The largest and most instructive one is, I think, Facebook. And tumblr. To a lesser extent reddit. For shits and giggles, 4chan and SA.
And if you look at the latter of those, you'll see kids making things by themselves in large amounts. You could take that as support for basic income - everybody under 18 pretty much lives on basic income and then some. A lot of them make really fun things and publish on the internet.
My hunch is that if we do get basic income, it will take one to two generations before the floodgates really open and our problem will not be people being too uncreative, but exactly the opposite.
The idea that the cat memes and horrendously inane linkbait headlines that litter the social internet might be representative of the creativity that could be unleashed in even greater volume with basic income is the best argument in favour of "worthless" mid level marketing managers and the forty-hour workweek I've ever heard.
Don't get me wrong, I've seen dilettantes' blog articles that are more thought provoking than supposed social science classic writings, but in general the more user-generated areas of the internet - populated by adults as much as kids - we'd still mostly waste the free time we got anyway.
(I've been distracted from a bit of volunteering I was going to do in order to add a comment on a social site that won't be read by anyone after tomorrow, and probably won't be remembered by many ten minutes after they've finished reading it. QED, I guess)
Your comment is definitely interesting, and I will remember it for more than 10 minutes. But the real question isn't "is what people do in their free time a good thing?", it is "is what they could do in their free time better for society than what they are doing at work now?" What are the hidden personal (not using your time optimally, lower happiness, etc) and societal (more stress, higher medical bills, etc) costs of people constantly doing things they hate? Not saying I have an answer, but it would be nice to find out.
That's a little bit unkind. I mean, I'm naturally inclined to believe you, but the more I think about it, the more I think it's wrong.
4Chan might be dismissed as "cat memes", but it's also a massive worldwide experiment in totally anonymous communication. That is a very new thing, and although you might not find cat memes to be all that impressive, intrinsically they aren't much different from poetry: cat memes and poetry are both about expressions as an art form.
Linkbait headlines suck too, sure, but it's also a symptom of an effort to get more people to read news than ever have before. How well-read was your average teenager in 1900? And now? There are totally average people walking around now with nearly encyclopedic knowledge of multiple subjects, in their heads, and what they cannot recall from that article they read the other day with the linkbait headline, they can still look up on a mobile device.
I totally don't get the whole doge thing. It's the first social fad that has come along that has made me feel old. I can't relate to it, it's alien, it's foreign, it's weird, it doesn't make any sense. But, I think probably that's just because I don't understand it, not because it isn't interesting.
Cat memes are fun. Mid level marketing managers impede my product's progress.
I'm also not entirely convinced making cat memes all day would be wasting time - if you do it long enough, you'll evolve it into a proper art form. The whole reason you have cat or any other kind of memes is because they let you succintly communicate something that's both new and would otherwise take a lot of explaining. It kind of sucks though when other people then take your meme and run with it making it say other things and diluting its meaning until it's nothing more than a reference to an echo of itself, posted only to show how hip you are with these new memes. Which is why cat memes (outside of one or two very specific images) and rage comics (all of them) are not welcome on 4chan any more.
Seems to me that Reddit and other internet communities serve as arguments against this "unleashing" of creativity, as they suffer from the 1% rule ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) ). In other words, if the idea is that Reddit serves as a microcosm of what basic income would do, then it suggests that 1% of people on basic income would be creating and 99% would be simply consuming.
So you believe that only 1% of the population enjoys or is capable of creation? That is BS.
1% of a given group A may be doing the creating, however many of the other 99% of group A may well be active in group B and be a creator there.
Additionally, I would guess that the percentage of of group that are active participants goes up as the group size goes down. In my DnD group the DM makes up ~15% of the group.
"if the idea is that Reddit serves as a microcosm of what basic income would do" then that idea seems obviously flawed to me.
>1% of a given group A may be doing the creating, however many of the other 99% of group A may well be active in group B and be a creator there.
The Free Market is structured along this assumption. 1% of people will make software, 1% will make music, 1% will farm, 1% will teach, 1% will build chemical plants, etc. etc. but they will each enjoy the other 99%'s productions. The assumption, of course, is that this will naturally fall into place. (Automation and even globalization/outsourcing threw a wrench into the system).
However, this "Law of Conformity" (mentioned in the great-grandparent comment) still applies in this 'new age' of 'basic income'. People will still converge on commonly esteemed things i.e. there will be A LOT of musicians, painters, filmmakers, etc. (many of whom will make crap stuff -- as is already noticeable on certain 'sections' of the internet).
Also,one of the real (current) reasons you never get payed a lot of money for helping people is because: the people that need the most help usually cannot pay you (or at least not pay you well).
The people buying your software, art, etc. are buying it after their own needs are well met (usually). That is the basic premise of consumerism. The morality of consumerism is an issue all on its own.
But it is also arguable that the Free market itself converges (or causes people to converge) due to this "Law of Conformity". The past few generations have pushed their kids like crazy to opt for 'better paying' careers, simply for the fact that they are 'better paying'.
Why? The Law of Conformity, I guess. :P An on topic video came out today by a fairly popular YouTuber, on the last point I mentioned (about the high-pay career pushing): http://youtu.be/16pVXq7Lscg
That's a possibility, but on the other hand you also have to factor in that the behavior of people currently on reddit is not only skewed 1) demographically, but 2) also affected by current society.
Regarding 1, I'd venture a guess that people on reddit are generally younger, and reddit as a community is bigger (especially if you stick with the 'main' reddits.). Many of my friends feel discouraged to be creative on reddit because of the sheer volume of creativity already there. They share their creativity in smaller workshops or among friends.
And considering 2, a lot of people have to use significant energy to do 'bullshit jobs', so when they come home they have little left for creative expression.
I lean towards the 'it's worth a shot' approach. I've been freelancing for a few years now, and in my constant battle against seeing my job as just a job, I notice a sharp increase in creativity when I get the 'money' part out of the way (via a fun or lucrative project), and when the job routines fades from my system (after some time spent not working actively on a lucrative-but-slightly-boring project).
Furthermore, if I look at my younger, more carefree self and at my younger siblings and their friends, I'm amazed at the creativity. They play minecraft instead of more consumer-style games, they tinker with electronics, and generally, after the novelty of 'doing nothing' wears off, seek out creativity with a passion. And this doesn't seem to be a specific subtype of people (geeks, creatives, whatever).
The largest and most instructive one is, I think, Facebook. And tumblr. To a lesser extent reddit. For shits and giggles, 4chan and SA.
And if you look at the latter of those, you'll see kids making things by themselves in large amounts. You could take that as support for basic income - everybody under 18 pretty much lives on basic income and then some. A lot of them make really fun things and publish on the internet.
My hunch is that if we do get basic income, it will take one to two generations before the floodgates really open and our problem will not be people being too uncreative, but exactly the opposite.