I always pitch universal wage and refusal of work to most people with whom I have meaningful conversations. By their reaction I'm certain that these ideas will be unpopular for the rest of our lifetime.
The best you can do is to keep preaching them if you believe in them. If the other person is a thinker, most people don't want to be thinkers, you might try to pitch them post-scarcity economics or explain that historically people never worked as much as they do nowadays. Also explain that most human progress came from 'play time' not 'work time'.
You won't change the world, just accept that, the world does not want to be changed. Most people invest a lot of effort in complying with the status quo. It takes generations to change this kind of social conventions.
Also,
"Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban ... At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals ... If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
-George Orwell
My wife and I travel a great deal and have had the chance to spend at least a little time in relatively undeveloped areas where people still fish, farm and so on to provide some or all of their regular diet.
Note that it being a primarily agrarian situation is important. The situation is very different for poor people working in factories for example.
>or explain that historically people never worked as much as they do nowadays
One striking thing is how much free time people in these areas have. Particularly in the afternoon its really common to see lots of people (children, adults and old people) simply hanging out.
Typically they have very limited capacity to store food so once you have enough fish for the next day or two, for example, there is very little value in catching any more. Although there are periods of very hard work (planting crops and harvesting crops in particular) there are plenty of occasions when the day's work is done relatively quickly. Your home is adequate against the weather, firewood is adequately stockpiled and your family's food supply is secure for the near to medium term so there is little value in performing additional work.
I really think we have to pitch it along the lines of the Alaska permanent fund (which is in fact a guaranteed minimum income, just smaller in magnitude than what most people think of) and is never opposed by anyone ever.
For example, it might be more politically palatable to say,
"Dear John Doe, here is your check for the oil and coal revenues that were collected in your name from beneath your homeland. Also there is some money from the toll bridges that we operate for you and the sales taxes we collected in your name from merchants operating in your area. Btw's we also gave the same check to all your neighbors because they live here too."
>The best you can do is to keep preaching them if you believe in them.
Why not just start now? There's not much standing in the way of a group of people voluntarily providing a minimum income to impoverished people right now.
I honestly don't intend this as a snarky response. I'm genuinely curious if supporters of minimum income would provide someone else a minimum income voluntarily, right now.
The best you can do is to keep preaching them if you believe in them. If the other person is a thinker, most people don't want to be thinkers, you might try to pitch them post-scarcity economics or explain that historically people never worked as much as they do nowadays. Also explain that most human progress came from 'play time' not 'work time'.
You won't change the world, just accept that, the world does not want to be changed. Most people invest a lot of effort in complying with the status quo. It takes generations to change this kind of social conventions.
Also,
"Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban ... At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals ... If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." -George Orwell