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Elon Musk Predicts Automation Will Lead To A Universal Basic Income (mashable.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Mashable's new article about Tesla/SpaceX founder Elon Musk:
Tech innovators in the self-driving car and AI industries talk a lot about how many human jobs will be innovated out of existence, but they rarely explain what will happen to all those newly jobless humans. In an interview with CNBC on Friday, Musk said that he believes the solution to taking care of human workers who are displaced by robots and software is creating a (presumably government-backed) universal basic income for all. "There's a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation," said Musk. "I'm not sure what else one would do. That's what I think would happen."
And what will this world look like? "People will have time to do other things, more complex things, more interesting things," Musk told CNBC's interviewer. "Certainly more leisure time." President Obama has also talked about "redesigning the social compact" with MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito, and in August predicted the question of whether there's support for the Universal Basic Income is "a debate that we'll be having over the next 10 or 20 years."
And what will this world look like? "People will have time to do other things, more complex things, more interesting things," Musk told CNBC's interviewer. "Certainly more leisure time." President Obama has also talked about "redesigning the social compact" with MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito, and in August predicted the question of whether there's support for the Universal Basic Income is "a debate that we'll be having over the next 10 or 20 years."
However I'd argue that in the long term it's not even about the will of the companies, they'll be forced to
That is the biggest flaw in the UBI argument; that taxes can rise to a level which would support your UBI. They can't,for two reasons: 1) there simply isn't enough money to go around, and 2) when taxes get too high the profit incentive disappears and people won't want to operate businesses.
The alternative to no private industry is communism. And we've seen how that has turned out every time it's been attempted. Because again, there is no incentive to work.