Slashdot Mirror
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."
Money only has value if you can exchange it for other people's work. I'm not sure if machines will accept it...
> People will have time to do other things, more complex things, more interesting things
And if it has value, it will be called work.
Guys, Elon Musk just invented work! What a genius.
And there isn't really any other way.
From the 1930s Keynes predicted a 15 hour working week. In the 60s and 70s a three day weekend was predicted. What actually happens is that some people have to work harder than ever for fear of losing their jobs while others have no work and live in poverty.
The test is whether Musk would be willing to pay a significantly higher corporation tax to fund the basic income.
His job is to sell you the idea of his company. In order to do that, he comes up with fanciful notions that will make you feel good so you think good things about him and his company. This is just advertising and has the same truth quotient as politicians kissing babies in front of cameras when in private, they eat babies. UBI is the socialist dream repackaged, and will fail for the same reasons Venezuela has fallen. When you give out money, it becomes less valuable. When you make it more difficult to acquire, it becomes more valuable. This value is measured in terms of what people will trade for it, not the denominations.
Alternative Right.
We have to make machine work taxable. Then we'll have the funds to cross finance a UBI or some other model.
It would also move the tipping point where machine work is more cost effective than human labor. I mean it's pretty unfair as it is. A machine designed for a specific task is usually way faster at the task and more precise than a human and on top of that, a employer usually pays taxes on an employee. Not to mention the taxes the employee himself has to pay on his salary.
Did he hack into the simulation to peek at our probable future?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Elon Musk says: Don't have people aboard rockets while fueling them. Just in case something goes wrong.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
There's a history of visionaries predicting utopian scenarios including a greater share of leisure time as a result of automation. John Maynard Keynes famously predicted a 15 hour working week.
It's based on the idea that there's a certain amount of work that needs to be done, and once it's automated people have nothing to do. However, the work that really that "needs" to be done was automated away during the Agricultural Revolution in the 1700's and 1800's. 90% of the work we're doing now (and probably closer to 100% of slashdotters' work) doesn't *need* to be done, but we do it anyway.
What the visionaries don't take into account is that the top two levels of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs don't work like the bottom two levels. The first small part of our work fulfils the basic needs like food water and shelter, then we carry on working in pursuit of higher needs, such as prestige and a sensation that we're fulfilling our potential. These needs are relative to what everyone else is accomplishing.
This is why people will carry on working long weeks long after automation takes away their manual labour jobs. In fact, automation has lead to longer working weeks, as manual labour is replaced with office work that can physically be done for longer. People will work for as long as they can to compete with their peers
Back to Elon's preiction. What will actually happen is that in the short term, people laid off as a result of automation will suffer and be angry, and in the long term the economy will adjust to the excess supply of cheap labour and invent new ways to use it, not necessarily as pleasant as the old manual jobs.
foo mane padme hum
When most of the work is automated, and therefor the opportunity for most of the people to provide for themselves is gone, there simply is no other option.
In such an environment capitalism becomes untenable because it will have become a winner takes all game on a global scale, leaving the rest with absolutely nothing. The first signs of this happening have been visible for quite a while already, it is the massive wave of consolidation going on in all industries, leaving us with bigger and bigger companies and less and less competition.
Take this to the process to logical capitalistic end, and it is obvious unmitigated capitalism will not work anymore. Something drastic will have to change in our worldview regarding the rules of ownership and fair distribution of wealth, or it will end in a bloody revolution.
UBI seems the most likely candidate. But on its own it is not enough. People will simply not accept that a very few people will own everything while they will have to live on a "handout, however generous the UBI will be. Because at that time it will not be about money and wealth alone anymore, it will also be about power and who makes the decisions.
As odd as it me seem to most americans, the (far) future may be more like communism proper, not the totalitarian version we have seen sofar, than anything else.
The automation problem will end one of two ways.
Universal basic income or related economic solution.
OR.
A lot less humans thanks to automated killing.
Grim. But option 2 is far more likely given the people that run the world.
On Tuesday, November 8, 2016 enough people voted for Hillary Clinton that she won the presidency. During her first three months of office, she implemented a UBI and raised taxes to pay for it.
Under this plan, every household in America receives $30,000 a year. The USA is able to keep borrowing on the basis of the strength of its brand, and the $28 trillion debt is not going to be a problem because the government is in fact making money from this scheme: it borrows, pays out benefits, the population grows, and it gets more taxes, so it can borrow more.
