The whole point of the term "universal' in UBI is that it does not depend on conditions like seeking work. There's no good reason to call existing welfare programs that come with conditions UBI.

I'm not sure exactly how Australia does this, but in the US, the largest welfare program we have manages to be fairly universal, politically popular and not abusive (as far as I know). That program is Social Security / welfare for older people.

I think some important pieces of how it manages to work are:

• The requirements are very minimal so almost everyone who lives long[1] enough qualifies (11 years of earnings[2] and reaching the age of 62)
• There's no requirements going forward, so there's no point to re-checking (i.e. if I'm 62 this year, I'll definitely be 62-or-older next year)
• Older people are a big enough portion of the voting population that making this worse would be politically unfeasible

Part of the popularity is that there's a general agreement that people over a certain age should get a break, but people used to work basically until they died and the idea that 62 year olds should be given retirement is fairly new. I suspect if we slowly pushed the retirement age down, the age at which people consider retirement reasonable will also go down. Past a certain point you might reach some political instability when people in their 20's realize how much they're getting screwed over and insist that the system covers them too, and I think you might reach an equilibrium where everyone over age X gets benefits because they "deserve" it and everyone under age X gets benefits because it would be "unfair" to leave them out when they're the ones doing all of the actual work.

But basically, I think you'd get better results from trying to expand a popular program than trying to expand an unpopular program. Starting from old-age down might also be more efficient, as younger people adapt to new technology faster and so are less impacted by technology making them obsolete.

[1] And importantly, it feels universal since everyone expects to live long enough to collect on it [2] Or there's various ways to get social security benefits through a spouse even after divorce

It's worth noticing that it's impossible to maintain universality without being prepared to 'hold your nose' and give money to Really Bad People, and that arguing for that position is likely to be unpopular, politically salient, and plain suicide for lawmakers.

This might be the case in the US but it's not the case universally. E.g. Finland's basic income experiment, while ultimately discontinued and sabotaged in many ways, still had enough political support behind it to actually get to the point of a two-year national trial. A basic income has also been on the agenda of at least a couple of Finnish political parties (the Green League and the Left Alliance) for a long time, with them having gotten a respectable-if-not-earthshaking vote share of around 7-11% each in various national elections. (For comparison, the three biggest parties in this year's parliamentary elections got about a 20% vote share each.)

Political views can also shift rapidly. E.g. something like same-sex marriage would have been utterly unthinkable and plain political suicide only some decades back. (E.g. it was only back in 1993 that the US military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy was considered a step forward for gay rights.)

I think this post's thesis (populists will stop any attempt at UBI) is perhaps narrativizing the situation.  Dems have had, in my lifetime, the full triforce of power at least 4 times.  They've never even tried to pass UBI, and that's not a coincidence.  The consequences of doing so would not flow from populists, but from its so-called supporters.

I worked at a QT for a sizable portion of my adult life, and the experience never leaves me.  The beings I saw, day in and day out, are your UBI support.  Let me tell you, it is a mile wide and an inch deep.

Ozy Frantz once fairly aptly described themselves as a 'do-whatever-you-want-ist', or words to that effect.  They are far from alone, and the mob marries that delightful noncode of nonconduct with 'and be praised for it' as their basic slogan.  They are for UBI, but will turn instantly, without a shred of guilt, upon anyone who attempts to implement it.

Forget the 'are you really in favor of giving my money to Pedophile Paul' attacks.  Those will be damaging, but far more so will be the 'these are the guys who made the music stop' attacks.  The UBI granters will be painted, accurately, as the slayers of Wal-mart, of QT, of Doordash and the thousand other little luxuries that our mob demand.  That's an attack that cannot be recovered from, a wound that is mortal.  You can't negotiate with one of my customers once you've caused them material harm, they do not work in that way.

Working at QT is a nightmare made manifest.  To win away my allegiance it was never remotely necessary to outbid my scumbag bosses.  UBI advocates began that game with 'here are 8-10 hours of your life back every day' in their plus column.  They don't need very much more than that to make those in my situation quit, and if we quit the QT folds.  If it folds the UBI implementers are politically cooked.

The people in favor of implementing UBI are not in favor of the consequences of doing so (their lives depend on the labor of the wage slaves that UBI would liberate).  The second that they feel a sting they will jump ship.  Politicians know that, and do not cut their own throats.  Far better to farm the UBI support and make vague noises about implementing it somewhere down the road, as they have historically done and will continue to do.

Military housing allowance (BAH) translates to 'rents in the commuting vicinity of a military base have a price floor set at BAH'.

UBI for landless peasants is destined to become a welfare program not for recipients, but for the parasitic elites who will feed and house them. Standards of acceptability for both will trend downwards long term, while laws against complaining about it will trend upwards.

[ not upvoted because it's a little off-topic for LW.  Not downvoted because even though it's close to politics, it does a very good job of walking the line between overgeneralizing and being useless vs taking a specific position on a hot-button topic. ]

I pretty much agree with the premise here, and it does apply (horribly) to alignment in general: humans treat each other horribly, and there's no reason to believe that powerful tools or even aligned powerful allies will fix that.

It's much harder to nibble away at something that's supposed to be universal , than something that isn't. Cf. universal healthcare.

Most criticisms of UBI that I have seen are criticisms of conventional welfare, rather than addressing the unique features of UBI. This is not much different. For insance, complaining about programmes for the unemployed does not directly address UBI, since it is not targeted at the unemployed only, and the assumption is that many recipients will stay in work.

You have a decent set of arguments related to UBI as it may be conceived today, but I think it doesn't accommodate the future or where we are right now in terms of worker productivity as a ratio to capital profitability.

There's a longer term x-risk for non-major (US/CN/IN/etc) countries - especially in my mind AU since I live here - that isn't being discussed as much as it should, since it's already been happening for decades and will only accelerate with tech/AI-centric developments: where is the tax/revenue base going?

