On the other hand, there's me. I hate not working. I would appreciate a UBI, as it would let me get out of a not so great place, and let me focus on working on what I like to do, but I would definitely still be doing useful work.
If the work your going to be doing is useful, then why don't you do it? Or is it objectively not as useful as your current occupation? In general the market compensates based on how much it is wanted by others.
It's amazing what an individual will think is useful when doing the work, vs what a customer who pay for.
> If the work your going to be doing is useful, then why don't you do it?
For me: I am doing/learning how to do it, but I don't have capability to monetize it right now.
In general: I have personally known many people who want to have a career in X, but can't because they are working three jobs to try to house and feed themselves.
> [I]s it objectively not as useful as your current occupation?
For me: It is objectively more useful then my current occupation. I can't explain more without revealing more of my private life than I am comfortable doing here.
In general: Regardless, something being less useful then something else doesn't make it not useful. 75% is less than 100%, but is still greater than 0%.
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Also, bonus argument for UBI.
Most (all?) propositions for UBI I have seen will cover only the bare minimum. Almost everyone wants more than this, and will be willing to work to get the extra money.
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Edit 0: Add less situational arguments.
Edit 1: Add bonus argument.
Edit 2: Move things around because I'm stupid and can't get formatting right the first 3 times.
In software at least, the opposite seems to be true.
You can make $500k+, but you have to spend your time building things that are not only useless, but a net negative to the world.
Or you can choose to spend your time building things that actually benefit individuals as well as humanity and large. But if you want to do that, you have to do it for free.
Nobody is getting paid $500k+ to directly build things that are net negatives to the world.
You can claim that a very senior Facebook employee is contributing to a _platform_ or _product_ that is a net negative to society. But at the same time, the work they're doing directly from an engineering perspective is probably technically on the cutting edge, and they're likely mentoring and growing a large number of other engineers at the same time.
Contributing to technical excellence and growing younger engineers is a positive, which is why they do their job. Don't dehumanize the people working at large corporations. They're not the ones steering the products in democracy-breaking directions.
> Nobody is getting paid $500k+ to directly build things that are net negatives to the world.
Yes, they are.
Anyone involved in adtech, tracking, their garbage news feed algorithm is actively and directly harming humanity.
Sure, they're involved in a good project or two as well, like https://www.opencompute.org/. But that represents a tiny minority of Facebook employees. The vast majority are getting paid directly to build things that are net negatives to the world.
> but at the same time, the work they're doing directly from an engineering perspective is probably technically on the cutting edge
I don't even know how to begin to unpack this. "Hey, I've built this new rocket I call the V2. Don't blame me if my employer uses them to bomb civilians in London, even if I knew that was exactly what they were going to do before I started the project. Just celebrate my technical excellence!"
> Contributing to technical excellence and growing younger engineers is a positive
No. Training young engineers to abuse their users for profit is not a positive.
As for technical excellence, that is quite a stretch for a website that can't even support the browser's "Back" button. But that's another discussion altogether.
How many people would rather raise their kids than work one or more jobs? Or has raising kids not been deemed useful because "in general" the market will compensate based on how much others want it?
