So, “hypothesis”? The article did present some evidence to support it’s argument. I’m sure you know that when discussing evidence and science, “theory” means something has been more or less proven.
Your hypotheses that a significant number people will do nothing good with the money is the unproven “myth” or common hypothesis the article was talking about.
The problem with the belief that unearned income is unhealthy and will lead to laziness and drug use in any significant amount is that it prevents people from trying to see what happens, because if true, it’s seen as at best a waste of money, and at worst doing damage to the participants. The hypothesis that unearned income leads to laziness is a real and significant impediment to the testing of that hypothesis.
By and large, people who inherit money don’t end up wasting away high and broke. There are a few, but nobody is suggesting seriously that we need to do lots of studies to see if inherited wealth is different in other countries or rural vs urban settings. Why should money given to the poor be thought of so completely different than money given to the rich?
We have some strong pervasive ingrained cultural beliefs that money must be worked for and not given, knowledge must be gained by derivation and struggle and not just told, success and stability must be attained through risk and competition and not cooperation or social programs.
These beliefs predate most of science, so it may be worth examining our assumptions about what needs to be tested.
Money that has been earned through work gives the recipient a higher level of satisfaction than money that has been gifted.
> knowledge must be gained by derivation and struggle and not just told
Knowledge gained through personal experience stays with you longer and more effectively than second-hand knowledge. That's why the traditional, frontal lecture teaching style is falling more and more out of fashion. That's also why you can't just read a book "Learn C++ in 21 days" and expect to be a decent programmer afterwards.
> success and stability must be attained through risk and competition and not cooperation or social programs
I have no idea why you're mixing success and stability, when those are orthogonal concepts. As for success: A lack of competition leads to stagnation; monopolies lead to rising prices and hinder progress. Look to the Soviet Union and you'll see what coorporation and social programs instead of competition through free markets leads to [1]. As for risk: Risk is what you naturally get once all the lowest hanging fruit are picked and there are still ripe fruits hanging higher up in the tree.
[1] Of course, in a competitive environment you'll still need cooperation. Competition on a higher level (i.e., in the market) and cooporation on a lower one (between coworkers) tends to work quite well for companies.
That is certainly widely believed and assumed to be true. Do you have evidence to back that statement up? And what does "satisfaction" mean? Is short term satisfaction about money related to long term life stability or happiness? What does higher level of satisfaction mean? How much higher? What level of satisfaction is the goal? Do we need to reach a certain level of satisfaction before it's okay to hand out money?
The problem with your statement in this context is that the author of the article offered contradictory evidence. Are you claiming the author or the evidence is wrong?
> Knowledge gained through personal experience stays with you longer and more effectively than second-hand knowledge.
That widely believed to be true, it's a super strongly held cultural belief that relates to the concept of hard work. But language is the first thing we learn, and we learn it by rote not by principles or derivations. And languages are hard to learn. So hard that educators believe you can't learn them well late in life.
Most education is by rote and example, and not by "critical thinking" or by struggle, no matter how much people like to wax philosophical about the importance of those things. Most of what we learn and teach is simply shown and remembered.
> That's why the traditional, frontal lecture teaching style is falling more and more out of fashion. That's also why you can't just read a book "Learn C++ in 21 days" and expect to be a decent programmer afterwards.
The thing missing from your examples seems to be practice, and not a distinction between derivations and second hand knowledge. Things that are used & practiced stay with you longer than concepts you are told once but don't repeat or apply to anything.
The things you're stating, you're stating as belief. What I'm saying is that if the bar needs to be scientific evidence for proving that the poor can handle cash handouts, then the bar also needs to be scientific evidence for proving that the rich can handle cash handouts.
A UBI experiment will probably need 50 years or more to determine what the long term consequences will be.
I'd call it a success if about half the adults end up working and the other half stay at home, just like people used to do 100 years ago... except this time, both men and women should be free to choose which side they want to be on.
https://scholars.org/brief/what-happens-poor-families-when-t...
while this may be true, I think it's somewhat of a false dichotomy. If we get to the point where UBI is implemented, I don't think the only two choices will be 'continue working or mope around'.
There are hundreds of thousands of ways to create value in society, and they don't have to be tied to the notion of working in exchange for money for survival.
I think the fear is that a small portion of society will be doing all the work to support the 'lazy ones'. It's understandable, but I think it is entirely possible to avoid that situation. Of course, it would require a fundamental shift in our worldly view (i.e. from individual success to shared success), but those discussions are hard and usually get shut down as 'commie crap'.
The problem is UBI is a simple solution to a complex problem.
I would call any theory that lacks adequate evidence to support it a myth.
By your reasoning we could also be talking about the Giving-Free-Cash-To-The-Poor-Will-Make-Them-Productive myth.
This is why basic income experiments like YC Research, the Ontario one, the finished Namibia one etc are all important. We need to see what happens in different cultures, in different communities, in different economies when we give un-earned income to people with no strings attached. We need to see what will happen.
You can absolutely bet if you give enough people free money, there will be ones that opt to do nothing but sit around playing their ninplaybox consuming their drug of choice. You can absolutely bet that some will use it to make positive life changes though like improving their diet or health care, seeking training, starting a side-hustle. We need to do these experiments for years and years in many areas in many populations to see though what exactly will happen.
I imagine if you took groups from the same state here in the US and gave those in a rural community money they're going to behave differently than someone living in an urban or downtown setting. Different if one group is in an economically depressed community and one is in a community full of healthy local businesses and corporate jobs.
I wouldn't call it a myth, I'd call it a theory with inadequate evidence to support or refute it.