Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income
by v_lisivka on Monday May 07, 2018 @02:41PM
(#17015239)
From my own experience, when I'm hungry, I will think about food and nothing else, so I will be biased. For my own good, it's better to manage my money by somebody with no bias.
Loans are shifting my perspective: if I will eat that fish today, how I will return that fish? I will not event think about that when I have a food for free.
I know you're speaking pretty abstractly, but let me run with it for a bit to illustrate the case for basic income:
Better yet, is give money and let the person decide whether to buy a fishing rod or a fish. Which one is better depends on a lot of uncertain and hard to observe (for an outsider) factors like:
* how badly an immediate fish is needed
* how viable is it for the person to learn to fish?
* how useful a fishing rod would be given the environment (people close to a river that has lots of fish probably have more use for a fishing rod)
* what the opportunity cost of a person's time is (if they have another good alternative job then they would logically prefer the fish as supplementary income rather than a fishing rod which must replace their old job)