Thread: A guaranteed basic income for all

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

The truth of the matter is that wanton consumerism is unsustainable.

Probably, but she's trying her best.

Originally Posted by Norton

Times change and automation always replaces humans. Usualy because it does things better, faster and cheaper than a human. My first job as a kid was in a gas station pumping gas. No more in developed countries. All self serve. One of the nice things here in the LoS. Got humans doing a brilliant job.

Re a guaranteed base income, I would not support it. Put the money into job skill training. Always best to teach folks to fish rather than give folks fish.

Give people free money to sit their ass and not produce?
Totally agree that job training should come first.
These useless college degrees in woymen's studies etc need to be scrapped and send folks to learn welding, electricity fields & coding.

Originally Posted by Switch

Not necessarily. Give your people a guaranteed income, but they are only allowed to spend it on home made goods. What if they buy Chinese white goods, German cars or Japanese technology? Your tax money goes to a competitor. Where do immigrants fit in?
Recycle your tax income through home based industry.

Don't see how to restrict buying choices in a free society, unless passively through tariffs and taxes, but then the foreign producers end up needing other consumers to buy their stuff, and reciprocate with similar restrictions on their own imports.

Maybe could work in a market that's self-contained and produces most everything to the highest standards.

It's an interesting idea, the sticking point is where the money is going to come from to pay for it, corporations have all the money, governments are bought and paid for by corporations ...by what mechanism will governments start taxing corporations?

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Give people free money to sit their ass and not produce?
Totally agree that job training should come first.
These useless college degrees in woymen's studies etc need to be scrapped and send folks to learn welding, electricity fields & coding.

FFS the thread is when there is no jobs... so train people all u like there aint no jobs . this aint kansas. u are democracy at work, no fucking idea wot the program is. still get to vote.

Originally Posted by jabir

While tech and innovation replaces humans with machines it also creates new jobs in different areas, often requiring new skills which is good for any work force.

Not on any comparable level to the amount of jobs that will be lost. Clearly you are one of the posters on this thread that has no idea what is coming.

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

These useless college degrees in woymen's studies etc need to be scrapped and send folks to learn welding, electricity fields & coding.

You are completely clueless. Welding will be one of the first jobs to be gone completely in the next ten years. Go do some research on automation someplace other than your right wing propaganda sites.

^
The disrupters are coming and its going to be a bloodbath.

You can look to what happened at the beginning of the industrial revolution for a sneak preview.

I can't see how it will be resolved other than a huge cull.

Originally Posted by bsnub

You are completely clueless. Welding will be one of the first jobs to be gone completely in the next ten years. Go do some research on automation someplace other than your right wing propaganda sites.

Perhaps they can get a welding job in the auto industry,

Originally Posted by foobar

^
The disrupters are coming and its going to be a bloodbath.

You can look to what happened at the beginning of the industrial revolution for a sneak preview.

I can't see how it will be resolved other than a huge cull.

Nature has its own recipe for the occasional cull to ease and sustain populations; seems to have worked fine until recently.

Originally Posted by jabir

Nature has its own recipe for the occasional cull to ease and sustain populations; seems to have worked fine until recently.

Worked fine for whom?

Envision a day in the future where vitually everything a human needs is provided via automation.



No one works, no income to tax. Where does the money come from to pay for it all in this utopia?

Originally Posted by Norton

Envision a day in the future where vitually everything a human needs is provided via automation.



No one works, no income to tax. Where does the money come from to pay for it all in this utopia?

From automation of course. I bet Maslow never saw that coming.

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

Worked fine for whom?

For Nature; do you think she cares wtf happens to us? We're special, but only to ourselves.

Originally Posted by Norton

Envision a day in the future where vitually everything a human needs is provided via automation.



No one works, no income to tax. Where does the money come from to pay for it all in this utopia?

UBI would cost less than current social welfare packages, which it would replace in many cases, and does not replace work or productivity.

Originally Posted by lob

FFS the thread is when there is no jobs... so train people all u like there aint no jobs . this aint kansas. u are democracy at work, no fucking idea wot the program is. still get to vote.

There will always be jobs.
Human ingenuity will demand it.
Learn to Code...

If you believe the hype, then Artificial Intelligence (AI) is set to change the world in dramatic ways soon. Nay-sayers claim it will lead to, at best, rising unemployment and civil unrest, and at worst, the eradication of humanity. Advocates, on the other hand, are telling us to look forward to a future of leisure and creativity as robots take care of the drudgery and routine.

A third camp – probably the largest – are happy to admit that the forces of change which are at work are too complicated to predict and, for the moment, everything is up in the air. Previous large-scale changes to the way we work (past industrial revolutions) may have been disruptive in the short-term. However, in the long term what happened was a transfer of labor from countryside to cities, and no lasting downfall of society.

However, as author Calum Chace points out in his latest book 'Artificial Intelligence and the Two Singularities' this time there’s one big difference. Previous industrial revolutions involved replacing human mechanical skills with tools and machinery. This time it’s our mental functions which are being replaced – particularly our ability to make predictions and decisions. This is something which has never happened before in human history, and no one exactly knows what to expect.

