I'll chime in because I always hear this argument and I don't see it as a particularly good one.
Take cleaning toilets, for example. If no one wants to do it then it will become more expensive to find people to do it. That will drive others to come up with an automated solution to the problem that, while expensive, will be cheaper than paying someone to do it. Eventually someone will come up with a solution that maybe wasn't even considered before, like self-cleaning toilets or something.
Now everyone is better off (toilets are clean and no one needs to clean them), because people were free to do what they enjoy.
This is why I believe in basic income, where people don't need to clean toilets for a living, and the actual issue of "how do we, as a society, get clean toilets, without submitting anyone to the awful task of cleaning them?" comes up for debate. Right now we don't talk about it because our system makes some people's livelihoods depend on their cleaning toilets, so they have to do it for the benefit of others, even though they'd rather do something else. Basic income is a very efficient way to force those problems to be solved, via the ingenuity of those that like problem-solving (entrepreneurs), because it makes it so that it's less likely that you can force someone to work doing something they'd rather not do.
> people don't need to clean toilets for a living,
I swear to you, our janitor is the happiest, hardest working person in the building. Everyone looks up to him. But I can totally see where he couldn't work at McDonald's, let alone do QA runs on lab systems (a lab tech's job), or diagnose disease. And I think a genuine source of his happiness is having a job. Basic income doesn't solve the problem of feeling valued.
>Take cleaning toilets, for example. If no one wants to do it then it will become more expensive to find people to do it.
IMO Here is the problem with what you are saying. Who actually cleans toilets today? Immigrants (largely illegal ones). This is just like the goods we import from China. There is a slave class of people who clean toilets and work in Chinese factories. I agree with the economic principles where innovation will drive improvement, but illegal immigration and free trade interfere with this.
I hope that basic income passes in Norway. It would be quite interesting to see what happens.
Take cleaning toilets, for example. If no one wants to do it then it will become more expensive to find people to do it. That will drive others to come up with an automated solution to the problem that, while expensive, will be cheaper than paying someone to do it. Eventually someone will come up with a solution that maybe wasn't even considered before, like self-cleaning toilets or something.
Now everyone is better off (toilets are clean and no one needs to clean them), because people were free to do what they enjoy.
This is why I believe in basic income, where people don't need to clean toilets for a living, and the actual issue of "how do we, as a society, get clean toilets, without submitting anyone to the awful task of cleaning them?" comes up for debate. Right now we don't talk about it because our system makes some people's livelihoods depend on their cleaning toilets, so they have to do it for the benefit of others, even though they'd rather do something else. Basic income is a very efficient way to force those problems to be solved, via the ingenuity of those that like problem-solving (entrepreneurs), because it makes it so that it's less likely that you can force someone to work doing something they'd rather not do.
That's just how I understand it.