However, the problem is that since $30,000 is pegged as the entry level that people can pay, costs catch up with this rate. Apartments that were once $500 a month are now $800 per month. Food prices go up as well. As a result, to live comfortably, you need about $40,000 per household minimum per year.
In 2020, the people will vote again. Whoever promises $40,000 a year in UBI will win, even though this is obviously a financial disaster for government as spending will have outpaced the borrow-spend-tax scheme.
Another problem has reared its head. Because America is now giving out free money, people are flooding across the borders. This means that government will need to pay more, to more people, just in order to keep this program going.
Parallels to Obamacare are mentioned for the first time.
Others point to the failure of European socialism. Yes, yes, there are all these great benefits... but we have to constantly bring in new people to work and be taxed to pay for the previous generation, which means that if population rises, the government goes bankrupt. The same problem afflicts the USA as it considers how to pay for the Millennials, the second-biggest generation ever.
Gift-giving programs like this always turn into runaway spirals.
Alternative Right.
Let me put forth a simple challenge: based on the budget data of 2015 for your own country, show where the money is going to come from.
The final equation should show this: (number of recipients) * (yearly sum paid) = (total income state) - (other expenditures state)
Show the following ***numbers*** (i.e. no handwaving):
- Number of recipients: this is either the total number of adults, or the total number of people (i.e. adults and children). Tell us how many there are.
- Yearly sum paid: this is what each recipient gets paid every year. How much will this be? What is considered a reasonable amount to live on in your country?
- Total income state: this is how much money the state drags in every year. This is usually only taxes but sometimes also include things like oil sales. Show what tax pressure looks like for the average person. If you plan to tax people who receive _only_ UBI, show how much they have left to live on after taxes.
- Other expenditures state: this includes such things as education, healthcare, having an army, building roads, etc. This figure should pretty much be the same as it is today.
Most of these discussions end with a bit of handwaving and a vague statement like "oh, the other 2 trillion will come out of improved efficiency", which is plainly ridiculous (it's more than the whole nation spends on salaries combined). This makes me suspect the proponents of UBI have not actually sat down and done the math, despite this being fairly straightforward.
If you do these things you will quickly find that either UBI will be far, far too small to live on, or that there is a very significant shortfal on the income side.
UBI may be a great idea. We have lots of great ideas, as a species, but unfortunately not all of those ideas can be realistically realized.
I am glad someone said this. I first read it in Houellebecq's Whatever, and was shocked by how flagrantly true it is. Most of what we do now is shuffling the desk chairs on the Titanic, hoping people will keep the money machine going.
A slightly more nuanced view: whatever everyone has becomes mediocre, partially from our pretense and partially because the wider the appeal of any given thing, the less quality is invested in it. People are working to rise above the Herd because the Herd converts everything it touches into mediocre variants of the original.
Alternative Right.
It's not so much the "insight" that is significant here; it's the fact that it's said by a wealthy corporate owner.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I'm a great supporter of UBI and would love this to happen. I don't think it will though.
Automation has been happening for well over a century; probably back to Marc Brunel's Pulley Block production line in the 1800's. Robots improved this but we never replaced all workers at the same time. The closest we got was during the industrial revolution.
So there's no immediate need for this. Society will adapt at the same rate that automation does, and we'll have a lot of largely acceptable compromises rather than a solid solution that lots of people strongly oppose.
If I had mod points, I'd mod you up. Musk seems overly optimistic about this issue. There will be mass unemployment, mass poverty, more homeless people and more families at the lower end of the income ladder who struggle to survive. Judging from history, the gap between the rich and the poor will continue to increase like it has during the past 40-50 years. There is more potential for unrest and civil war in the US than for basic income. As for other countries in the world, BI might be a bit more likely because of different election systems, but I wouldn't raise my hopes too high either.
Things are getting creepy in general because our civilization is collapsing, and when that happens, only untruths are tolerated which means that almost everything is a lie.
We have not only homegrown dysgenics (Idiocracy style) but the effects of a consumer population bent on pleasure (Brave New World style) combined with a constant third-world influx so that we may virtue signal our way to social success (see Camp of the Saints).
The result is that there is no way for this society to survive. The babbling over the UBI is just a way of keeping the groundlings fascinated and thus distracted while the kleptocracy takes anything of value that is left before the edifice falls.
Alternative Right.
