Is Universal Basic Income the Answer to an Automated Future?
Hopefully this link works for non-LinkedIn folks.
In my opinion, we have a wonderful case study in these-here somewhat United States. Since LBJ's "great society" proclamation in the early- to mid-1960's, we have progressively (pun intended) paid people to not work, and the results have been disastrous. We have a society where life has been devalued to the point that abortion is accepted, where the old norm of getting married and having children is distorted at best, and we have people who are no longer ashamed to accept public assistance. To the latter point, people feel OWED and find public assistance a basic expectation. And it's never enough. But I digress...
In my opinion, we have a wonderful case study in these-here somewhat United States. Since LBJ's "great society" proclamation in the early- to mid-1960's, we have progressively (pun intended) paid people to not work, and the results have been disastrous. We have a society where life has been devalued to the point that abortion is accepted, where the old norm of getting married and having children is distorted at best, and we have people who are no longer ashamed to accept public assistance. To the latter point, people feel OWED and find public assistance a basic expectation. And it's never enough. But I digress...
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For ancient humans the stone axe made most jobs (hunting and building shelters) twice as efficient, therefore it "destroyed half the jobs". So was the axe a bad thing?
Automation is increasing return on investment and decreasing return on labor. This will lead to calls for various forms of socialism. Socialism will seem more reasonable to people who would reject it categorically, if it weren't for the changes associated with automation.
The only hope for numanity would be for them to reach the Singularity (Ray Kurzweil term) and become cyborgs. Thus ends humanity.
Now there ate those who say that automation doesn't remove jobs, it creates new ones just as fast. And certainly that has been true in the past, but automation has typically been used in the realm of repetitive specific work. Weaving, assembly etc. Automation is terrible at things that require human judgement, like cleaning a hotel room.
But the next wave of automation will be general purpose AI. These machines won't be designed to solve specific problems, they will be designed to do what people can do. And they'll be cheaper.
So do we require business to hire people they don't need at higher pay than a robot would require? Do we hire people to do make-work jobs such as digging holes and filling them back up again? Or filling out forms and having other people hired to file them (wait, we already do that). Or do we find some other way for people to obtain the goods the automated factories are producing.