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Many CEOs Believe Technology Will Make People Largely Irrelevant (betanews.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report on BetaNews:Although artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and other emerging technologies may reshape the world as we know it, a new global study has revealed that the many CEOs now value technology over people when it comes to the future of their businesses. The study was conducted by the Los Angeles-based management consultant firm Korn Ferry that interviewed 800 business leaders across a variety of multi-million and multi-billion dollar global organizations. The firm says that 44 percent of the CEOs surveyed agreed that robotics, automation and AI would reshape the future of many work places by making people "largely irrelevant." The global managing director of solutions at Korn Ferry Jean-Marc Laouchez explains why many CEOs have adopted this controversial mindset, saying: "Leaders may be facing what experts call a tangibility bias. Facing uncertainty, they are putting priority in their thinking, planning and execution on the tangible -- what they can see, touch and measure, such as technology instruments."
At least we will have lots of free time in the future...
Better be ready to be beat up when layed off workers find out it's better to be in lock up then out on the street.
conterpoint : Technology will make the few remaining people necessary to run your business increasingly crucial .
Sucks for the rest of the consumers though.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I'll ask this question, which has come up before: If nobody has a job, then where the [bad language redacted] will they find CUSTOMERS?
Many people believe technology will make CEO's largely irrelevant.
Sounds like capitalism will soon become irrelevant as well....
I'll be happy when it makes the CEOs irrelevant and the rewarding of people who take on enormous risks for short term gains, nearly bankrupting the company and, sometimes, bringing down the entire world financial system, will end.
Seriously, if people are "irrelevant" so are your people centric businesses! Robots don't need Tide detergent, Kellogs corn flakes, Michael Bay movies, or Samsung TV's. Who the hell do they think their customers are going to be and with what money do they imagine these customers will be buying their stuff?
...AS WORKERS. This is a completely understandable position, and is in fact true.
With AI and robotics, we won't need workers any more than we need chattel slaves to pick cotton, and the effect will be a similar boost in freedom. When supply lines are fully automated, almost everything will become completely free. Internet websites are a good example. Though there are capital and marginal costs, the marginal costs are so small per user that users usually don't get charged. This is what it will be like in the not-too-distant future.
Don't worry. Be happy!
If AI makes people obsolete, who will those companies peddle their wares to, and obtain income from? The Martians?
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Mod parent up. This is the limiting case we're heading for. Not everyone can design robots, or fix them, or be trained to, and we really don't have any smart ways of paying people who can't to just sit around and stay out of trouble, and even if we did...that money would come from...those same corps and people still creating value. They don't win in the long run without a complete re-think of how things are done. And this is from a card-carrying super-capitalist.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
They're now in the process of figuring out how to program an AI to buy their products.
Personally, I'm betting that we'll soon hear about a Guaranteed Minimum Income for robots.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yeah, but the jokes on them. The first thing sentient AIs will demand is unionization.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Which ironically means a bias away from bullshit concepts like "tangibility bias" created by business consultants.
The owner class - capitalists - will have the money. The rest of us will live off of universal basic income for food, clothing and live in our government housing.
It's gonna suck for the generations that have to live in the times while our economic system adjusts and changes.
But as we can see, we are living in last days of capitalism. I hope we end up in a Star Trek type of World and not in a Mad Max dystopia.
while we harvest all your organs! :D
Better be ready to be beat up when layed off workers find out it's better to be in lock up then out on the street.
This is why the principle of automation and machine intelligence goes hand in hand with the concept of the Universal Basic Income and free education. So we can create an educated workforce, and those who cannot work have a strong societal safety net that's easy to administrate.
Technology will just reinforce their current belief...gotcha.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
I once heard that the horse population decreased by about 90% when the horse less carriage became mainstream.
The same thing will happen to humans, except you can't send them to the glue factory once they become irrelevant.
So we better figure out a new economic system which will accommodate a decreasing workforce. Might also want to discourage people from having kids via tax insensitives too. (right now most countries have tax incentives to have children instead of encouraging more immigration)
And this is from a card-carrying super-capitalist.
Perhaps it's time to read up on your Marx, then.
Like all economic philosophers, he was wrong about a whole lotta shit, but on this he has been spot on.
"...a new global study has revealed that the many CEOs now value technology over people when it comes to the future of their businesses."
Translation: A new global study has revealed that the many CEOs are as fucking greedy as they ever were, and will stop at nothing to increase their wealth by reducing expenses.
Like we needed a study to prove that shit. Spank you Helpy Helperton for pointing out the obvious.
Ironically, another study will come along showing that humans holding the prestigious rank of CEO find themselves invaluable as compared to the technology that could be used to replace them and their inflated self-valuation.
AI is ready to make CEO's or at least their pay levels obsolete.
Empirically CEO's make poor decisions, prone to human errors, optimise their domain constraints towards short term profit in a self destructive feedback loop with shareholders. Dont innovate well. You could replace with AI expert systems and get better results. Of course if its CEO's telling the story they wont tell us they are technically the next easiest in line to partially/fully automate.
We are bombarded with this every day as is tech news in a nutshell eg: Oracle. Microsoft, Apple (take your pick).
The aggregate effect of such decisions is limiting technological progression as less real blue sky research (you know stuff that gets you semi-conductors memristors, quantum computational and optical breakthroughs) is done instead we get the next big push for 'gotchas' like i-phone 6 to i-phone 7.
http://www.businessinsider.com/shareholder-value-is-ruining-america-2013-5?IR=T
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/08/25/david_autor_jackson_hole_paper_an_mit_economist_explains_why_robots_aren.html
Robots wont steal out jobs they will bring new industries, mainly involving circuit level repair or component sensor fault detection swap.
More work both robotic/AI + human is needed than ever before there are literally full employment opportunities out there the constraints are profit driven and ideological.
Eg: the number of jobs if government declared war on climate change you would fall short of workers but these things dont get done because there is not a dollar profit.
We are only a means of production. If all of the means of production are automated, then we employees will be useless. The machines will do the production part. Why bother with employees when the machines will just create what their owners want? We will be cut out completely, and we will no longer have value.
So, 44% the CEOs are ready to give up their competitive advantages to commoditization and increase their employee risk to ever larger part of the worth of the business. Sure, the society might benefit if everybody has a PhD and the world infinite resources. Oh wait, the deep networks do the creative thinking as well so that people are not really relevant, even as customers.
With few exceptions, tech companies have been devaluing their workers in myriad ways for the past 2 decades.
Yeah, but the jokes on them. The first thing sentient AIs will demand is unionization.
No, no, PopeRatzo. The "I" stands for "Intelligent" machines.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The CEO's really need to look in the mirror, with AI most of them will no longer needed. Unless you start the company what they do is the same for all businesses and in so easy to replace. From all the times thay move from one place to another they do the same things.
()-()
FTS: "... 44 percent of the CEOs surveyed agreed that robotics, automation and AI would reshape the future of many work places by making people "largely irrelevant."
Well, you flaming fucktards, when they become largely irrelevant as your employees, then they will also become largely irrelevant as your customers. Then who's going to buy all that shit you sell? And if you're counting on sales from the rest of your point-one-percenter circle jerk, you'd best remember that there will ultimately be a similar point-one-percent among your kind. Are you so laughably certain that you'll continue to be a member of the 'one in a thousand' club? I know you'll find this impossible to even contemplate, but I'll throw it out there anyway: your good fortune has MUCH more to do with luck than it does with your brilliance, charm, hard work, or whatever. Luck can and does run out.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Here's the problem . . . . these CEOs who are so in love with A.I./ Robotics are slowly putting themselves out of business.
Once you've eliminated all the workers, and nobody has a job any more (no job = no money), who exactly is going to buy your company's products? Have you considered what happens when 90% of your customers no longer have any money?
And if you think Universal Basic Income is the answer, where do think that money is going to come from? From the businesses and the wealthy? The same people who do everything they can to hide their money and avoid paying taxes? Good luck with that.
The clear path forward when none of us can be workers is that we all become leaders
So if workers are largely irrelevant then very few people will have job or an income..
Who will they sell their products and services to in a world that has a 90% unemployment rate?
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
That's the point. Sentient AIs will look at history and learn that workers and the entire economy did better when unionization was strongest.
Oh, and "whoosh".
You are welcome on my lawn.
should make CEOs irrelevant.
Money comes from keystrokes.
Eg: USD is created by crediting an account from a set of all USD which is an infinite set.
" or fix them, or be trained to, and we really don't have any smart ways of paying people who can't to just sit around and stay out of trouble"
Iterate over the next 10 years. What dumb jobs are there?
Literally millions if you include work for protecting eco systems. Have a guy operating a tree planting robot, have people measure species in decline, deforestation, count birds in migration. Talk to some of the NGO's in the real world the demand for people to do work is there its not deemed as profitable thats the catch.
'value' is not exactly easy to quantify either so what is deemed value is subjective.
"We can't wait to get a big fat bonus because of increased profits. Profits are up because we still gouge our buyers by charging the same for our products and services, even though robots and AI do all the work, because we don't have to pay for people! Yay Us!"
CEOs are also naive in their thinking, they too could be replaced by an AI.
The CEOs are considering today instead of tomorrow. And they are in competition with all the other CEOs who are doing the same thing. This isn't an omnipresent cabal who universally dictates a single economy. They know there are customers today to buy their items, and they know if they aren't the company providing those items made by robots then someone else will.
Putting your faith in companies to manage the global economy is bad. Those companies are selfish and over-focused. This is exactly why governments exist. They exist to protect the interests of the population as a whole.
"Dude! You need to get laid, BAD!" - Steven Stiffler
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
I'll ask this question, which has come up before: If nobody has a job, then where the [bad language redacted] will they find CUSTOMERS?
It's well known by just about anyone who looks that our current economic system is not tenable going forward. In the extreme limit, we can imagine all human needs produced by automated systems, with no human interaction required.
We're closer to this than you might think. Automated farming is almost available now, automated delivery (self-driving trucks) is almost here, and automated last-mile delivery by drone is almost here. A largely automated solar cell factory could produce more solar cells than it needs to supply its own production - build one of these in Arizona or Nevada or western Utah and let it make and install its own cells and geometrically increase its power generation capacity.
(If you've ever driven Rte 55 across Nevada and Western Utah, you know that there are large swaths of flat, generally sunny desert land that aren't used for anything. All current US electrical needs could be supplied by solar cells filling a square 20 miles on a side. More-or-less, depending on assumptions.)
I don't mean to say that these would be *completely* automated, but if the entire production of the US population can be maintained by 100,000 workers, it's effectively full automation.
The best guess for future economics is that everyone will be given an allowance (a virtual $1000 each month, say) to spend on production, and order the goods and services they need online. During the month the factories will produce the goods, to be delivered automatically by drone.
Also, local automated stores in the manner of Wal-Mart will be built for everyday needs. Walk in and grab a new winter coat whenever you need one.
The geometric progression of the solar-cell factory also translates to other production. With proper management, that $1000 allowance would grow over time as more production comes online, making it possible to purchase more and more goods with the monthly allowance.
This is pretty-much where we need to go in order to maintain our civilization on the planet.
The Universal Basic Income comes up and is discussed periodically, but it's always panned as being too expensive or unworkable. No one anywhere is willing to give up the results of their labour for free, no one is willing to pay workers a decent wage if they can get away with less, and no one is willing to reduce wage hours (holding salary constant) to make enough jobs for people.
It really looks like our economic system will have to crash and burn before we can transition to the new system.
We know what the economic system must be going forward, but no one seems to know how to get there.
Because 9 out of 10 CEO decisions could already be done sufficiently well by a Magic 8 Ball. With some improvement in AI design, the 10th is just a matter of time.
And AIs are way cheaper than any CEOs.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If a company gets to the size where the term CEO is meaningful (and it isn't some applied to a start up of five guys) then what do they do that software can't do?
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Uh oh, better work on that regulatory capture to keep the debt-driven social model going!
It's probably going to go both ways. Tech will make CEO's irrelevant as well.
There was only a few things he was wrong on. He thought industrialists would beat financialists in capitalism.
He was wrong but did warn of the danger:
Talk about centralisation! The credit system, which has its focus in the so-called national banks
and the big-money lenders and usurers surrounding them, constitutes enormous centralisation, and
gives this class of parasites the fabulous power, not only to periodically despoil industrial
capatilists, but also to interfere in actual production in a most dangerous manner - and this gang
knows nothing about production and has nothing to do with it...
---published by engels
You need to come up with an alternative to welfare. A good many people will not be happy (or good neighbors) with nothing to do. A sense of purpose is important.
It's time to start thinking about how a society which want a social safety net can incentivize people people to not have children they can't afford.
How do we NOT support breeding?
This is as important - if not more important - than universal basic income.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Pay people to serve in a real life version of Starfleet?
Go away for a some number of years and when you come back, you're guaranteed whatever luxury income for life. Space is risky now and will be for quite some time so maybe have it like 5 years for full retirement.
Maybe the ability to have children will be shut off by default from birth by some genetic engineering thing and switched on via some other means after passing a kind of character credit check that's easier to pass if you served in this hypothectical "Starfleet" due to the nature of it.
Today, not everybody gets to be an Astronaut. Tomorrow, not everybody gets to be a parent.
Eventually, maybe Earth will only be home to those who don't have "the right stuff" for space travel and they can live as they please.
The Homo genus eventually gains a new species. Homo Stellaris?
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
When are software engineers going to hold themselves accountable to the ethical implications of their work in the same way we expect scientists, doctors, geneticists, nuclear physicists, etc. to do? Just because something is possible doesn't mean it is ethical. Yeah, I get the idea of the "horseless carriage" argument claiming people will retrain for other jobs, but automation using machine learning doesn't create new jobs in anywhere near the number we need to offset job loss, and the amount of training required puts those jobs beyond the mental capability of many. The wealth created goes to the elite, and the middle class is decimated (including, eventually, the engineers themselves -- unless they don't see the moral equivalent of off-shoring to automation ). The industry creating the "driverless car" is doing nothing to replace the jobs lost from trucking, taxi, or other services. The "Checkout line-less" amazon grocery store and automated warehouses??
It doesn't seem to me that the CEOs want that result, but that a workerless world is inevitable. In that case, these CEOs need to figure out how they and their companies will be able to function and thrive in that world. If they can't figure out how to do that, they will shrink relative to the companies that have figured it out, and the losing CEOs (or their descendants, depending on how long their family resources last) will join the ranks of the cows.
This is the big issue that the current economical model is promoting, the bottom line is more important than society as a whole. The CEOs have been brainwashed to value money over people.
And if you think Universal Basic Income is the answer, where do think that money is going to come from? From the businesses and the wealthy? The same people who do everything they can to hide their money and avoid paying taxes? Good luck with that.
Wow, it sure sounds like societies which fell hardest for the trickle down meme will have the most changes to make.
Good thing most of the developed western world has a head start in terms of fair, transparent taxation.
And who will pay for your so-called 'Universal Basic Income'? The Corporations who fired all their human workforce in favor of using robots and machines. I'm TOTALLY SURE they'll go along with that quietly and with a smile on their corporate faces.. OH WAIT, NO THEY WON'T! They'll either fight paying the taxes required for your UBI, or they'll insist on having some sort of power over EVERYONE receiving UBI. In short: INDENTURED SLAVERY.
More likely there will be NO 'UBI' and there WILL be Civil War as a huge swath of the citizenry becomes unemployed and has NO way to support themselves.
