Game of Thrones isn't actually made of dollar bills, it's ultimately made of labour. And a basic income would make that labour available without requiring that the project cover living costs. Which means most of the cost would just disappear.

How do connections relate to paid content? Do they somehow come at a massive cost?

I did point out that I might be constructing a strawman, but seeing as you have yet to propose any alternative and copyright is in fact the status quo, it seemed like a reasonable assumption. Perhaps I should have added a question mark for emphasis, but feel free to clarify your position at any time.

The point of basic income isn't to cover everything one could want out of life. It's to cover basic living expenses. Basic housing, basic food, a basic life. If basic income existed, then people would want more. That's not a strike against basic income, but just the opposite: it's a reason why basic income is more likely to work than, say, socialism. People who want more out of life can have it, whereas people who are satisfied with little can have little. The cost of specialized labor will never disappear.

I'd rather not subject my personal belief system to public analysis, because the average public opinion on beliefs is an average belief system, and the average belief system in any era has almost always been crazy.

Sure people would want more than just the basic necessities, but it would still offset the cost by a significant amount. Having your living costs covered and being able to take a break from a job that pays well to work on something you are passionate about without having to fear homelessness and starvation makes a big difference.

People have been forking up $3-4 million for very niche adventure and old-school rpg games. Star Citizen is closing in on $60 million. This is with crowdfunding still in its infancy and projects that have orders of magnitude less interest than Game of Thrones. If people, both producers and consumers, don't care enough about Game of Thrones to make it happen, then so be it. But I don't believe that would be the case.

Actually, if basic income is implemented, the cost will be much higher than the current costs, not lower. Basic income is a redistribution. You can't give a bunch of people money without also causing inflation. The question is whether basic income adds an acceptable amount of inflation. It definitely won't help with production costs, though.

How would redistribution cause inflation? In order to redistribute, you would need to collect the money to distribute through taxes, removing just as much money from the system as it injects, thus maintaining average purchasing power.

If the money would just be printed, it would of course cause inflation, but that's not redistribution, it's just distribution.

Hmm. You're right that the two concepts were muddled in my mind. Are you sure that basic income won't be implemented via the "print money" approach? It seems like people may have major problems with the idea of transferring a large amount of wealth to others if they also see their own money dwindling as a result. In other words, people seem to notice inflation less than taxation.

It still doesn't make sense to me that basic income will reduce costs in other sectors, but I'm probably just not smart enough to understand how.

It might be conceivable to fund a basic income via money creation, but that would require more than simply printing money, a complete revamp of the banking system and monetary policy. It's an interesting idea, but somewhat above my head.

I'm from Norway, where we already have a big welfare system funded by a progressive tax system. And which would already be able to fund most of a basic income. So obviously the idea of redistribution isn't that big of an issue around these parts. As a result, I'm perhaps too quick to assume funding would be done through taxation.

Not sure what you mean by "other sectors". Other relative to which sector(s)?

Makes sense.

I misspoke earlier. I meant "I don't understand how basic income could reduce the costs you mentioned earlier, like production costs." But I'd like to. Do you have some time to explain why this works?

I assumed it would be something like: People are given money in order to cover basic costs of living. But because everyone is given the same amount of money, that will increase all costs throughout the economy, because if people have this basic amount of money, people are free to charge even more for their products and services, since they know people will be able to afford it.

That logic is admittedly a little convoluted and probably incorrect, because I haven't spent much time thinking about this.

Happy to oblige. I will have to skip a lot of reasoning and contingencies for brevity's sake, but I hope it gives you an idea of what a basic income might actually mean at least.

So first of all, a basic income would be a lot more transformative to society than it would seem at first glance. It's not just about people getting more money to spend. Crime would go down, peoples health would improve and we would trust each other much more since there's much less reason to lie and cheat just to get by (which is considered a major factor in the success of the Scandinavian model.) We'd need less police, less health care, and insurance costs would go down. And of course the entire means-testing bureaucracy would be unnecessary.

Then there's the labour market. Not being required to hold a job, and the increased bargaining power that entails, could lead to a number of different outcomes that are sometimes hard to predict. Shitty jobs would either become less shitty, pay better (which of course makes it more expensive for the employer), or get automated if it's cost-effective. As would jobs individually considered harmful, meaningless or counter-productive, like the military, weapons manufacturing, telemarkting and advertising, to name a few. People would likely get a lot more educated, and the education system would hopefully transform from being a production line of worker drones to actually encouraging curiosity and learning. Innovation would flourish, since anyone could just go out and do their own thing without risking homelessness. Cooperatives would be much more prevalent. "Good" jobs might pay less, since there would be a lot more well-educated labour available.

But here's the kicker: when having a job is no longer essential, there's no reason to artificially create jobs. We could stop encouraging consumerism and infinite growth, and institute policies that are untouchable today because they remove jobs or hinder job creation. Which would cause people to spend more time and energy on what they really want to do, things that actually matter, rather than hoarding stuff. Many would work less, others more, because they're able to do work they enjoy and don't have to do it primarily for material gains. Those with small children or elderly parents could spend more time taking care of them themselves, instead of shipping them off to some institution or other.

A lot of work that's good but difficult or impossible to monetize, that currently need to be supported by advertising or considered charity, could actually be done full-time without having to spend your time fundraising or degrading your work with advertisements. It could be done part-time alongside a part-time job for some extra spending money, or on a break from your ordinary job. I think we'd see a huge increase in political activism, journalism, and a transformation in how democracy would work in general. Finally, if we got rid of copyright, the production of creative works would be included in this category, and while not very likely, it would be possible to produce something like Game of Thrones without a single cent of funding.

If all that waste and abuse could be eliminated, or significantly reduced, it would reduce cost at every step of the production chain. Profit margins, and therefore prices, would be kept down unless for some reason competition decreases. Prices might even be lowered further if there's less manipulative marketing creating artificial demand. Skilled labour might be cheaper because there's more of it available, and if it's something people really want to work on I believe they'd care less about the paycheck and more about doing what the want to do.