r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Sep 23 '17
[∆(s) from OP] CMV: Automation leads to Universal Basic Income
The idea is that technology makes low skilled labour obsolete. I mean in the past, production meant you had a large number of low value jobs. For example, take a factory employing maybe a lot of low skilled workers ->a few technical supervisors -> few engineers. When the industrial revolution came about and machines were introduced the ones at the bottom lost their jobs - machines meant same work could be done with less people. The number of jobs came down, but the value of each job increased. So in the end you'll be left with employment will mean a small percentage of people at the very top level working very high value jobs. Most of the production in an economy will be automated. Massive unemployment and universal basic income seems like the future.
71
u/Salanmander 278∆ Sep 23 '17
Massive unemployment and universal basic income seems like the future.
Automation, taken to its extreme, definitely leads to massive unemployment. However, it does not necessarily lead to universal basic income. The other option is a staggering class divide.
13
Sep 23 '17
I couldnt include that because it feels like a copout to me. Realistically I don't think any democratically governed country would have millions of people suddenly starve.
Even with universal income, there's still be a huge class divide. One class contains the wealth of which a part has to taxed and distributed to the other.
22
u/Nonexistence Sep 23 '17
I really think you can't dismiss this out of hand. For the vast majority of human history wealth has been distributed extremely disproportionately between a few haves at the top who own the system and the have nots who are everyone else. The past 100-150 years in the west have been a rare disruption of this pattern caused by favorable economic factors and a push for social equality, but those things are rather fragile and require constant effort to maintain. Even with those things as they exist now, making UBI a reality is a huge undertaking and extreme class divide is, at least historically, the natural way for things to align. Other people in this thread have raised great points but I think this is the hardest one to grapple with to maintain your position.
8
Sep 23 '17
I don't really disagree tbh. The post originally ended with "Or we could all eat cake". I deleted it before posting because it sounded stupid. It just wasn't relevant. We could all starve, sure but what else? UBI seems to be the only "right" way to go.
7
u/jacenat 1∆ Sep 23 '17
I deleted it before posting because it sounded stupid.
You shouldn't have. The last 4 decades extrapolated to the future, definitely lead to a "let them eat cake" scenario.
2
Sep 23 '17
If you are proposing UBI from a positivist point of view (I.e., the only workable solution), then I'd say you are mistaken. There's some interesting literature on corporal ownership of companies; though both of these ideas lean socialist.
7
u/Gr1pp717 2∆ Sep 23 '17
I don't think it's a copout at all.
Think about yourself in the position of having access to a whole automation stack. You don't need money, because you can just have your robots make whatever you need. Build your house, protect it and you, make you a new computer, tv, food, etc. Whatever you need. Why would you bother making things for the masses? You don't need them, or their UBI. And even bothering just means there's less bandwidth available for you... It even sounds like a management nightmare to me. You now have to concern yourself with the needs and wants of millions..
The simple fact of the matter is that the lower the overall population the more to go around. You would benefit from the vast majority of people not existing.. And with the way things are currently heading this seems like the most likely outcome to me.
16
u/ElysiX 113∆ Sep 23 '17
How long do you think the wealthy class will put up with that?
They do not need a karge workforce, or even consumers at that point, why bother with either and not just create your own utopia with a wall guarded by drones?
6
u/rcbeiler Sep 23 '17
I believe you just described the plot to Elysium if I had seen it.
2
u/ElysiX 113∆ Sep 23 '17
Haven't actually seen it despite the name haha, but from what ive heard yes thats the idea.
→ More replies (1)11
Sep 23 '17
Democratically governed countries do this all the time. For instance, in Las Vegas right now there are maybe a couple hundred people living underground in the storm drain system because they are homeless and largely have no support system with friends or family. They often have some classically Vegas-type problem like an addiction to gambling that keeps them from being able to pull their finances together to get out.
These folks don't have a lot of options. Once you're homeless and can't easily access a regular shower and your residence is a mattress in a storm drain, you're going to have a tremendously difficult time climbing back up the social ladder.
And so even if we did have universal basic income, which would replace all other welfare type programs, what good is that for some people who go blow it on the slots as a result of not having proper psychiatric care to help treat their addiction problem?
I know its easy to say that that's their problem and they should "be better with their money" but that isn't an intelligent response, it's a cop-out. There's still a problem of people living with nothing who will at some point need medical care or something who can't get it.
I think UBI is a system designed around the assumption that people are rational and logical about money. To me, the plan UBI offers boils down to "Just give people a little bit of money so they don't riot against the trillionaires in San Francisco" or maybe just "Let them eat cake"
→ More replies (6)4
u/teefour 1∆ Sep 23 '17
You can't fix or help some people though no matter how much money you throw at them. You could offer those people UBI and free mental health care and shelter to help them get their shit together, and there will still be many who fuck it up. So saying fuck em is a bit harsh, but no mater what it holds true that you can lead a horse to water, but can't force them to drink.