No, the ruling classes won't hand out cash to people who need it. It'll be more likely Aids v2 will be launched.
..."People will have time to do other things, more complex things, more interesting things,"...
Really? Go ask those living under the current welfare state how "complex" and "interesting" their lives are based on a government-funded paycheck.
UBI will be nothing more than the current welfare program expanded. And if you think for a second any government will financially approve any more than BASIC bread-and-cheese income, you're delusional. This cannot and will not happen without a massive overhaul of unadulterated greed that has created the 1% elite class who care about themselves, not funding millions of humans to enjoy an "interesting" life sitting on their ass no matter how much self-education and groupthink may advance the human race. Greed always wins. Look at history.
At first, there may be some kind of pay scale to reward those with advanced degrees and careers (lawyers, doctors, etc.) as they're put out to pasture by automation. But once we realize that automation and AI have made educating a human an extinct concept, all humans will be pretty much treated the same way financially, for there will literally be no valid reason to reward one above the other.
Forget defeating unadulterated greed for a moment, an equally delusional concept is thinking that governments can afford to pay humans to have a complex and interesting life. Much like trying to extract taxes out of the wealthy, lobbyists and loopholes serving the elite class will ensure they take on the smallest burden possible, which translates to minimal funding for the UBI concept.
TL; DR - Either figure out another way to pay for it, or call a spade a spade, and drop the delusional dreamspeak.
You are very misinformed about the Russian situation. The October Revolution was the result of Bolshevik forces co-opting the February Revolution by capturing key infrastructure like railroads. Both the February Revolution and the October Revolution were the work of relative elites and were not popular revolts. (The popular revolt element came in only subsequently with the Civil War, when the peasantry began choosing either the Red or White side.)
Popular revolutions are almost always led by elites. Remember the archetype of them all, the Magna Carta?
Alternative Right.
The fact remains that if you can't keep the vast majority of the population employed, you're going to have to do something. Mass unemployment is an economic black hole, because people without jobs don't have money to spend on goods and services, so the businesses providing those goods and services struggle and fail, leading to a downward spiral that would be utterly devastating to society if the unemployment level got high enough. It just can't be allowed to happen.
Personally, UBI seems like a pretty dumb solution, but something else radical might be needed. You could implement a corporate tax system where the level of tax is based on a jobs/profit or jobs/revenue ratio, so companies making a lot of money without giving much back to society in the form of employee salaries would be taxed at a very high rate, while companies creating a lot of jobs per unit of profit would be taxed at a very low rate. This would reduce or remove the financial incentive for companies to automate jobs out of existence, assuming you get the tax level right, because they're going to be paying as much in additional taxes as they would have been in salaries. It should be part of the social contract that one of the functions of companies in society is to create jobs, not just to make money, and companies should be expected to actively find ways of doing things that employ more people, rather than the opposite.
So...what have you done lately?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Not surprising that a corporate welfare queen like Musk thinks it's fine and dandy for everyone to get money for doing fuck-all.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
UBI still seems better to me than your tax suggestion, because it also increases consumption and allows people to flourish without constant fears about the future. It fosters unusual career paths and would result in many successful small companies and more creative "content producers". More education, music, writers, more handcrafting of luxury goods. These things are good for a modern industrialized society and the calculations of UBI costs I've seen are not that bad at all in comparison to expensive wellfare systems. (Arguably, the debate in the US is always a bit special, though, because an astonishingly huge number of people there seem to be willing to reject basic wellfare and just let people die in the streets.)
The biggest problem society will face will not be finding something to eat - it will be finding something to DO. "Idle hands make for mischief".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Sauron was the good guy. The elves were racists bastards that would rather leave Middle Earth than see their leader's daughter marry a dirty human. The dwarves were just as bad. Not even the humans got along with the humans.
Meanwhile, Sauron ruled a multicultural group of diverse individuals that worked well tighter, goblins, orcs, trolls, humans, spiders, etc. And all they wanted was to not be oppressed by the evil racists humans and elves. They were just trying to improve their lives and move from the volcanic wasteland that was Mordor to a better place where they could farm in peace.
Sauron was the great hope of the oppressed and downtrodden.
UBI means a relatively small 'elite' which has a paid job and can afford a relatively decent level of life, plus a majority of population having 'survival benefits' which are only sufficient for basic (and bad) food, simple shelter and TV/Internet subscription with ads. Higher-level services like health care, education, hobby, travel, etc will become too expensive to compensate for near-zero profit margins.
