Chiming in as a former-ish member of the demographic you are just making stuff up about. There is no way to determine how much and how UBI would impact hikikomori because the demographic is inherently adverse to study.

I personally know that some crucial open source work is maintained by people with schizoid-avoidant spectrum issues. I know a lot of them but I won't out them here. hikikomori are driven to be invisible because their extreme pathological avoidance of attention. You don't know them and their contributions because they don't want you to know that they still live at home, out of their car door dashing because no company ever hires them, are shut-in because of serious unhealed trauma, are still deeply in poverty in such a wealthy industry etc.

A lot of these humans if given a no pressure handout of cash would likely contribute more to society. Would most not contribute? idk. But I do know that the contributions of those who would might offset all the others.

Many prominent pseudonymous devs have had hikikomori traits. _why practically inspired a generation of Ruby devs. visualidiot (RIP) was a crucial driver behind a lot of web dev culture in the 2010s. Heck, I made significant contributions to Joomla and WP themes back in the day -- you have probably used sites with themes or plugins I made. Also I ran a blog a decade ago that used to rank prominently in google and receive dozens of emails a month from people struggling with mental illness -- many people crediting me with saving their lives. Surely that is something of value to society.

Don't go around spreading bullshit like it is facts about a group of people we know little about.

People who are specifically not employed because they aren't motivated to do anything at all don't seem to be the best sample for what average people could do if they had more free time during their waking hours.

> The hikikomori[1] or NEETs ought to be a hotbed of creative works if your hypothesis is true.

This seems a non-sequitur. People whose motivation is isolation are unlikely to try to generate anything for other people.

But your general idea is correct - is there group where motivated people don't need to worry about money?

Well yes - we see this in artist colonies and indeed in entrepreneurial retreats like https://www.recurse.com/

Counterpoint to your counterpoint: the flourishing of the arts in Bohemian districts[1] in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Maybe there’s a feedback loop with societal expectations regarding the hikikomori / NEETs? The more they are demonized as unproductive, the less productive they become.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemianism

a) I'm not sure it logically follows that the hikikomori would be a particularly artistic group, thus don't understand the assertion; b) how do we know they aren't? By definition, they wouldn't be out promoting their works or gaining recognition.

Also, there is at least one example of UBI contributing to an increase in activity:

"According to the research, 31% of BIA recipients reported an increased ability to sustain themselves through arts work alone, and the number of people who reported low pay as a career barrier went down from one third to 17%. These changes were identified after the first six months of the scheme and remained stable as the scheme continued." [1]

[1] https://musiciansunion.org.uk/news/ireland-s-basic-income-fo...

Hikikomori seems to be largely a symptom of mental illness. NEETs almost by definition are not productive.

The fact that these groups are not producing mass amounts of creative works in no way implies that currently-productive people would not produce significantly more creative works if they had the time and resources to do so.

NEETs are, by definition, people who are either unwilling or unable to do anything productive, so I don't think they are a good example. I expect you'd get better results if you include the people who are employed today.

Um, hikikomori are a hotbed of creative works, though. Your entire premise is false. I don't know that you could get reliable statistics proving this claim, but Japan likely has the highest number of creatives per capita of any country in the world, and a ton of them are NEETs who spend their time drawing fanart or writing trashy webnovels. The vast majority of this creative work isn't commercially successful, of course, which is part of why they're NEETs.

No that wouldn’t. If the zeitgeist, culture, society at large are antagonizing toward you, if you are meant to feel like a useless negative part of society, why would we expect amazing output from them?

This reinforces others talking about the flaws of hustle and grind culture. The status quo create the conditions for the negatives and then point to that and say “see”.

The UK music culture of the 1960s was in large part due to the "dole" or cash payments to poor people.

and yet their hypothesis is true, there are already many people, with or without UBI, that volunteer, create things and in general help people surrounding them without any reward and they are the backbone of every society, not the career-chasers