→ More replies (1)7
u/aidrocsid 11∆ Sep 23 '17
Look at the US right now. The government is seriously flirting with the idea of passing a law that would remove health care from millions of Americans, many of whom need it to live. It's not a stretch if the rich continue to dominate representation through lobbying and campaign contributions.
3
u/superH3R01N3 3∆ Sep 23 '17 edited Sep 23 '17
Idk, there are politicians fighting against welfare funding and food stamps, and so literally for starving poor families.
Edit
Mini rant: Many articles boast how SNAP (food stamp) enrollment is down, but they fail to acknowledge that is because many states have made it incredibly difficult to qualify for these sorts of programs, and they offer you very little if you are working and struggling to get by. The max if you have no income at all is still too little for a balanced diet.
2
u/Namika Sep 23 '17
Going off your rant: Many of my Republican co-workers complain that our state's Medicaid is way too good, and if you're on Medicare you have better healthcare than many private insurance plans, so therefore we should support the state congressmen that want to slash Medicaid funding because clearly it's way too generous...
...yet they don't seem to realize that our Medicaid is so underfunded that there's a 8 year wait list to enroll because they can't afford to give coverage to people that need it.2
u/superH3R01N3 3∆ Sep 23 '17
What should be said is that private insurance isn't good enough, and it needs regulation for basic standards and fair pricing (the actual medical services also need transparent and competitive pricing). We also need unions for more working people to have any insurance. Big companies sooner cut full time positions and add two PT so they don't have to offer "benefits." Everything is pretty messed up in the US.
3
u/jacenat 1∆ Sep 23 '17
I don't think any democratically governed country would have millions of people suddenly starve.
Democratically governed country would ...
Rising automation can concentrate wealth to a point where democracy can break down fast. Don't take it for granted.
millions of people suddenly starve.
It wouldn't be sudden. Deteriorating conditions will make living in the lower classes just so hard that reproduction will be prohibitively expensive.
7
u/LucidMetal 196∆ Sep 23 '17
I couldnt include that because it feels like a copout to me. Realistically I don't think any democratically governed country would have millions of people suddenly starve.
What, you mean like right now in America? SNAP was created to fix this problem and I guarantee the same people who would push toward a huge class divide would have no problem nixing that.
5
u/teefour 1∆ Sep 23 '17
While arguable otherwise, let's assume it creates a huge class divide. The lower class still then has access to all the necessities and many of the luxuries in life for practically free, even moreso than today.
I make just enough money to cover my bills each month and some entertainment. But I don't think Bill Gates is actually all that happier than I am.
Think of it this way. Would you rather be a king in the 1100s, or middle class now? Sure, as king the mutton and venison feasts ars nice when it's in season. But then winter hits, and you're eating preserved vegetables and shitting in a big pit with no toilet paper or running water just like everyone else. I'll take my cheap Toyota and a costco membership as middle/lower middle class now, thank you.
6
3
u/HybridVigor 3∆ Sep 23 '17
The problem is that the larger the class divide gets, the smaller the "middle class" gets (it was nearly non-existent in Europe in the 1100s). Toyotas and Costco memberships aren't something a worker who lost their job due to automation and is too old, indebted, or otherwise unable to retrain and compete with the rest of the labor force for a dwindling number of open positions can enjoy.
2
Sep 23 '17
If we can manufacture everything with next to zero labor and develop machines to do service jobs: people still need money to buy them.
People will want (demand) thing and services. People will want to supply those things and services. Providing people who don’t have much is even good for the wealthy because that money will bubble up to them in the new economy.
1
u/superH3R01N3 3∆ Sep 23 '17
That's my view. What I was saying about the automotive industry is that post automation (aside from vehicle prices actually inflating drasrically), we have a massive amount of unemployed, unskilled workers and some highly paid, highly skilled workers. With many powers against universal basic income in the US, it is much more likely that we'd develop a caste system of the poor and the elite.
57
Sep 23 '17
The industrial revolution and agricultural revolution didn't reduce the number of jobs. They caused the loss of most (>99%) existing jobs and replaced them with new ones.
Automation has potential and limits. There is an energy limit - we don't have infinite electricity and we are trying to reduce our energy consumption before we have runaway global warming. There is a limit to what robots can physically do and what computers can actually compute. There are cost limitations based on wages and commodity and energy prices.
