EDIT: I'm actually a believer in Basic Income, but this is a silly argument. Bad arguments do a disservice to the idea of Basic Income and make the battle uphill that much harder.

I read this two days ago when it was posted, and it didn't sit well with me because it didn't make sense. I hand to think about it for while about why it didn't make sense, but I have it now.

Lets break this down:

We’re the only species who must pay to exist

We're really the only species that uses money regularly. So at first glance the literal statement is true but irrelevant: We're the only species that must pay, because we're the only species that uses money. So the literal definition is that other species don't have to pay. True, but they don't get to use money to store work. Our society has determined that "money" is a method to store "work".

What the author is saying in spirit is: We're the only species who has to work to exist.

If indeed I have the author's meaning right, then this is clearly false. Every other species has to do some level of work to exist. Even parasites will not have a second generation without working to procreate. This brings us to the author's next statement:

In a private property system where all the land was claimed by others before we were born, and everything we need to stay alive costs money....

If you're willing to lower yourself to an animal that doesn't use money with all of the freedom and consequences that comes with that, you don't need to spend a time on land, food, shelter or ANYTHING. There are huge swaths of land all over the world where you could live in the wilderness likely your entire life and never see another human being who will bother you. Most of northern Canada and northern Russia and completely unpopulated for hundreds of hectares. Same with lots of the middle part of Australia. If you're willing to live off the land without modern medicine, communication, entertainment, or societal infrastructure then there's no one out there to force you to pay for anything.

The author goes off the rails in suggesting an non-human species, which has no benefits of humanity, has to pay for nothing but lives and dies off the land and at the will of other predators and nature, is equal to the life of a human in modern society with modern medicine, agriculture, law, defense, technology and entertainment.

To the author: If you want to live like a non-human species (an animal) there are plenty of places you can do that. No one will stop you. No one will make you pay anything. Have at it! ~~If you want the benefits of other people's work in a society, then you have to contribute something back to that society that society values.*~~ EDIT: I'm removing the last sentence because it needs more context for a much larger argument. The rest of my post stands.