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'We Could Fund a Universal Basic Income With the Data We Give Away To Facebook and Google' (thenextweb.com)
Tristan Greene reports via The Next Web:
A universal basic income (UBI), wherein government provides a monthly stipend so citizens can afford a home and basic necessities, is something experts believe would directly address the issue of unemployment and poverty, and possibly even eliminate hundreds of other welfare programs. It may also be the only real solution to the impending automation bonanza. According to AI expert Steve Fuller, the problem is, giving people money when they lose jobs won't fix the issue, it's a temporary solution and we need permanent ones. Sounds fair, and he even has some ideas on how to accomplish this end: "We could hold Google and Facebook and all those big multinationals accountable; we could make sure that people, like those who are currently 'voluntarily' contributing their data to pump up companies' profits, are given something that is adequate to support their livelihoods in exchange."
It's an interesting idea, but difficult to imagine it's implementation. If the government isn't assigning a specific stipend value, we'll have to be compensated individually by companies. One way to do this, is by emulating the old coal mining company scrip scams of early last century. Employees working for companies would be paid in currency only redeemable at the company store. This basically created a system where a company could tax its own workers for profit. Google, for example, could use a system like that and say "opt-in for $10 worth of Google Play music for free," if they wanted to. Which doesn't help pay the bills when machines replace you at work, but at least you'll be able to voice search for your favorite songs. Another idea is to charge companies an automation tax, but again there's concerns as to how this would be implemented. A solution that combines government oversight with a tax on AI companies -- a UBI funded by the dividends of our data -- may be the best option. To be blunt: we should make Google, Microsoft, Facebook and other such AI companies pay for it with a simple data tax.
It's an interesting idea, but difficult to imagine it's implementation. If the government isn't assigning a specific stipend value, we'll have to be compensated individually by companies. One way to do this, is by emulating the old coal mining company scrip scams of early last century. Employees working for companies would be paid in currency only redeemable at the company store. This basically created a system where a company could tax its own workers for profit. Google, for example, could use a system like that and say "opt-in for $10 worth of Google Play music for free," if they wanted to. Which doesn't help pay the bills when machines replace you at work, but at least you'll be able to voice search for your favorite songs. Another idea is to charge companies an automation tax, but again there's concerns as to how this would be implemented. A solution that combines government oversight with a tax on AI companies -- a UBI funded by the dividends of our data -- may be the best option. To be blunt: we should make Google, Microsoft, Facebook and other such AI companies pay for it with a simple data tax.
It's interesting. In the US, people generally trust corporations rather than their government. In Europe on the other hand, it's exactly the opposite, people rather trust their governments than corporations.
I don't trust either, but there's a distinct difference between the two. I can decide to opt out of dealing with any corporation. If I want to opt out of the government, eventually men with guns will come to force me to deal with the government.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
That's not enough to drive an economy. Let's imagine I have 900 and you, along with 9 other people, each have 10. Our whole economy has a purchasing power of 1000.
Let's say that we could all be happy with "stuff" for 100. That's basically what someone would sensibly spend, at the most. Sure, you can somehow survive at 10, be ok with 20, feel satisfied with most your needs spending 50, but if you can spend 100, pretty much all you could sensibly want is paid for. We're talking Ferrari in your garage on the mansion on the hilltop with the private air strip and the private Learjet. The point where there's simply no more spending that could fill any kind of void.
So you spend your 10, because that's all you can spend. I spend the 100, because I can afford it and there isn't really anything left to buy. Now I sit on 800 that ... well, what do I do with it? I want to invest it of course but what should I invest in? There's nothing to invest in because there is no viable business able to open, there wouldn't be anyone to sell to. I have what I want, and you have no money.
Let's spread the money differently. You and those other 9 people now each have 50, I have 500. Our total economy still has a purchasing power of 1000, but a lot more money now changes hands. You'll probably spend 20-30 of your 50, either because you want to retain some purchasing power "in case", or simply because there is no supply to match your demand anymore, because so far there was simply no demand. I still spend my 100, with 400 sitting here, ready to be invested in the businesses that now have a potential customer, i.e. you. And those other 9 people like you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nice straw man. The other poster said nothing of the sort.
What he said was, "Fundamentally, there is no difference between... a dictator, and a representative democracy." That's very much "of the sort."
Even if you're a well-dressed, well-fed slave in the Big House, you're still a slave.
Yes, yes, taxation is theft and we're all slaves... Why don't you move to that country that provides everything you need without charging anyone taxes and doesn't require anyone to work "for the Man." That's the only way we'll be "free" of this terrible American oppression.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
You can opt out of every government. Unless you're in North Korea or something like it. At the very least you can vote what government you prefer, and if that doesn't work out, move to a place where the government is more to your liking.
Are you being intentionally obtuse? Your last example provides a great illustration of my point. If I don't like Coca Cola, or Comcast or any other corporation, I don't have to move. I just don't give them my money. If I don't give the government my money, they will send men with guns to put me in a cage.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
If you are a Republican you trust corporations more than government. If you are a Democrat you trust government more than corporations.
If you aren't an idiot you don't trust either of them. You realize the people who occupy the high positions in both are part of the same class. Nor do you trust those people who are partisan, as they are obviously deeply flawed and compromised in their ability to dispassionately observe reality.
