Comment by yetihehe

> financial destitution by definition cannot affect producers of vital goods,

Say that to farmers struggling to make meets end. We managed to make production of vital goods so efficient, that we don't need as many producers, so they are becoming not-producers-of-vital-goods en masse. So, now that they don't produce vital goods, they can safely go into destitution?

> only an individual level failure (which isn’t to say that the individual is “to blame”, I am not talking moralistically

Individual level failure means individual is to blame. But UBI is meant to give them safety net, so that when they fail, they don't go into destitution.

> So at least what you mentioned cannot result in systemic failure from a mechanistic point of view, only an individual level failure (which isn’t to say that the individual is “to blame”, I am not talking moralistically, just that it affects individuals and not the entire structure

Nice, but when you get rid of 20% of people and move them into "not usable, you won't eat now" category, each single one for personal reasons, then another 20% for other personal reason, you have to train them somehow. You could of course say that they should retrain on their own, but that's currently done typically after several years of giving them too low prices, so they used up their safety reserve.

> On first paragraph, okay how does that scale though. Who does the actual work of producing things people need to live

The people who feel they have the skills for this. Just like right now.

> and how do we make sure that enough people keep doing that specifically,

We have enough people to make food. We have to make artifical limits on how much food they produce or they would flood the market with food. We pay them to keep their fields unused for some time, kept in reserve. UBI would just be a guarantee that they won't go into destitution when they can't sell the food at good price.

> “birth rate increases because people have more free time which means now you need more farming”

I think birth rate might decrease even more. As people become more and more comfortable and stopped having to work as much as previously, they don't need children to secure their future.

> We need to characterize these dynamics, wouldn’t you say? Have you thought about it, or are you satisfied by hand waving?

I agree we should. Who would do it? Who would pay for such characterisation? Maybe you should try to do it? A lot of people think about it already.