To preface: UBI will not truly solve a problem until limitations are put on the extraction of economic rent. If everyone gets UBI then everyone will be expected to have UBI, so landlords (the original rent seekers when ignoring taxation) know that they can extract the UBI plus whatever they charged before. House sellers know that they can factor in the UBI into their selling price. Yeah, maybe some economic competition will limit how much of the UBI any given rentier or seller tries to extract, but you could easily end up in a situation where a person's multiple rentiers try extracting more than the UBI from them, putting them right back into the situation a UBI is supposed to prevent - not enough money to live on.<p>If UBI is going to exist without solving the problem of rent seeking it might be better to do it as multiple scrips or coupons, each good for only a particular thing (e.g. rent, food stamps, etcetera). This adds a layer of bureaucracy, but at least a person would be guaranteed a minimum amount of funds for each life necessity, instead of having it all taken by one thing.<p>And I know that this analysis of mine is missing quite a bit. E.g. Good Luck with implementing a UBI over the long-term, and for everyone.<p>-------------<p>>"The thing is though, this isn't that far from what we actually did here on Earth centuries ago. Land used to exist without a monetary cost to access it. That was the natural way of things prior to the private property system and monetary system. We created poverty as we know it."<p>Taxation and indenturing existed before money. Taxes have previously included a certain amount of raw goods or labor. Even in non-agricultural tribal systems I assume people would be expected to contribute to the common weal as best they could.<p>>"It is a position not to be controverted, that the earth, in its natural uncultivated state, was, and ever would have continued to be, the COMMON PROPERTY OF THE HUMAN RACE. In that state every man would have been born to property."<p>I agree. But anyone who takes a look at squirrels or birds know that they fight over territory. Humans simply "civilized" the fight by attaching it to documents and currency.<p>>"If it's wrong to choke or starve someone to death unless they do what you want, then it's wrong to withhold air or food from someone unless they do what you want."<p>This is universally wrong. However taxes, and any other cost to living, is not forcing someone to do what you want. It's forcing someone to do <i>something, anything</i> which generates a cash income. It's an incentive to labor of some sort, though unfortunately, in our current system, it's also an incentive to become a rentier. The rentier is the problem, not the incentive to work. Though yes, no one should starve or be homeless, even if they can't labor.<p>>"Let's just recognize that Earth actually does belong to all of us, everyone in the present and future, and that those who own pieces of it, and who create things out of it, owe compensation to the rest of us for removing our access to what would otherwise have been common property."<p>I agree with the sentiment stated by Thomas Paine and this article. I just don't know that a universal UBI will be the way to do it. At least not without solving the rentier problem.