It seems you either are having a hard time understanding simple concepts or you're not able to see the forest for the trees.
For starters, a basic income does not stop anyone from working in structured projects. I have no idea where you came up with that nonsense. You gave construction work as an example and I explained to you why your belief made no sense, and still you don't follow. Let's be perfectly clear: people do enjoy what they do for a living, and don't do it because they are paid to do it. Self-fulfillment is real.
Secondly, people do enjoy working in structured environments, specially if they are working on a lofty goal. Academia is largely an example of that. You talk about the Manhattan project? How many physicists do you believe were working on that project because they wanted to get rich or were compelled to pay the bills? Once you satisfy your basic needs, you focus on other aspects of your life. See Maslow's pyramid.
Thirdly, people do cooperate and collaborate for the greater good, regardless of income. See volunteer work.
And finally, please refrain from trying to belittle fellow readers, specially if you do that while demonstrating some slowness grasping simple concepts or ideas.
You are interpreting my comments in a very strange way, so I don't really know how to respond. I was just making a simple point to the parent comment about project organization, not going on an attack against the idea that people enjoy their work, or trying to belittle someone. You are reading way more into my comments than is there.
Hopefully I can intervene a little here - I think the argument he's making is that nothing is stopping someone from, say, receiving UBI -AND- also working on an organized public-works project.
There's a sense that if we have UBI, it'll take a huge number of people out of the workforce, but I think the only real rationale for that is the notion that a number of people hate working enough that the moment they get "sufficient cost-of-living" income they'll quit and veg out. There's a counter-argument that a huge number of people would instead still work really hard, but would pursue different jobs (often jobs that pay terribly right now) if they didn't have to worry about financial security.
There's a huge swash of jobs I'm actually personally interested in, in the trades, that I can't rationally touch because it's a massive pay cut - which wouldn't be so bad, except that our society has no safety net, particularly for end-of-life care, so squirreling money away is the only way to get an approximation of one. It's really the unbounded end-of-life/healthcare costs that force me towards a soft income-maximization path. I don't have to be too crazy about it, but if one possible career path (programming) has a reliable guarantee of earning 3-4x another one (construction), I can't reasonably pass that up.
I think if UBI dropped in, we'd see a mass exodus from "bs jobs" that provide no value to society, but I think a large number of jobs which do something meaningful would retain a surprisingly high percentage of their employment. There would probably be some major wage adjustments, but they'd draw a surprising number of people from the "now that I don't 'have' to do anything, what do I 'want' to do?" crowd. Doctors, food-industry, construction, mechanics, etc, would all remain surprisingly hirable. Quite a few other things like sales and management would dry up really hard.
> My point is that large infrastructure projects require top-down organization
This has nothing to do with UBI. That's why you're having trouble understand the excellent points by rumanator. He's pointing out that you can have both UBI AND large infra projects. They are not mutually exclusive. I'm not sure where you got that idea from?
For starters, a basic income does not stop anyone from working in structured projects. I have no idea where you came up with that nonsense. You gave construction work as an example and I explained to you why your belief made no sense, and still you don't follow. Let's be perfectly clear: people do enjoy what they do for a living, and don't do it because they are paid to do it. Self-fulfillment is real.
Secondly, people do enjoy working in structured environments, specially if they are working on a lofty goal. Academia is largely an example of that. You talk about the Manhattan project? How many physicists do you believe were working on that project because they wanted to get rich or were compelled to pay the bills? Once you satisfy your basic needs, you focus on other aspects of your life. See Maslow's pyramid.
Thirdly, people do cooperate and collaborate for the greater good, regardless of income. See volunteer work.
And finally, please refrain from trying to belittle fellow readers, specially if you do that while demonstrating some slowness grasping simple concepts or ideas.