A German experiment has found that people are likely to continue working full-time even if they receive no-strings-attached universal basic income payments.
Archived version: https://archive.is/20250412140637/https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/11/health/germany-universal-basic-income-study-intl-scli-wellness/index.html
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We live in a real world, not a hypothetical scenario. There are multiple stores and they’re all either in a cartel or just blindly copying each other in extracting the maximum value out of their customers.
This brings them more money, they pump more into marketing and voilà, only the shitty stores remain. If a newcomer joins, you can enjoy a few pretty good years until they inevitably join the shitty cartel or cease to exist.
So yeah, that’s a problem of capitalism but that doesn’t mean it’s not a problem preventing UBI actually ever being implemented.
But we’ve already seen this without UBI. So worst case, nothing changes. Best case? There’s more opportunity for change.
I don’t think “This other, largely unrelated, problem is bad so we shouldn’t do this thing” is good reasoning.
I don’t think in the real world, in all places (or even most places) all the stores are in a cartel. Where I live, there are several large supermarkets and a handful of smaller groceries all within walking distance. They are not a cartel. They compete. You’re just making stuff up for some weird dark fantasy of yours.
Furthermore, if there was a monopoly, and we have the political might to implement UBI, I dare say we’d also have the political power to do a tried-and-true popular move of breaking up monopolies.