When your outlook sustains, everything is good. But there is also a failure mode where you lose that motivation ("burn out") or never have it to begin with, and fall into a cycle of doing only what's required.
If that's only ever a small fraction of people at a time, then giving them food/shelter and letting them "freeload" is fine. But the worry is that by taking away any incentive to produce, that group will grow without bound and end up consuming non-neglible output from the people who do.
I'm not arguing to diminish your main point, but to strengthen it by adding nuance. The way I see it, our current system basically pushes people into burn out mode a priori, and only a lucky few escape to make money while still fully engaged. Which is why eg you visit the hospital and everyone there acts like what they're doing/saying actually makes sense, but when looking at the big picture it's obviously horribly broken. The Programmer's Stone (which I need to reread sometime) explores this phenomenon in depth while proposing a theory to explain it.
My take is that basic economics predicts that as people become more productive they should become wealthier. So their marginal utility of keeping their time goes up, their rate should go up (assuming they're worth it), and they should also start demanding to work less. But this is clearly not happening on a societal scale. IMHO because debt is the gradient version of slavery, and advances in surveillance technology have made debt such a prominent part of our society.
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When your outlook sustains, everything is good. But there is also a failure mode where you lose that motivation ("burn out") or never have it to begin with, and fall into a cycle of doing only what's required.
If that's only ever a small fraction of people at a time, then giving them food/shelter and letting them "freeload" is fine. But the worry is that by taking away any incentive to produce, that group will grow without bound and end up consuming non-neglible output from the people who do.
I'm not arguing to diminish your main point, but to strengthen it by adding nuance. The way I see it, our current system basically pushes people into burn out mode a priori, and only a lucky few escape to make money while still fully engaged. Which is why eg you visit the hospital and everyone there acts like what they're doing/saying actually makes sense, but when looking at the big picture it's obviously horribly broken. The Programmer's Stone (which I need to reread sometime) explores this phenomenon in depth while proposing a theory to explain it.
My take is that basic economics predicts that as people become more productive they should become wealthier. So their marginal utility of keeping their time goes up, their rate should go up (assuming they're worth it), and they should also start demanding to work less. But this is clearly not happening on a societal scale. IMHO because debt is the gradient version of slavery, and advances in surveillance technology have made debt such a prominent part of our society.