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UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

Earlier this week, I attended The BIG Conference, where OpenResearch presented results by Vivalt et al. from their three-year study of people who received unconditional money. Unsurprisingly, the study participants became less inclined to work jobs. Noah Smith, among others, interpreted this as bad news for Universal Basic Income. But the key insight that the Noah Smiths of the world seem to be missing is that, in today’s world, we artificially elevate labor demand to keep people employed. UBI means not having to do that anymore.

Earlier this week, I attended The BIG Conference, where OpenResearch presented results by Vivalt et al. from their three-year study of people who received unconditional money. Universal Basic Income is a solution to the problem of how to distribute money to consumers without distorting the allocation of labor and capital. I admit that I’m not a scholar of the history of leftist thought, but this feels like a vibe shift compared to the socialists of a century ago.

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