I think this discussion rather gets to the bottom of the objection to UBI: nobody objects quite so strenuously to wasted work as they do to "idleness". In the view of these people, it is morally superior to pay people to dig holes and fill them up, or the white collar equivalent of digging holes in spreadsheets and filling them up again, than it is to just give them money with no strings attached.

The important thing is that people are prevented from enjoying themselves for at least eight hours a day.

No, not at all. The important thing is that the person making poor choices bears enough of the cost of those choices.

Otherwise, they will not grow.

True UBI would create the largest, most indolent, and most socioeconomically isolated consumption class the world has ever seen — until it collapses under its own weight.

Sorry to just jump in here, but growth isn't for everyone. If some people don't want to work, I'd rather pay them to get out of the way than risk the chance of them adding negative net value.

That’s the other major issue of UBI — it’s an ideal tool for ghettoization, if those in power decide it’s more profitable to give “undesirables” just enough that they’ll get out of the way — and stay there, quietly.

The wealth and culture gap would become nearly insurmountable for anyone otherwise capable of upward mobility out of the UBI class.

The people "making good choices" here being the unproductive office workers?

No, the people making poor choices are the managers wasting the work output of their office workers.

They're not usually bearing the cost, though? In a lot of places it's better to have hundreds of unproductive staff than a few productive ones, it inflates your standing and pay. It's ultimately the investors who bear the cost, but they also deem it not worth their time to try to manage the managers.

From a society point of view, it doesn't really matter "who" wastes it. Ultimately, the outcome is the same: Someone spends time on something that society does not benefit from.

... sidenote; I personally think that something completely inefficient "is not that bad". Much worse is work that is directly detrimental for society as a whole, even if it does make a few people rich. Now that is terrible.

Someone does something that society does not benefit from and earns a paycheck.

They then buy food, housing, medical, transportation, fuel, entertainment, (optionally) raise kids, by things kids want, take vacations, have hobbies

They're still most likely a net positive to the economy.

businesses fail, government programs are forever.

> Private money being wasted due to inefficiencies at the office is surely entirely different than a government-granted right to not produce anything yet still be supported.

Why?

If you are in the camp that think companies sole purpose is shareholder profit then this is perverse.

If you are not in that camp you can probably agree that we should aspire to the best life for most people.

(As a European this comment really dissonates. I do realise that it does not for Americans)

Private money wasted usually leads to that entity dwindling away from competition, with the end result (of efficiency) that benefits society at large. Public money wasted takes a much longer time to dwindle away and the end result is usually catastrophic for society at large, i.e. a revolution.

As a European, odds are that you're used to a monoethnic country where "most people", "society", and "government" are kind of interchangeable, and people find it easier to sacrifice themselves for the greater good -- as you say, aspire to the best life for most people, even if it might mean that the decisions being made are not optimal for one's own circumstances.

I myself hail from such a country (though outside of Europe), and you are right that the American viewpoint, or that of any other large, multiethnic country, is quite different. Implementing policies that require taxpayers to support others that are culturally different and therefore harder to empathize with is an order of magnitude more difficult; and it is becoming yet more difficult in America as time goes by, due to the reduced emphasis in assimilating to the mainstream ("white") culture.

Ultimately, these systemic inefficiencies are financially supported by people, the public at large.

At different rates though. You can absolutely choose not to pay the lazy-tax and buy from a different vendor that doesn't employ an army of people who do nothing, you can even build whatever it is you need, but you can't easily choose to not pay the taxes that the government collects for the same purposes.

Pretty sure Atlassian has a lower per-employee efficiency than what a smaller startup providing a product in the same market would have, but there might be specific sticky features in the Atlassian product that make it difficult for one to migrate. The effective market hypothesis is great at finding local maxima.

Likely, yes, but it's "do I want to work around this", not "there's no way". There's enough people getting fed up with Atlassian that "Like Atlassian X, but sane" could be a category.

There's basically no way you can start a new state if you'd want to opt out of the existing ones, and even moving from one to another is quite the undertaking. Imagine Atlassian saying "sure, you're free to stop working with and paying us, but we believe that we've been instrumental in building your company, and we believe that entitles us to 20% of your company if you want to work with someone else".

You might find it ethical to not use a superior product to try and force the world to be more like the one described by the efficient market hypothesis, but I definitely don't believe this is on the to-do list of people who get stuff done and get promoted to make impactful changes in their organization.

Even if that were true, and I don't think it is, there are millions of jobs that are subsidized with public money and the public has no meaningful choice in them. Think defense contractors, public sector consultants, etc.

"Jobs paid for by public money" and "completely unproductive jobs paid for by public money" are not the same though.

But even if it actually was millions of completely unproductive jobs, I fail to see how that would be an argument for adding a few dozen millions more and not a reason to get rid of the ones that exist and cost us money that we could otherwise invest into important things that are currently underfunded.

Because they are not jobs. They would free up people to other pursuits, in the hope at least a few of them would be useful. It would also be a massive boon to those who cannot make ends meet.

I wasn't making the argument that every government job is useless, I was simply reminding that it's not true that unproductive private jobs can be weeded out simply with competition or customer care.

Can you really? Are you sure? I sincerely doubt it.