That was the reason even Milton Friedman, otherwise pretty much the opposite of a socialist, though that a basic income was a good option even in western countries. His view was that just giving people unrestricted cash would cut out much of the corruption, inefficiency, and market distortion that creeps in once you start giving intermediaries the power to put conditions and restrictions on support. For example, with food stamps, he was skeptical that the restrictions requiring people to buy "proper" food with them produced better results overall than just giving people the equivalent amount in cash and letting them decide. For one thing, if individual recipients are choosing their food, rather than picking it from a list of food-stamp-approved choices, it completely removes the whole business of lobbying to be on the approved list, plus the bureaucracy of administering the list.
The problem is that the economy is often seen as more than a mechanism for efficient allocation and transfer of resources: for many, it's also a source and enforcer of moral order.
"People who work hard and play by the rules should have a shot at success. People who don't work shouldn't be given handouts. Corporations who misbehave shouldn't be bailed out, because they're just incented to misbehave again. We should drug test welfare recipients even though it ultimately costs us more than it saves us, because drug addicts shouldn't get welfare." etc etc etc.
I'm not saying it's true, but in all of those cases it intuitively seems like a bad idea to encourage/not discourage those behaviors. Giving people handouts might give them an incentive not to work, giving corporations handouts lessens the incentive to not fail (and keeps the competitors which did better from gaining a larger market share), refusing drug addicts welfare might encourage them to get help, etc.
I'm not saying these things are necessarily true, but it certainly seems reasonable if you don't know otherwise. The point being that it's not because people necessarily see these things as moral issues, but just possible incentive problems.
