That makes sense, though I keep thinking about people who are (for various reasons) fundamentally non-rational actors. Those with mental illnesses or drug abuse issues, etc.
I think you'd find that drug abusers are much less likely to commit crimes once they have a steady flow of money. "Well now we're paying people to do drugs!" But we're doing that in the first place, through welfare and food stamps, etc. And if we don't pay enough, they steal. So in one instance we ignore the problem and it ends up costing us, in another instance we accept that there are people who are going to withhold contributing to society and we give them their check anyway because they'd just end up taking it.
As far as mental illness goes, that is an interesting problem I don't think GBI would solve. Sure you can give a schizophrenic person a check, but are they going to cash it? Or would you still have some sort of public facility for mentally disabled people? I would hope so.
Those are fair concerns. Mental illness is a serious problem as an estimated 1 in 4 adults suffers from some form of mental illness in a given year. Perhaps, those problems could be solved with conservatorships, better healthcare, and private services built around providing basic needs. The latter is done for free by volunteers in many cities already; Meals on Wheels, for example.
