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Originally Posted by wil318466
Well, let's say everyone in this thread suddenly made the same salary and didn't have to work for it? How do you think that would work out?
I presume everyone gets the social net and there will be a minor drift in job participation, but overall the people making money will still make money. It's not like everyone quits their job and we revert to some kind of fantasyland communism-esque environment where nobody works.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wil318466
Anecdotally, I was on a severance package for 6 months, full salary. I can tell you the first few weeks were glorious, the next few bored, and then my life started going down the drain. I had nothing to do since everyone else was at work. I routinely got up at 11, didn't shower til 1, and was drunk by 4. Take a nap, have dinner, then decide if I wanted to drink again.
Nothing saps the life out of you faster than not having goals or simply something to do. I understand why retired people die. There's nothing to do, so you better have a spouse and some kids around, because at least then you have chores or errands to run even if they aren't all that fun.
Humans absolutely need something to keep their minds occupied.
I'm gonna go on kind of a tangent to this... I can relate to this, but honestly I consider this a good thing. I took a trading job in Chicago where consensus was failure rate was 90%. The reason I did it was because I wanted a level of financial success in trading that I didn't get with poker. When I achieved that, I realized it didn't make my life happier. It made life more comfortable and less stressful wrt bills and stuff, sure, but I got the general emptiness residue that happens when you dedicate your entire life to one thing (in my case, trading) and once that's no longer an itch, you're left with a hollow existence. Burnout except you don't really have anything to fall back on.
I found "Know Your Truth" by Ravikant to be helpful in this regard. I have new goals, I know my reason for existence, so I'm working to accomplish those things instead of getting drunk on my couch at 3pm.
UBI is gonna throw a lot of society into this existential quandary, and I anticipate a lot of people on the poverty line are going to go the "drunk at 3pm on your couch" route which is sad. Others may take it as their moment of truth and finding purpose. The scene I like referencing (and quoted in Ravikant's book) is the one where Tyler Durden takes the shop clerk's ID and tells him he will get murdered unless he immediately works to become a Veterinarian. For other people that could mean working on art, health, travel, all things that are at least achievable on a budget with that new safety net.
Finding existence or purpose outside of work/money goals is something that everyone ought to come face to face with, especially in a future where many jobs could totally disappear. The moral question, from a society standpoint, is what % of society gets presented UBI and it totally ruins them (like your 3pm couch drunk experience). I suspect it is not a small %. If anything, that's the argument against UBI. But the India study I think presents a good counterpoint.