I'm kinda libertarian, and I kinda like the idea of a UBI, because it means we no longer need people in power to make decisions about who gets welfare and other social support, and all the gaming and corruption involved.

I've come around to the idea that there can't and won't be zero public social support, so UBI seems like the fairest, least-overhead way to take care of it.

The downside is, the argument/power of who to let in the country, or who in the country gets UBI, gets a lot more serious. There really aren't any easy answers here...

UBI can't replace welfare -- it cannot provide enough money to everyone to replace whole salaries. If you agree that welfare should exist to take care of people who cannot work or have expensive conditions that need to be treated then BI cannot replace it.

> If you agree that welfare should exist to take care of people who cannot work or have expensive conditions that need to be treated then BI cannot replace it.

That's what insurance is for.

(And the state (or parents) can take out insurance for the kids before they are born---ie before anyone knows whether they are at special risk of any diseases or conditions, thus charging the average is economically fine.)

If you have to keep welfare, medicare, social security, etc... then what's the point? Just another bureaucratic money sink?

> It's still a net loss for them. Yes they're getting some too, but it's just their money coming back to them. You'd be foolish to feel comforted by that.

People are foolish. That's the whole basis of behavioral economics. The point is not that a rational homo economicus would be any more comforted by the fact that the basic income is universal, but that normal people would be. I don't think this universal nature is essential to the basic idea, and would be happy to have the negative income tax.

> Also, UBI is far from libertarianism. Libertarians want to be in control of their own money.

Here's an essay on libertarianism.org that goes through some pros and cons: http://www.libertarianism.org/columns/libertarian-case-basic...

>UBI is far from libertarianism

Many libertarians are in favor of UBI. Including this poster.

This is the essential problem with libertarianism. You can't personally be in control of money, it has to be granted by some sort of central authority. Even Bitcoin, which ostensibly is decentralized, still has central planning in the form of developing the software and the rules around how the blockchain functions. Bitcoin is designed to have very lightweight central planning, but it's still there.

What about gold?

(I don't like gold as a currency, but it doesn't seem to require even the modicum of central planning that bitcoin does.)