I think UBI is a pipe dream. It's a naive hope at best, or an insideous tool to implement socialism/communism at worst.
UBI cannot work unless the government has total control of the means of production (be it through direct control or insane tax rates and regulation).
Without this total control of the economy (and by extension society) UBI cannot work, since it would just temporarily create huge inflation and the rest would remain as is.
Depends, about which 'model' of the UBI are we talking about right now? There are literaly thousands of approaches, calculations and ideas. Sometimes they come from the left, sometimes from the right even.
UBI is discussed by all political ideologies and it has supporters and enemies in pretty much all political groups.
The big problem is, right now no one can say if it is a pipe dream or not, as there are no tests with enough verifable data, which is a big issue right now as it means that you can't have a proper debate outside of 'ideology', like you said Commust dream at worst - there is nothing communist about it by the way, or a naive hope. But the truth is, no one knows it.
What we know however, automatisation will happen, it's already starting now and it will reach more and more jobs. I believe, to say that our 'current' system is ready to deal with that is actually a naive pipe dream - what ever if UBI is the correct answer, that's another question, but there can be no doubt that changes have to be made one way or another, we can't turn 50% of the population into programmers.
There is nothing that scares me more than the ever increasing population of our planet and the fact that AI and robots are likely to totally change our idea of "work" by the next generation. But UBI is not a solution.
Much like overt communism, it can only ever work if it is efficiently implemented AND everyone does it at the same time. This will never happen.
Historical and scientific research indidcates that the 10th billion person most probably will never be born. So it is an issue, but it most probably won't be the downfall of mankind. ANd the problem with the overpopulation right now, is not a lack of food, but the proper distribution. 30% of the world population simply consume more than the rest in both food and resources. If you take the average american or german as standard, than you are right, yes we are doomed if we try to push everyone to that level. But I think it's pretty obvious that this won't happen any time soon.
Again, UBI =/= Communism, infact there are many leftist that vehemtly argue AGAINST(!) UBI as communists or extreme leftists often want to see some kind of labour behind the benefits they get from the state, everyone is supposed to 'work' something what ever if he wants it or not, for the greater good of society and the state.
The idea of socialist states like the Soviet Union isn't to provide everyone with an equall income, the idea was to get everyone to 'work' for the state and lose any kind of individualism while the state provides everything necessary to reach that goal.
The UBI would be pretty much the antithesis of that, as you could decide to work what ever you want to work, or ... you just don't, and follow what ever else you want to do, if that means writing controversial books than you can do just that.
The UBI has much more to do with individiualism.
With UBI, you place your hope in what eventually amounts to control & oppression, dressed up with some fancy words. Free income! Free time! Freedom to chose what you want to do! But nothing is free until we are sufficiently evolved to hit post-scarcity society, which we are very far from hitting. It's all nice to think "well, we'll take it from the evil entrepreneur and redistribute it!", but who are we to decide that? As much as a loathe the idea the rich getting richer, who empowers you to take the fruit of their (or their ancestors') work away? I hope you realize that the persons most hit by this will be average middle class business owners, not the super rich?
I think that above all the role of the state is to protect its citizens, and protect their freedoms (freedom of expression & assembly, privacy, right to defend themselves adequately, self-determination, etc). This is severely at odds with what UBI requires to be implemented.
In the end, UBI represents one world government. It is the only way it would ever come to close to working. And even then, it'll fail and only be a vehicle for continued oppression of the masses.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions...
How is it 'opression'? Or let me paraphrase it, how is it more opressive then what you have already in place with stuff like the minimum wage, which is often enough still not enough to garantue a decent life with a single job.
Besides, I always find it funny to talk about 'money' or 'finances' here, when you look at a few numbers, for example workers on minium wage had a compensation of 14 billion dollars, where as Wall-Street has thrown out 28 billion dollars in bonuses alone WITHOUT(!) the compension.
I find it funny how often people talk about the 'free market' and 'free enterprises' in a society like the US, if this is how the freedom looks like:
Well than I think the US can keep it, I will gladly take the social wellfare state as we have it in Germany at least. As I think I have more freedom in what I want to do, compared to someone who has been 'left' alone by the state.
All the numbers right now point in the direction that the form of capitalism we see in the US and in other parts of the world, is failing and it is failing hard. Capitalism has sure done a loot of good for some parts of the world - while killing many others in return, no one can denny that. But we have to face the fact that we have to change at least SOME parts of it. Or we will eventually see a collapse. And in a society like the US that is so heavily weaponized ... it doesn't take much to see why that will be a huge disaster once a critical mass is reached. We're living in a society that works like a pyramid, with the richest on top. Those kind of structures, always start to fall apart from the bottom. And that is what we're seeing right now.
