I sort of agree with you, except that the problem isn't "that some people are being paid too much to do nothing."

The problem is that some people are being paid too much to be meddlesome.

There's a difference.

If you have a bullshit job you are paid to do nothing. If you have UBI you are paid no matter what you do. Somebody who has to not get fired cannot do anything other than sit in their chair and do their bullshit job. They are actively removed from the pool of useful laborers. But somebody who is paid regardless can choose what to do. Yes, they can watch TV all day. But they can also do something that isn't bullshit.

There is little difference between UBI and useless college administration jobs or useless gulf nation oil administration jobs. Both jobs have high autonomy and very little accountability, so they already have the option to not do bullshit if they really want to. Many Saudis got paid even if they didn't even bother to show up to work and protested when the higher ups demanded attendance. Demanding attendance is even worse than letting them do nothing, but it does go to show that they simply had no expectations to begin with, and that higher ups are also doing nothing all day.

https://www.newarab.com/opinion/saudi-workers-enraged-five-t....

The book covers this much better than any comment can (and is a breezy read!)

But there is absolutely a difference, which you already mentioned: Seat in chair for 8 hrs.

They might be spending it watching YouTube but they can't volunteer or start a band or do whatever they want.

With UBI there is no nominal expectations so nobody does anti-useful things like adding paperwork to justify their existence.

The key part of the book for me is that people really truly want to work and be useful. Case in point why people accept teaching roles despite the bad pay. In fact, people will volunteer to do these things for free. So why should they get paid at all?

Jobs that are useless can't get people to stay for any reason other than money. In essence, because it is useless it pays well.

One option (UBI) is to pay everyone and then they do what they feel is most useful.

But the incentives for doing useful work are not there, since enough people are willing to be paid in good feelings instead of salary. So if not UBI something needs to change to make real useful jobs worth it

> what UBI actually means is giving exclusive in-groups more money than the median global income for free. We see exactly what happens in the gulf oil nations like Qatar.

This is interesting to me and I wanted to dig in more. You seem to imply that Qatar has some form of UBI, but I can't find any source to that effect.

Qatar doesn't have UBI, but I'd argue that what they haven't isn't very distinguishable from UBI. Qatari citizens are basically guaranteed a cushy government job where they are free to do whatever they want. 75% of Qataris are employed in the public sector [1], but they aren't actually doing the real work. For example, even though Qatar Airways is owned by the government, you'd most likely never see a flight crew member who's actually a citizen of Qatar. Similar jobs exist in Saudi Arabia, but recently they have been transitioning to a form of UBI [2].

[1] https://www.psa.gov.qa/en/statistics/Statistical%20Releases/...

[2] https://www.zawya.com/en/economy/gcc/saudi-citizen-account-p...