>> they'll depend on some powerful centralized instance providing them money
>You just described most jobs.
No. Now you depend on a lot of semi-powerful un-centralized instances, and not just one point of failure. And you can pick your poison according to your tolerance. It is not perfect, but it does not leave you at the mercy of one and only one entity without any recourse.
This is like Google banning you on gmail, and hence adsense and youtube, or Paypal or Visa banning you on their payment network, only a million times worse.
My opinion is that UBI would need to be established as a quasi-right at a minimum, similar to how we talk about Social Security (third rail of politics, etc).
It is much easier to get locked out of the market for jobs that pay a living wage than you realize. If you have a bad credit report or a criminal record, those un-centralized instances start to behave like a single point of failure. And you definitely don't have any recourse.
I'm aware it's not perfect. I just don't think you realize you want to take exactly the thing that is wrong about our current situation and make it the core feature of society.
The fundamental difference is that UBI would be subject to democratic processes. The private economy is not. Not that democracy is working all that well right now...
I don't want UBI; I want people to have some assurance they will be able to eat tomorrow.
>You just described most jobs.
No. Now you depend on a lot of semi-powerful un-centralized instances, and not just one point of failure. And you can pick your poison according to your tolerance. It is not perfect, but it does not leave you at the mercy of one and only one entity without any recourse.
This is like Google banning you on gmail, and hence adsense and youtube, or Paypal or Visa banning you on their payment network, only a million times worse.