&gt; I find that most of the arguments put forth in favor of UBI seem relatively narcissistic in nature (Your startup fails and you end up on the street? Yeah, not my problem actually, nor would it be my problem if you spent your entire paycheck on losing powerball tickets etc).<p>I look at this from a different angle: right now, startups skew heavily towards founders with significant risk-tolerance (young, healthy, good educations, family money, business connections, often partnered with someone who also has high-income career options, etc.) for whom the worst-case outcome is probably something like taking a job at BoringCorp and hanging out in cube-ville until they build up their reserves.<p>There&#x27;s nothing wrong with that but there&#x27;s an argument that society is missing out on a lot of ideas which won&#x27;t grow out of that fairly homogenous subculture. If we provide a basic cushion, it makes it less intimidating for someone from a less comfortable background to take a chance. That could be particularly beneficial to society: someone coming up with some business ideas which are viable in, say, a factory town or agriculture has the potential to affect a lot of people who are largely ignored by Silicon Valley culture.