Citizens of rich oil sheikhdoms in the Gulf have had de-facto UBI, and a high one, for a long time, even though the formalities were a bit muddled. In practice, if you were lucky enough to be born as a Saudi or Qatari citizen, your needs would be covered.
It did not lead to any explosion of creativity, arts and science there. People are morbidly obese and spend their money on gambling, drugs and sex.
I am not very optimistic about human nature when exposed to easy life.
My question and this truly is a question as I am not well read on UBI concepts and social theories is:
So it did not bring about nirvana and human nature is well human nature but did it eliminate suffering to a noticeable degree i.e homelessness, poverty, food security, healthcare?
It seems to me the two are not directly tied, people are always going to seek out the vices because they are the roots of pleasure but that does not mean that the other side of the equation is negative, if it does eliminate suffering then it would be a net positive. I am not advocating for UBI, I am completely ignorant on the subject, just trying to understand if it did produce positive results against suffering.
I definitely do not want to diss a concept that hasn't been tried out extensively, though I am more skeptical about it than many others - not least because people tend to discriminate "good" neighbourhoods from "bad" using rent level, so we might just see a general jump in rents and property prices that eats the entire UBI and a new unhappy equilibrium is reached.
That said, I think that rich Gulf states show us that it can be overdone, that a completely sheltered life of plenty sucks. It sucks in a very different way than hunger or homelessness, but it gnaws on human psyche too.
Capitalism + UBI = still capitalism. Of course people are fat and lazy, there's an entire economic apparatus convincing them to be. This is why I prefaced the entire point with "abolish capitalism."
If you were financially independent, what would you do or build? I know I'd never stop producing useful things.
I don't know whether you should be so sure that you're not mixing up cause and effect here. It might as well be that we have the economic apparatus because people naturally gravitate towards becoming fat and lazy. Or, most likely, both options are true to some degree.
I'm sure you believe this in good faith, but most human beings are not as driven and are not as good natured as you.
This is also why governments or any form or redistribution is inferior to a perfect market without human interference: you will always have bad apples stealing resources or being as inefficient as they can be.
I know this because I'm a psychopath, I feel zero guilt or empathy and the thought that someone like me could be in a position of power is downright scary.
It did not lead to any explosion of creativity, arts and science there. People are morbidly obese and spend their money on gambling, drugs and sex.
I am not very optimistic about human nature when exposed to easy life.