>If someone posits, for example, that universal basic income (UBI) could ameliorate the loss of jobs due to automation, a straw man would be, “So you want people to sit at home all day and collect free money?”
I don't see how this is a strawman. UBI literally lets people receive free money even if they sit at home all day. At some level, a UBI proponent has to "want" this outcome. If you think that UBI wouldn't cause people to leave the workforce, that's a separate argument.
Because it is an absurd mischaracterisation of the benefits people see in UBI and most proposals for it.
> UBI literally lets people receive free money even if they sit at home all day.
See this is where nuance starts showing the straw. There is an important and significant difference between "you want UBI so you can sit at home and do nothing" and "even if you did nothing UBI would still cover you." One of the differences is intent. If you want UBI because you are lazy, is a very different situation from, you wanted UBI for good reasons but ended up using it while unemployed.
> At some level, a UBI proponent has to "want" this outcome.
Some proponents of UBI do not want it to cover rent + food + bills. So no, some proponents do not want that. Some just want to simplify goverment aid into a single payment. Some want the residuals of automation to be shared by all. In either case it would hardly cover for people to be sitting at home doing nothing.
>There is an important and significant difference between "you want UBI so you can sit at home and do nothing" and "even if you did nothing UBI would still cover you."
I would agree if that were what the author's example, but it wasn't. The author's statement wasn't a direct attack on the UBI proponent.
>Some proponents of UBI do not want it to cover rent + food + bills. So no, some proponents do not want that.
If you're proposing UBI as protecting people from automation like the author is, it necessarily has to cover all basic expenses. By far the most popular UBI proposal in the US proposes $12000 a year, which is definitely enough for you to find a spare room in Kansas and play videogames all day.
> The author's statement wasn't a direct attack on the UBI proponent.
I think it was though. It's hard to read "ySo you want people to sit at home all day and collect free money" as anything but free leeching, lazy, people who don't deserve the money (obviously heavily reading between the lines).
While your version "UBI literally lets people receive free money even if they sit at home all day." has several advatanges, by using passive voice and saying "even" you take a huge chunk of UBI receivers and make the "abuse" of the system not malicious.
That's kind of the point of the article. Sometimes tone alone can bridge the gap between a mean, angry, unfair reading of an argument or a positive, best version, good intentioned reading. Yours doesn't go as far as being super fair on what many UBI people want, but it is certainly more charitable than the strawmanned version.
> By far the most popular UBI proposal in the US proposes
Arguing with someone over the benefits of UBI and trying to understand where they come from does not requiere knowledge of the currently proposed version of it. I want universal healthcare but could not give you intricate examples of the working of the multi-insurance service in France vs the fully public system in England.
The 12k proposal in the US I am sure is based on some analysis of cost of living, and tech business growth and what not. But it might not be universal. UBI proponents in general want to simplify goverment aid, help lessen the problems of automation and prepare society for post scarcity. These three groups sometimes have very different aims, goals and even starting points they just all happen to want UBI.
>It's hard to read "ySo you want people to sit at home all day and collect free money" as anything but free leeching, lazy, people who don't deserve the money (obviously heavily reading between the lines).
It's hard to read because everyone has their own implicit assumptions. The anti-UBI advocate thinks it's an universal assumption that giving people free money makes them lazy. They're genuinely perplexed by UBI advocates, motivating them to ask "So you want people to sit at home all day and collect free money?" From your perspective, this question must be an implicit accusation of laziness even when they may think it's a genuine question.
It's a strawman because one doesn't have to want people to sit at home all day in order to advocate UBI.
An advocate might disagree (rightly or wrongly) that UBI will necessarily lead to people sitting at home all day.
An advocate might agree that some people sitting at home all day is a possible undesirable outcome of UBI, but might be willing to tolerate that risk in order to achieve some other outcome that they consider more important. that doesn't mean they want that outcome; just that they are willing to tolerate it if it happens, as long as the expected benefits are also possible.
An advocate might even agree that some people sitting at home all day is a necessary and undesirable consequence, but be willing to tolerate it, in order to achieve another desirable outcome.
All of these positions are logically possible for a rational person to hold, so long as they don't know them to be wrong. None of them require that person to desire people to sit at home all day.
Therefore we cannot conclude from UBI advocacy that the advocate desires people to sit at home all day, which means that claiming they must is a strawman.
>None of them require that person to desire people to sit at home all day.
I think this is a strawman to the anti-UBI camp's question.
"So you want people to sit at home all day and collect free money?"
If that was phrased as a assertion, then I'd agree with you that it's undeniably a strawman. It may be a disingenuous question, but if you're starmaning them it's not difficult that understand why someone would ask such a question in good faith. The asker thinks that it's a universal assumption that giving people free money will cause them to not work, so they're genuinely perplexed a proposal to give people free money.
There's a significant difference between "so you want people to sit at home all day and collect free money", and "so you want the people who sit at home all day to collect free money".
The former is a clear misrepresentation of the views of most UBI proponents. The latter is an accurate part of their views, albeit a loaded/(mis)leading statement.
It is technically a strawman because the interlocutor never said that--so you are arguing with something that wasn't said. If you phrased it, "While I have considered the possible advantages of your point, I, by contrast, am against UBI because it will obviously incentivize idleness," that would be both correct and not a logical fallacy.
Wanting UBI can be purely driven by a desire of a better world and belief that people will contribute more to society on average given space and resources to think and catch their breath.
Just because a minority might "sit at home all day and collect free money" doesn't mean the UBI proponent wants it on any level.
Projecting this want onto the proponent as part of their argument makes it a strawman.
I don't see how this is a strawman. UBI literally lets people receive free money even if they sit at home all day. At some level, a UBI proponent has to "want" this outcome. If you think that UBI wouldn't cause people to leave the workforce, that's a separate argument.