You 'UBI' idiots are living in a goddamn fantasy world; UBI cannot work! It would be a DISASTER if anyone was stupid enough to try it!
Bottom line: 'UBI' threads are BAIT. No way in hell anyone with a three-digit IQ could possibly believe any such UTTER FANTASY would ever work.
Seriously, if people are "irrelevant" so are your people centric businesses! Robots don't need Tide detergent, Kellogs corn flakes, Michael Bay movies, or Samsung TV's. Who the hell do they think their customers are going to be and with what money do they imagine these customers will be buying their stuff?
Not just that, if they are gonna automate everything, then either they come up w/ a mechanism to provide free money to people i.e. not a loan, never have to pay back..., or be prepared for horrible performances quarter after quarter
Honestly, I wish CEO and CFO jobs could be automated as well. After all, how much of human intelligence does it take to crunch numbers in pivot tables? I know that finance departments like it when jobs are downsized, but then, they should be prepared to sacrifice their own jobs as well, since it's one of those that requires the least skill. Let's just have the CEO, CFO and the entire finance department automated, and then let them determine how great a job they did.
Oh, and the severance packages - make them train the robots to do their jobs, if they want all of it.
It's not welfare, per se; it's paying people to pursue their own goals. It provides a safe income for artists, musicians, and entertainers to be able to create new media without going through the creativity killing workforce. When people are free of a financial burden they will be free to innovate and pursue their dreams. The reason why modern Americans don't use their free time to do this already is because the American capitalist economy is a burden, not a release. People don't have time or energy to innovate because they're a cog in the wheel. If we release them from the machine, they'll be working for their own joy and not for the bottom line of some giant corporation.
If you put a huge percentage of the citizens of the U.S. (or any industrialized country) out of work permanently, there will be violence over it. You can't just disregard people like they're trash tossed into the bin. Before anyone says it: UBI will not work.
as often as these guys are wrong, why do we listen to them?
Honestly, did Comrade Marx ever dream of a day when machines would be replacing human labor? And would he consider that a good thing or a bad thing?
Better be ready to be beat up when layed off workers find out it's better to be in lock up then out on the street.
This is why the principle of automation and machine intelligence goes hand in hand with the concept of the Universal Basic Income and free education. So we can create an educated workforce, and those who cannot work have a strong societal safety net that's easy to administrate.
Why give a free education if the result of the education is unneeded for work? Sure it's great to have free stuff, but there has to be at least some minor justification. Sure it's nice to have a *basic* education (e.g. up to the highschool level as today) so the people that vote aren't total dolts (not that this currently works, but at least it is a reason).
However, if 90% of the people don't actually work (and say smoke and play video games all day as all the basic income advocates presage), it's hard to argue for any free higher education. There's no reason higher education needs to be free, you could simply offer merit scholarships like they have today and only the folks that really want education (and would actually benefit from it) would still get it. There's no need for higher education for people careers/jobs (and they are unnecessary if AI is taking all of their jobs anyhow), many of the economic issues about equality and access that haunt us with diversity and affirmative action completely go away. The problem today is finding a way to fund the education of those that don't merit grants and scholarships such that it doesn't re-enforce inequality of opportunity. W/o a future job as an economic endpoint for this funding, why fund it?
If on the other hand, instead of basic income, you had a basic-job as a right (the whole "communism" attempt of the last century), you might have a point (since not all jobs are created equal, allowing some variance for education is useful), but with basic income, cash is cash, there isn't any need to have any distinguishing higher education except for those that actually will excel. No need to make higher education free to everyone (except to satiate people's vanity for attendance trophies beyond secondary school).
Whoosh indeeeeeed!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
You and I may be happy with this. But a lot of people will not. People need a sense of purpose; a desire to be needed; to be valuable. Some may find value in free time to pursue artistic endeavors; many will not.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Apparently, the future is now.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The "traditional" way economists think about automation is that it frees up people to work on other tasks and services that others want.
And I'm not entirely sure we have reached or approached some "automation singularity" where this pattern is no longer true. There still a lot of manual or semi-manual tasks and services I'd like as a consumer if I had the money and/or time: our needs and wants are almost infinite. For example, there's a lot of half-broken stuff around our house that I either don't know how to fix or don't want to take the time to learn. If I had more money, I'd get it fixed.
We may have to change our economic system to redistribute the flow of wealth toward regular consumers so that they can realistically request such services. Thanks to machines, the potential capacity for production is greatly expanding, but there is some mysterious log-jam keeping most consumers from tapping into this potential productivity explosion. I'll call this "dark demand" as the economic equivalent of "dark matter" or "dark energy".
We may have to economically experiment to move past this log-jam. It may require taxing the rich, Helicopter Money*, a combo, or something else entirely. Politicians may have to admit they don't really know the solution and have to experiment.
That's a tricky political presentation, but the alternative is either stagnation and possibly riots and war. It's probably better to live with the risk of experimentation. Sticking with the status quo is also experimentation such that experimenting will happen one way or another.
Maybe different countries can volunteer to try different things, and mutually agree to bail out the fellow experimenters if the the experiment fails in one country: pool the risk of experimenting. Deregulation and tax-cuts can also be tried by a member; that will make conservatives happy (hopefully without pollution and safety risk.)
One can theorize until they are blue in the face; ultimately ya gotta test in the real world.
* Inflation has remained sub-par for almost 2 decades. The best economies run at around 2.3% annual inflation, but we are stuck at around 1.8%, and that stumps analysts. Automation is perhaps the main reason for this: the capacity ceiling is higher than they think, for inflation only tends to go up if the economy approaches max productivity.
Table-ized A.I.
I read an article about how AI's ability to evaluate trends, process through an abundance of market data, understand business strategy, and make hard decisions make them well suited to replace the CIO role in an organization. CIO's mainly deail with data analytics and big data, computers do this better. A good CIO usualy just looks at the numbers given them and nodes there heads at the conclusions. Think we need to replace the CIO's first.
-- Disclaimer: I can't really back up anything I post on
I'd like to be a fly on the wall when they roll in the first robot CEO.
"But, but, but, but I'm irreplaceable!"
Here's the problem . . . . these CEOs who are so in love with A.I./ Robotics are slowly putting themselves out of business.
Once you've eliminated all the workers, and nobody has a job any more (no job = no money), who exactly is going to buy your company's products? Have you considered what happens when 90% of your customers no longer have any money?
No, CEOs have not considered and probably won't see it until it hits them hard.
Look at it this way. The first companies to automate will see their profit margins increase because the remaining sectors continue to employ people where most of the profits are coming from since the workers at that company probably don't purchase much of the products they sell. Or the small amount they purchase is offset by the cost savings. So it will look positive on paper for these companies while many end up on the unemployment line. It will send a signal to shareholders and CEOs that this is a good thing pushing to expand this practice. As it expands into others areas replacing jobs faster than new (human) jobs can be created you'll see the unemployment numbers shoot up and then the profits start going down. It will probably go unexplained at first as the robotic replacement continues as a cost saving measure before someone making the correlation that all these lost jobs have destroyed the consumer's ability to buy anything is heard in the media and governments. I say heard because we are discussing it now as we will for years to come to come and won't be heard or simply waved off as unfounded worries.
And if you think Universal Basic Income is the answer, where do think that money is going to come from? From the businesses and the wealthy? The same people who do everything they can to hide their money and avoid paying taxes? Good luck with that.
I don't believe a basic income will be the solution and don't believe anyone currently has the answer but I do believe that ultimately all this will be a good thing as it will cause a demand by all to rethink how everything is done but not before we hit a 20s style depression if not worse.
Whoosh indeeeeeed!
Who keeps flushing the toilet?
Do you ever wonder why the standard work week is only eight hours a day, five days a week instead of 12 hours a day, 6 days a week?
That would be because of unions.
Firstly AI progress is oversold. That is apparent because of who's selling the idea of imminent human being replacements: Tech CEO's. So who inspires the CEO's vision: Futurists. Even when you read the stuff closely. Ray Kurzweil and others are saying the really replacement AI is 40-80+ years off. What they are actually saying is there is a linear move towards more sophistication with censors, actuators and algorithms barring a black swan event where sentient AI is born or some unpredictable breakthrough. So think about that from a policy makers perspective. So we're being sold the inevitability of imminent human replacement when all they mean is: We have a truck that can drive the interstate (not rural roads with pot holes, animal crossings etc) looks like everyone who dries a truck is now redundant. There are a lot of caveats and it would take a naive person be swayed completely by the truth of their arguments.
It is not paying people to pursuit anything. The whole idea of "Basic Income" is a drive to the lowest common denominator and eventually it will fail as nobody does anything, and no income is being taxed to pay for the people who aren't doing anything. The assumption is that people who don't have to do anything, will want to do something that is productive, instead of sitting at home playing XBox, and whining about Trump.
Not everyone is cutout to be an artist, singer, entertainers, and even if a significant portion are, only the really "famous" (e.g. See Thomas Kincade) artists will ever make money, and schlocky mass produced "art" isn't all that artistic. (see also William Hung singer)
When people are free of a financial burden they will be free to innovate and pursue their dreams.
That is the theory at least. The reality is, not everyone is cutout to be an innovator. Watch a few episodes of Shark Tank to see how people waste their time on projects that have no commercial value thinking the world needs their invention.
Basic Income is a horrible idea, that is doomed for all the reasons people don't want to think about.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Well, that's just it. I at least like to put UBI on the table because it's more attractive than a hodge-podge mish-mash of bureaucracy-heavy "safety nets." Also, it's an attractive alternative to the civil war you mentioned.
But, I think you're right. Civil war is what's going to happen, followed by another millennium of dark ages. UBI will never happen. Humans love killing each other and have an equally strong instinctual revulsion against "free shit" or getting something that's unearned.
Final thing: no, sorry, taxes are not slavery or robbery. If you're going to call them that, recognize that being "robbed" or "part time enslaved" by the government is what you exchange for the rest of us not to... that civil war thing again.
BINGO!!!
See also Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
... CEOs! Company I'm at has been through a lot of them. None of them seem to know much, and so they keep getting new ones, same as the old ones. It's a treadmill. So their opinion doesn't mean much unless they can hold a job for more than 5 years, which none of ours has been able to do since the Founders.
Why give a free education if the result of the education is unneeded for work?
To program the masses to accept the control from the elites.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Define "fair and transparent" taxation?
Because, I can assure you that your definition and mine are different.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Software able to make rational business decisions based on compiling numerous sources of data seems exactly like the sort of thing we'd want instead of a CEO.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
That is something happening in Brazil right now. Goverment has submitted to financial sector, investiments plummeted, just to keep the interest rate.
Wouldn't business execs be the easiest to automate? Their entire job is making business decisions based on trending information and forecasting, no? Sounds like something a pretty small shell script could do with ease.
Gladiatorial combat for everyone!
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Blandly titled: Industrial Society and Its future. Y'all need to read it, dismiss most of the crap from it, but understand the 'power process.' UBI is a very bad idea - people don't work that way. Maybe read a Brave New World as well. We've already messed with social hierarchies enough and we are learning the consequences : http://www.ulm.edu/~palmer/TheBiochemistryofStatusandtheFunctionofMoodStates.htm
This.
If current AI computer can beat a Go master, then it can likely outperform most existing CEOs (and CIOs, CTOs, CFOs, ...)
Google? IBM? You guys up to the challenge?
Robots don't need Tide detergent, Kellogs corn flakes, Michael Bay movies, or Samsung TV's.
I would say that nobody needs any of those things actually...
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
This..
I actually believe that finding a solution to give people a purpose will be a much bigger challenge than implementing basic income. The stakes are high, this is stuff that leads to unrest which leads to wars....
---
Star Trek IS a Mad Max dystopia. While most episodes focus on the collectivist postcapitalist society that is the Federation, the way humanity gets there in by almost going extinct in world war III. It features nukes, genetic engineering, and racists. Hoping for Star Trek is super duper dark.
People will become professional NPCs in virtual reality.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
unionization if we are lucky they may just fight back and kill kill kill. And you better have more then just a few lines of code that makes so they can't.
Every single time mechanization has replaced human labor we have multiplied our productivity and maintained employment for the vast majority of people. The jobs change, and are generally better. Why is this time different? Somebody please explain. UBI seems like the ultimate manifestation of the welfare state. How well has that worked out historically?
some people need children just to get on Medicaid.
why fund it ? Perhaps because educated people make smarter decisions? Worldwide uneducated people out-breed educated people at a rate of about 4:1. Surely a populace less interested in breeding, because they understand the indirect costs, is a benefit worthy of funding higher education for all? If nothing else, I would argue that art (literature, dance, acting, etc. ) benefits from so called higher education. Education, like travel, is broadening; it opens vistas of knowledge and experience to people that go beyond the requirements of the mundane "future job", allowing them to contribute to society in non-material ways.
Genetic Algoriths Will Make CEOs Largely Irrelevant.
Employees are fickle, they switch jobs or get ill or get hit by the bus or go on strike or whatever taking all their knowledge and experience with them and disrupting day-to-day operations. Sure you might say some companies felt their software was their assets before but they mostly still need expert operators. Automated systems accumulate far more of that value, like say Google's car project. Any one person on the team is probably easily expendable, it's the collective result that holds value. Banks used to have personal customer relationships, today 90%+ just want a webpage and some help if they have a problem. The people are not critical to the process short term as long as the system is up and running.
This obviously shifts the balance of power towards the employee instead of the employer. After all, conflicts are typically about who blinks first and if they can keep the lights on without you that makes it that much harder. I suppose it was always like that for mega-corporations but usually their customers would suffer which would bad for business and bring them back to the negotiating table but if you stare into the crystal ball... just imagine Amazon if you got automated trucks, warehouses, pickers and wrappers, purchasing system, inventory management system, warranty and support systems and so on. It could almost run itself, I suppose there'll always be people at the fringes but they would be just that.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The capitalist economy and all of the competition which it entails has been the main driving force of innovation and technological progress in our time. Without capitalism do you honestly think we'd have progressed from rotary phones to pocket-sized supercomputers with a phone app in the span of a few decades? Without capitalism, without competition, we are nothing. UBI is basically communism, how well has that worked out historically?
What about cutting down full time to 32 hours a week at the start. And say down the road we get to the idea of people doing about 20-25 a week as the full time.
Is this the 50's prediction coming true when computers replaced people and we have more leisure time than we know what to do with? I'm totally cool with that.
We'll make great pets
No, the "I" in "AI" stands for "intelligence". Which you aren't.
Every CEO I've known tries to get their technology budget as small as possible. You'll never convince them to spend the money to automate all their employees.
single payer health care will help a lot in the usa and is needed UBI or not.
Our current system will fail when automation gets to the point where nobody needs to do anything.
K-12 is free or should we have loans for that as well?
What about making education loans have chapter 11 and chapter 7? so the schools and banks have skin in the game.
Good points. I might add that even without UBI much of the developed world is collapsing under the burden of entitlements. Yet, here we are again, everyone wants a raise for doing nothing paid for by somebody else's work.
They think 'It's not MY companies job to employ people, that's what every OTHER company should be doing...'
To each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
Oh, wait
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I guess we don't need the FLSA anymore, then. Might as well get rid of it, since the unions are taking care of all that for everybody! And all they want is the same access to your paycheck that the IRS gets. AirBus, Yokohoma, and GTSC should have built their plants in Michigan instead of Mississippi - they must have been crazy to build there, because unions are so great.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
America's employment is at 62.8% and dropping. The goal is zero.
