I'm not for UBI but I totally get & agree with the reasoning behind it; including yours here which I think is pretty dead on as to why it would be beneficial (in theory). In fact the "stealing from our future" part jumped out at me as similar to the way I think of societal debt cycles (the kind Ray Dalio talks about in his books - short-and long-term [~10yr; ~100yr] cyclical sine waves of waxing & waning [in/de]flation). You probably would avoid taking on a ton of debt during the peak of a given credit cycle (when rates are at their highest %), especially if you know you're simply fking yourself that much harder than if you were to take on the debt at some point in the future, when rates are much more likely to be low, and thus save you a ton of money in the long run.

Same thing with putting in extra effort at work. No reason to actually take on the extra hustle if it pays off minimally when all is said & done anyway. Better to say no thank you, I'd rather not take on a burden of effort-debt yet and wait till it makes significantly more sense to do so