The complete naivete of the slahdot crowd concerning UBI is beyond comprehension.
It looks like most slahdotters think a simple tinkering with the taxation system (which will mostly affect wealthy corporations and individuals) will bring universal joy to everyone.
I tell you what. It will absolutely do no good. It looks like everyone thinks that wealthy men keep their wealth in some kind of vault like Smaug. This is not the case. Most of their wealth is already in the economy, there is basically nothing you can get from the wealthy by taxing them more.
At best UBI will create a society similar to the one in Atlas Shrugged. I do not like to live in such society.
So, what is the solution to the problems UBI is supposed to cure? Most probably the answer is WAR. Currently, nobody dares to comprehend this possibility.
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
Is Elon Musk worried about his job? No? Then this is really about the concentration of wealth into ever fewer hands. The technology is just a smokescreen.
"our civilization is collapsing"
This dire opinion is only true if you ignore the history if the US in it's entirety. People complain that some how the US has declined as if the US achieved some model society.
The US has been fighting in one war or another since the inception of the state.
The US suffered through a civil war that tore the country apart. During this war Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and jailed journalist who were publishing news he determined were fanning the north-south hate. Still he is remembered as one of the US's best Presidents.
FDR violated several US laws prior to it's entry into WW2. The lend-lease act was a blatant end run around the Neutrality Act. An act that was widely support by the US citizens. He wanted to wire tap suspected German agents in the US but Congress passed a law to prevent him from doing so. He ignored that law and did it any how. If the US had lost the world, and he had not died before the end, would most likely have faced impeachment proceedings. In hindsight his actions setup the US to go from a mediocre international player to the strongest country on the planet. Still he is remembered as one of the US's best and only 5th term President.
The turn of the century saw true monopolies that have no comparison to any company today.
The Constitution's "all men are created equal" was never really implemented but that goal is still being pursued.
In the 1980's it was common thinking that Japan was going to over take the US economically forcing a decline in US manufacturing jobs. And while Japan made great strides they didn't over take the US in anything.
The US suffered through the Great Depression were up to 50% of the people were unemployed and people were living in shanty towns in NYC park and bread lines were a common sight throughout the country.
These are just a few examples of US history that don't make the US look like a perfect society that we are some how declining from.
So if you feel the need to complain about the decline of the US you need to take in to account the totality of it's existence. To do other wise creates a picture that is misleading and self defeating.
Mexico.
Commie bullshit !!
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Although living with Katniss wouldn't be too bad.
> call a spade a spade
As a tool, I much prefer the guillotine. More complex, yes, but it does a much cleaner job.
You'll need more throughput to offset the initial cost, though.
Hollywood has done enough to lay the plan out for the inevitable Skynet takeover. No need to jump the gun (or blade in this case).
So future election cycles will be about who promises the most for those stuck on basic income. As a significant number of people end up on it, and assuming it's set at a level beneath what people actually need, then people's votes are easily won. Oh, they can top up their basic incomes with part time work? Yes, nice in theory, but they're trying to get money off of other people on basic income. Initially it will be okay though, there will be enough employed to pay for these services and items, but as more people migrate to BI...
There is a trash sci-fi novel called Beggars and Choosers which is set in a future world where most people exist in a world where full social welfare is provided, elections are a sham of who promises the most stuff to the populace (in return for not harrassing the upper classes), and the upper classes exist in cities free from the masses enjoying the best of everything (whilst also descending into various forms of debauchery). I presume the basic incomers were pushed out of cities via housing affordability mechanisms beforehand.
Boils down to this: Who pays for it? The rich people will just do like Apple and move their assets abroad. What is left isn't going to be much.
Before even thinking about a UBI, people need to read Atlas Shrugged, or some relevant literature about the topic, and actually be able to comment with some enlightenment.
The best thing the rich can do is to keep lower classes fed. If they don't I fear they will be inviting civil war.
We've been hearing this since the industrial revolution. That automation means workers earn more and have more free time. But this relies on their boss passing the profits from automation onto those employees. When in reality it just means they can fire some of those employees.
Ok, so I guess he's right about having more leisure time.
some level of minimum wage is still needed or more labor laws so a place can't get away with unfair wage deductions to get free work out of people.
lower full time to 32 hours a week and set salary min level to 75K+COL or more. To start
By lowering the full time levels we can get more people working.
cheaper then jail / prison that some use for there needs at a much higher cost.