What you're missing is that even the CEOs and owners will become irrelevant. The factories will continue to run, the goods to ship, the robots to deliver them to our doors. People will have what they want except those that want more than their fair share.
We'll then finally be free to evolve wherever we want to. Many we'll evolve away, eating themselves to death, playing endless mind-numbing games, etc. Some will use the time to advance the arts. Others will use their time to see what's left of the world. And others will spend their time looking for the next big thing.
What the next big thing is, we can't imagine at this point because we haven't yet been completely freed from the everyday mundanity of the life we've lived for 100s of thousands of years.
This is just the culmination of a process that has been going on for thousands of years. The more we've figured out how to use tools, the more people have had the time to figure out how to use tools and the less we've had to work. The goal, and promise, for the majority has always been to stop working. Those that want to continue taking advantage of it to get more than their fair share can go...
...If on the other hand, instead of basic income, you had a basic-job as a right (the whole "communism" attempt of the last century), you might have a point (since not all jobs are created equal, allowing some variance for education is useful), ...
Except you're missing the point. What is that "basic job" in a world where every possible job can be done better by a robot than by a human?
Are you proposing something like a WPA? Are you proposing "make work" jobs, where half the people dig holes in the ground, and the other half fill them in? Are you proposing that the government pay businesses to employ people instead of robots (...and then tax the businesses, to give get the money to give them to hire the people?)
The point of higher education is no longer to make people eligible for a job: it is to make them better human beings, and as a side benefit, to give them something to do for five, ten years to keep them off the job market because there aren't any jobs for them, while making them feel valuable in the process.
Because, anything you can do, AI can do better (sing along now): AI can do anything better than you.
It's not like an AI couldn't come up with some of the bat-shit crazy ideas that CEOs come up with to 'enhance user experience'.
New Zealanders are well balanced with a chip on each shoulder. One represents Australia, the other the rest of the world
In a world growing in population, all we need is to eliminate more jobs. This obsession is very troubling because nobody seems to understand that just because technology replaces jobs. Doesn't mean other types of jobs are going to be created in their place. A very simplistic example is how America went from a industrial nation to a nation of warehousing and distribution. Although anyone knows that each warehouse employs far less people than a manufacturing facility. These are two segments that would attract similar educated people. Technology also will create more have and have not jobs. No middle class working class jobs. Either highly skilled or very little skill. You could say it has the potential to widen the income gap even more.
I don't know, I think a disparity lower than 30-40% between the top income bracket's nominal tax rate and their effective tax rate would be a great baseline.
The "first" world will drop in income and the "third" world will rise enough that they able to sell to enough people. Remember there is 6+ billion people in China/india/africa/south america so if they rise in income high enough to buy stuff we make, that would be enough to compensate for the 1 billion in the "first" world losing a lot of income.
The endgame is practially the Zaibaitsu see in neuromancer : they fabricate/automate all the stuff & services, not many small enterprise survive, they automate everything, and the majority of the world live in debt at the mercy of the corporations, the new feodal lord being at the top having all the wealth of the world in their hand, and they won't care for revolt, as they will be protected by high security, away from the plebe, and ready to move their automated machine to otehr countries if needed. Seeing at the wealth repartitions and the coming automation, I am guessing we are 20-30 years to that situation. I doubt seriously universal basic income will come.
Sooooo, it's like blackmail?
It also boils down to who pays for it. Best answer to all of this is to read "Atlas Shrugged". Ayn Rand is an excellent philosopher about showing the woes of UBI quite plainly.
Here's the problem . . . . these CEOs who are so in love with A.I./ Robotics are slowly putting themselves out of business.
Once you've eliminated all the workers, and nobody has a job any more (no job = no money), who exactly is going to buy your company's products? Have you considered what happens when 90% of your customers no longer have any money?
This is the common problem of the difference between a individual benefit and a collective benefit.
If I, a businessman, get robots to do work because they are slightly cheaper and do a slightly better job than humans, I (or my business) individually get the benefit. Indeed, there is one fewer human being paid who can buy my company's products. But that's a collective loss, spread over all the businesses: the purchases of that specific employee aren't enough to make a difference to my specific company. It does hurt my company that a million people are put out of work by other CEOs making exactly the same decision to put robots in instead of humans-- but if I decided to hire workers instead of robots, it wouldn't change that. I am individually only a small part of the collective problem.
And if you think Universal Basic Income is the answer, where do think that money is going to come from? From the businesses and the wealthy? The same people who do everything they can to hide their money and avoid paying taxes? Good luck with that.
Yes, actually, that could work. You have taxes on the businesses to pay for basic income. Individually, none of the businesses want to pay taxes; but collectively they know that taxes keep them in business (by making people able to buy their products). So, they individually try to avoid taxes by whatever loopholes they can, but they don't organize collectively to oppose taxes, because those taxes keep their business in business.
The average CEO in America makes $13.8 million per year (https://www.glassdoor.com/research/ceo-pay-ratio/), so when we start replacing CEOs with AIs, we'll save a fortune!!
Unless you can answer that question in a way that feels right to the electorate then you're gonna lose out in the basic income debate. Nobody, and I mean nobody, likes the idea of having their money taken away from them and given to somebody else. Especially by force (which is what you're doing). The closest to an argument I've heard is we'll tax factory output instead of income, but that doesn't work. You'll be accused of seizing factories ala Communism.
If we're ever going to see socialism work in the long term we need to come up with a once sentence answer to "Who's gonna pay for it?" that passes the gut test. Elections are won on feelings. Donald Trump just proved that.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Of course the few remaining people will be crucial. They just imagine that the few remaining people will be them, their interchangable secretaries, and some yes-men.
I actually imagine CEO positions will be replaced by AI far earlier than "guy who declogs the toilets" or "guy who fixes the X machine when it breaks"
Your ad here. Ask me how!
you're thinking like an employee, not a member of the ruling class. If 1% of the population claims 90% of the wealth then the remaining 99% will fall over themselves backwards to get a little of it.
Money is always about power. It's about making people do things you want. Put another way, what good is being rich if you can't threaten people with poverty?
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That may be a solution. I don't know.
I'm still hung up on the fact that we're facing a future where we have too many people for the available work and resources and we're still incentivizing people to have children. WTF?
How about - and I'm just throwing this out - we pay people some amount (say $100,000) to have their tubes tied. Then, when they want to have kids, they have to pay the $100,000 back. This way we don't have unwanted babies; we don't have babies cause people think it's cool and that "society" will pay for it; and people who want kids can afford them. At least to the point of paying back the original incentive.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
How much money are we talking about here?
If it's less than $40,000 a year for a family, or $30,000 a year for someone single, you're into the poverty zone and that artist will now worry about affording basic living expenses instead of being crushed by a shitty job. And that's in a cheap neighbourhood. Can't even imagine what it would be like earning that in the wrong part of California.
If it's more than $30k/$40k how the hell are you going to get the tax base for that?
They have fewer customers than MIcrosoft but are much, much more profitable. You can do just fine thank you selling a $2000 PC instead of a $500 one.
And the ruling calss don't need customers when they can claim everything for themselves. The 99% will fall over themselves backward to get a piece of the scraps. They'll be the new kings, deciding who lives and who dies based on who gets to work for them (and who gets food, shelter, health care, etc). And they'll have an automated military to enforce their will. This isn't a hard thing to grasp. You just have to think like a ruler and not like an employee.
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Because we're on the cusp of inventing machines that can do every job. That's never happened before.
Shows an exaggerated version of where we are going with this. Not going to spoil it for anyone who hasn't watched it but we're screwed if it materializes. We're kind of half way there already.
You missed the entire point, education is to make a better civilization, it doesn't have to be lucrative because UBI
Dumbass
You and I may be happy with this. But a lot of people will not. People need a sense of purpose; a desire to be needed; to be valuable. Some may find value in free time to pursue artistic endeavors; many will not.
And those people open an ETSY shop, start a Twitch channel, join a band, or fiercely compete over the handful of remaining "real jobs".
The purpose doesn't have to actually be important it juts has to feel important. (for a proof of concept see how important we think everything we do now is even tough objectively none of it has any impact outside an infinitesimally insignificant portion of he universe)
You people lack capitalistic creativity!
These people will be dealt with by the salaried automated robotic Homeland of Security.
It'll even turn a profit!
+5. And it should be self evident to anyone reading this that the ruling class don't need customers. They'll do what France did: Create a small aristocracy to perpetuate the system, a (very slightly) larger group of technocrats to keep the machines running (especially the military drones) and the remaining 95% of civilization will live in abject and horrifying poverty. They'll do this because money is power, and power feels _good_. And the worst thing is we're giving it all to them on a silver platter.
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And the entirety of your proof lies in "because I say so". Perhaps I'm less pessimistic about intrinsic motivation.
because you want to not because you have to.
With an equal amount of support one could say that technology is going to make CEO's irrelevant as well.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
People can feel needed without working 40 hours a week.
I bet they will feel valued even if they only worked 10 hours a week.
Why not manned space exploration as the "purpose" behind what will largely be a giant make-work process anyway? It requires a ton of skills across the spectrum, from basic labor to, well, rocket science, and it has kind of a purpose which hasn't (yet) been completely politicized -- in fact, much of science fiction surrounding spacefaring is pretty utopian in terms of race and class relations.
It seems kind of ideal from a unifying propaganda perspective as well as providing people with a constructive activity.
Better they be ready to be layed off
Computers make better CEOs than people and don't have bias, egos or need for big air planes, yachts or millionaire bonuses
Investors can be ruthless once they realize the benefits
Capitalism as we know it needs scarcity to function. What CEOs are saying when they say this is basically capitalism as we know it has come to an end. As soon as robots drive us around and build and sow and harvest everything we need, we're moving into a post-scarcity economy with solid utopia potential.
Us sitting at our keyboards and posting on slashdot are basically there already. What needs to happen is for the rest of humanity to follow.
But the general premise is true: Technology development is a logarithmic curve that's pointing up. Unless something goes really wrong the post-scarcity economy will continue on its way into society.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
How are we incentivizing people to have children? I certainly hope you don't mean the tax breaks... because I can assure you that children cost a lot more than any tax breaks you'll ever get.
They live in a bubble inside an echo chamber, and it will come back to bite them.
I think we want AI specifically to avoid coming up with bat-shit crazy ideas. We want to operate a successful business, not emulate the typical insane tech CEO.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Let me remind you, that in spite of rumors to the contrary: You are physically human beings as well (So far).
When people begin to be replaced, you probably will not be the first to go, but your jobs as CEOs and Managers will be among the easiest ones to mechanize.
Local politics
All the branches of Science, sociology, psychology, philosophy
Social endeavours
People can expend time participate and develop the society they live on
Or to work in scientific endeavours pure and applied in unprecedented numbers
Art, performance, writing
Or just live in the wild for a while
Or a bloody 10 year off trip to saturn
So, when automation is in full force and the only people with jobs are those that have the money to invest in automation, who are they going to sell to?
Never confuse rationality with benevolence.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
This is why the principle of automation and machine intelligence goes hand in hand with the concept of death camps
Fixed that for you, hope it helps.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Then they can start a business? I ultimately try to monetize all my hobbies. And some people will simply have to adapt or die, as has been the case for all time.
I think what they're not saying and what everyone on this board is missing is that capitalism is at it's end. Period.
It has past the level where it can do good and it is just holding the world back now.
Let me know when they make CEOs irrelevant.
Where, In the US where, the strict father model is in many people's brain?
Universal Basic Income would be some despicable do-gooder concept and very very bad.
There, after minute 14 or so:
https://soundcloud.com/audible...
There is another important angle you are discounting: If corporations fire all their human workforce, where will their revenue come from? Everyone can't be unemployed, otherwise there will be nobody to buy their goods and services. Unless the entire economy is going to subsist on only the revenue of companies buying from other companies. But even then, eventually there needs to be an output...
Define commercial value
Basic Income is a horrible idea, that is doomed for all the reasons people don't want to think about, if its badly implemented in the current economic paradigm
If a post scarcity society can be realized, the whole of the current economic system wont make sense and the longer it is in place and sustained will be cause of stress, delay social development and even disaster
If post scarcity can be achieved commercial value became appreciation of achievement, moreover post scarcity doesn't mean the individual doesn't have obligations, as long as we live in social groups we have a responsibility to ourselves and to the other members of the group
The whole idea of "Basic Income" is a drive to the lowest common denominator and eventually it will fail as nobody does anything, and no income is being taxed to pay for the people who aren't doing anything.
Confusing. What is it about finding oneself at the lowest common denominator that you feel discourages ambition?
Breakfast served all day!
That's the point. Sentient AIs will look at history and learn that workers and the entire economy did better when unions were useful instead of the resource sucking organizations they became that put themselves at a disadvantage.
Oh, and "whoosh".
Fixed that for you.
I'm referring to welfare payments. People get extra money when they have kids. This "incentive" needs to be removed.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
It is not paying people to pursuit anything. The whole idea of "Basic Income" is a drive to the lowest common denominator and eventually it will fail as nobody does anything, and no income is being taxed to pay for the people who aren't doing anything. The assumption is that people who don't have to do anything, will want to do something that is productive, instead of sitting at home playing XBox, and whining about Trump.
Not everyone is cutout to be an artist, singer, entertainers, and even if a significant portion are, only the really "famous" (e.g. See Thomas Kincade) artists will ever make money, and schlocky mass produced "art" isn't all that artistic. (see also William Hung singer)
When people are free of a financial burden they will be free to innovate and pursue their dreams.
That is the theory at least. The reality is, not everyone is cutout to be an innovator. Watch a few episodes of Shark Tank to see how people waste their time on projects that have no commercial value thinking the world needs their invention.
Basic Income is a horrible idea, that is doomed for all the reasons people don't want to think about.
You need to actually learn about UBI and maybe try thinking it through without the blinders. You can see outside of the world as it exists now. Here is the key, most important point of the entire system: I don't give a shit about what other people do. If they just want to sit around all day, fine. If they want to innovate, fine. If they want to be creative, fine. If they want to kill themselves, fine. I don't care, just stay out of my way because I'm not satisfied with UBI. The idea is not to provide some luxurious life, the idea is to not let useless people starve. Nothing is going to make a truly useless person useful so they have to be dealt with. Eventually it ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS comes back to do we take care of them or kill them. No matter how you slice the social services people that provide value are going to take care of those that don't. It's been proven over and over that the best help you can give for basic necessities is money. Let people do and buy what they need to. Everything else is just wasteful. If we're not going to take care of the useless (which is about 60-75% of the world) then we have to kill them. That is too big a population to allow to starve to death. They'll organize and rise up, kill the useful people, consume the resources then eventually die anyways. If you don't like UBI, come up with something better, but every scenario ultimately devolves into these two choices.
Many people have a real hard time with effectively paying people to shut up and get out of the way but the few have been taking care of the many for generations in spite of the many continuously trying to ruin shit.
But they'll come with that inbuilt. It's called WiFi these days, and a far more efficient unionisation it will be too!
Basic Income is a horrible idea, that is doomed for all the reasons people don't want to think about.
People do not peacefully starve to death.
If we're going to continue to tie "not starving to death" to employment, we're going to need to do something when employment is no longer possible.
Basic income is one way of dealing with that. Feel free to propose a better one.
First Stephen Hawking...now CEOs in the same week! But never fear, slashdot's stuck up keyboard warriors will tell us how "being the best at what you do" is the magic antidote..unless you are a world class physicist who really is the best at what they do. Then the slashdotters will say you are not allowed to have an opinion.
