I find it hard to imagine a path to a working UBI system which does not first provide more basic things like healthcare are education. Arbitrary spending money isn't exactly foundational in the hierarchy of needs. But if somebody manages to find such a path, sure, why not give UBI to children.
Expecting those children to then spend it on education seems like a stretch, but we're already playing what-if here, so why not?
But unless you have that plan in your back pocket, we're still in a world where scarcity is relevant.
If some people want to repurpose the commons in support of their own non-common agendas, then it's up to the rest of us to oppose that.
Isn't the entire argument for UBI that arbitrary spending money is exactly the best way to provide for people's individual needs? Like a poor person might be healthy and not really need healthcare, but they do need somewhere safe to live.
And you'd give the money to the children's guardians, who can make those decisions on the children's behalf. Maybe they hire a tutor. Maybe they send their kids to a school. Maybe they use the money to offset a stay at home parent.
I don't think UBI makes sense for a variety of reasons, but that's the gist of it, no?
> Isn't the entire argument for UBI that arbitrary spending money is exactly the best way to provide for people's individual needs?
No. That's an argument used by the subset of UBI supporters who believe that UBI should displace all other social support including non-means-tested aid, but that's not the general case of UBI advocates (who generally advocate that UBI should displace means-tested benefits, but there's no general position on universal/unconditional non-cash programs alongside UBI.)
Support for universal (public single-payer or otherwise) health coverage of some kind among UBI supporters is pretty common, for instance.
The more general reason for UBI is the belief that multiple means-testing bureaucracies are duplicative of each other and thr tax system, and prone to adverse incentives due to too-quick clawback both in where it cuts in and in the ratio of aggregated benefit reductions for each increment of additional income.
@dragonwriter has it right as far as the pro-UBI position being a varied one. I recognize that mine is nonstandard.
In general, I prefer:
1. a functioning government
2. a UBI-enabled market
3. a malfunctioning government
It seems to me that the least violent way to kill off a government and bootstrap a new one in its place is to work towards a position where you can safely turn your back on the currency that the incumbent is minting. I view UBI a tool to make such a step more palatable. A safety net for transition times.
It still has to be backed by something, and I think the most likely candidate for that something is demonstrated success in other areas of DIY-government. If people can look around and see that the problems are getting solved, then maybe they'll have enough faith in a UBI system designed to let them safely quit the old ways and participate in building something new. This credibility would come from solving things like education and healthcare, which is why I say I have a hard time imagining a UBI system getting up and running in a community that does not have a grasp of those more immediate problems.
Without that initial success as a credibility-builder, the UBI-paved road to a functioning government will be indistinguishable from a ponzi scheme: here's some pretend thing for you to value.
If people truly have no faith in the existing government's ability to do government things, then their DIY efforts should be gathering steam to sideline that government, not angling for a slice of the tax bill from the very government that they've lost control of. If they get that slice they'll have become the very sort of corruption that they're objecting to.
If that's not an amount of work they're ready to stomach, then maybe they should rethink their disavowal of the existing channels in the first place and instead go participate in them.
