As it has been pointed out, the studies are fundamentally flawed in that the participants know they are of a limited duration. Getting a stipend for a few months isn't enough to quit your job. Being promised one for the rest of your life certainly can be.
UBI is basically communism lite - with all its flaws. People who are provided for tend to behave just like animals who are provided for - after all, people are animals - they mainly lounge around and try to amuse themselves. This isn't a moral judgement, just an observation. I've not seen any study that has conclusively refuted this.
It is the rare, exceptional, person that will spend their free time on something truly productive and constructive. We can see examples of this already - we've made it very easy to get a loan and go to college, partially socializing college education. As a result, we have a surplus of college graduates and a shortage of labourers and trades. Introducing UBI would simply magnify this effect. When people have alternatives, they don't tend to want to go work on farms, construction sites, or in restaurants or shops. People work these jobs primarily because they would otherwise be destitute. I know that's why I did.
So we could quibble over details such as that people in some of the studies did quit their jobs, or whether UBI is actually a very conservative and capitalist concept, and so forth... but ...
Since HN discussions tend to be short and fleeting; I think the point to focus down on would be "free time". Just because you take (some of the) money out of the picture, doesn't mean that there still isn't a lot of work to be done. And it doesn't mean that all the other motivators to do that work aren't still present.
Instead of or in addition to money: people work for power, prestige, recognition; but also for love, honor, duty, "FOR SCIENCE", beauty, tradition, for personal satisfaction&improvement, and many other reasons.
With all these different reasons to want to work, and all kinds of different people and professions, (eg. politicians, artists, homemakers, soldiers, police officers, doctors, nurses, scientists, students, artists ), you might imagine that taking money off the table might not actually have such an influence on these people's desire to work.
If you think back, surely you'll recognize these motivations showing up everywhere; including in stories, newspapers, citations, history books, holy books, and surely even scientific studies. They're all part of the human condition, after all.
The examples you give of farming, construction, hospitality and retail are often mixed motivation. Some people (like you?) only work in those jobs because they need the money. And without further motivation, then surely one won't like the work.
But many people who work in these sectors actually do so because they believe in their job, because they want to build something, and/or because they see it is valued and helps the community. When they are down and demotivated, this is where they draw their strength to carry on.
This is especially true in SME's, which is where I've had a lot of my experiences.
I agree with everything you wrote. I think the only question is how much work overall, as a percentage of the economy, is motivated by the avoidance of destitution, and how much is motivated by higher humanistic values. I think if you ask most people, you may be disappointed to find that they give pithy answers about not starving, or supporting their lifestyle, and vanishingly few will cite honor, duty, beauty or tradition. I think you would also find that the frequency of pithy answers forms an inverse relationship with wages. It would be interesting to try to construct a study to answer these questions.
Overall, I don't think the "human condition" is much of a thing. People are marginally more clever than apes on average, and that small margin pushed us past a tipping point into civilization. Give a chimp a smartphone and they start to behave remarkably like people (or is it vice versa).
However, even if you're right, and most people would find humanistic motivation to work, my point is that we just can't have all the people who do menial, necessary, jobs pursue careers motivated by higher values. If all baristas were suddenly free to pursue their dream art careers, who will pour the coffee?
By way of contrast to your question, ask a kid what they want to be when they grow up. Note the cool factor in the jobs that kids want to do ("astronaut" , "fighter pilot", "fireman", "vet", "nurse" ). I'll bet very few kids say they want to stay at home and sit on the couch all day!
More in general:
I think that Maslow's hierarchy of needs [1] has a quite a lot of levels between "basic physiological needs" and "transcendence". I think that as long as people need to fulfill needs anywhere on that ladder, they'll be willing to do work. If people are lucky and/or smart, a lot of their needs will be immediately fulfilled by their work; other times things may still need to be covered by money and/or free time.
I think it'd be strange if people would only have boolean motivation (either 100% staying alive, or 100% enlightenment). I think in real world people, it's often going to be some mix of motivations, with all sorts of levels in between. Sometimes more towards one side, sometimes more towards the other.
So that's my theory anyway.
Here's some examples of anecdata I have:
* An electrical technician I met at $factory. Possibly they'd work somewhere else if not for money, but on the other hand they do get a kick anytime a machine they fixed starts working again.
* An industrial programmer who got to play with $MM worth of robots and computers and lasers. They outright forgot to bill me and needed to be reminded. (oops)
* An awesome Barista who made coffee into an art form indeed; A lot of deep knowledge and skill and creativity went into it. They charged me about 2-4x what it would cost out of a machine, but it was worth it!
But you've not answered my question. What portion of all work in the economy do you think is motivated by the lowest needs on the ladder, the ones that we are endeavouring to provide with a UBI? How do you think that work is distributed across industries?
> very few kids say they want to stay at home and sit on the couch all day
You will notice however that, in absence of intervention, most kids do sit on the couch all day, especially in the digital age. We also observe that this behavior continues as long as it is materially supported. Countless articles have been written about the increasing numbers of seemingly-functional adults who live under the care of their parents and don't do very much at all. UBI will enable more people to adopt this lifestyle, to become starving (read: non-productive) artists, man-children or hikikomori. Why don't you think they'll take the opportunity?
> people would only have boolean motivation
I agree that it's not a binary motivation. In aggregate however the point stands, removing x% of motivation for work will inevitably result in x% less work being done. Furthermore, any decrease in x represents wealth transfer from those who are motivated to work by higher values to those who are motivated to work by lower ones (in Maslow's hierarchy). All of this raises many moral questions, and I think these are fundamentally worth discussing.
UBI is basically communism lite - with all its flaws. People who are provided for tend to behave just like animals who are provided for - after all, people are animals - they mainly lounge around and try to amuse themselves. This isn't a moral judgement, just an observation. I've not seen any study that has conclusively refuted this.
It is the rare, exceptional, person that will spend their free time on something truly productive and constructive. We can see examples of this already - we've made it very easy to get a loan and go to college, partially socializing college education. As a result, we have a surplus of college graduates and a shortage of labourers and trades. Introducing UBI would simply magnify this effect. When people have alternatives, they don't tend to want to go work on farms, construction sites, or in restaurants or shops. People work these jobs primarily because they would otherwise be destitute. I know that's why I did.