>If I receive a basic income as part of a pilot/experiment I will feel tempted to "give back" somehow, while if basic income is a baseline all humans receive, that reciprocity will not be present. How can you design an experiment so that somehow people don't feel they are receiving money in an extraordinary way, but rather that's just part of how the world works
FWIW, excepting the actually lazy (which I think comprises a vanishingly small minority of the population), I think most people will feel as though they have to give back. Sure, once everyone gets N dollars/month just for being alive, they will no longer be receiving money in an extraordinary way, but culture is hard to kill. The relentlessly inbred Protestant work ethic provably shapes a panoply of aspects of our society even now (8 hour work days that office drones spend half of on Reddit, etc); there's no reason to think that its influence will suddenly drop away with the advent of "free money". I have little to go on beyond the already extant Canadian study of 'mincome' [0] back in the 70s, but that was generally considered a success, with recipients putting the money to use in building their businesses and communities, rather than sitting on their asses (with the notable exception of new mothers and teenagers [1], for respectively obvious reasons (OTOH teenagers' HS graduation rate improved, possibly due to not feeling pressure to go get a job)).
It comes down to how much Basic Income one can expect to collect. I don't consider myself extraordinarily lazy, and thus do my part working to earn a comfortable living. Really though I'm the type who hasn't found my "dream job", so working 9-5, 40 hour weeks, is something I don't particularly enjoy, and it sucks the life out of me.
Existing social assistance where I am doesn't even cover the cheapest rent in the city, requiring you to live with at least two others who are also on welfare in a studio apartment that deserves to be condemned as being unsuitable for human habitation. So long as "basic income" means bottom-of-the-barrel minimum income that requires you to rent in the slums with roommates, while barely having enough money to eat... I will remain employed. If "basic income" ever provides more than that, I could see myself being tempted into joining the ranks. Particularly if you are allowed to keep income from a part-time minimum wage job without any clawbacks to the basic income.
FWIW, excepting the actually lazy (which I think comprises a vanishingly small minority of the population), I think most people will feel as though they have to give back. Sure, once everyone gets N dollars/month just for being alive, they will no longer be receiving money in an extraordinary way, but culture is hard to kill. The relentlessly inbred Protestant work ethic provably shapes a panoply of aspects of our society even now (8 hour work days that office drones spend half of on Reddit, etc); there's no reason to think that its influence will suddenly drop away with the advent of "free money". I have little to go on beyond the already extant Canadian study of 'mincome' [0] back in the 70s, but that was generally considered a success, with recipients putting the money to use in building their businesses and communities, rather than sitting on their asses (with the notable exception of new mothers and teenagers [1], for respectively obvious reasons (OTOH teenagers' HS graduation rate improved, possibly due to not feeling pressure to go get a job)).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome
[1] http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20%282%29.pd... , which is a 2011 analysis of the data from the 70s, largely lying fallow thanks to Manitoba's provincial Conservatives