$31,286 or more per inmate vs just giving people UBI
I'm very aware of these realities, but the whole point is that the foundations that lead to the civil war after the revolution, and the rise of communism in general wouldn't have existed if it wasn't for the poor proletariat masses created by the industrialization. Communism as an ideal was given birth to by the industrial revolution and the conditions across Europe that it created for the uneducated working poor.
So my point wasn't to say that income inequality was the direct cause of the Russian revolution, but that the inequality was a key component in the chain of events leading to birth of the Soviet union. When you have a mass of people doing badly, they're prone to conflict.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
Well we certainly won't have to worry about it in the U.S. We can't even get universal basic healthcare, much less a universal basic income.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Musk can afford to be an idealistic dreamer, because he knows that neither he nor his children (or grandchildren) will ever have to suffer from any lack of wealth. For the rest of us, we're forced to live in the real world, where the rich get richer and everyone else gets fucked.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
In fact it is a matter of choice for the super-rich. If the mass automation works we will have a very big mass of people who have no way to support themselves for not having jobs, and note the crucial detail that they will not get jobs even being excellent workers. They will not have jobs because they are lazy as some right-wing retards will claim, they will not have jobs for the lack of jobs.
This mass of people will not go away, then the super-rich will have three choices:
A) Build a robot army of exterminators to eliminate the "surplus people" (me, you, anyone that is not super-rich);
B) Do nothing and be killed sooner or later in the wake of the mass of hungry and desperate people;
C) Use a portion of the billions obtained through automation and create a basic income to avoid the consequences of option B;
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
@emusk have a good point now!
Work gives one a sense of pride in accomplishment and soaks up our time. It is a social activity that matures us through forced interaction with many other different people. It gives a sense of belonging and inclusion. It stabilizes us. And when did a "basic income" afford anyone the means to enjoy life, to do "other things?" Will we all go deep sea fishing? How about taking up flying? Travel the world? No, more likely we will end up eating biscuits of indeterminable composition and sitting in our tin-roofed hovels in our burlap sacks. It takes much more than merely food and shelter and clothing to satisfy the broad human motivation array, and a basic income will not allow that. Thus, there will be massive discontent and violence. Not to be religious, but how long have we known that "idle hands are the devil's workshop."
E Proelio Veritas.
The Oligarchs only want what is best for you. The Oligarchs will provide for you. Trust the Oligarchs.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
As robots and printers etc make manual labor mostly useless, information will get more and more value, as it will be the thing you input into the machines to make the life of everyone better, and as such, science probably will became some sort of gold rush, with everyone too uncreative to come up with designs or media becoming "scientists".
Where are we going to get all the required energy?
Then why can't the worker become an investor by using a portion of wages to slowly accumulate stock?
There is more potential for unrest and civil war in the US than for basic income.
Honestly I see that as inevitable at this point, barring a voluntary and non-violent separation of the country.
Regardless of what side of the political spectrum you may fall on, there's no denying that the USA is a DEEPLY divided country ideologically. It may teeter on who's dominant for voting from one election to the next, but it's close enough to a 50/50 split that when it comes to national elections regardless of who wins you basically have the other half of the country that feels as if their world is going to unravel.
Like I said - it doesn't really even matter anymore WHO wins the elections - the schism is so great that I don't think we'll be able to stand as a single country for much longer. IMHO I would love if we could just peacefully draw a border to split the country and part ways amicably. Anyone who ends up in a region that they don't agree with after the borders are drawn can immediately transfer citizen ship to the other side. Somehow though, I kinda doubt it will end up that well. It won't likely be in the next year, two, or even five, but in the next 15-25 years things are going to come to a head.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
A "universal" income....EXCEPT for politicians, the "uber" rich. In other words a Tyranny. The way of controlling people even more. You will only be able to have "so much" regardless of your labor. Work your ass off, or, be completely lazy, you make the same amount. That causes stagnation, lack of innovation. I'm just glad that I'm upper middle age, and by the time that happens, I'll be long gone from this world! I do not want to live in a society, where I do not have the freedom to do as I please with my labor.
So the fundamental issue we're having is that wages are not tied to ownership of productive resources. Programs like UBI presume to deal with this by taxing production.
What if, instead, wages must be part cash and part ownership? Something like a "minimum ownership wage".
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
THE UBI portion of you income would have to be extremely highly regulated on what the UBI is spent on by the average person.