This dream of technology unlocking UBI and/or Utopia for all people seems DOA if we live in a world where corporations don't actually pay meaningful taxes in the non-majors (situation we have today and only getting worse - look at Apple/Ebay/Google/Facebook tax payments in Australia) and those corporations have an ever-consolidating level of market power. We've been living in the world of ever-consolidating market power since around 1980 (slightly earlier in US, slightly later in AU). During that period, corporate profits have exploded while worker incomes have stagnated, even while worker productivity has grown strongly. This contrasts harshly with the 1945-1975 era where growth in worker productivity correlated closely with growth in worker real wages and overall well-being. The dismantling of antitrust and related regulations are coming home to roost.

There is at least a dual factor here: both reduced regulation & state capture combined with massive financial globalization where capital can be moved to the most favorable places in the world.

If even the most Trekkie AI optimists see a future where 99% of humanity could live in recreational luxury, served by technology and 1% of the human operators - and full disclosure, I believe this future is technically possible and maybe here already - under our current world system, there's just no way that will happen. The top 1% have a ridiculous amount of gravity and will always veto that, when it could be the common goal that all humans work towards.

"Let's refashion this planet in a way where every human is happy, and we can sustain this for a million years" - to me, this would be a great goal, and probably achievable given today's knowledge, but we as a species/society are maybe just not set up to make that happen. Even if we were, we are currently living under a system of global capitalism that has transcended human ability to overturn that system. Like even if 60? 70? 80%? of humans wanted to do some form of major revolution in the major economies, it couldn't happen.

So therefore IMO the UBI debate is not that relevant. If UBI happens in the major economies (I think it will), it will be the baseline to prevent the future mass-unemployed from mass revolting. It will be to allow anyone in that economy to live just above the "acceptable poverty line". It will be the equivalent of the old school dole and pension in Australia, but worse, because increasing happiness is bad for GDP.

Hard agree. I wrote my own post [LW · GW] not long ago about exactly how I think that at a fundamental economic level, a society in which a large class of people exist who have no leverage and contribute no value yet are kept around seems dramatically unstable - and I'd expect those people to quickly fall into various forms of serfdom or worse, eventually, genocide. You actually make some compelling and more pragmatic arguments for just about how this would go short term.

I think people hope for a change in culture, thinking that this mindset is the product of capitalism or what have you. I think it's the product of scarcity, which is what we evolved into for hundreds of thousands of years (or at least got used to in thousands of years of agricultural civilization: hunter-gatherers may have had it better), and so there inevitably would be some disconnect if we transitioned to a truly post-scarcity society. But the speed of technological change might mean that culture would not be able to keep up - that we would find ourselves scarcity-minded people in a post-scarcity world, and that spells trouble. We're already somewhat like that - most worries about welfare cheats are nonsense at an object level, squabbling over tiny amounts of money that it's actually more efficient to let go to waste rather than try to catch, yet they happen because people have this strong "punish the freeloader at all costs!" instinct because that's what our culture has done, has had to do, with freeloaders for a long time. And even though now we could afford to let it slide more often than not with no big harm, people don't grok that. Going into a post-AGI economy like this risks to be a sequence of "oh, that group got disempowered by AI and now they're unemployed? Well, if they can't move on to do something else they must be lazy bums!" from everyone who's still been lucky until at the end only AI-owning capitalists are left and everyone else (including the developers who created the AIs) have been thrown under the bus.

The US has even killed its own citizens without a trial on at least one occasion.

This is mainly a problem with granting birthright citizenship.

One of the biggest problems in a world with UBI- the complete lack of power of the average person.

One worst things about the abuses of people in welfare by those in power (intentional abuse or not) is the utter disparity in power. And the deep psychological effects of that. Having been in such a position at one point, I felt humiliated, ashamed and really worthless. This is not how all people felt or do feel, but by and large, it is not good.

I think a much better alternative to UBI- but one that might be even harder to do- would be to work to make everyone self sufficient. E.g. if AI was used to design highly efficient, easily repairable solar panels and solar energy storage. Mini factories that everyone could own that can make parts from raw material. Greater ability to protect your own assets and purchase the things you need (through a combination of needing less things and things being cheaper) meaning not needing to rely on banks. Laws/policies to prevent Buy to Let schemes and the ability to launder money/evade taxes through properties, to lower housing prices. Laws/policies to close tax loopholes.

I think in a proper 'utopia' UBI would be completely unnecessary. And I don't think UBI helps us get there- rather it does the opposite, by distracting from doing things like the above and giving an opposing argument to doing them (e.g."Houses are expensive for loads of good reasons!! We should do UBI instead!!")

I don't follow your reasoning. You seem to identify two main problems, which is why you think UBI is [unlikely to happen / not a good idea in your opinion] (I'm not sure which one you are claiming, or if you're claiming both).

Problem 2: You show, with examples, that when someone relies on some social program system, then they can be forced to do things, under the threat of being excluded from said program. Does this imply that a program with simple conditions or without any condition, such as UBI, would be a better alternative, because it would make excluding someone harder or impossible?

Problem 1: You seem to mostly make two claims in this section

1. UBI includes giving money to very bad people
2. Giving money to very bad people is a deal-breaker in a democracy
3. [Plus a lot of strawmen, intended as illustration it seems]

(1) is crystal clear, but I don't see why (2) would be true. I agree that (1) is an argument against UBI, but I'm sure UBI supporters also have arguments pro UBI. Is there something about (1) which makes it some kind of final argument? Getting back to my initial confusion, is (1) a final argument for you (i.e. you think that some people are so bad that a scheme leading to them receiving money must not be implemented), or is (1) a final argument for almost everyone?