments manually, I don't have enough evidence to make a prediction about HN users' support of UBI. So my conclusions may not have enough basis in fact.

To play devil's advocate for a moment, what if we imagine that the votes went the other way, with 50% favoring UBI, 25% disfavoring UBI, and 25% neutral? And what if HN were left-leaning, and wished to work towards UBI, convincing others on the left to join? What kind of opposition would they face?

  * women who are primary caregivers wouldn't want UBI because?
    - they make plenty of money already, earning the same wages as men?
    - receiving assistance would diminish the perceived value of the money they earn being away from their children, elderly parents, etc?
    - they've seen how depriving people of enough income to meet basic needs builds strong communities?
  * parents practicing positive reinforcement wouldn't want UBI because?
    - taking that money as a handout sends the wrong message to their children, that societies are stronger than individuals?
    - they work enough hours already that they have all the money they need to spend quality time with their family?
    - it's better for kids to have their hopes dashed than know their parents have enough money to feed and clothe them, eventually sending them to college?
  * liberals in favor of government programs, agencies and social safety nets wouldn't want UBI because?
    - it might interfere with existing institutions like the Department of Health and Welfare, known for their efficiency and effectiveness?
    - it might undermine unions, the Peace Corps, etc that already promote meaningful work and fair pay?
    - it might help conservatives, which could undermine leftist agendas like making sure that everyone has a fair shake?

Do any of these pass the sniff test?

After writing this out, I think I can safely say that even without knowing the sentiment towards UBI, we can make predictions about who will favor or oppose it and why. It has to do with empathy or the lack thereof, and how traditional notions like responsibility, community and patriotism have been coopted during the Information Age by moneyed interests in the status quo.

I've kind of reached the point in life where talking about problems till I'm blue in the face does nothing to fix them. I'm more interested now in joining and forming coalitions that bring about meaningful change and give people alternatives that pay dividends larger than the way things are currently.

At the simplest level, we can ask: does giving people who are already rich even more money at the cost of those struggling without enough resources (Social Darwinism) build a more prosperous society? Or does using excess wealth to provide for those in need (Social Planning) heal society?

In these matters, I tend to think that the opinion of a 5 year old child is generally more in line spiritually with the greater good than whatever serious-sounding adults preach, even academics. So I know where my sentiment stands regarding UBI.

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