> I think we do need to be careful to intentionally craft society that incentivizes us to do activities that build genuine self worth.

Incentives can be carrots, they don't all have to be the specter of death. I think lack of social mobility and not seeing any meaningful achievements materialize from your hard work, seeing retirement and property ownership move further away all play into this.

> specter of death That seems a bit hyperbolic. :)

We can have social support/nets besides UBI right. I can agree with the negatives you point out. I'm just skeptical of UBI as the best solution.

One thing I've never heard addressed is how you'd scale it. We see this with COVID payments. You either give enough to live like a king in rural areas or give enough to live like a pauper in urban areas. The US is a huge country with many diverse populations/needs. UBI seems overly optimistic and poorly targeted.

Not a popular opinion, but I think it should be enough to survive in the cheapest area. Then if you can't get a job, you move to the cheap area and survive rather than wasting valuable real estate in a city and forcing up rent for the actual workers that the city is for.

But somehow people feel that those supported by social welfare deserve to live in whatever place they prefer, no matter how expensive it is while people who pay for their own housing are forced to choose somewhere cheap enough they can afford.

On the other hand it is important to make cities move-to-able. And huge discrepancies in housing costs doesn’t help. One point I’ve heard is cities were more affordable when there was less regulation. So if you require certain sq ft or kitchen amenities, you reduce supply. Or if you prevent certain shared living options, you reduce supply. If the permitting takes years to complete, you reduce supply. These things need fixed so that minimum costs can go down. Sure luxury can still exist, but the floor needs accessible beyond living in the street in tents!

Those regulations exist specifically for the purpose of keeping property prices high. That's what people actually want because they already own property and want to profit by restricting the supply to others as well as keeping the riff-raff out which will devalue it.

There are neighborhoods in my city with required minimum house construction costs. You're not allowed to spend less than a certain amount to build your house!

Ya there was an article on HN in the last year that called out “housing cannot be both an investment and affordable.” Nice and succinct. It’s obvious once you think about it.