UBI really makes me think of AI-safety-world i-risk. i.e. Ikigai risk (feeling like you have a meaningful purpose in life).
Ikigai, or purpose, is a Japanese concept dating back to the Heian period in Japan. The Japanese word “iki” translates to life. Additionally, the “gai” portion of the word comes from the word “kai” meaning shell.
I'm not sure that UBI actually addresses this, and may be counter productive.
Is it not obvious that people would have more time to seek a meaningful life if they spent less time working?
The trick will be figuring out how to get people to actually do that, rather than just using the money to further participate in the same carrot/stick game that they're accustomed to.
How to get them to take a risk and start a business doing sobering w important, versus just buying the next larger SUV because that's supposedly going to make them happy.
This would necessarily[0] be a cultural thing, and particularly any mention of Japan means an implicit strong work culture stemming from their geographic situation[1]. And if it does turn out that there are enough people needing some externally imposed structure, something can always be simulated for them.
[0] Necessarily because there was a time when this wasn't a thing at all, before the birth of wage labor. Everyone had the opportunity to contribute as they saw fit.
[1] Japan is very poor in natural resources (oil, ores, etc), and so in order to participate in the global economy, the only thing they have to rely on is their human labor pool. And so they needed a society of extra hard workers to have a competitive edge in something.