Some opponents of a Swiss guaranteed income also attacked it as a return to Marxist economics, even if the idea has far older roots, dating to the 16th-century writings of Thomas More and the 18th-century works of Thomas Paine.

After World War II, the concept of a guaranteed income was promoted as a way of redistributing income by some free-market economists led by Milton Friedman, who in part argued that it would be more efficient than the bureaucracy of running dozens of separate programs to help the poor.

Still, the current discussion, in Switzerland and elsewhere, has been not only about wealth redistribution but also about how modern societies can continue to create jobs while pushing technological advances such as factory robots and driverless trucks.

Campaigners in favor of a guaranteed income used robots as street stunts to warn what the jobless society of the future would entail. Some people gave out 10-franc notes at the Zurich’s main train station while supporters in Geneva set up, on a public esplanade, a giant banner that asked, “What would you do if your income were taken care of?”

“I understand that a new generation is worried about how and where young people will next find work, but this proposal was pure nonsense,” said Curdin Pirovino, a Swiss industrial designer. “You cannot give a society the idea that money is available for doing nothing.”

But at a Sunday market in Geneva, several people defended the proposal in the context of returning to a more equitable society.

Some also presented their vote as another challenge to industrialization, similar to their motivation for buying organic food from the stalls of local farmers rather than cheaper supermarkets. A third of voters in Geneva backed the idea of a guaranteed income.