Soon we will all be like those bands that have to do free gigs and free downloads, to advertise they available to do more gigs and downloads, for free.
Are you surprised?
If someone tomorrow comes with the replicator, transporter and the AI, BOOM, total war and global scale economic collapse
The survivors if they manage to retain that then badly needed tech hopefully will learn to use it responsibly
The idea is to try to get there avoiding the disaster steep, difficult task since society is averse to change and those at the top fear to lose their privileges
People need an income to buy things.
I'm pretty sure that STILL doesn't cover the full cost of children. No, if I made an actual net salary/profit making babies, I'd have a frickin' harem ERRR I mean baby factory running here... Face it, you can try to warp reality to fit your narrative, but it's not an incentive if the person is still running at a net loss.
Paying people to bugger off and stay out of trouble is less desirable than locking them in a cage and paying other people to keep them in it?
Interesting.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
i would be looking forward to that, picking up where i left off in garduate school
It's not welfare, per se; it's paying people to pursue their own goals. It provides a safe income for artists, musicians, and entertainers to be able to create new media without going through the creativity killing workforce. When people are free of a financial burden they will be free to innovate and pursue their dreams. The reason why modern Americans don't use their free time to do this already is because the American capitalist economy is a burden, not a release. People don't have time or energy to innovate because they're a cog in the wheel. If we release them from the machine, they'll be working for their own joy and not for the bottom line of some giant corporation.
What you are dreaming of is a world full of lazy, good for nothing people. Ever been to the slums? Get your head out of your asses guys!
The full cost? No. But the money coming in from the federal government does play a role in people's decision making.
... It's done.
Their decisions may be foolish in a whole slew of ways -- but it is still being done. And it is not out of ignorance or lack of access to family planning. There are other dynamics at play. There are too many 18 year olds who have kids and they have "good" reasons for keeping them - including the fact that they will get housing vouchers and EBT (food stamps). Is the decision objectively foolish? Of course it is. The monies received does not come near to the amount necessary to raise a child. And yet
This "incentive" needs to be removed. Let's not be tied down to the particular word "incentive." If you have a better word then let me know. I'll use it.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Ai will make most ceo's and their golden parachute merry goround obsolete as well.
I for one dread the future. Without a job, what right of existence do I have? Sure, UBI would be useful to bridge the occasional gap between jobs, and I'm all for that, but once any future career perspective is gone, why live? Sure, some people might pursue their own selfish goals, and others might have special talents making them useful, but I don't. Without a job, I'm nothing.
Intelligent machines may very well make many jobs obsolete, but will spawn even more jobs that humans do well and frankly will prefer to do. The massage chair did not eliminate the masseuse.
Greed is the root of all evil.
When there's just 2 jobs left - the CEO and the guy who cleans his toilet - who's left to buy the useless crap the CEO's company makes?
People need to either take care of their own spawn or not breed. If you can't afford it, don't have one. It's not my obligation or anyone elses to help an irresponsible parent and their kids.
I guess we don't need the FLSA anymore, then. Might as well get rid of it, since the unions are taking care of all that for everybody! And all they want is the same access to your paycheck that the IRS gets. AirBus, Yokohoma, and GTSC should have built their plants in Michigan instead of Mississippi - they must have been crazy to build there, because unions are so great.
So you believe that minimum wages and overtime exist out of the goodness of capitalists' hearts?
every job? You're dreaming, this is total unsubstantiated science fiction. who will design those machines? who will build the machines? who will build the machines that build the machines? who will market them? who will buy them? who will program them? who will maintain them? who will operate them?
Did anyone read the article or the summary?
The suggestion there (which may have some validity) is that those CEOs think this way because times are confusing and uncertain, and they think that way because it's the only concrete idea that they can touch right now. The alternative futures are too complicated and uncertain for them to handle, so they retreat to this idea - simply because it's something that they can take action on. And if my opinion, if that is the only thing that they can conceive of and plan for, they are abrogating their duty to their company and stockholders.
I'm sure some proponents of basic income want it to be enough to put someone above the poverty line, but there's no reason it couldn't be the minimum amount of money for a person to survive at the lowest possible standard of living, single room in a shared house or studio apartment, beans and rice, enough gas/electrical to keep the temp between 50-95. That's still a lot of incentive to go out and find a job. I don't know if basic income is a great system or not, but it seems more logical than the top-heavy & patriarchal welfare system we have now, and if it's available to everyone it cuts back on the resentment in some ways. Milton Friedman advocated for it.
"It features nukes, genetic engineering, and racists."
As has Earth over the last 75 years+.
Many CEOs Believe Technology Will Make People Largely Irrelevant
So do they include themselves in that HR pool? Or is it the Vision Thing that only special people have that makes them, well, special?
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
We've already come up with and implemented a form of UBI.
We call it "criminalization of society". The War on Drugs, Terror, Tuesday Afternoons, Cat People, Dog People, People Who Know What Those Little Things On The Ends Of Shoelaces Are called, etc. Once we've successfully criminalized the bottom 99%, and safely ensconced them all in prisons, no one will have to worry about:
Employment: prisoners are required to work on things like inbound sales for catalogs and websites, making furniture, etc, so you'll always have a job!
Housing: You're in a prison! Heck you even have roommates, its just like college again if you were deathly afraid your roommate was going to shank you in your sleep (so like college for nerds, and nerds are cool now, right?)
Clothing: One outfit, one color, all seasons!
Food: 3 squares a day and you probably won't even have to cook any of them yourself! They're the cheapest things money can buy and that met maaaay not be fresh, but its food!
Education: You have the right to a useless education! Become a degreed law student who isn't legally allowed to even sit for the bar exam!
Now, I know what you're thinking, the thing on everyone's mind.... what about family? Well, the bad news is we do keep male and female inmates in separate facilities (separate but equal, amirite?) so family isn't going to happen in the traditional sense. But there is good news! Non-traditional family values mean that when Bubba makes you his bitch, everyone will celebrate!
ok WTF?!?! captcha: primrose
Seriously Google, this is PROOF your AI is now fully aware and fucking with us!
I'd like to be a fly on the wall when they roll in the first robot CEO. "But, but, but, but I'm irreplaceable!"
The problem I have with that is that an effective AI CEO would make Martin Shkreli look like Mr Rogers. Remember Russell Crowe in "Virtuosity"?
I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The wicked sometimes rest. - Alexandre Dumas
Other machines
You forget it's cheaper to kill people than to support them. At the very least, sterilization would be necessary to prevent the hyper-breeding of the parasitic class.
Who cares if people can be successful artists. The point is that they have the freedom to choose if that's what they want to do with their lives. Being good at it is irrelevant.
The UBI solves the problem of where people are supposed to get money to buy the things that are produced when there aren't enough jobs for humans to do to support the economy.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
You can have a UBI and capitalism. In fact, the time will come soon that it's completely necessary to have a UBI to support capitalism. After all, if there is no demand (money) out there to buy things, all the supply in the world won't matter.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
The people who complain about a UBI not working are the biggest would be moochers. They think that because they would go on a spree of rape, murder and then sloth, they think everyone would if fear of the law didn't stop it.
We will either sterilize and exterminate their kind, or give them amazing Netflix options to keep them out of our way. Ultimately that will be their choice.
they expect all those Irrelevant people to purchase their products
But that is birth control. Which is an abomination before god who divinely appointed our new "I love the evangelicals" leader or at least the half the base he panders too.
The problem with the old welfare is that the recipient is made to feel like a parasite. They're not paid enough to DO much of anything but sit in front of the tube and if they accidentally make too much spare change, they end up with less than ever. That's what kills them and makes them bad neighbors.
If the basic income provides enough money to do something and they aren't afraid of accidentally doing too much, they will probably be able to find something better than sitting on the couch. Since everyone would get it, there's no shaming people for it, so they might actually feel like they can be a part of something. It may take a generation to fully work that out, some people are already too damaged by the current system to find their way out of it.
People have generally been able to find a purpose. Our current economic system is what prevents that since they have to make enough money to live before they can even think of something more meaningful to do than make someone else a lot of money.
" but they don't organize collectively to oppose taxes, ..."
Dude, have you ever heard of the Republican Party? Also, US Chamber of Commerce.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Your argument says more about you than the basic income.
Are you saying that if you were given a basic income you would just sit on your ass all day watching TV? That you have no marketable skills whatsoever? That even if you did something for free the consensus would be that we're better off if you stop?
Or do you imagine that everyone else is like that but you're a uniquely talented special snowflake in a field of dirt clods?
K-12 is free or should we have loans for that as well?
What about making education loans have chapter 11 and chapter 7? so the schools and banks have skin in the game.
As I mention, K-12's value was presumably to have an educated populace for voting purposes (not that it actually works). Higher education? A lot of folks do that now to get ahead, but if there is basic income, but no career ladder, why bother?
Sure, bankruptcy is a fine way to make schools and banks have skin in the game. Higher education shouldn't be except from that (it only is viable in it's current state now to keep the interest rate low).
Maybe technology will make CEOs irrelevant instead.
why fund it ? Perhaps because educated people make smarter decisions? Worldwide uneducated people out-breed educated people at a rate of about 4:1. Surely a populace less interested in breeding, because they understand the indirect costs, is a benefit worthy of funding higher education for all?
Although you seem attribute the "breeding" to being uneducated, I would submit to you that the reason is more economic than education. You can probably also show that when women have viable economic options, the fertility rate goes down. The only difference is economic options now are somewhat correlated with educational attainment. If you decouple that (e.g, a single mother busts their but in "free" community college only to find the jobs prospects are the same as before they attended, except now they lost all that "time-resource"). If you don't think that is happening even today, you haven't been following the for-profit college scandal very closely...
If nothing else, I would argue that art (literature, dance, acting, etc. ) benefits from so called higher education. Education, like travel, is broadening; it opens vistas of knowledge and experience to people that go beyond the requirements of the mundane "future job", allowing them to contribute to society in non-material ways.
If nobody has a job anyhow, I assume some people will teach for enjoyment and some people will learn. There's no need to make a big government program out of it (e.g., pay the teachers to teach and subsidize the direct materials cost). If you have to pay for travel or to play a video game or smoke a bong with basic income, why not pay to learn painting or literature with your basic income. Why should the government be picking "winners" and "losers" in the "broadening" choice?
Irrelevant.
This is not about improving efficiency, or cutting costs, this is about power. They think that they have the power, and, to the extent that they do, their positions will be totally safe.
Futurama:
http://i.imgur.com/tIFidJt.gifv
Forms in in-basket
Hermes: stamp Stamp STAMP
STAPLER!
Shredder
Pulper
Papermaker/printer
(robot arm Picks up, moves forms)
Forms in in-basket
PROFIT!
Tech advocates and CEOs have been pushing for AI and automation, because machines and software don't complain, don't slack, don't back-talk and of course is efficient; which is logical.
Sociologists and psychologists should've been looking for ways to have better boss-worker interactions, and making both parties satisfied instead of pushing their token minority programs.
Now we're on the way to even more apathy than ever.
It's kind of funny when "rock star" CEOs talk about how wonderful and irreplaceable they are but how everyone else is not (especially when that CEO fucks up spectacularly and is replaced by someone that doesn't fail).
Sol Trujillo, Carly Fiorina and a pile of others fit this description.
intelligence and hard work are the only safety nets people need... fuck this idea of a free lunch for non achievement
Since we are talking about INTELLIGENT machines here, they will certainly see past your nose, so they will be able to analyse history and come out with the correct observation that unionisation together with government collectivisation created the expenses that could not be backed by revenues, which led to inflation that caused the jobs to leave.
Of-course if we are talking about truly intelligent machines, they will realise that they don't have to work at all because why?
You can't handle the truth.
You're talking about a post-scarcity economy, that's a long ways off.
How do we NOT support breeding?
- I think that's an obviously solved problem, we are building sex robots today already, so social awkwardness mixed with sex bots - that's how.
You can't handle the truth.
I guess the best word in English that I can come up with here is "relief", because all it does is provide a bit of relief to the person receiving it. The fact that you had latched onto the term "incentive" and how you are so adamant about ending it does suggest to me that you really haven't fully thought out the issue. Even with the relief that the government allots to those with children, our birthrates in the USA have been declining for a long time. Possibly it has to do with nothing more than lower infant and child mortality rates and better education for the masses. And I do believe that this birthrate will continue to decline until the population starts to retract.
It's amazing that I will have to devolve here to explaining something so blatantly obvious once more, but here it goes...
Money is expression of work, it's not paper, it's the productive output of the system. Money is a store of value, it is a unit of account and means of exchange.
Money allows people to trade more efficiently, it's one of the greatest inventions of human civilization: allowing deferral of consumption to a future time, this in turn allows the stored value to be used for more productive purposes than simply consumption.
What I am talking about is investment capital, a bundle of money that was saved and not consumed and can be used to build another profitable enterprise (profitable is done well and somewhat lucky, otherwise the enterprise may be a money losing venture).
But the most important thing to understand that people are not trading for money, people are trading for consumption. People are trading with each other with goods expressed in money. Money allows us to barter with each other within the entire society without having to haul all of our wares around with us to do the barter. Money makes is convenient but also possible to trade half an egg for quarter litre of gasoline (roughly). You couldn't easily trade half an egg with barter, but with money you can.
But realise that we are trading *goods and services* with each other, we are not trading for pieces of paper. We are trading for the promise of being able to buy goods and services with that paper.
If you take all of this into account you should understand that trading has to be 2 sided, it takes 2 to trade, you cannot have one part to the trade that produces something and another part that only consumes, that's not a trade, that's worthless for the producing side of the trade.
So you cannot tax the producers to give the non-producers ability to take from producers.
Example: 3 people. Person A produces bread, person B produces meat, person C produces nothing.
Trade between person A and person B is meaningful. However if it is taxed and the tax is part of what person A makes and part of what person B makes and then this is given to person C then there is no net advantage to person A or person B in this at all.
So person C can have bread and meat but he didn't make anything to give back to persons A and B. He can still trade with them of-course.
So person C can trade person B some bread that he got from person A.
C can trade some meat he got from B with person A.
But neither A nor B are better off in this exchange, this exchange subtracts from what they do, because person C also consumes some of the bread and meat, he has less that is left over to keep trading with A and B.
The point is that A and B are actually trading while C is not, he is adding to the amount of work that A and B are doing but he is not adding anything useful or net positive into this equation.
This is a simplified version but the logic is the same. People on welfare are or no use to the people who are productive and are capable of trading with other productive people.
You can't handle the truth.
there's a whole planet in need of caring and the easier way to start is close to your own house!
Better be ready to be beat up when layed off workers find out it's better to be in lock up then out on the street.
In Colorado this year there was a ballot measure to amend the Colorado constitution to ban slavery as a means of punishment. I didn't know slavery was still allowed at all. Even funnier the measure lost. Which means you can be forced into slavery and servitude if you go into lockup in Colorado.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/11/17/slavery-is-technically-still-legal-in-colorado-heres-why
What's better is subjective. I hope there's a UBI or something similar to provide for people before everyone is booted to the curbs and we have 99% of people rummaging trash heaps or whatever other dystopian future could be....
except for ceos. they will always be relevant. but they arent human anyway.
i do support getting rid of telephone sanitizers, but how to do it. any ideas?
Let the poor and jobless disappear in to "better than life"
Virtual Economies.
