How basic income could fail in America
&gt; <i>Altman envisions a scenario in which the majority of Americans, fresh off their initial basic income payments, become perfectly content to sit at home in their virtual reality headsets. He questions whether that future is necessarily better than the stimulation and (modest) physical activity found in commuting to work and chatting with coworkers.</i><p>&gt; <i>&quot;People do form bonds with their community and their society through work,&quot; he says. &quot;And I think it does contribute to our national cohesion.&quot;</i><p>I&#x27;m biased by my experiences and by the company I keep, but I doubt this is at all a likely outcome, at least for the majority of people.<p>I know exactly one person that would be content to sit inside a small room all day long, eat just enough to exist, and spend his time playing video games. That&#x27;s his passion, and as awful a life as it would be for me, I can&#x27;t really say it&#x27;s wrong.<p>Everyone else I know would rather spend their time outdoors or in their community or doing something that doesn&#x27;t always have to have money attached to it. There are about 120 volunteers in our county&#x27;s search and rescue organization and we&#x27;d be happy to have more [1]. There&#x27;s another group self-funding an indoor climbing facility. Other groups working on improving the county&#x27;s economy, attracting more talent, improving the organization of the talent we have. Still another group that runs a maker space.<p>It could be that this county is an outlier or it could be the people I choose to associate with, but I&#x27;ve yet to see for myself any evidence that basic income would make people socialize less or even be less productive. The opposite, in fact.<p>[1]: Come to think of it, the overwhelming majority of our search and rescue volunteers are all retired people -- they&#x27;re the only ones that have the time and residual income to handle the commitment it requires. There are a few professionals with semi-flexible schedules, and fewer still business owners like myself that have managed to eke out some of the benefits of retirement before actually reaching retirement age.