Otherwise what is to prevent Joe Schmoe from blowing his 24K UBI on non necessities such as smokes, beer, lottery tickets, pizza rolls, etc?
Then Joe is still out the basic necessities of life like shelter, clothing and sustainable food and no better off than he was before now with the difference being the Mr Hard Worker's tax money is paying for Joe to be a leech.
I don't think that we should abandon the principles of capitalism at the slightest whiff of inequity. I think it is far too short-sighted to expect that everyone have wage income. There is a thriving passive non-wage income economy and we need to get more in touch with it. This way, we don't need traditional jobs per se, but we don't have to directly subsidise people's incomes either. What we do need is better education about passive income and passive income resources.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Only /. would highly mod a post saying that we should all just kill each other rather than mess around with the tax system. . . because *incoherent economic argument that would make their Eco 101 professor spin in grave*
/. now consists of the ape shit crazy, Trump supporting, conspiracy theory toting, Nihilist types. The reason for this being. . . those types tend to scare the rest of us away. . .
I think the primary demographic of
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
The point of the UBI is that no one should need to work if they don't want to. It is equivalent to giving all people a minimum wage job that involves doing nothing useful.
If companies want to hire volunteers to work for free, that's fine. If they want to pay a small amount per hour, that's fine too, because the people are already being paid sufficiently for that work through the UBI.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
If there's a Universal Basic Income, then the minimum wage needs to be abolished, because people are already effectively getting their minimum wage through the UBI.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
The big question is what happens between a significant number of people losing their jobs and UBI arriving? And how long is that period? At the moment you have a pool of people who are mainly looking for work - the overall number stays roughly the same but there is probably a lot of turnover as people move in and out of that pool. At some point this pool is going to start to actually grow - people will move in and won't be able to move out. This is already happening to an extent in the UK but the numbers can be masked by the number of people sharing a dwindling number of shitty jobs eg they are working part-time or zero-hour contracts. When they go from 'surviving' to 'homeless' the shit will hit the fan.
"with little oversight"??? If a person is employable, being on welfare requires submitting regular proof of an ongoing job search, and as far as I know, they actually check.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
As long they don't say up front we pay and then on pay day say you own us X so your pay is 0.
Have gnu, will travel.
Musk's business models are largely based on government subsidies, government regulation, government-created barriers to entry, Naturally, he wants most of the population to become dependent on government.
That's what this so-called 'UBI' would create. Hello 'Idiocracy', goodbye 'American know-how and innovation' -- and, guaranteed, those of us who can and do work, will end up paying taxes so high that we can't afford to live anymore, to pay for it all. You want a Civil War? Go ahead and institute UBI.
Count me among them. One of my jobs is to eliminate dangerous and tedious work from manufacturing processes. Nobody wants to spend their day grabbing searing hot parts from a welder at one station and stacking them in exact locations after another so they don't get out of order and miss their settling time. That's where robots come in.
People are needed to maintain those robots and the computers they coordinate with. People are also needed to supply the machines with materials. There will always be work to do. There will just be better options than "something to pay the bills for now".
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
civil war 2 the rich write land owners will not have robots. They will have the blacks working for $0 hr on there land.
And you think a society where "newly jobless will be fucked" will continue to function? How stupid are you?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
lower full time to 32 hours a week and set salary min level to 75K+COL or more. To start
To start what? Insane inflation? That's a rather large chasm between current minimum wage and a $75K salary floor. That might require forcing companies to stop paying CEOs 5,000% more than their employees, along with eliminating golden parachutes and other forms of forced retirement "penalties" measured in tens of millions. Fat fucking chance of that happening.
By lowering the full time levels we can get more people working.
Ah, let's pay everyone an exorbitant salary and put more people in the workforce. No way that would increase burden for companies well beyond revenue or sustainability...
We have not only homegrown dysgenics (Idiocracy style)
Citation needed. And no, a shitty movie is not a citation.
Countercitation: flynn effect
I would suggest that if the social order is on the verge of collapse, it's because our current social order was designed by morons who were quantifiably dumber and less informed than future generations are.
This. A thousand times this.
It won't be UBI that kills the nation. It'll be selfish "I hadda do X so you do too" morons, assisted by the "Arbeit macht frei" morons and the "work is a required pursuit to be of human worth" morons.