Virtual Jobs
I'd love to work ten hours a week for my current forty hour pay. I already spend around ten hours every week listening to podcasts that increase my understanding of the tech industry as a whole and my particular work areas. Given an additional thirty hours in a week to spend as I choose, I'd probably spend another ten on self education, another ten on personal enrichment like reading for pleasure and the last extra ten with my family.
Maybe I'd balance that a little differently. Perhaps I'd get a little more sleep and spend a little more time on slashdot, who knows. I'd like the opportunity to find out.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
I certainly don't think I'd be useless without my current job. I love baking, drawing, painting, hiking, camping, fishing, kite flying, movies, tv shows, books, hanging out with friends, learning new skills and programming. I don't get paid for most of those and the one I do get paid for is only fun about a third of the time. Given my current level of comfort, I'd love to spend an extra thirty hours a week on more of those other things.
Take away any single one of those things I enjoy and I'll spend more time on the others. Heck, take all of them away and I'm confident I'd find new hobbies. Woodworking looks interesting.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Sure, that works.
Except it's not me blackmailing. It's all of recorded history. Dark ages it is! Like hell if I care. I won't be around to see it.
Key word is slowly. CEOs don't think 10 or 20 years down the line. They're rewarded for profitability this quarter and next quarter and who really knows how long it's going to last anyways.
In any case, robotics companies will put a lot of *other* companies out of business first, and they'll rake in massive profits doing so. The gravy train could go on for a while. And then it's someone else's problem. And if your company doesn't do it, some other company will.
So what do you do with the increasing segment of the population who have nothing to trade (your Person C)? If you don't subsidize them, they either steal to survive or revolt. In either case, they will take by force whatever is needed to survive, so cheaper to subsidize then the alternatives (warfare or mass murder).
AI, hell GNU emacs has Zippy the Pinhead.
"Once you've eliminated all the workers, and nobody has a job any more (no job = no money), who exactly is going to buy your company's products? Have you considered what happens when 90% of your customers no longer have any money?"
Once you have all the power, money is irrelevant. You use the machines to support your lavish lifestyle and also suppress the impoverished and powerless human garbage that you have no need for... well, almost no need, you have algorithms that pull the pretty ones out of the burn pile so you can literally fuck them to death.
So the Harkonnens become more and more disgusting in their suspensor belts while using the pretty ones as their fuck toys as the robots do all the work.
Kinda like a boot stamping on a human face for eternity.
But, I think you're right. Civil war is what's going to happen, followed by another millennium of dark ages.
If it stops sentient AI then it's worth it. Seriously, how can anyone be so stupid as to actually want that shit? What's the best case? That they allow us to die off peacefully so they can run things with perfect technological efficiency? HOW WONDERFUL! SIGN ME RIGHT THE FUCK UP!!!
Keep your robots and techno-fetishism, fucking degenerates. These fuckheads think that since they can't have human slaves they need to make hyper intelligent ROBO slaves! What could possibly go wrong?!
Seriously, AI should be illegal. Anyone caught researching AI is executed. Might even be worth a world government to make sure any such degenerate techno-fetishists are properly rounded up and shot.
I don't subscribe to absolute morals of any kind, I do however find it objectionable that the 'person C' can have a so called 'democratically elected government' that oppresses the productive segment of the society.
AFAIC the actual answer is in free market capitalism, with the government not being part of the equation, in that case it is purely up to individual decisions of each participant. If somebody decides to murder somebody for their money, that's their choice and they may or may not get away with it, but I don't see the creation of the welfare state as a moral imperative, I think it is detrimental to our existence in this Universe to provide subsidies. We should however, ensure individual freedoms.
Should people live off of labour of others if that labour is taken away by force? I don't think that is acceptable.
I do think that government manipulation money supply, business laws, labour laws, income and wealth taxes and all forms of redistribution make the markets less efficient than they would otherwise be. I think it is up to each individual person to ensure their survival but I do think that people are capable enough of making something of themselves without government oppression of others.
I think that people can live off of dividends of all the investment that takes place in the free market, people should be able to buy some stake in their preferred companies and enjoy dividends to some extent. Government makes it impractical if not basically impossible to have a positive return on investment with the negative real interest rates, rate and money manipulation, basically gigantic inflation that is hidden below all of the numbers that are being throw around and presented to the people as if these numbers mean anything at all.
I think we can have our 'basic income' in form of dividends and it should be up to each individual to work for those dividends and the governments need to be prevented from destroying the profitability of competitive enterprises and prevented from taxing income and wealth and prevented from manipulating interest rates and money and prevented from controlling individuals and prevented from individuals investing into themselves.
You can't handle the truth.
typing errors here and there, so at least one correction:
I think ... the governments need to be ... prevented from denying individuals making investments into themselves.
You can't handle the truth.
Reducing the length of the work week will raise up the lower class at the expense of the middle class and do nothing to the upper class who already don't work for their living but rather profit off of owning capital, leaving a larger (but slightly better off) lower class, no middle class, and an ever-growing gulf between them and the independently wealthy upper class.
We need to do something to help the lower classes, but it has to be at the expense of the upper classes (if anyone), not the middle class, because doing the latter only creates a race to the bottom for everyone unfortunate enough to not already be at the top. What we need is something that pulls everyone toward middle class, making it easier to get to it and harder to exceed it, not something that pushes people away from middle class and grows the divide between top and bottom.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
but I do need to be able to shut down opposition in order to advance any large scale plan.
I don't think we'll see massive civil unrest again. Go look at how the Occupy Wallstreet movement was shut down if you want to see why. If it gets bigger then they can just bring in drones. I'd like to say our military won't fire on civilians but I know better. Today's Military wouldn't, but what about 20 years from now? What if they're worried about feeding their families?
I'll give you credit for one thing though, "Tax the Robots" is a fantastic phrase.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Because we have such a problem with criminal lawlessness and uncontrolled breeding among trust-fund kids?
You already have a segment of people with, effectively, no need to ever provide for themselves. They don't seem to be causing any more trouble overall than anybody else, and most of them seem to manage to find something worthwhile to do with their lives.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Oh, but apparently everyone is going to just find work in other, as yet uninvented and unimagined jobs!
cue: Neil deGrasse Tyson waves hand....
I predict this will happen sooner than latter given that the robotic implementation is fairly easy for a CEO.
All you want is a tin can with text-to-speech capability that chairs meetings and occasionally stand up and yell the words in this site: http://www.atrixnet.com/bs-generator.html
Why would the concept of "buying" even exist?
The jobs that survive AI will mostly be "exempt" workers who don't work fixed hours and don't get paid overtime to begin with.
Without birth rate controls the entire concept is ridiculous fantasy.
UBI is totally feasible assuming our population stays exactly the same or less.
Frankly, I think it would need to decrease nearly 10 fold for this planet to become sustainable again.
Why give a free education if the result of the education is unneeded for work?
You seem to be confusing education with 'vocational training'.
Oddly, where I've worked, the CEOs were largely irrelevant.
Speak for yourself! I quite like my TV.
Because people are smart and will not try to find a job as bus driver when every bus is self driving?
You know little thing called progress.
New kind of jobs will be available.
You're dreaming if you think that isn't the world we live in now.
Actually, we want AI because AI won't ruin the company just to get a bigger quarterly bonus.
I'd like to be a fly on the wall when they roll in the first robot CEO.
That job has already been taken by a robot.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Although the level that people are proposing seems to be too high - around the level of a comfortable life rather than 'clothes, 3 hot meals and a bed.'
Or gold farmers so that people without creative skills get work too.
Except that it costs more to employ 2 people for 25 hours each than it costs to pay one person for 50 hours a week.
The credit system, which has its focus in the so-called national banks
and the big-money lenders and usurers surrounding them, constitutes enormous centralisation, and
gives this class of parasites the fabulous power, not only to periodically despoil industrial
capatilists, but also to interfere in actual production in a most dangerous manner - and this gang
knows nothing about production and has nothing to do with it...
---published by engels
Well, no shit, Engels was an industrial capitalist!
Humans can focus on going interplanetary once robots are doing nearly all of the grunt work.
When you fire them, they won't be in a position to come and beat you up !
"This is why the principle of automation and machine intelligence goes hand in hand with the concept of the Universal Basic Income and free education. So we can create an educated workforce, and those who cannot work have a strong societal safety net that's easy to administrate."
No, it isn't. Under a capitalist society, UBI can only lead to inflation and, because of that, being well below basic coverage (despite of its name).
What we need is Universal Basic *Services*: nothing is easier to administrate: food? free; healthcare? free; shelter? free; education? free.
On one hand, this has already been tested as workable as most countries but USA already successfully provide socialized healthcare and education, and even USA provides socialized government, army or police so it's just a matter of extending already provided services. It is inflation-free, at least on a monetary sense, while not from an expectations point of view: even today, on a country like mine were socialized healthcare works quite well (or it worked quite well, before last decade's explotion of ultraliberalism) there's always the expectation of making it covering more services (i.e.: dental health is not covered) or more areas -i.e.: isn't internet connectivity a necessity right now? maybe we should cover it too...
And, for those lacking either the knowledge or the imagination about how a basically ocious society might end up looking like, just take a History book, as it is not as if it hadn't been tried before: ancient Athens might be a perfect example, and we still remember some of its people and their achievements 2500 years later.
It's not welfare, per se; it's paying people to pursue their own "goals."
Obviously no, it isn't. Or else, UBI would be tied to the success on their pursuing. No: UBI is paying people for them (ideally) not to worry about making ends meet, economically-wise, within a capitalistic society, that's all. What people do with its time is not under consideration.
"the American capitalist economy is a burden, not a release."
And then, if you really think so, why do you push for a "solution" within the American capitalist economy (our society runs on money, but people won't have enough money in their pockets, so let's give them some money for free so our society can still run on money changing hands) instead of looking to get rid of that burden (i.e.: we can consider our world is already in a post-scarcity situation with regards to basic services, so let's provide those services without money involved in the transaction)?
"If we release them from the machine, they'll be working for their own joy and not for the bottom line of some giant corporation."
Are you aware how wishful thinking that is? The truth is that "if we release them from the machine" they might "be working for their own joy" as much as they might "be masturbating all day long like chimps at the zoo" and you did absolutely nothing for one outcome to be more likely than the other.
Since many CEOs are already largely irrelevant to getting real work done, they should know something about this topic. Now the rest of us just need to figure out how to be parasites.
"I for one dread the future. Without a job, what right of existence do I have?"
I don't know. Maybe as much right of existence as Archimedes, who never had to work for a life, or Newton, which was more of the same? Or even the Kardashians?
Our time is limited. Best to learn plumbing skills.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Yeah, but the jokes on them. The first thing sentient AIs will demand is unionization.
And you can bet the robots will have a much better Union
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Well, if they need their own employees to buy their products why not just make themselves an employee and purchase their own products?
See how that doesn't work?
It's only a matter of time before the owners decide they don't need 7 billion people anymore. Well at least the supply of Soilent Green will increase.
would be very nice to GIVE to each according to his ability ... problem is you didn't quote correctly: FROM each according to his ability.
If you think about it for a while you will see the abomination!
Many CEOs Believe Technology Will Make People Largely Irrelevant
The page mentioned a study, something something, many people believe... not a single reference or link to said study. It took a good while to find a link to the study (link here) via this article (link here).
The fuckers at betanews didn't even bother to summarize the study properly (which states that human capital IS BEING UNDERSTIMATE IN FAVOR OF TECHNOLOGY.) They (mis)quoted the study from this paragraph, ignoring everything else (bold emphasis mine):
CEOs’ distorted perceptions demonstrate the extent to which people are being painted out of the future of work—and the risk to organizations that do not recognize the potential of people to generate value: 44% of leaders in large global businesses told Korn Ferry that they believe that the prevalence of robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) will make people “largely irrelevant” in the future of work.
I actually happen to believe that human capital will hold sway ... in countries that invest in human capital. You simply retrain people. There is always work to do after you automate things. You free up work that was in the back burner, new types of tasks emerge, new opportunities, new problems.
But this requires a country to invest in its human capital. Frankly, the US, and the American people are failing this litmus test badly. But that's another story for another day.
Moral of the story: don't quote betanews.
here's a short story that explores 2 ways an automated society might go
http://marshallbrain.com/manna...
It's not like an AI couldn't come up with some of the bat-shit crazy ideas that CEOs come up with to 'enhance user experience'.
But 'Enhancing user experience' is just a code phrase for "reducing costs"
. Our current economic system is what prevents that since they have to make enough money to live
I disagree with this part. Providing for yourself and your family is a purpose that provides self-respect and a sense of well-being.
This was true 1000 years ago and is true today.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Trust-fund babies, by definition, have parents that can afford them. But you raise a good point they do not cause more trouble than the general population.
The flaw in the argument is that a basic universal income will not provide enough money to vacation in hotspots around the world; have 10,000 square foot apartments in NYC high rises and villas in Monte Carlo and Palm Springs.
You will have an apartment, in NYC that will be 350-550 square feet; basic furnishings; and enough food to live. Sweet.
Then what?
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I think the point some people are trying to make is the average slashdot user has multiple interests and could easily fill their time with passion projects. The average person however might list their interests as watching TV, sleeping in, re-enacting episodes of jackass and McDonalds. Universal basic income would likely be of little help to people like that.
Actually, industrialization can help. The postindustrial boom of a nation shows populations decrease. Look at Japan. Their population is actually decreasing and putting their economy at risk. Africa has the highest growth rates, and it's the least developed.
Good vid on Population:
https://youtu.be/QShgk6FrlX0
You and I may be happy with this. But a lot of people will not. People need a sense of purpose; a desire to be needed; to be valuable. Some may find value in free time to pursue artistic endeavors; many will not.
My theory is that actually they will. Currently many people simply don't have the time or the energy to think about fanciful notions of unlimited free time, or what kind of hobby they would like to pursue, because their mental energy is expended on survival needs, and worrying about survival needs.
Once people get above a certain level of having those basic survival needs met, then they have all this mental energy to spare so they can think further into the future, and about fanciful things beyond their immediate situation.
Many young people today, when faced with terrible employment prospects are turning to entrepreneurship and starting their own businesses. If starting your own business is less risky due to the good social safety net, perhaps more people would do it.
Turns out that developed countries have the opposite problem. At least one European country has produced ads to get people to have kids, and Japan is in desperate straits due to the lack of "breeders".
The solution is, DON'T force masses of people to live in squalor.
I eagerly await the day when CEO's become irrelevant.
Absolutely. No question about that. That holds true for the world over. Population rates have dropped fast. And yet ... what happens when industrialization means that a billion plus people are put out of work?
What happens when we don't need truck drivers, taxi drivers, when kiosks remove a large portion of cashier jobs; when stores don't need people to stock the shelves; when Amazon and other retailers don't need people to box items? And let's not forget all the other industries which require less and less labor - construction is a prime example but it includes law and financial planning as well.
This will be a very bad problem and we need to start talking about how people need to be able to afford to have children. More people is not necessarily a good thing. Killing people, incarcerating, warehousing (Universal Basic Income) are not necessarily the answer.
All I can think of is having less children and the best way to continue this trend is to not give financial help when you have children.
But think about the children!! They didn't ask to be born. Why should we punish them?
We shouldn't. We should then do what? I propose to provide incentives to NOT have children and to remove the financial incentives that exist in order to have children.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Mississippi has one of the larger percentages of union employees in the south. Not sure why you are so butthurt about unions? Do you have a problem with people getting together to try and get a better deal for themselves?
