> they'll depend on some powerful centralized instance providing them money

You just described most jobs. The difference is that UBI would be something like a right, as opposed to jobs where you can be cutoff from your livelihood at a moment's notice.

> instead of earning their own via providing goods to the market (e.g. services)

We need to get over this Smithian vision of everyone being their own little entrepreneur. You'll see the job 'market' acts very little like a utility maximizing market when you get into the details. For example, see the endless posts on this site about 'culture fits' and ritualistic hazings posing as interviews.

> The difference is that UBI would be something like a right, as opposed to jobs where you can be cutoff from your livelihood at a moment's notice.

A right can be withdrawn, especially as we a working towards outcompeting lots of people using machines. Then keeping a large population would be merely a hobby of the powerful.

> For example, see the endless posts on this site about 'culture fits' and ritualistic hazings posing as interviews.

Right, it is not perfectly efficient, but better than alternatives that are determined top down by rigid rules enforced by a powerful apparatus.

>> they'll depend on some powerful centralized instance providing them money

>You just described most jobs.

No. Now you depend on a lot of semi-powerful un-centralized instances, and not just one point of failure. And you can pick your poison according to your tolerance. It is not perfect, but it does not leave you at the mercy of one and only one entity without any recourse.

This is like Google banning you on gmail, and hence adsense and youtube, or Paypal or Visa banning you on their payment network, only a million times worse.

My opinion is that UBI would need to be established as a quasi-right at a minimum, similar to how we talk about Social Security (third rail of politics, etc).

It is much easier to get locked out of the market for jobs that pay a living wage than you realize. If you have a bad credit report or a criminal record, those un-centralized instances start to behave like a single point of failure. And you definitely don't have any recourse.

I'm aware it's not perfect. I just don't think you realize you want to take exactly the thing that is wrong about our current situation and make it the core feature of society.

The fundamental difference is that UBI would be subject to democratic processes. The private economy is not. Not that democracy is working all that well right now...

I don't want UBI; I want people to have some assurance they will be able to eat tomorrow.

What we have now already is subject to democratic processes. In fact, that is the only reason UBI is even being discussed.

> The difference is that UBI would be something like a right

The notion of a right does not include material implementation of that right for you by others, it merely states that you have a right to earn it and keep it by your own work and effort.

You may not like the imposition of positive rights, but that doesn't in any way preclude their existence:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights

The right to council in criminal matters, for example, is well established even in the U.S.

The right to counsel is more about what the prosecution can't do (sentence you without giving you a reasonable chance to defend yourself) than it is about something other people owe you just for existing. It's there because sentencing you when you didn't have the benefit of competent counsel to make your case would call the legitimacy of the court's judgment into question. Note that it only applies when you are the defendant, not the plaintiff, and you can't claim your right to counsel just because you need someone to help you draw up a contract. The right not to be sentenced without the benefit of counsel upon being accused of a crime is a negative right.

The idea that other people owe you specific goods or services just for existing—a.k.a. positive rights—leads directly to contradiction and conflict.

The people who control the UBI spigot (or seek to control it) will be the most dangerously powerful people in the world, IMO.

It's not enormously different from other programs like Social Security. No one I know of lives in fear of the Social Security Administration. Do they have some power and need to be watched? Sure, but it's not some distopian nightmare.

I see a critical difference: social security is not paid to a majority of eligible voters and the funding is being taken from a majority of workers. That combination provides critical controls against the benefit levels rising (or being promised to rise) without check.

The AARP is a wildly powerful lobby, well out of proportion to the number of their members. People don’t live in fear of the AARP, I agree, but you might ask where does that power originate?

> it's not some distopian nightmare

How do you possibly enforce that while things become ever more centralized and automatized. We are already losing to those in power and we are not even a tenth of the way there. E.g. there has been a massive decline of applications of anti-trust laws.