But we already have existing data that says that people who are given free money don't just become unemployed, and the only people who do take the free money to be unemployed are parents and teenagers who are trying to parent and study respectively. I think personally that sounds amazing. If someone wants to watch Judge Judy all day, every day, for months chances are they have a mental illness and need to be treated the same way as someone whose back is thrown out needs to be treated.

People will take jobs for the similar reasons we take jobs now- we want money, and take higher paying jobs to afford nicer things. In a world where bases are covered, luxuries will definitely be a better carrot than the stick of homelessness.

I won’t force you to support them. I WANT to support others because I feel good doing so. At normal jobs I’m just helping some billionaire get richer (my last job I worked indirectly for a billionaire). I would way rather work day in and day out to support regular people like me.

And since you brought it up, I find your attitude disturbing. “Why should I have to help other people” is kind of a gross question. You don’t want to help other people? Doesn’t that make you selfish? Again I’m not saying I will force you to help, but why are you against the idea of helping others anyway?

I see that you mention government. I didn’t mention government. I said society could provide for everyone. We can do that without the government.

You did say "democratic arrangements" which you might be able to wriggle out of admitting means government. In either case, what is your plan for dealing with a dissenters to your view, especially if they wind up being in the minority? Remember to leave out force, threat of violence, and other coercions, lest you contradict yourself. Or strike "democratic arrangements" because it's a heavier hammer than you think it is.

People who don't want to interact with society or be helped by society can... not interact with society or be helped by society. They can go out in the woods somewhere or develop a religion that gives you excemptions.

You can also organize among your minority group and protest that your rights are being violated, or hire lawyers to sue.

Oh my god you act like I’ve never heard of libertarianism. A worker owned cooperative can be democratic without being a government. And I agree with authors like Murray Bookchin who advocate for a kind of anarchist communism where you have a “government” but not a state. I personally advocate for a state-free society and have no interest in rule by force. I wrote a story about a democratically arranged worker owned cooperative that feeds and houses all its members two and a half years ago: http://tlalexander.com/corporation/

I’m not concerned with people who don’t want to participate. They don’t have to and we don’t need their support. Such a system can be supported entirely by those who want to support it.

I’m sorry if I come off confrontational but your question seemed to be a “gotcha” that is honestly very simplistic. As an anarchist or “libertarian socialist” I’m quite aware of problems of the state. I will say that in many cases I think local governments may find it beneficial to support these systems, but I like the idea of this being done on a local level so individual cities can decide for themselves. In the same way that some governments operate trains, it is not the case that trains depend on government to be useful.

Remember the premise is to drive down the cost of meeting peoples needs.

If the cost of supporting peoples need is driven towards zero, then the cost of supporting your own needs will likewise gets driven towards zero. At that point, the amount of work you will need to put in to meet your needs will go towards zero, and the number of people that can be supported by a minimal amount of additional works will rapidly increase.

The point being that at some point the incremental amount of work needed to support a large number of people choosing not to work will be so low that it's not worth worrying about it relative to the potential benefits of creating a surplus large enough that it effectively becomes a choice for everyone.

While I'm sure a lot of people will choose leisure, a lot of us won't. We might work less. More likely we'll work on different things. If I had full freedom to choose my projects, I'd still work on something because I work on software because I enjoy it.

Liberating a huge number of people to pursue projects that the financial payoff for is extremely uncertain has the potential to be massively transformative.

There are plenty of ways we could reward those choosing to continue to do the minimal necessary work in a future like that, to ensure sufficient people want to.

> They might need some temporary help now and then, but making dependency a permanent state is a great way to ensure that government has ultimate control of your life.

I happen to agree with this part. The Expanse illustrates this potential case well: People on "basic" have their needs met, but are also locked out of work, and getting into the upper echelons where you can get a job and do better is treated as a privilege allotted via random allocations - unless you have friends in high places... People on basic don't dare rise up, because their life depends on not getting in the crosshairs of government.

This is why a lot of the left are concerned about universal basic income, for example - because it is a potential "bread and circus" for capitalism struggling to deal with future fallout of automation.

But that is different from opposing the idea of a system where automation is advanced enough and democratized enough that basic needs are available to be met everywhere, and nobody has the power to stop you from using the time that gives you however you want, including creating your own position to do better.