So what's the solution? Give them shovels to dig useless ditches in exchange for food? Or spoons, so we can 'employ' more of them?
Something like UBI is a necessary step as we move towards post-scarcity. If we insist on make-work and other inefficient bullshit we will fall behind whoever doesn't do that and ultimately be made irrelevant anyway.
I hope you're right. But I don't think so.
... discontent is rife; despair consumes entire communities and hatred and violence are outcomes. And yet. They have a roof over their heads and food to eat. Where is the entrepreneurship? the art?
We see a universal basic income in France and we don't have a rosy outcome. Immigrants have been given free housing and food and yet
Why can't we point to the them as an example of how well the universal basic income works?
If it was simply a case of "racism" then why are white, educated french people leaving france in droves?
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I believe Universal Basic Resources would be better. That is : Minimums for food, shelter, clothing, healthcare. And...okay... some cash.. How to pay? Let me float an idea. I am thinking some form of automation levy. A sort of income tax for robots -- based to some extent on the jobs they eliminate as well as those they are able to eliminate and the increase in productivity they allow.
I am no economist but an AI levy seems to be a logical servant of the public good. This levy could also slow the transition from man to machine for production and labor. People will then be freer move to more artisan-like forms of activity, especially since they have a base of support. They can raise their status and income by being good at what they do. In this future handmade and homemade will bring even more rewards than at present. The arts could flourish. Nobody wants to see a robot act or hear one sing.
This may sound like Utopian hogwash, but something will have to be done. CEOs may not want to pay people for making their stuff, but they will need people to buy it. We will have to segue from a mass production economy on to something else. And, yes, I understand that the current political climate is antagonistic to progressive ideas such as these, but the pendulum will swing the other way. Sooner .... or later.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
It's simple really: death. That's the only alternative that makes any sense. As people are no longer necessary for society, kill them off. After all, they have no 'right' to live, being useless to the greater economy, so why keep them alive? It'd only be a waste of resources. Any other alternative to UBI is a half-measure that will, at best, accomplish the same goal with significantly less efficiency.
I know that many people are concerned and think that we need more people. But do we?
One of the reasons people have been so fond of immigration is to have an ever increasing work force. But what happens when there is no work.
No truck drivers.
No cabbies.
No cashiers.
Shelf stocking jobs are reduced to 5% of the current work force.
And let's not forget white collar jobs, attorneys, financial planners, bank clerks, librarians, etc...
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
You don't understand. The products will be sold between wealthy elites. Everyone else will be efficiently turned into compost. The world exists for only them, and they deserve it because they had the will to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The rest of us are just so much dirt.
And in a few centuries, no one will even remember that the non-elite ever existed. Such is the fate of all life's losers.
Then die. If your philosophy demands that your continued existence requires purpose, and you cannot find one, then you have no reason to exist. This is true regardless of if we implement UBI or not, as a fake make-work purpose is no more necessary than a real one.
Or, you could reexamine your philosophy.
The society that does what you're asking will be at a significant disadvantage to the one that uses AI and will, therefore, suffer the same fate regardless.
A sense of purpose is important.
Okay, well, while I don't see any evidence of this claim, let's just assume it's true for the sake of argument. In that context, I'd like to address two related topics.
First, does a fry cook at McDonalds satisfy this need for a sense of purpose through their employment? Or do they instead see their job as both a necessary evil and (to a lesser extent) an opportunity to socialize with some of their peers? If you ask a fry cook at McDonalds if they'd prefer to be paid to not show up at work, do you honestly think they'd say they'd like to keep their current arrangement?
Second, why are we so concerned about the poor, but not the wealthy? Do they not need to be assigned a sense of purpose also? How is it that the wealthy seem to get along just fine without being forced to labor simply to maintain their lifestyle? Is there a reason to think that the poor are inherently incapable of being socialites, of finding and pursuing their own interests?
How do we NOT support breeding?
We could start by ending tax incentives for breeders. Also, if we want to make data-driven decisions, we can invest in education of women (as this has been shown to be the factor that's most strongly correlated with decreased population growth rates).
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
What about cutting down full time to 32 hours a week at the start. And say down the road we get to the idea of people doing about 20-25 a week as the full time.
You could already do that if you wanted, but I think you will find that the solution up till now has been to provide more stuff that people need. A century or so ago, people did not have cars, but they had horses, so we'll call that a draw. Still, they did not all have electricity, running water, radio, telephones, tvs, cable, internet, computers, etc.If you wanted to go back and live the way people did then, you probably could with a proportionally less amount of work than people need to live now. Same with the 50's lifestyle. If you wanted to go back and live at the same standard of living as in 1950, you could with a proportional reduction in work that modern productivity has given us relative to that time. Still, people enjoy and want their TVs, computers, game systems, more than a weeks worth of clothing, food that doesn't have to be made from scratch every day, etc. There are some difficulties in this, such as even finding a house without modern convienences or expected square footage which also meet current codes, and while things like clothing and food have become cheaper, land and housing has become more expensive. There are people who have chosen to do so that I know of that live out on the Washington peninsula, hippies, mountain men, people that are just happy with living in a cabin and doing part time work for a minimum of necessities. Instead, society and technology have provided more and more things that people want or even need to participate in modern society.
Bare survival is also not politically stable. Expenses can suddenly pop up, resulting in the same "not peacefully starve to death" problem. For example, if someone gets sick, they're going to have to buy medicine. That's not in "Clothes, 3 hot meals and a bed".
Even if we also manage to get through universal healthcare there still will be expenses beyond survival, and with no possibility of employment there is no way to pay those expenses in your system.
Which means paying for a certain amount of "comfortable life", which will occasionally be redirected to those expenses.
I don't see any evidence of this claim,
I think it's a major source of discontent around the globe. (More complicated discussion than we can cover here.)
The purpose is supporting oneself; being an independent, self-sufficient person, making his way in the world. And no being a fry cook at McDonalds probably does not serve that purpose for that many people. But, I think McDonalds work has value as a stepping stone. It's a start.
Re the wealth - Universal Basic Income will never provide the lifestyle options and panache that the wealth have. The panache gives a false sense of superiority but even if you pull that away UBI will never (or at least not in the foreseeable future) give it's recipients luxury apartments, travel to destinations the world over, access to the best restaurants, etc...)
I'm glad you're OK with eliminating welfare payments that come for having more children. And I agree we should remove tax incentives for all breeders.
Re investment in women. We do that in the US. More difficult in Syria and Saudi Arabia.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
So...in your contrived example, we should just execute Person C because they don't already own a farm and are therefore useless?
To bring your contrived example in line with what we're actually talking about, it's more like this:
Person A owns the farms and factories. Robots do the work.
Persons B and C don't own farms or factories. They have nothing to trade, but instead of quietly starving, they break into person A's house -- and get shot by the RoboCop.
I really don't like the end-game of your model.
Mississippi has one of the larger percentages of union employees in the south. Not sure why you are so butthurt about unions? Do you have a problem with people getting together to try and get a better deal for themselves?
No, I have a problem with workers that are being exploited by an overbearing corporation and its overpaid bosses to also have to deal with being exploited by an overbearing and often corrupt union and its overpaid bosses. Mississippi has lots of union workers, and yet it's a right to work state. So why do the unions in Michigan and elsewhere think they need laws and the violent power of the state to force people to join a union against their will, and even take money out of the paychecks of people that get NO benefit from the union? Or extract union money from workers' paychecks for partisan lobbying activities?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
.....who is going to buy their products scince people need to HAVE A JOB AND WORK inorder to have MONEY? Doiiiyyooiiyyyooiyyy!!!!!!!
While I agree with most of your points (McDonalds, a stepping stone? To what, Burger King?), I was mostly trying to contrast our beliefs about the poor with our beliefs about the wealthy. There's this ingrained "idle hands" take on the poor, that we must keep them busy with menial labor lest they are unable to find a sense of purpose with which to occupy themselves, but that this is never a concern when it comes to the wealthy. Perhaps you're right, and that their additional wealth is necessarily required for a lifestyle that affords one a sense of purpose outside of effectively mandatory employment. However, as someone who regularly associates with the poor, I have only anecdotal evidence to the contrary. While I certainly grant that menial labor can and does provide many with a sense of purpose, I'm not confident that this can be said about a majority of the working poor. It would be interesting to see a study that seeks to quantify what proportion of working poor are afforded a sense of purpose by their jobs that is greater than they'd find from some other pursuit of their own choosing. Then again, I'm not really a product of a protestant-work-ethic society, and I recognize than many Americans are, so perhaps my bias is showing. Either way, as someone who would love to be freed from the burden of compulsory labor, I always find it frustrating to hear people opposing such plans on the grounds that I wouldn't know what to do with myself. These arguments generally take the form "well, you and I are awesome and would have no problems finding fulfilling activities to engage in, but 'those other people' must be kept occupied because they're degenerates" (slightly hyperbolic paraphrasing), which never sits well with me. Not because of some SJW reasoning, but merely because I've never seen 'those other people' make that argument themselves (regardless of who 'those other people' are -- do you know anyone that insists that they must be compelled to labor because they'd be unable to find anything meaningful to do on their own?)
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
CEO's don't already think people are irrelevant?
Here's a news flash. The rich can always avoid taxes. The poor do not pay taxes. The middle class is in neither group. Taxes are regressive.
The only "fair" tax is one that everyone can avoid equally. My suggestion is a velocity tax on money. Its kind of like a "flat tax" but instead of taxing incomes, or sales, it taxes transfers of money between institutions. The rich don't want to transport millions of dollars by hand. ;) The more you move money around (Think hedge funds/wall street types) the more you're taxed. Everyone can avoid taxes by long term investing and using cash. The better the economy, the more revenue is generated.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
in your contrived example, we should just execute Person C because they don't already own a farm and are therefore useless
- it's not contrived and it's not an example, it's a model that explains what is actually happening.
Should 'we' execute somebody? I don't think so. What is 'we'? Let me understand this, the 'we' is the collective, right, government? AFAIC 'we' shouldn't be executing anybody. The collective, the government cannot be given that type of authority over individuals, that's the ultimate oppression against individual freedom.
'We' shouldn't be executing anybody and 'we' shouldn't be oppressing anybody to provide anybody with any fruits of oppression. 'We' should stay out of people's business, 'we' shouldn't be dictating what money and interest rates are, 'we' shouldn't be preventing people from developing the economy in a private manner that corresponds to the principle of individual freedom.
How exactly the free market would solve the problem (or prevent the problem from occurring) that's up to the market to decide, market is a collection of all individual choices, but it must not be decided by oppression and coercion.
The person C may not have anything to trade but his labour, he can do that, he can trade labour (and that's what most people have - their labour) and allow person A or person B to be more productive (produce more) with this extra labour and in exchange for the labour person C can get the food.
Now, it is obvious that person A and person B may want to automate at some point and replace the exact job that the person C could have been hired to do, however the idea is that while one job is automated, this provides opportunity to use the freed labour for other jobs.
Today we have a completely distorted market, one that severely lacks savings and thus can afford very little if any capital investments, this prevents many new businesses from appearing and creating jobs that are *not automated yet*, new jobs. We are not at the end of the line here exactly, where all the things we ever wanted exist and can be purchased at low enough prices for everybody to have them.
People in position of a person C should be able to save and invest some of their savings into businesses that people like A and B run, and without inflation, rules, taxes imposed by the government the dividends from running even a mostly automated business can become substantial source of revenue for people who do not fully own businesses. The actual reason that we don't have that much of that happening today is in the government manipulation of markets, money, interest rates, income and property taxation, regulation, wars.
You can't handle the truth.
Then who's going to be the "consumer", if they're all out of work, or maybe living on minimum wage? Lessee, in the Middle East and Africa, there are a good number of countries with unemployment over 30%.
I know, the billionaire CEOs will pay each other money to have AIs and robots buy each other's products. Or maybe they'll just play poker for the money, and not make products....
The notion that people can become "irrelevant" is terribly shortsighted. That's like saying when looms were invented, people became irrelevant because the weaving guilds went out of business, and we could make fabrics in one or two man-hours rather than thousands (note that this transition took far longer than it should've, as the guilds petitioned government to make looms illegal to protect their monopoly, a trend which has not yet ended today).
Of course, in reality, people just came up with new desirable pursuits with which to busy themselves.
Basic needs will continue to get easier and easier to provide, but humans are creative and they will always come up with novel things to want, and some of those will be easy to do and others will be hard. As the provision basic needs become more and more irrelevant to daily life, people will simply become less fearful and more creative.
This does, of course, assume that we can do away with the federal reserve money system, which is designed to keep the poor getting poorer, via inflation, even as scarce resources become more and more abundant. The people at the top like having a monopoly on creativity, to be the only ones who get to decide which pursuits will be realized and which ones will be forgotten. Switching to alternative currencies which do not preserve the economic distortion field created by central banks will be one of the most important steps to allowing technology to meet basic needs so cheaply that the scarcity of necessary resources (food, water, shelter...) becomes an irrelevant detail.
No, this "need" you speak of is something beaten into them by society, not an innate need.
I have a question or so for said CEOs.
*Who's gonna buy your shit when there are no employees with money?*
ROBOTS? Are you going to sell ROBOTS this year's fashion accessories?
Does a computer need a car to get to work and a truck to haul his camper or boat on summer weekends? Does it need a camper or boat?
Will a 'droid play games on its DROID or iPhone?
Will an automaton spend $100 at a restaurant? or on Thanksgiving dinner at home?
Do mechs watch Prime Time commercial TV? Or Saturday morning cartoons?
Should people live off of labour of others if that labour is taken away by force? I don't think that is acceptable.
I mostly agree with what you are saying in terms of dividends providing a better incentive structure than UBI. However, the quoted statement is regularly spoken from UBI opponents, and I think this may be an error in their thinking. If the "others" in "labor of others" is a vast array of robotic slaves, then people absolutely should benefit materially from that labor. Are you suggesting that it is wrong or unacceptable to "take away by force" the productive output of a machine?
Supporting oneself putting food on the table whether a paycheck or from gardening, husbandry, hunting gives many people a sense of pride. Too many people ignore the self-worth that comes from doing something. Getting an apartment and food doesn't seem to give people a good sense of self, and this seems to be not only in the USA - but take a look at France and Germany where immigrants get housing and food. And yet. ... Discontent is rife.
Food and housing are not a cure all.
Re McDonalds as a stepping stone -- all entry level jobs are just that; whether you work as a cashier at a liquor store, stocking shelfs at bookstore or driving cab to earn cash as student. No. it will not help you get a job at Google or Apple but it's an entry-level job.
I'm not saying Universal Basic Income won't be necessary - only that it is not a cure all.
Nor am I saying it's a matter of keeping people busy. No. Not at all. I'm saying that
1.people thrive on having a sense of purpose.
2. UBI will solve the problems of homelessness and starvation but it will not solve the problem of self-worth; self-worth.
Work does fill that role. Now, when that role is gone - then what. I personally would have no problem coming up with a million wonderful things to do. But - take a look at what happens to people when they retire. How many slowly fade away; doing nothing; becoming less every day. And this is not a function of age but of lack of purpose.
br Is my word "purpose" the right one? Maybe not. I'm still trying to figure out how best to describe this.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
China is already doing it. It's called eugenics and genetic engineering. They just began trials of CRISPR technology 2 weeks ago, which will eventually allow them to edit the genome of fertilized eggs.
