A basic income would hardly be libertarian. Although I also tend to libertarian, I do see a role for government in addressing cases of market failure, or where the market fails to meet certain moral standards. An example would be if somebody working in the best job they can find doesn't earn enough to pay for basic accommodation and food. The government would provide the safety net in this case. However there must still be some incentive for people in this situation to try and find better work (or perhaps move to a better location). Otherwise, you have people simply taking whatever job they find the most enjoyable, living off the government subsidy, and leaving other less desirable jobs unfilled(paying slightly better, so according to the market more important, but leaving the employee no better off due to the government subsidy.)

It's particularly silly with the current system that you can legally work for nothing, be a volunteer or an unpaid intern, but you can't work for $1 per hour. If you make low paid work illegal, you make the low paid unemployed.

Perhaps some day all of this "scarcity economics" will be moot, if we could invent the star-trek style replicator, I suspect "work" would move to a volunteer model.

> Otherwise, you have people simply taking whatever job they find the most enjoyable, living off the government subsidy, and leaving other less desirable jobs unfilled

What's wrong with this, honestly? If less desirable jobs go unfilled, I'd expect that people would find ways to mitigate the need for human beings in those jobs. Let's let the market figure out what those jobs are and if we can do such mitigation. That seems preferable to the current situation, where people such as yourself say that we need people to be placed into explicitly undesirable positions.

Let's actually see this problem before we anticipate it.

> Let's actually see this problem before we anticipate it.

The problem has always existed. It's the reason that people need to be paid for most jobs, since they won't do them just for fun. If people know that they'll be paid a decent amount for doing any job at all, then there will be a lot of recreational activities which are thinly disguised to look like jobs.

That's why it's an income guarantee - so you don't have to invent an activity that looks like work in order to receive money.

So in your case under a BIG, they would get some money and pursue leisurly activities. This in contrast to someone doing a task that needs to be done (say dispose of garbage), who would get some money from the BIG and a substantially bigger sum in actual wage. The service (getting your garbage disposed) would have to be priced accordingly.

Some activities (such as musicians) would be a gray area, but it's not a problem - people can make music and if someone buys it the musicians get extra income.

If there are services needed which are very unappealing, they will be priced high. Also, the incentive to automate them (and thus reduce human suffering) will be high as well.

right - it would have to go without saying that EVERYONE gets the BIG, including millionaires and paul allen.

These sort of pensions are already available to some people, in some countries (typically the elderly and the disabled). However governments are struggling to pay for them, and the eligibility criteria tend to get tightened (in my country, the old-age pension age will increase to 67). I don't see how they could be expanded to the entire population without destroying the governments' budget, and if they tried to raise such massive sums through taxation, destroying the economy too (and causing massive flight of the wealthy to lower-taxing countries.)

The availability of BIG to people who don't actually need it is about the principle of BIG: that it doesn't care who you are. I'd find it interesting to consider how we might let people decline their BIG stipend in return for... something.

> I'd find it interesting to consider how we might let people decline their BIG stipend in return for... something.

Why would we do that? We could instead just sell the "something", which has the same effect, without defeating the point of BIG by complicating the BIG administration.

> It's the reason that people need to be paid for most jobs, since they won't do them just for fun.

There's a huge difference between (a) not being interested in doing a job, but doing it because you're getting money for it and (b) not being interested in working and doing it because you're getting money for it.

You're arguing (a), but I'm arguing (b).

A basic income is libertarian in that it allows individuals to actually participate in the free market as rational actors, and puts control over use into the hands of many individuals instead of in the hands of the government.

I think eliminating the minimum wage is reasonable combined with a guaranteed stipend. However, I think you will find that "undesirable" jobs are (rightfully) paid quite well. Possibly even better than now since this system would better balance the power between employers and employees.

http://bit.ly/16o33Bp

Ah, but it's not libertarian in the sense of total sovereignty for owners. The workers would start to backtalk!

I'm a Groucho-Marxist, so I refuse to be a member of any club that will have me, however it is nice to find something I agree with you on :)

Speaking of Groucho-Marxism: http://sniggle.net/Manifesti/groucho.php.

I am what most would call a conservative and if what was being offered was a complete elimination of all social services, entitlements, and government largess, then count me in.

I would much rather a BI than having this menacingly powerful centralized vote buying machine.

Under-the-table arrangements are like the majority of BitTorrent traffic, economies that occur despite rules because there is net utility. People still pay taxes and still license (not own) retail movies.

Seconded. I'm also a believer in basic income as an otherwise staunch libertarian, purely based on how much sense it makes.