I'm not certain that you can extrapolate the behaviors of highly-paid, highly educated engineers with the hypothetical behaviors of the typical person getting a subsistence allowance from the government.
Incentivize completion of higher education & collaborative research projects?
Basic income could have qualifications attached to avoid the fears of what opponents would claim to be lazy or "leaches" of resources.
Of course figuring out how to balance the stipulations of such qualifications for BI, affordable public education, and public research & development projects against claims of abuse akin to the prison labor [1][2] or bloat of tuition from the near endless supply of student loans will likely be an interesting problem to solve.
I think someone only earning BI probably wouldn't have the resources or motivation to do Bell Labs-style research.
> how do you think they got there? by being forced to be a wage slave, working long hours to come home completely burned out every night?
Unless you're implying that all of a sudden with the help of basic income, people's interests and preferences will change and result in a glut of engineering talent I don't see how it's at all relevant.
> I think someone only earning BI probably wouldn't have the resources or motivation to do Bell Labs-style research.
It's sure as hell better than earning $0, being forced to work some shit job 60 hrs a week at a SV startup providing SaaS full of proprietary software that will circle the drain in a few years, receiving money from a VC that truly doesn't give a shit about the greater good.
Instead said person could work 15hrs at that shit startup to live more comfortably, and spend the rest of their time working on ffmpeg or something. It doesn't have to always be Bell Labs tier.
> Unless you're implying that all of a sudden with the help of basic income, people's interests and preferences will change and result in a glut of engineering talent I don't see how it's at all relevant.
With BI many people will no longer be tied down to the rat race and will actually be able to work on themselves. It has nothing to do with interests and preferences. Time is money.
I don't read teddyh as saying that BI would lead to a boon in engineering research in particular. Rather, the example of the OP suggests that monetary incentives and short-term performance monitoring are not the only way (or even a good way) to encourage creative, productive work.