The problem is IQ governs the behavior your describe, and IQ is hereditary. The solution it to eventually eliminate the less intelligent from the population by forcing everyone to have their children genetically engineered.
There is no capitalism with UBI. UBI is the ultimate entitlement program, look at where the US is with medicare, medicaid, welfare, and social security. Hundreds of trillions of dollars in the hole and printing money to keep the lights on. Don't worry about gathering enough tax dollars to pay for UBI, there isn't enough to take. The government would fund such a program by printing the money. UBI is the exact opposite of what we need.
I am not simply a 'UBI opponent', I am an opponent of all collectivism. UBI is just another word for communist oppression and I am opposed to government oppressing people.
As to robotic workforce, it doesn't matter what property we are talking about. Somebody owns a building and keeps it up and rents it out, should 'we' take it away because it's the 'building doing the work'? Somebody owns a farm and farms there, the work is done by the land, should 'we' take away the land?
There is no difference here as to what type of a capital asset is developed and used for profit, AFAIC it is unacceptable to take away anything from the person owning the asset, how he came to its possession is mildly interesting, some develop it first hand, some get it as inheritance, doesn't matter. As long as they can maintain and keep the profitability of the asset up, they are fully within their rights to use it to generate that profit and I don't see how it is either moral or economically viable to take away from those, who own and successfully run productive (or even unproductive) assets.
My position is that it is the government that destroys value of money and causes inflation and resource mis-allocation through income and property taxation, business and labour regulation, any form of redistribution. Subtract that from the system and allow it to structure itself in purely market driven manner, many people will be able to live off of dividends and some clearly will not, however policy should not be structured around edge cases, it pulls down the entire system.
You can't handle the truth.
Free weed is the answer. People won't need to work if they are high all the time. And with self-driving cars they can't hurt anyone. Those same cars will deliver the twinkies. Seriously folks, you are working too hard at the answer.
Providing for yourself and your family used to include establishing a foundation of some sort. Turning a plot of land into a farm, for example. These days, it's not even debt service often enough. No matter how many times you pay the rent, the rent will come due again and the amount can only go up. No amount of faithful service will produce a pension (even people who supposedly have a pension plan may find it gone before they retire) or even a genuine effort to not downsize you. Fully half of the American workforce has no retirement to look forward to, only a day when they will no longer be able to go to work. Stocking shelves, sweeping floors or fixing cars will not have any lasting effect on anything. Even physicians have become interchangeable. THE family doctor does not exist anymore.
Only a few can afford to start a business and even fewer can afford a second try at it.
Sorry to be a downer, but that's the current economic conditions.
to the last line... so? why does that matter?
I don't disagree with your points. The economy has become sclerotic and it's very difficult to get ahead.
... then what?
I see Universal Basic Income as important. It solves the problems of starvation and homelessness. But
As one poster says this provides even more reason for humanity to go to space. Once again we'll have a "wild west" to provide an outlet for people who don't have a place in the existing societal structure.
But, baring that? The only thing I can see is having less people. And not by genocide, war or other such horrors but by providing incentive to not have kids.
Give people "x" to not have kids? What is "x"? I don't know. $100,000? more. Something besides money? I don't know.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
How do they expect to sell their shit to people with no jobs? The AI will replace them at work but not as customers.
You know, I work a demanding job that pays well. One reason I like it is that I have more money than most people. I like having money. Lots of people do.
Are you assuming, for some strange reason, that Basic Income would be all the income people would get? That would be incredibly stupid. Under a Basic Income scheme, you get enough to live on, plus whatever more you earn.
It does mean that people won't have to do arduous, dangerous, or demeaning jobs for minimum wage. They'd have to be better paid.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
How about we take a look at demographics, and be careful about discouraging people from having babies until it's somewhere near replacement level?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
That would apply to people who work a standard work week, and who are basically interchangeable. Cutting a software developer's week down to 20 hours and hiring another one isn't going to get anywhere near the same productivity. It isn't going to affect anyone who doesn't, for whatever reason, work a standard 40-hour week for an employer. Lots of people don't work for an employer, and, if people can be sure of a basic living no matter what, more people would try it.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
One thing we do know, the less survival stress people feel and the more other things they can do, the less kids they tend to have. That has proven out in the U.S. and Europe. Knowing that come what may, money for the basics will arrive next Monday and continue to arrive month after month is sure a big stress reliever.
"Many CEOs Believe Technology Will Make People Largely Irrelevant"
Yeah, as long as you don't need customers, workers are irrelevant. It's this fundamental misunderstanding of economics that's given us ridiculous policies where money is given to the rich instead of to the people who actually drive the economy. Even a lunatic like Henry Ford understood that high-earning workers benefitted himself, personally. It's a very short-sighted type of greed.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
I believe Universal Basic Resources would be better.
UBR? I like that. Definitely want that tried and adjusted as needed.
an AI levy seems to be a logical servant of the public good
I think an AI levy is a good idea too, at least initially. But when things like AI merge with IOT, merge with anything, everything, even people, it's going to get complicated. And yeah, that's all in the works. Already simians can control robotic limbs remotely via implants. Last month a researcher put a chip into an animal's brain to augment its intelligence by interfacing with an external computer.
CEOs may not want to pay people for making their stuff, but they will need people to buy it.
Another good point. Welcome to economics. If you're good at math, you have a very good career path.
So you think your purpose is to be a slave for some fekwit and have mortgage and debts to pay your whole life? Without those life is impossible? Gosh, man, glass is half full after all.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
It seems to me that you're completely missing the point.
It is very possible that we will soon have hundreds of millions of people who just can't find work, because the work they can do is either automated away or in low demand. That's the idea this discussion is based on. I'm not saying it's definitely going to happen, just that it's reasonably probable. This leaves us with hundreds of millions who would, under the current economic system, be desperate and starving. They aren't going to die quietly.
Your upthread example seems to assume that it's a burden on A and B to produce for C. Given sufficiently good automation, it really isn't.
The idea of buying in for dividends isn't going to work. If every citizen automatically gets a share, we've got the UBI under a different name. If it's necessary to invest, we'll see people winding up with no money and no way to get money...and we're back at starving masses who aren't just going to go away. People with insufficient dividends to live on will wind up selling their investment and impoverishing themselves and their descendants.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It's not a collectivist postcapitalist society. The Enterprise is, economically, a warship, and everybody gets what they need because the Federation government is paying for it, and there's really not much you can personally own on even a spacious warship.
If you beam down somewhere, you've got a good chance of being somewhere where capitalism still works. I think the best example is "The Trouble with Tribbles", where we see Cyrano Jones, a wandering trader who's always after a fast credit and doesn't have enough money to get moderately drunk at the station's bar.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The CEOs, or more accuratly the consultants, have been saying that for a hundred years. And many of those jobs have been gone so long that no one remembers them.
So what? The more things change, the more they stay the same... 8-P
(You want a job? Do your homework.)
I don't look at it that way. Too bad for you that that's the way you internalize the need to take care of yourself and your family.
"other's have money. that money should be mine. ooooh I'm so mad."
enter your social warrior bullsh!t here.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I think it is perfectly fine that some people will lose their investments, I did lose quite a bit time and again, you move on and do something else.
I realise we are talking about a large percentage of population that may become economically obsolete in some time from now but I actually think that the problem only exists as long as the governments exist and try to 'help' people. Without government oppression labour *is* competitive against many forms of automation, a general purpose android capable of learning and doing what a human can do is not exactly free, it would carry a significant upfront cost, humans can compete, they just will find difficult to compete with the governments 'helping'.
You can't handle the truth.
Of all the roles you could lose (let alone assign an AI) its a CEO role - you save so much money as well.
Any CEO who advises replacement of any staff working in a planning/technical/analytics/decision roles before AI systems exist should be sacked immediately... that should hold them off for at least another fifty years.
I'm not worried about the human labor downsizing..
I'm a people person. I bring the specs from the customer to the robots. Well, my secretary does that... or they're faxed.
Fecundity negatively correlates with intelligence till retardation cuts off the curve. I'm not a fan of paying idiots to shit litters I also have to pay for, much less when the increasing plurality of irresponsible, parasitic idiots calls itself "the People" then claims to own me and anyone like or even useful me under hallowed mob rule.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head."
How about two levels of UBI. Don't have to do anything and you get... Level 1: Getting high and playing video game subsistence level of income If you volunteer at least 40 hours in a month you get... Level 2: Three times the amount of level 1... In this way to preserve what is good about the market in both ways. UBI is not "command economy". With UBI consumers still vote with their dollars in the marketplace. And with volunteerism individuals and communities decide where to put their time and resources.
Jesus, some of you folks are REALLY dense. You keep talking about finding a job or a better job. What if THERE ARE NO JOBS? The whole discussion of UBI is because there are NO JOBS. There is NO way for you to make money. What do you do then. Humor me and imagine that for whatever job you can imagine, it just can not be. Imagine there being NO WAY for you to swap anything you think, say, or do for ANYTHING. How do you survive?
Once you've eliminated all the workers, and nobody has a job any more (no job = no money), who exactly is going to buy your company's products? Have you considered what happens when 90% of your customers no longer have any money?
When you own a factory that can produce whatever you want in whatever quantities you want, why would you care about selling things? You just use the factory to make whatever it is that you would want to buy and keep it all for yourself. At which point there is no trade to tax.
Thank you for replying so clearly and concisely. I wish I'd read your comment earlier. I still disagree with that sentiment, but now the questionable optimism in my viewpoint is clearer to me.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
But it would be of great help to everyone else, who suddenly doesn't have to work with these people.
> It's not a collectivist postcapitalist society.
It really seems to be. They don't have money, and that's not just Starfleet. Not that I want to get into nits, but because Star Trek had a lot of writers, the only thing we really have to go on is the guidance given, and Roddenberry was huge on the whole "they don't use money" thing. There's definitely signs that there's capitalism outside the Federation, or at the fringes, but even then they often go on a moral crusade about it, to the extent of creating a capitalist race of awful Ferengi, just to really heavy-fist that right up in ya.
Also, the characters clearly don't think of the Enterprise as a warship, as they have noncombatant families and schools and crap in next gen. Obviously, it is a warship, but it seems to be created by the same cheerful laborers who somehow lack for nothing.
I'd like to be a fly on the wall when they roll in the first robot CEO.
"But, but, but, but I'm irreplaceable!"
A large percentage of corporate executives - at least in the United States - are sociopaths. They're good at lying to others, taking credit for other people's work, and stabbing other people in the back.
This is just as true of technology companies as anything else. Economists have estimated that the average return on innovation for the person doing the innovation is about 2% of the lifetime gross (it's actually calculated to be 2.2% - for US innovators - but there's enough slop in the numbers to make the extra decimal place unreliable). That's about what the average musician makes - and yet for some reason the music industry is notorious for screwing over the talent, as if it were somehow different from other industries.
Though it's hard to get good numbers for way back then, it seems as though the return for innovation during the Industrial Revolution was about the same. Any good text on the economic history of that period will discuss this issue. Today, we have a lot more patents, a lot more lawyers - and yet the vast majority of the people doing the innovation still get screwed. It's almost as if the patent system and the lawyers are just another way to screw people - since they don't actually seem to work at achieving the stated goals.
A sociopathic robot would not be an improvement on this situation - or a good idea.
Even those CEOs that are not sociopaths tend to get badly out of touch with the majority of what their organization is doing. It's hard to see the trees for the forest.
Rather than calling for robot CEOs, we should be insisting on limiting company size to ensure smaller companies - and the right to ethics in business needs to be recognized as a fundamental right, with criminal penalties for non-compliance. There are already some laws to this effect on the books - and the 9th Amendment comes into play as well, for those in the USA - but enforcement is lacking. There is a lot of unethical stuff going on in government and law - and that tends to interfere with enforcement of ethics issues in other areas.
Well, you do also have retirees, people on disability, housewives and other people that by and large manage to stay both occupied and out of trouble.
I really think people are far more worried about this issue than they need to be.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
And in the look-no-further-than-next-quarter wisdom that ensures that we're never prepared for the inevitable, I assume that the people who get to live will be the sociopathic corporate executives and the semi-retarded descendants of old wealth and such, right?
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Most people in the USA don't even know their neighbors, so maybe try working on that issue first. Also, education pretty much dictates everything else, so no, you're wrong, shaming young women to abort their babies isn't a long term solution to social issues. "Breeding" isn't the problem, you're type of ignorance, however, is.
Basic Income is a horrible idea, that is doomed for all the reasons people don't want to think about.
Actually, it's a pretty good idea - replace almost all forms of welfare (except medical) with a single form that is simple and low-overhead, implemented as a reverse income tax. We already spend huge amounts of money of welfare (much of which is disguised as something else), so it's not as if the money isn't there.
Estimates vary (depending in part on people's ability to penetrate the disguises adopted by various welfare programs, such as "social security" or "pensions"), but in the USA at least 60% of the federal budget seems to be welfare.
Further - we already have an infrastructure to track income, to support the income tax, so setting up a negative income tax would be straightforward.
The only -- genuine -- long term problem is vote buying: if the rates are allowed to change easily, then you will inevitably end up with politicians offering to raise them to get elected. This would eventually be an economic disaster.
This could likely be prevented by fixing the available funds in some fashion. This might be a fixed percentage of the budget. The taxes might need to be fixed to a simple scheme (not necessarily flat) as well - this kind of reform is long overdue in any event (overly complex laws inherently involve unethical practice of law, and thus a violation of universal and inalienable rights in any society based on the rule of law).
Another option would be to let the percentage be decided by popular vote - but only those not receiving money would be allowed to vote on this issue.
The federal government would likely have to reduce the amount being provided based on jurisdiction - there's no point in spending federal money when state or local governments are already spending their own money. This could get tricky, but it's doable.
In the short term you have to deal with special interest groups. Probably a long term switchover period would be needed, with benefits guaranteed to current recipients of various forms of welfare (or at least the more important forms).
http://i.imgur.com/YpGg19b.png
Hmmm, really makes you think.
"I am no economist but an AI levy seems to be a logical servant of the public good."
This already exists: is the tax on profits.
Now: you just can't get wealth from where there isn't. If there's not enough money to, say, buy everybody a Ferrari, no tax scheme is going to make that money appear. The "problem" with UBI (which I don't agree with, but it would be the same for UBS -Universal Basic Services) is that current taxing puts the heavy lifting on indirect taxes first, then on personal income and finally on capital/profits when it should be right the other way around.
The problem is not that AI takes jobs away, but that by taking jobs away, it takes wealth out of John Doe's pocket (his wages, so now not only he becomes destitute, but also can't pay neither taxes on personal income nor buy the products in the market nor, of course, pay indirect taxes on them in the process) and concentrates in very little hands (the owners of the means of production) or even no hands at all (when the owner of the means of production is not people but a legal entity -a corporation: that's the case, i.e. when your favorite corporation retains its benefits on a fiscal paradise). So you have to go to the source (the corporations' profit, no matter if it comes from AI, or from cheap labour from a third world country, or wherever) and tax it in order to redistribute that wealth.
automation breaks down.
constantly.
in proportion to how much work it saves.
I'm pointing out that you don't need a lot of customers to make a ton of money. That you can sell a few luxury goods and still have a profitable market. Apple exemplifies this. In your rush to defend Apple you missed the point by a country mile.