When I recently met with Culum Chase in London, he told me “A lot of people think it didn’t happen in the past, so it won’t happen now – but everything is different now.

“In the short run, AI will create more jobs as we learn how to work better with machines. But it’s important to think on a slightly longer timescale than the next 10 to 15 years.”

One guiding idea has always been that as machines take care of menial work (be that manual labor, augmenting the abilities of skilled professionals such doctors, lawyers, and engineers, or making routine decisions), humans will be free to spend their time on leisure or creative pursuits.

However, as Chace says, that would require the existence of the “abundance economy” – a Star Trek-like utopia where the means of filling our basic needs - sustenance and shelter - are so highly available that they are essentially free.

Without this happening, humans will find themselves in a situation where they have to go out and compete for whatever paid jobs are still available to humans in the robot-dominated workforce. As a simple example, a fully automated farm would, in theory, provide food at a far cheaper cost than one staffed with human farm hands, machinery operators, administrative staff, distributions operatives and security guards. However, if the owner of the farm still parts with his goods to the highest bidder, there would be inequalities in how that food is distributed among the populace and the potential for a poverty-struck underclass which lacks access to adequate sustenance. Nothing new there – of course, this underclass has always existed throughout history. However, it doesn’t exactly fit with the idea of the Star Trek utopia we need to have in place before we can comfortably hand the reigns to the machines.

This makes it something of a “chicken and egg” problem, and the ideal way for it to play out would seemingly be a gradual and managed transition to a smart machine-driven economy. This process would involve careful oversight of which human roles were being automated, and ensuring that the “plentiful” resources are in place to support those who unfortunately do find that they are being replaced, rather than merely “augmented.”

The problem is that this would require two elements: A concerted and informed effort from governments and regulators to understand the scale of the challenge and enable the right framework for it to happen. And an acceptance by those leading the charge – the tech industry – that there is a more important motive than profit for getting the change right.

Neither of those seems likely to happen any time soon. Despite the “make the world a better place” ethos, big tech’s overriding aim is still to generate growth and profit for their enterprises.

Also, managing the political change could be an even tougher job than persuading a tech CEO that she shouldn’t be focusing on revenue or profits.

“People aren’t stupid,” Chace says, while discussing how automated driving systems look set to erode the employment opportunities for humans whose trade is driving.

“They will see these robots driving around taking people’s jobs, and think ‘it won’t be long until they come for mine’ – and then there will be a panic. And panics lead to very nasty populist politicians, of the left or the right, being elected.”

Chace also doesn’t believe that the concept of universal basic income – currently being trialed in some Scandinavian countries – is the right answer, or at least not in its current form.

“The problem with universal basic income is that it’s basic. If all we can do is give people a basic income, we’ve failed, and society probably isn’t saveable.”

A future where the majority of humans live a subsistence-level income funded by the fruits of a robotic labor force, while a “1 percent” upper class – those in control of the robots – build their empires and reach for the stars – isn’t appealing to those with an egalitarian mindset. However, it could be the direction we’re heading in.

However, argues Chace, it’s not too late to plot a better course.

“We’ve all got a job to do – to wake up our political leaders who are not thinking about this, and wake up our tech leaders – who seem to be deeply in denial.

“If we do grasp the challenge we can have an amazing world for ourselves, our kids and our grandkids, a world where machines do the boring stuff and humans do the worthwhile, interesting stuff.”

Calum Chace’s newest book, Artificial Intelligence and The Two Singularities, is available now.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernard...ll-capitalism/

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

But this conversation is not whether nature will be better of without as but rather, will we be better of without jobs. And since we want to talk about nature , will nature be better of if we didn't have jobs.

I thought the conversation was about UBI, which was never intended for nor would work as as a substitute for jobs but rather as a social safety net and a foundation for greater economic freedom.

Originally Posted by DrB0b

I thought the conversation was about UBI, which was never intended for nor would work as as a substitute for jobs but rather as a social safety net and a foundation for greater economic freedom.

But what happens when the money runs out?

Believe we're back to 'Give a man a fish & he'll eat for a day...'

Society will always have poor. There are folks who are just natural-born slackers and it wouldn't take too long for those who get up every morning and go to work and observe their neighbor idling his time away for the 'social construct' to break down.

There's an incentive to get off welfare but with UBI there isn't.

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

There's an incentive to get off welfare but with UBI there isn't.

As usual you are missing the point. The reason that UBI is being discussed it that automation is going to wipe out millions of jobs in the short term future. There will not be enough jobs for people to transition to other industries. But then again you live in a fake news bubble so it is no surprise that you have no idea of what is about to happen.

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

But what happens when the money runs out?

Why should the money run out? You might laugh but it is a legitimate question.
I read that the wealth of the top 2% can end world hunger seven times over, how about we end world hunger only once over,and they still remain fabulously wealthy.
The truth of the matter is that wealth will still be generated after some humans are removed from the production cycle, otherwise why would anyone introduce automation if it will make them poorer???
Corporations introduce automation to become wealthier, not poorer!!