Money are used as a replacement of resources. By printing money out of thin air you make the same amount of money signify less amount of resources. This is very profitable to those who print money and very unprofitable for those who holds these money but need resources instead. So printing money is just a redistributive program that takes resources from savers. In severe form, from anybody having money, even for a short term (this is called hyperinflation). So when we're talking about "money has to come from somewhere", we're of course talking about resources, "printing money" is just a sneaky way to extract resources from those who delayed their consumption of resources they produced, foolishly trusting the government to preserve their value by exchanging them for a government-controlled money. And these resources are not infinite, they are scarce. Moreover, if you start extracting a lot of resources from those foolish people, they start noticing and no longer entrust their savings to the government that takes too much from them. And then the government finds itself with a lot of people who were promised non-scarce money but don't have any resources to back them up. And you can't eat money, so situation becomes sour pretty quickly at that point.

> And these resources are not infinite, they are scarce.

This is the crux right here.

The government no longer providers you money as BI. It provides you with the right to housing (build up), the right to energy (one person can only use so many KwHs/day), the right to worldwide communications (I think we can all agree the price of moving bits is going to continue to fall), the right to food, and the right to transportation (electric self-driving vehicles).

With enough wind, solar, nuclear power, with self driving cars, with automated manufacturing and farming, you don't need money. You simply provide for your citizens their basic essentials. The people who want to work, will. The people who don't aren't a burden, because robots don't resent.

Yeah, in a fairy land where resources are non-scarce and are conjured by the government from nothing, it would work fairly well. I've been taught about this is the soviet school, where they explained me the communism is right around the corner and it would look exactly like that. In the real world, meanwhile, everything consumed has to be produced, and if you want power, cars, manufacturing and farming, somebody has to manufacture and farm it. So for you to get it for free means somebody has to produce it and then either gift it to you or you will take it away by force. Last time I checked giving away cars wasn't that popular (if I'm wrong please tell me where I can pick up my free Tesla) so I guess you'd have to take these cars by force. Why would then the manufacturers keep producing them is a mystery to me.

You are working under a set of extremely strong assumptions, which happen to be true right now: (1) Humans have to do most menial tasks. (2) Most people will cling to all their possessions, never giving them away for free. (3) We don't have the resources to give everyone decent housing, transportation, energy, food, and communication.

(1) Automation is on its way, and will continue to eat jobs. It won't be possible to create as much jobs as technology is taking away. Take self driving cars for instance: soon there will be no bus driver, no truck driver, no taxi driver. Some of them will work in control centres and "supervise" 50 vehicles at once, but that still means many people who will need another job. People will have free time, whether they want it or not.

(2) This is a cultural problem. I guess much of it will go away once we solve (3)

(3) is less costly than it sounds. We just need to be rational about crop management (which is currently insane, thanks to globalization), the use of technology, urbanisation… It's a huge problem, but not an unsolvable one. We will need the political will to do it though, and that won't happen until western countries become democracies[1].

[1]: Current western countries are not run by the people. They are run by elected elites, which happen to represent the interests of the businesses —the only special interest that is not called such. Therefore, current western countries are not democracies. They're plutocracies. Now, I think this is most true in the US, and less true in some European countries.

(1) We've heard this song since invention of the steam engine. Yes, dozens of horse-based and carriage-based professions disappeared due to shifts in technology. Yes, US whaling industry, once fifth largest in the economy, is no more. Yes, water-bearers, ice- and kerosene-sellers are not that common anymore, since running water, refrigeration and electric light became commonplace. But somehow there are hundreds of other professions and occupations, unheard of in the age of horse and carriage, that were created instead. There is always something to do. And always will be.

(2) Yes, of course, people will start giving away their possessions really soon now. As soon as there will be communism, which is right around the corner. I'll believe it when somebody gifts me a yacht and a beachfront house somewhere in Mediterranean. BTW, how exactly you would have your magic robots make everybody their own beachfront house in the Mediterranean?

(3) Yeah right. We just need a set of magic technologies which would do something that was never done and nobody has any remotest idea how to do it, and every attempt in the past to do it ended up in spectacular and very bloody disaster. Technology is not magic, it can do a lot but it can not change human nature and it can not produce everything out of nothing for free.

(4) Businesses are people. You're just trying to dehumanize them because these people stand in line of your agenda. While you are glad to describe how people would gift you their possessions and work for you for free, you still realize fat chance they will. So you just say - well, those not true people, those are "elites" and "businesses" and "special interests" (as if anybody but people can have interests!) and as soon as we disenfranchise them and take power to the real people - abundance and happiness will ensue. Too bad this all was already tried a hundred years ago. With exactly the same words and exactly the same promises. The result was and always will be - blood, hunger, suffering, misery and death.

I did list printing as one of the three way a government acquires money, and as "smsm42" explained, it's not a sustainable way to fund anything, let alone the massive expenditures required for UBI.

> But we shouldn't fool ourselves: we never ever lacked money. Money isn't scarce. What we may lack however are resources (both renewable and fossil), and labour.

Money is a representation of value - you've had to earn it somehow (unless you're the government ofc). In other words, money represents labour/resources/services etc, and those are scarce even if our fiat currencies can be created out of thin air seemingly without any limit.

The point here is, again, that you can't get something from nothing. If a government wants to implement UBI, it can't just distribute grains of sand to everyone - it has to be something valuable and useable as a means of exchange, and that places limits on what the government can feasibly do.

> it's not a sustainable way to fund anything, let alone the massive expenditures required for UBI.

I'm open-minded but not convinced that printing money for UBI is an awful idea.

Printing money and sharing it out equally results in inflation, very likely, which affects people with existing wealth/savings more. The result is that money is very effectively redistributed, in a way which the existing income-based taxation system is unable to. Isn't that exactly the goal?

It is, but you have to be careful not to overdo it.

Also, I wasn't only advocating printing money by the state. I was also suggesting we stop banks from printing money as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-reserve_banking Monetary policy is too important to let private special interests control it.

Also, the current way of dealing with money, even for a state, is to think in terms of budget, deficits… while it should instead think in terms of money supply. The state would then increase the money supply through various spending, and decrease through taxes. Deficit would be zero by definition. Only inflation would remain. (My guess: inflation should probably be kept between 3% and 10% per year. It should definitely not be null.)

Monetary policy influences all other policies, because you do need a budget to do anything. (A budget in resources and manpower, but money is too convenient to do away with.)

My point is, money is too important to let a few powerful, not-even-elected entities control it.