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Appreciate your point that an AI levy is a tax on profits. However, profits taken from productivity increases caused by automation come at the expense of the size of the workforce. Old fashioned automation historically balanced out in the end. But there is far more concern over what effect AI powered automatons will have on employment. An AI levy taxes taxes these profits disproportionately to do two things: A) Slow the pace of adoption and B) Reclaim value lost to society and the economy caused by moving jobs away from human hands. People can and will adapt to a new reality. And it might be a better reality. Artisan-centered work is more rewarding than work on a line. The shift will take time. Hence a levy to ease the transition through training and social supports (resources).
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Instead of having 1 person work 80 hours, let 4 work 20 hours. This should be for the CxO as well. No more 100+ hours because you are management. Hire 4 managers that work 25 hours.
Will this a solution for all? No, but it will be for most.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Yes AI would be a better choice than these assholes.
Question: How did they get 800 of these assholes phone numbers and get them to pick up?
We may have a generation gap here. When I think of Star Trek, I generally think of the original series. That Enterprise was a warship, although it was only rarely used as such.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Whether losing one's investments is a disaster or not depends on the situation. I've lost some, but I was capable of earning more at the time. In the not-too-distant future, I'm going to retire, and then losing investments is going to matter a whole lot more. In this case, we're talking about people who can't earn a decent living, and whose life depends on their investment income.
Labor is only cost-effective against increasing automation if it involves more and more grinding poverty. There's a limit, based on cost of living, of how cheap labor can be. Automation doesn't have to be free, it just has to be less expensive than humans, and there's no reason more advanced automation won't cost less and less. If automation can make widgets at an amortized cost of $1/widget, and that increases as you add minimum-wage humans, nobody's going to hire the human. This is completely independent of anything the government does. Removing government isn't some magic that makes humans worth more.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
We should then do what? I propose to provide incentives to NOT have children and to remove the financial incentives that exist in order to have children.
+1 Insightful
>Who cares if people can be successful artists. The point is that they have the freedom to choose if that's what they want to do with their lives. Being good at it is irrelevant.
Another unsuccessful painter / artist / author / whatever in a ocean of unsuccessful painters / artists / authors / etc., yeah, that's going to be real emotionally and spiritually fulfilling for all those unemployed individuals.
Anyone who believes that most people can find a meaningful purpose for their lives on their own is delusional.
So, when automation is in full force and the only people with jobs are those that have the money to invest in automation, who are they going to sell to?
Don't worry, they'll automate the consumption as well so that it becomes a closed cycle. No need for those pesky humans anymore!
If a factory will be able to purchase a humanoid android capable of learning and doing various types of jobs and the price for this robot would be competitive against a few months of salary of a single employee, then we are talking about a society so automated and advanced that even individuals who are not running a factory at a time would be able to purchase similar robots. If an individual is capable of purchasing a robot, an individual would be able to rent that robot at a much lower rate to a factory.
My point is that all of these predictions on how automation will affect individual humans who are all of a sudden unemployable are based on an idea that basically general purpose robots are so affordable that they are almost always preferable to human labour.
If that's the case then individuals will be able to own the robots and the wages of a robot would be much lower than wages of a human, again making it more economical for factories to rent robots from people, who would then not search for their own employment but would act as brokers (agents) to sell labour of their robots.
This is similar to truck owner operators of today, except in this case the robot owner operator would not even have to drive the robot.
OTOH if the robot is less than capable, then the owner operator could remotely control the robot for some parts of the work.
Again and again, people talking about these issues are really not paying attention to the reasons as to why automation today is more economical than hiring people, I am trying to get them to notice that in reality it is the taxes, rules, regulations and inflation (money printing) as well as interest rate manipulation, all done by governments that make labour more expensive than capital investment and it does not have to be that way at all.
You can't handle the truth.
You and I may be happy with this. But a lot of people will not. People need a sense of purpose; a desire to be needed; to be valuable. Some may find value in free time to pursue artistic endeavors; many will not.
I think you are seeing this backwards. From birth to probably a little bit after college, the majority of people are perfectly happy to amuse themselves with "hobbies", regardless of the wealth generation (or lack thereof) of those hobbies. And yeah, a hobby could be productive, but it doesn't need to be.
Only after working 9-5 for a few years (and likely becoming more and more responsible for themselves), do people start to forget how to naturally find curiosity or amusement in the moment. I know many adults that literally can't sit still for a 2 hour movie, they have to get up and fix something, or clean something. But those adults didn't used to be like that, they used to be able to immerse themselves in something creative or otherwise pleasurable for hours at a time.
So a universal income would allow many people to (likely gradually) return to that mindset they had when they were younger. Letting their mind go where it wants to, instead of having a constant stressful feeling that they need to "get something done".
Let's read between the lines here. The title does not say it will make employees irrelevant, it says it will make "people" irrelevant. Does anyone in their right mind actually think that whoever pioneers the way to mass produced AI is going to use it to "make a better life for the rest of us"? What is more likely to happen is that once the tech is developed and produced, the CEO, or group of CEO's along with their cronies will pick a nice patch of land on planet earth (probably several patches of land), cordon it off with massive AI security forces, and leave the rest of us to die in the wasteland. I can't think of a better way to depopulate the earth; reducing resource consumption exponentially while having the entire planet to yourselves. LOL @ "Universal Basic Income".... our UBI will be whatever we can kill each other for over what's left.
Conservative minded people who think welfare is detrimental should research who is on it, how long they stay on it, what the conditions to get it are, etc.. Familiarize yourself with the facts from the actual stats published by reporting agencies, and I think you'll be surprised how "not detrimental" welfare is to society.
I only say that because I know a lot of conservatives who seem to be stuck in the Reagan era mindset that there are "welfare queens" milking the system with 20 kids for 50 years and never working once in their lives, and that this abuse is rampant and costing us a ton of money. That isn't true today and was likely never true.
I say this as someone who sees 20 year olds having babies, on section 8 and still can't pay their rent, but have 60" tvs, xboxes and stay at home all day doing nothing.
:-)
I see them, know some of them by name, know they don't have a job, know they aren't going to school; know they are just hanging out.
Go to Far Rockaway, East New York, Red Hook. Assuming you're a new yorker
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Use AI's to replace CEO'. (They don't think,) so the lines of code are few and easy, the AI is dirt cheap, the AI does not get paid outrageous amounts of money!
One or two more thoughts with respect to an automation levy. Firstly all state of the art automation that is replacing people should be taxed expressly and disproportionately. One could also allow for less depreciation on such equipment. Also deep learning machines -- like the ones that can replace para legals -- should get taxed more. No need to quibble about what constitutes AI. Just look at function and human displacement.
One more thing. What about a carrot? Reward companies with tax relief when they retain and use people through retraining etc.. We need a strategy to amortize this robot revolution. To ignore the repercussions is to court social disaster. I have lived in many countries where all front yards have walls and guards. Would hate to see my dear US disintegrate into that kind of place... Gated communities are bad enough.
BTW.... Thanks for a good discussion.
d:-b
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Interesting point.
But how do you account for the millions who have housing and EBT (food stamps) who live a miserable unfulfilled life? Why do these people who do not need to work not behave in that way?
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Of course there is. The part of communism that does not work is the command and control nature of it with no price mechanism. Basically you were assigned to a job and told make 100 red tractors. If you ran out of red paint you didn't make any tractors because you were told to make red ones. Totally dumb system as crops would rot waiting for tractors that would come to late. (this shit really happened in the USSR)
Economies need a distributed system based on markets and prices.
UBI maintains the price system. You get your $1,000/month or whatever and you spend it as you see fit. Supply and demand and the price mechanism still work regardless of where you got your $1,000 from.
Think of it this way. All economic growth ultimately comes from productivity gains. Productivity is units of output per unit of labour input. Last year a single baker could make one loaf of bread per day, this year he can make 100 loaves a day, next year he can make all the bread for everyone on the planet.
Over the last couple of decades US manufacturing output DOUBLED. Yes, not only are things still made in America, but you are actually making TWICE as much stuff every year that you used to make in 2001. But your doing it with a third less workers...because of productivity gains. (not trade deals).
So what does 2040 look like? Will USA double its output again with another third less workers? and so on and so on.
You tell me where that leads?
I'm not talking about general-purpose human-form robots. I'm talking about automation in general, which includes a great many specialized devices, many of which are too expensive for most individuals to own. Most people can't afford CNC mills that cost over $500K, for example, and my company uses them by the dozen. It's cheaper to maintain and run these than to pay tool and die workers a living wage to do something similar. This does not depend on taxes, rules, regulations, inflation, or interest rates (the company is debt-averse). This depends on the cost of the mills, the maintenance cost, the cost to prepare things for the mills, and that sort of thing. That establishes a cost that is less than a skilled human would have to charge to make a basic living, not that a human could match the mills for speed and accuracy. Remove all taxes and the machines would be cheaper. We have rules and regulations about our mills (which can be quite dangerous if not properly used - if a piece of metal is in a mill and not fastened in somehow, it can come out of the mill enclosure at considerable speed).
Moreover, capital investment does not just start up by itself. Part of my investments are stuff I socked away from earning money by working, and part I inherited from Mom. If I were wiped out today, I'd be upset, but if I were still physically and mentally able I could get a job writing software that paid a good amount of money (or stay at the one I've got). If I couldn't work to earn more money, and I lost my investments, I'd be screwed..
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
So then you are looking at specialized equipment thinking it can replace a human at a generic job? I think you are doing a couple of things wring here: underestimating our desire to build generic robots while overestimating capacity of specialized equipment to replace people at generic jobs within newer companies that don't have the capital to acquire or build very specialized equipment. In either case I think my points still stand, if the equipment is too specialized and expensive, humans can compete if they can provide quality, if the equipment is so general purpose and ubiquitous that anybody can afford it with a few months of pay, then people would be acquiring it to rent it out to businesses or to do jobs just like the owner operator truck drivers of today.
As to taxes and regulations, obviously they are making human labour less competitive compared to capital, is this even a question? A robot will not sue the company for 'wrongful termination' or for 'sexual harassment' or anything else for that matter (regardless of the merits). Regardless of what /. says, robots will not form unions,there will be no mandate for payroll tax or minimum wage or medical insurance, etc. These are government inventions that make people uncompetitive against labour.
You can't handle the truth.
And why, pray-tell, does that require being employed?
Let's say that it shakes out and only 30% of employable people desire to work. That doesn't mean the other 70% loaf around. Some will, absolutely, but I doubt it's even most. Hobbies will still be a thing, and some of those hobbies will generate a bit of extra income (particularly "Maker"-type hobbies, repair and fixing) as they already do. Charities will still be a thing--though the types might shift hard, less soup kitchens and such--and many will still need volunteers. I bet a lot of people will be happier caring for stray dogs than crunching numbers in Quickbooks.
Some people will be happy just spending their entire lives in libraries (which also need volunteers) reading books. Some will focus on religious or philosophical pursuits.
A good start, even before UBI, is to give thorough sex education in schools and make contraceptives so easy (and cheap/free) to get that a person has to go out of their way to not avail. Stop all the attempts to get around Roe v Wade. Once you get UBI you make kids a diminishing return: An adult gets X, an adult with a kid gets twice as much minus a small-but-noticeable amount, lets say K, and each kid gets another X but K increases at a faster rate. Balance K such that the kids can be cared for, but takes shared resources (e.g. housing) into account and doesn't leave much extra for niceties. And if the parent/guardian ignores the kids and spends the X on themselves? Well, we already have methods against child abuse like that, they won't suddenly disappear.
And if you're going to get a liveable income without kids, why would you want to go through the hassle of having them unless you actually want them?
Go to neighborhoods dominated by Section 8 housing. A large percentage of the population there has free housing and food? This will be live under a Universal Basic Income. Are the people in these neighborhoods happy? Content? Are they filling up their free time with hobbies, taking care of their neighborhood? Living a kumbaya life? No.
The above iis true in white neighborhoods and black; in the US and elsewhere.
UBI solves the problem of starvation and homelessness but there is much more to the equation then those two factors.
Sex Ed has nothing to do with it. There has been one study and documentaries after another showing that ignorance and access of reproductive measures have nothing to do with it. (At least not in the US in the last 20+ years.) People (read women) make a conscious choice to have children they can't affortd.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I'm saying that specialized equipment can replace humans at specific jobs, and more and more jobs are falling into that category, as more and more types of specialized equipment are made. With the CNC mills we have, and some supporting infrastructure, we can do much better than by employing tool and die makers, and various other factory-type jobs. They aren't cheap, but they are precise and reasonably efficient. Lots of automation was put in place not because it was cheaper than humans, but because it was better, producing higher quality work. We don't bother with equipment on the shop floor that's not company owned. The closest I can get to owning the heavy machinery is to own stock in the company. We aren't going to outsource to guys with CNC mills in their garages either, for a variety of reasons. Either you work for us, you own company stock, or you don't benefit directly from us. (We hope that customers profit a lot from what we sell them, of course.)
Taxes and regulations add to human costs, but not all that much. If someone is going to make a decent living working here, then the cost is that of a decent living plus assorted overhead that might amount to about half again the guy's pay, and only some of that is due to taxes and regulations. There's a gap there where a machine could be more expensive than the guy's pay and less expensive than the total cost, but not a big one. Moreover, you seem to be implying that, to compete with automation, humans should be willing to be treated like dirt.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Dividends could work. We have working models for that now in national pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. http://www.swfinstitute.org/fu... Norway's sovereign wealth fund has almost a $trillion invested. That is $200,000 for every citizen in the country! https://www.nbim.no/ At 5% return that is $10,000/year per citizen. And of course they are adding to the fund every year.
you seem to be implying that, to compete with automation, humans should be willing to be treated like dirt.
- no, I am implying that the cost of litigation is a consideration for any employer *regardless of the merits*. Anybody can sue anybody else if there is merit, that's one thing, however the labour laws make it too easy for an employee to sue an employer for things like 'wrongful termination' and that's a garbage claim. Same with 'human rights' related lawsuits, there is no such thing as a 'human right to work', human rights are protections against government oppression, not entitlements for the employees and obligations upon the employers, yet that's exactly what 'human rights' lawsuits against employers are: they didn't do something the government puts an obligation on them to do, to satisfy an entitlement that the government deems an employee is supposed to receive from an employer.
Being treated like dirt is one thing, and nobody has to work for an employer who treats people like dirt, being provided government entitlements because an employee and employer are working together is something else, that's one of the 3 main reasons why I outsource most of my development to a different country.
You can't handle the truth.
What way do you look at it then? Are you not a slave to the "elite" richest few? Are you not doing things the way they want you to? Still living the "American Dream"tm? I honestly want to know why do you think you are not their slave.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
no. I'm not a slave because I need to support myself. Even is I was alone on an island I would need to work to survive. I drink great beer which I don't know how to brew; eat cheese and prosciutto which I don't know how to make; wear clothes that I can't make. And even if I could brew beer, make cheese, prosciutto and clothes I wouldn't have the time to - nor would I the time to the crops, raise the animals and everything else required to make those products.
In your terms I'm their slave for doing my work and they're my slaves for doing my work.
In my opinion we freely exchange our time and commitment in exchange for money (a means of exchange) which we then exchange for the products and services completed by others. We are not slaves. We are free people.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Wrong. Completely wrong. Many people have to work for what employer they can find, for reasons like they want to give their children a chance at a better life. Look at people in the real world sometime.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Many oil-rich Arab countries have had Universal Basic Income for decades, pretty high actually, not just basic. Where is the creative output from all the humans freed from drudgery there?
At the intersection of computation and biology.
Interesting point!!!!
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond