Ask HN: What are the best arguments in favor of a UBI?
I seriously doubt you will really get the info you need from tossing this question out there on this forum.<p>The people who are for the UBI tend to see the world differently from the people who are against it. They look at the same data and draw different conclusions.<p>I have written a few anti UBI pieces. I have had someone tell me &quot;The data for when they have tried it is all positive&quot; or whatever. But, then they link me to trials that I find unconvincing. If you have a UBI trial that involves just one small town and there is intent from the start that it will have a limited duration, you will get different human behavior than if you genuinely try to implement some kind of guaranteed security.<p>Every historical attempt that I am personally familiar with where they tried to promise universal security has failed. These historical attempts were not called Universal Basic Income. They had names like communism -- the idea being we would all live communally and the community came first and took care of everyone. The result in every real world trial I know of for promising some kind of baseline security to all members of the group is that too many people decide to just be freeloaders and not do fuck all, since they won&#x27;t starve if they don&#x27;t do a damn thing.<p>I have blogged about this from an anti-UBI perspective. It has not been well received. I am not sure I am going to bother to keep blogging about it because I am not convinced it matters. I am skeptical that it will ever actually happen and, if it does, it will likely fail in short order, like all previous attempts.<p>The only question is whether the failure will cause so much widespread harm that I need to care or not. It might make more sense for me to just keep on keeping on with trying to solve my own substantial personal problems that most people don&#x27;t give a fuck about, while continuing to light one small candle where I can for helping others currently suffering due to the issues out in the world today.<p>You might find better answers by either searching Hacker News for previous discussions of the UBI or searching the web. A lot of people are for it. You can easily find their arguments in various places and that might be more helpful than what you are likely to get for answers here.<p>Best of luck.