Then instead of mowing your lawn and cleaning your gutters and dusting your furniture, you can do your neighbor's and vice versa and then make equal payments to each other and report it to the government to get free money.

Honestly, I don't see the problem with this. If you don't like "free money" then a UBI would be horrible.

An EITC keeps people engaged with the economy. So sure it starts with me hiring you to clean my gutters and you hiring me to clean your gutters, but eventually I discover that my comparative advantage is cleaning gutters, and then I can provide value to my neighborhood cleaning other people's gutters, and maybe even grow that into a business.

Sociologists and economists have measured what happens to people on unemployment, and while the overachiever population of HackerNews might be the kind to do more exercise and do more home repair, most people don't.

"People on unemployment" is not a good representation of "people receiving a BI" - very important dynamics are different.

> Honestly, I don't see the problem with this.

The problem with it is that it makes the restriction a waste of paper. Anybody can satisfy it just by formally accounting for the reciprocal favors people already do for each other. You might as well make it unconditional and save everyone the paperwork.

> An EITC keeps people engaged with the economy. So sure it starts with me hiring you to clean my gutters and you hiring me to clean your gutters, but eventually I discover that my comparative advantage is cleaning gutters, and then I can provide value to my neighborhood cleaning other people's gutters, and maybe even grow that into a business.

Which doesn't really work when your comparative advantage isn't cleaning gutters and you're only looking for some generic labor to use to claim the EITC.

> Sociologists and economists have measured what happens to people on unemployment

...which you lose as soon as you get a job, creating a perverse incentive that a basic income doesn't.