Not everyone is good at coming up with a productive purpose on their own. A job lets those people adopt a purpose that gives their life some structure and meaning. Without it, people often waste away... all the people who die shortly after retirement, as an example. Add money into the mix, and that money can fund a drug habit as an escape for a lack of purpose. Drug overdoses spiked when the covid checks were sent out. Giving someone without purpose, and a drug habit, a bunch of free money can kill them.

I'm not opposed to the idea of UBI, I think we should at least set up the framework, so we can turn the dial up or down, depending on how things go with AI and robotics. The issues mentioned are some downsides I do think about and why I don't think it's as straightforward as "give everyone money and they'll start doing art."

I think universal healthcare alone would let a lot of people choose the job they want, instead of the job they feel they need.

The downside is shitty people don't need to learn to not be shitty. In order to work with other people you have to be socialized to some level of "is okay around other people". UBI removes that. The downside is the rest of society having to put up with shitty people.

It's a downside for some nebulous strawman that just barely exists outside of the support system UBI would provide. Far enough out to not experience the benefits but not far enough to be above it all.

Of course the strawman's proponents will use it as an example of why we should write the whole idea off entirely, rather than test the validity of the concern and discuss options that provide some form of equity to a wider population.