What I find so curious about people who argue against something like a UBI is the way these people don't seem to realize what a comedic farce the economy has already become in so many ways. For example, in the working classes, its basically been a standard complaint for years that people who make millions for doing things like being movie stars, singers, and footballers are "sort of ridiculous".

 Essentially, when we take the long range historical view of how a human ought to earn their living, the idea that people started tossing a football back and forth in the 20th century, and making millions, seems preposterous. There is still a lingering memory of how inherently odd this is, when you really think about it. It seems strange on some level, to everyone. Because we have a type of collective memory of times like the 1700s--when such a thing simply could have never happened.... 

When people made money back then, they either robbed it or they actually worked for it, by helping to build, run, and maintain society. There was no other known way that existed to make money for all of time. Artists and entertainers didn't even really operate within the real economy in the deep past. They instead lived off of wealthy patrons. I.e. DaVinci "ate off the plates" of a rich family like the Medicis, who helped set up real cogs of society, by creating banks, and Shakespeare ate off the plates of the royals, etc. Shakespeares plays were not inserted into the economy, transported via wagon, and placed on shelves to be resold at shops. They just sort of existed, created inside this little slice of time which people in the 1500s had, to devote to leisure, during an otherwise very tumultous period of still being in the middle of building an enormous civilization. 

Of course, this ability to make money as an "entertainer" who, quite literally, does nothing to help society run, happened directly due to 20th century automation and tech advancement (i.e. all those boys playing pro football, singing, and dancing are actually no longer necessary to use at the factory or to run the cities etc). If automation had never happened at all (as people who argue against UBI are so fond of screaming at us) then such leisurely positions simply would not exist within this civilization. Literally everyone would have to play a vital role here that could never go unfilled. 

In our own age of course, where automation has become even more present, we now have added another absurdity to the mix, which are the endless no name clowns who make money doing silly things on YouTube (or also the person who sets up a website and jsut gets paid off an income stream from ad revenue). Automation has now created a truly enormous class of people who are sitting on the sidelines of this civilization, never at all helping to pull any of its levers, solely entertaining the people who do. (Not to mention all the retired people, often greedy, who don't seem to realize that, in the real hard workin' past, such a concept never existed). 

Again, all of these methods of making money look inherently ridiculous, since they contribute literally nothing to society itself actually running --- and yet nobody seems to notice it or comment on it. In other words, at some point along the way, our definition of what it means to be contributing to society, took on a dangerous new twist. People now no longer differentiate between someone who actually contributes to the civilization running itself (i.e. someone who fixes train tracks, cooks food, or helps build bridges), and all of these people who are essentially just sitting around, making this 'funny money'.

These entertainment oriented "workers" get the luxury of being seen as "contributing" solely because they make money, and nothing more. In a very real sense, they're almost like leeches (just like someone could claim a welfare recipient is) but again, since they make money, they are not seen that way. Some of the YouTube culture is arguably the best example of what i mean by how absurd this is becoming. Back in the day, with TV, there was at least a sense of refinement to the entertainment. A sense that one was not inherently wasting ones time by watching, say, I Love Lucy. Now it has completely devolved into absurdity. Many types of videos on YouTube that people actually earn bread by making are time wasting videos and they're self aware of this, too.

The reason this is important to stress, for me, is because the entire argument around why UBI should never happen only ever goes back to one thing: People simply must do something to contribute to society, in order to be considered worthy of having money. The idea that having an entire class of people, like we have now, who are always dangerously close to having no money at all , never seems to strike any of these imbeciles as a terrible (or, of course, potentially threatening) thing. Yet the pros of a UBI so clearly outweigh the cons of our current situation. The current situation is laughably pathetic. We have entire cities that have essentially been eroded by poverty and thus turned into lunatic areas of crime. But the connection between crime and poverty is somehow still not being made. The connection between danger and having all these people so close to having no money at all, is never made.

It is literally as though our culture simply cannot accept the fact that its become so intelligent and advanced, that not everyone is necessary anymore, to keep the cogs of the civ running. For example, all the people who make the argument that welfare recipients are leeches, and should be contributing, never seem to also wonder, jsut what could those welfare recipients get done for us anyways? In what area are we "missing" them? WHat isn't getting done, that urgently must get done, thanks to these welfare people? The answer, of course, is basically nothing. There is literally nothing that anyone is missing that these people could be doing, because there's almost nothing to do anymore, in a very real way. Society has largely been built. The roads are done. The bridges done. So much is done. Yet, in our current state, we don't even really reflect on this either. We are still so obsessed with the fact tht eveyone must be doing something, that we don't realize how much very hard work has already been completed, and now needs not be done again.