The system that works best is when The People know the dangers of government and corporations getting in bed together, and understand the closer government and corporations get, the more closely the collective system resembles fascism. The historical kind of fascism mind you, not the hysterical kind of fascism.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
According to reality, the "people" who make less than $200,000 a year "are" less than 10% of the government. The other 90% is made up of a comparatively few corporations, PACs, and people who work for those corporations and make over $200,000 a year. That's about how campaign money falls out. It costs around $11,000,000 to run for Senate, on average. Well over $100,000,000 to run for president. It costs a bit less than $2,000,000 to run for the House of Representatives. The oligarchs who own and manage (at a high level) the large, often multinational corporations that contribute tha vast bulk of this money have de facto veto power over who gets to run in the first place. By the time the "choice" is presented to the voters, it is reduced to the Whore of Babylon vs the Antichrist -- we the actual people are a loser either way, and no matter who wins, their soul will be owned by the people that bought and paid for their campaign an who they KNOW will have to continue their support for them to hold on to power.
That's the interesting thing. You see, the Constitution doesn't identify "the corporation" as a political entity at all. Unsurprisingly, as "corporations" in the modern sense almost didn't exist in America at the time and there wasn't that much by way of "old money" oligarchy in a country that had just thrown OFF the overseas monarch and his oligarchs that ran it immediately before. They also had no concept of the modern "political campaign" with its ever shifting base of paid advertisement, rumor, fake news, sly innuendo, attack ads, sound bites, billboards, and massively printed and distributed posters. They would have been shocked by the idea that someone running for president would target just a handful of "battleground" states for the bulk of their campaign activity and spending on the basis of pre-election "elections" by a tiny fraction of the people plus statistical extrapolations, neglecting to even show their face in dozens of other states full of the very people they would represent but that were supposedly "solidly" behind one candidate or the other.
Unless and until we muzzle the oligarchy that effectively controls the US electoral process from the ground up by the simple expedient of contributing money equally to BOTH candidates in many races -- if they avoid vocalizing things like the need to muzzle the non-constitutional oligarchy itself, if they both appear equally compliant and smart enough to understand what will happen if they ever vote to alter the situation -- we'll continue to have politicians effectively sell their votes on things like net neutrality for the contributions from the big telecoms and their executives. In North Carolina (where I live) for example, Burr got around $600,000 of his last election budget from households that make under $200,000. He got around $1,200,000 from communications companies and their top executives. Hmmm, you can talk about "votes" all you want, but money talks, bullshit walks, and telecommunications paid for almost 10% of his campaign, twice as much as he raised from the ordinary voters in the state combined.
Plutocracy, oligarchy, the recreation of a de facto feudal "nobility" in the form of the very rich (Koch Brothers, Bill Gates, etc) who control the jobs and livelihood of millions of voters with their billions of dollars -- they are not our forefather's democracy. Either we the people wake up and smell the shit in our Starbucks (metaphorically speaking) and alter from the ground up the way elections are funded and run -- banning outright ALL forms of corporate support for candidates, eliminating lobbying (all forms, the good, the bad, the ugly), eliminating PACs, maybe eliminating the need to obtain campaign contributions altogether -- something that is ENTIRELY within our capabilities in the Internet age -- or we will continue to yield complete control over who emerges as candidates to be voted on in the first place as well as the length and strength of the campaigns they run to the wealthy few at the expense of the ordinary American.
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Well said, sir! No mod points today, though, sorry, as I'm already commenting and don't do the AC swaparoo to do both.
I always liked it as a sound bite "Taxes buy me civilization", much as the liberty I give up -- such as the freedom to kill my neighbor, steal his sheep, and rape his daughter if I'm stronger than he is and can get away with it -- buys me freedom from murdering, raping, sheep rustlers in turn who just happen to be stronger than I am or who have a few more friends.
It is surprising how quickly the religious principles of the rabid libertarian evaporate, though, when confronted with the plain old bad luck of life that nobody ever insures against. Having any sort of public health care system is an insult to democracy and the freedom to die a pauper if you actually get sick -- right up to the day they have a single "accident" and find out the hard way that the emergency room, surgery, and two weeks in the ICU plus two weeks on the wards of the neighborhood hospital has left them backrupt and -- if it were not for the corrupt bankruptcy laws and social support network -- would leave them living under an overpass somewhere and panhandling on corners. Then you have things like Ayn Rand, the poster child for libertarianism, using medicare/medicaid when (after a lifetime of smoking and NOT buying insurance or saving money) she gets cancer.
What it really comes down to is a mix of spite and the kind of world you want to live in. If you want to live in a world dominated by the wealthy, the strong, and the ambitious, where the poor, the weak, the sickly, and the stupid are left to struggle, starve, and die young, by all means, rant on about the evils of taxes and the virtue of selfishness. Just remember that the real Midas Mulligans of the world, when confronted with an upstart who tries to start a bank to compete, hire some unemployed layabouts and have them pitch bottles of gasoline in through your new bank's windows, kidnap your children, and leave you notes pinned to your gutted Alsatian suggesting that you might want to sell out at 10 cents on the dollar to Mr. Mulligan. Or, in the case of the energy oligarchs, lean on the government so that they send in the army to take by force the right of way of a long oil pipeline.
Taxes do indeed buy me civilization, but the real problem with our current system is that "democracy" has been completely undermined by the absurdly wealthy who own the very restaurant where the menu of "column A and column B" is presented to the voters. It doesn't matter. Vote for either side. They all belong to the rich and powerful either way, or they wouldn't be on the menu in the first place.
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.