Thing is, requirement for on-site employment requires you to live where lots of people live; only the very wealthy can afford to live in places without jobs nearby - as UBI decouples income from where you live, then it would be a pressure to equalize rents, as underemployed people - the demand for whose labor is decreasing and will decrease further - can afford live in the many places which are currently shedding population because of lack of jobs despite being actually very nice to live in.

Maybe. But the counter is that entrepreneurship has strong network effects, it really pays to be around other talented people and hear about the future they're busy inventing. Maybe we'd see the opposite, people leaving a stable job which ties them to some unexciting place, to try to make it in NYC.

> But the counter is that entrepreneurship has strong network effects, it really pays to be around other talented people and hear about the future they're busy inventing.

The actual powerful network effects are essentially a somewhat benign form of cronyism, not mere inspiration from other entrepreneurs. People do more business with less haggling with friends than with strangers.

> People do more business with less haggling with friends than with strangers.

This is how humans work. This cannot change with UBI.

Agreed, wasn't trying to claim that it would, just pointing out that network effects are not about inspiration, mainly.

I think you're talking about networking for money, and that's a thing.

But there are also ideas. Even in fields where there's basically no money, half the world's innovation happening within a circle of a few miles is routine. For instance this happens in music, repeatedly.

When has it happened with music in the last 60 years? If you’re talking about mostly classical music clusters then there are a lot more reasons for that than you’re suggesting

Have you heard of this thing called "the internet"?

And do you know where the web got invented? At one of the biggest cathedrals ever built to the idea that bringing lots of scientists into close proximity to work on hard problems tends to produce neat stuff.

Sure, on some level he could have done the same work in his garage, in some quiet seaside town full of retired people. But he didn't.

Reducing the friction in long-range interactions obviously has its upsides. But these hairless primates still pick up lots of stuff from being around each other.

and, afford to risk starting their own business. Maybe something simple, maybe something that will grow.

Right now, only the wealthy can really risk things.

Exactly. The high costing of housing really has more to do with the type of person you've living around/near, than the house.

From this angle, a UBI is even more powerful, in that it will go a lot further in areas that are less economically productive, and let us use "surplus" housing there.

Ideally we'd just let more people live closer together like they want to, but the elites won't let more people get close to them.

> it's just located in places people don't want to live

Often because there aren't any good jobs there. With UBI entrepreneurs can self-select and live in places with low rent and weak job markets.

The supply of housing in the places people do want to live is artificially constrained, intentionally driving up prices to achieve the New Segregation.