If they gave you enough to live on comfortably, then why would anyone work?

The original Israel model probably is a better plan. Each family was given a portion of land.

It would seem then that the family could use the land as they saw fit -- for farming and livestock, for carpentry or other services. They could lease the land out or use the land as collateral but the land would return to the family no later than the year of jubilee. People on that land could work for other families if needed. But at least the family property would be available to live on ... to have a house (or tent) that was without taxation. People just have to figure out how to make this property work for them -- and it is not charity -- but is sort of a system of allotment of property. This meant that no one would hoard land while others hand none. This is not communism since the family's land is not public nor community property.

I would like to try, where do I sign up?

I'm not sure how that would work in the modern world where land doesn't have the same value and utility, and most people today wouldn't know what to do with a plot of land anyway.

Weed! It grows easy. Or check the internet to see how to make a tent to live in.

A lot of what I have in mind is that people who have some location where they could park a car if that is all they have. It becomes really tough if people have no place for anything. A homeless person suffers many problems just finding a place to stay overnight.

This is more of a solution than trying to give basic income to people. Note that the leasing arrangement can sometimes be useful -- for example if some manufacturing company needs more room to build things.

just wait a few years for social security.

People would just sell off their land for quick cash, spend it, then complain because they were poor again and didn't have any place to live.

Universal basic income is probably something that will happen down the road, though whenever I look at it I always think it won't be until radical automation has taken over most jobs and there aren't many jobs left at all. It remains more of a societal toy model, a science fiction idea, but like with Chesterton's Distributivism or other fanciful ideas I don't think there's a set of continuous changes we can apply to society to take us there in a meaningful way.

I don't think automation will ever eliminate most jobs. Just like computers didn't. They eliminate SOME jobs but create others. People will always work and have a need to work. People have been crying about automation replacing people since the industrial revolution. What happens is that automation makes products cheaper and eliminates drudgery type jobs, but creates other jobs and more wealth for everyone. We might not have any manual weavers any more (except for artisans) because of autolooms, but we have better quality clothes, and cheaper clothes because of them.

I made a whole career out of building and repairing computers that were supposed to put millions of people out of work!

And because of computers we have entirely new industries. The internet alone has created millions of jobs and money making opportunities.

I don't believe an argument like this is actually very strong. One could say the same about more land being discovered, but since land is a finite resource, eventually we've discovered all of it. Which we have now. The same is true of oil fields, more and more are being discovered but at a lower and lower rate, and the oil that is being discovered is harder and more expensive to extract than before. This leads to Peak Oil scenario, albiet probably no where nearly as harsh as those who originally proposed the idea.

It is true that jobs are being generated. However they are increasingly technical and more difficult to do. I work in IT as a consultant. Most of my job is really just going into companies, figuring out why their setup isn't working as they hoped it would, and either spend some months fixing it or setting up something better. Through that I've come to realise, bitterly, just how few qualified people are employed in IT. Most people are really bad at it.

Automation, standardisation, and various services by the big companies can help ease the pain of managing IT solutions like that.

But we can't get enough people in who are good. We don't need more newbies in this field. We don't need a cheap code sweat shop in India. We need experts. We need college graduates with good grades, who can be molded into that.


And for a lot of jobs I expect it to be more and more like that. Not now, of course. Maybe not in fifty years, or even a hundred. But I believe we'll run out of jobs eventually. Farming all of the US will be a thirty man team job.

There will come a time when it is possible for a small team to own the means of production for pretty much anything. Right now cars, computer chips, resource processing and chemicals, require huge industrial setups to work properly. But I suspect when its possible to minify those setups to the point where they can fit inside a small warehouse, then we'll see a rather radical change to the economy.

Fundementally God has given us a lot of materials. Even on Earth there's vast amounts of untapped resources, and solar power alone can provide orders of magnitude more energy than we currently consume. At that point? With pervasive radical automation? With people being able of owning the means of production? That day I think either universal income, or something else will take place.

So its way in the future if ever.

I'm glad you're here in the now, brother.

Been very busy these past few months after getting hired the current company I work for. Had to get used to wearing suits for every day work (thankfully I discovered that the tie was optional - blech).

Just been busy. I realised that I burning a lot of energy arguing on web forums late at night so I cut that out and spent the energy elsewhere.

I look in now and then. And when I'm on a boring train ride like this one I don't mind dropping in.