I'm not sure I understand the leap in logic there. If people have a reasonably comfortable minimum income regardless of what they do, how does that induce runaway speculation? Would venture capital firms not be as hesitant to hand out money to people who consistently failed to return on investment? Granted, VC firms could still get caught up in fads like in the dot-com bubble, but I don't foresee a minimum income really driving (very rich, well above the minimum income level) VCs into higher risk taking behavior.
Yeah, what if instead of enough money for a year, you were provided a "reasonably comfortable minimum income" indefinitely? In other words, imagine if somehow magically (or with technology :-) ) most of the basic things needed in life were provided to you. What would you do? Have you been taught to deal with lots of free time? No probably not. We have only been taught to work work work!!
Now imagine if most of society had lots of free time? As a teacher, I think we could do so much more if there was less emphasis on having a job and more emphasis...
In the open thread, moridinamael hypothesized that LWers would be willing to take more risks in order to become rich if they had a financial safety net. This seems like an idea worth exploring further.
What would you do if you had a financial safety net (maybe a year's worth of living expenses) to fall back on if your venture failed?