The transition from a work-for-survival economy to a pursue-your-dreams economy is likely to be very, very difficult.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
See, what you don't realize is that's just a blue cup which is receding from you really, really fast.
(Political metaphor absolutely intended)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Good luck boys!
Curso NR 10 online curso NR 10 curso NR 10 online
UBI will happen right about the time we convince corporations and the rich to give up their power and status and be just normal people.
How are you going to convince someone to work at McDonalds or out in the fields picking strawberries if you have UBI? Shit jobs depend on people having no better options.
I read the internet for the articles.
Is it about risk? An established company is more of a sure bet than a slot machine could ever be, and an index fund can help spread the risk out across several companies. Or is it about not having enough disposable income to save up for even a tiny number of shares in an index fund?
Society is evolving, not collapsing. In better parts of the world life has never been so good.
My point is that it's rather difficult to provide proof of job search if there's no jobs available in the first place... so UBI is by necessity going to be quite different from welfare
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Your mistake is in conflating "human effort" with "Income."
History is replete with individuals who did valuable, and/or worthy, and/or artistic, things because that was what they wanted to do, and not because someone was paying them (and in many cases, no one was paying them.)
I write SDR software. It's pretty good -- in fact, a lot of my users say it's the best in the world. Guess what I get paid for doing that? Nothing. Zip. Nada. I do it because I like doing it. And, of course, because I can do it. In my case, it's because I've done some other things that got me the financial wherewithal to do what I want, instead of what I had to. But I assure you, if I'd been able to do my own thing sooner, I would have done so.
Frankly, if the only thing motivating someone to do something is money, they could be doing something better. Also, there is a distinct possibility that the job isn't being done as well as it could be.
We should get away -- entirely -- from the idea that human worth is tied to constant wage slavery.
Here's something else;
Used to be we swept the floor. Someone had to do it, right? Then along came the vacuum cleaner, some time was saved, and the brooms got put away. Then along came Roomba, almost the entire tasl now requires no attention, and the vacuum cleaner got put away. What was lost? Not a damn thing. What was gained? The freedom to do do whatever you wanted while your floor got vacuumed. All that's left is emptying the Roomba's collected grit and grime; and how long do you suppose it'll be before the hardware doing the job can do that too? And again, what is lost? Nothing.
Labor-saving devices most critical value is that of relieving us of drudgery. Not that of freeing us to do other drudgery.
That's what everyone has to wrap their head around.
If I don't have to drive, mostly, I won't. If I don't have to vacuum the floor, I won't (and I do, in fact, own and appreciate a Roomba. I clean it once a day, takes about thirty seconds.) If I don't have to clean the catbox, I won't. Go shopping. Take out the garbage. Wash my clothes. Mow the lawn. And so on. And yes, that absolutely includes working for a wage -- when machines can do it, they should do it. It's not a bad thing. It's a wonderful thing.
We're a long way from this, but it is exactly where we should be trying to head. Money isn't a good thing. Money is what is holding our society in its current, stressed, divisively classed form.
It's going be very rough getting from here to there. I can't say I feel very good about watching the process, but the game is very much worth the candle. Let's not hang on to drudgery. Let's reach for freedom to do whatever we want.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Um, no. An unconscious, drunk, drugged or otherwise incapacitated person cannot give consent. The manner in which they became incapacitated is not relevant.
Here's a simple tip. If someone is unconscious, drunk, drugged or incapacitated - don't have sex with them. Simple. And sex with someone who's conscious and willing is more fun. Trust me on this.
If someone runs onto the highway, high as a kite, most drivers would make the effort to try and avoid hitting that person, they wouldn't line them up in the crosshairs and hit the gas. Yes, getting high as a kite and running onto the road is stupid and highly likely to result in death. But deliberately lining someone up in order to run them down is still murder (or possibly manslaughter).
Then you'll have to ignore the "if" where there should be "of", and it'll all go to hell in a handbasin.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I could see automation creating a surplus of basic goods that could be directly provided, but not UBI.
France tried that. It was disastrous.
This puts the whole issue in a simple to understand perspective that even troglodytes can understand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Regards, Chris
Nothing will change
Millions, then Billions will be out of work
Eventually, labor will become so cheap that the 1% need no longer concern themselves with the 99%
The current system of support will be eliminated, the 99% will experience shorter lives, with more desperation
Girls will work the street and men will break laws to buy subsistence
Police will be increased, killings will multiply, finally biowar will be used to eliminate much of the 99% threat.
