I think we need to experiment with this before deciding whether it's a good or bad idea. A whole country is probably not the way to start, though.

While I personally would love to see this pass and the experiment to go ahead, I only really feel comfortable saying that since I don't live in Switzerland and won't have to deal with any potential fallout.

There have been experiments along these lines. I'm not sure why but I read about this on on HN not so long ago..

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8792192

As described in plenty of comments in that thread, that experiment was not in basic income. Minimal income and basic income are different in fundamental ways, and could potentially lead to fundamentally different behaviours.

I'm not sure it will work in a smaller area. If you just did it in one city poor people from all over the country would move there and bankrupt the program.

There were many experiments like this, including whole countries. E.g. in North Korea, there _is_ a guaranteed basic income (at least by law), equivalent to a bowl of rice per day.

Urgh really? That is so disingenuous I actually feel a bit dirty after reading it. Sorry, but surely you are invoking the comparison to North Korea because you hope to argue against guaranteed income by association.

Also, a bowl of rice a day really is fundamentally different to a guaranteed income that can be spent as the recipient wishes. It is more like food stamps in the US.

> Urgh really? That is so disingenuous I actually feel a bit dirty after reading it.

Just walk away. Because you won't win any argument with that type. A very convinced yet insecure type.

A bowl of rice a day is not enough to live on.

> Thankfully.

Sadly. I'd really like to see this being implemented somewhere during my lifetime. A society in which survival is no longer a problem might be just what we need in a time when the biggest problem in european agriculture is overproduction and many houses are empty yet we still worry about putting food on the table and a shelter over our heads.

What would people do with this new freedom? An acceleration of technical innovation? An art renaissance? How would relations change in the workplace once you no longer need to work in order to survive? Would volunteering take off as a socially acceptable alternative to paid work? Would it cover areas ignored by the current market?

This was actually a main selling point of Communism. Like a perpetuum mobile, it is really attractive to most people, but can't be implemented.

But people dreaming of free energy are mostly harmless, the only problem being the grant money spent on cold fusion and the like. People dreaming of free money have created worst bloodbaths in history.

Communism was about forcing individuals to do things for the common good. It obviously didn't work. Unconditional basic income is about freeing people from the constant stress of worrying about their survival and the survival of those depending on them.