NEVER count on the long term thinking of the 1% as being altruistic
Equality has to be taken by force.
And it won't happen in this perfect information world.
This mass of people will not go away, then the super-rich will have three choices:
A) Build a robot army of exterminators to eliminate the "surplus people" (me, you, anyone that is not super-rich);
B) Do nothing and be killed sooner or later in the wake of the mass of hungry and desperate people;
C) Use a portion of the billions obtained through automation and create a basic income to avoid the consequences of option B;
D) Imprison them.
Curso NR 10 online curso NR 10 curso NR 10 online
There are more people employed today than at any other time in history. Unless you know someone who makes hand-dipped candles for a living, every worker you know has a job made possible by modern technologies.
The Luddites who feared their jobs in the textile industry would be replaced by machines benefited as much as anyone, as textiles became far more affordable. For the first time in history, millions of people could afford to wear more than rags.
Time and time again, we've seen that moderately disruptive technologies have had a moderate net positive effect on the number of jobs available, and massively disruptive new technologies have had a massive net positive effect on the number of jobs available. 21st-century technologies will be no exception.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
The idea is that you rejig both taxes and ubi do that for example net income for a median tax earner doesn't change.
Their net income won't change, but their motivation to create goods or services that benefit society will certainly change, when they look around and observe that people who do absolutely no work are now receiving a "basic" income that their hardworking grandparents would have envied.
That seems to be a major flaw that UBI supporters overlook.
Under UBI, a highly-paid person would probably find enough motivation to keep doing what they're doing, but think about a sanitation worker. He could stop the hard work of tossing smelly bags of garbage into trucks, and earn nearly the same income as he currently does. Under UBI, wages for those types of jobs would have to massively increase, just to keep people on the job.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
my salary gets replaced by $120,000
So under UBI, if you tune out and do no work, your family will have more income than the current scenario where you are engaged in a job through which you contribute valuable services to society.
That would be great for your family, but bad for society. And if millions of people decide to stop creating goods and services, suddenly there's a massive shortage of them.
If there's an incentive for a software developer to stop working, the incentive is that much greater for a low-skilled person, such a sanitation worker, to stop working. Garbage will pile up in the streets.
After you think it through, you realize UBI is unworkable.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
We *should* be approaching a 15 hour workweek by now. The historical trend is for the workweek to get shorter and shorter. But this trend got stuck. Employees who would really like to work, say, 18 hours per week, refrain from doing so for lots of reasons. Maybe they would lose benefits; maybe they fear a stigma of being perceived as lazy; maybe their employer isn't equipped to create nontraditional working arrangements.
As a 40-hour-per-week employee (what is currently arbitrarily considered a "full time" worker), I contribute to the cost of my health insurance, and my employer makes an even bigger contribution. That's a trap. Just increase my hourly wage by the amount of the employer contribution, and have me pay the entire cost of the health insurance.
But if the work that needs to be done could be divvied up between more employees, working blissfully short workweeks, you would (1) have a surge in the number of employed people, (2) eliminate the need to import H-1B workers, and (3) create far more social benefits than a UBI would.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
in the long term the economy will adjust to the excess supply of cheap labour and invent new ways to use it, not necessarily as pleasant as the old manual jobs.
That is why there are currently more people employed than at any time in human history. Thanks to modern technologies, entire new classes of jobs have come into existence, and they certainly are more pleasant than the old manual jobs (such as harvesting grain with a scythe, or digging coal out of the ground with hand tools).
But that trend would be wrecked by a UBI. There won't be an excess supply of cheap labor, when a UBI pays people to do nothing.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Technology is the root of all that you mention, and it would have advanced anyway. We have wasted what it has given us on make-work jobs and useless activities which, whether your wife likes them or not, create bloat in this society. It might be time to realize that what you want is not the yardstick.
Alternative Right.
So what is your solution?
If you feel giving pedicures is a make-work job, would you want an across-the-board reduction in disposable income so that fewer people can afford pedicures (as was the case 50 years ago)?
Or would you simply ban pedicures?
And what would you do with those who were formerly employed giving pedicures? Do you have a more meaningful job lined up for them? Would you have them do nothing and simply receive UBI? (It's not even clear whether you are pro- or anti-UBI.)
With some exceptions, a job should be considered a make-work job only if it can't sustainably exist in a free market without government subsidies. By that definition, pedicurists do not have make-work jobs.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.