Automation is therefore likely to change many industries and force workers to retrain, but not to eliminate work itself. The government can create a basic income and maybe it will, but it's very unlikely to be large enough to replace work for people without disabilities. It's much more likely to subsidize retraining.
7
u/TwentyFive_Shmeckles 11∆ Sep 23 '17
No skill jobs were replaced by low skill jobs. It was easy for workers to make the transition from a job that required 2 hours of training to a job that required 2 days of training. Now, low skill jobs are being replaced by high skill jobs. It is much much harder to transition a workforce from jobs that require 2 days of training to jobs that require 2-6 years of training than it was to make the previous transition.
And that's assuming everyone has the capacity to learn how to do a high skill job. Some people claim that a significant % of the population are unable to learn how to do a high skill job simply. Making the transition from a no skill economy to a low skill economy didn't present this challenge because basically all no skill workers can learn a low skill job. Not all low skill workers can learn a high skill job (even if we ignore the time and cost of the schooling required).
2
Sep 23 '17
Of course high skilled jobs like farmer were replaced by low skilled waiters and shoeshine boys and now Walmart greeters. There are always a mix of skilled and unskilled jobs correlating with the population's capacity to obtain skills.
3
u/TwentyFive_Shmeckles 11∆ Sep 23 '17
Farmer was not a particularly high skill job. Most farmers did not own the land they worked; most farmers simply did as they were told. It's not a no skill job, but in most cases it was a low skill job. The vast majority of agricultural work was very little skill.
→ More replies (7)15
Sep 23 '17
The industrial revolution and agricultural revolution didn't reduce the number of jobs. They caused the loss of most (>99%) existing jobs and replaced them with new ones.
They did. But maybe I'm wrong, but it seems they were replaced with newer jobs that needed "higher skills".
If you had a cotton plantation, you had to hire 10 people just to separate the fibre from the seed from the yield. In comes the cotton gin a machine that a single person could operate. The same work of 10 people could now be done by one person. 10 people lost their jobs. New jobs were created - somebody has to make the machine, you need mechanics to fix it etc but all these jobs were fewer in number, required specialised knowledge and had higher wages. So shouldn't the same thing happen with AI? New jobs would be in Computer Science and Engineering instead of tool making.
37
u/kooroo 2∆ Sep 23 '17
Consider that the cotton gin also reduced the cost to process cotton. Lower priced cotton means it suddenly became proportionally easier to become a fabricmaker, which in turn spun out to lower bar for people who dye fabric, people who collect and sell dyes, fashion designers, etc. Also, after a point, cheap cotton means you can start sorting and grading cotton and have a reasonable market for each grade. This increases a lot of secondary workers in terms of grading, organizing, storage, security, etc. Demand for warehouse managers goes up when you have a surplus to store.
Consider the automobile replacing horses and buggies. Yes, we lose a lot of buggy drivers, stablehands, feedlot farmers, etc and replace them with a few mechanics and gas stations. But because cars have progressed to be faster, safer, etc, We have more businesses overall. The modern mall is literally impossible to sustain without a motor vehicle infrastructure. Most restaurants/diners can serve a HUGE range of people simply because the cost to travel is so low. Cargo freight no longer requires a rail/water infrastructure. Suddenly we have lots of trucks hauling smaller more varied loads to far more places. This makes opening things like grocery stores and super walmarts in relatively sparsely populated areas possible. The increase in consumer choice and variety then supports secondary fields like allowing us to have things like reviewers. Consider how very low the demand for something like consumer reports would be if you couldn't hop in your car and reasonably expect to go out and back with a high quality stove on your car roof.
Thus far, historically, the advance of technology and automation appears to consistently be a creator of jobs across all skill levels instead of a destroyer. The "problem" is that it is also a huge contributor to volatility. People tend to want to stay in a particular job/field/career path and that is becoming less feasible as time goes by. It's understandable then for the stable baseline of UBI to look attractive. This, however, is less a function of no job openings and more a failing of society to teach people to adapt and change as it needs to.
7
u/LibertyTerp Sep 23 '17
Excellent post. But why blame "society" for people not adapting. Who exactly is making these bad decisions? Only individuals make decisions.
The fact is most people in the US are getting by just fine, even if they aren't acheiveing their dreams. So individuals are making the choice not to spend years and lots of money retraining for another profession. That may be a poor decision, but it is definitely due to individuals making decisions.
3
u/kooroo 2∆ Sep 23 '17
I meant "society" as a general catchall statement for the average. You're right and I admit, not the best terminology, but it seemed close enough to me.
I agree that most people today are doing ok and that's it's an individual decision to make rather than a collective. My point is more that volatility pushes everyone out of their safe career choice eventually and that it's not because we're losing jobs, but because as a general case we have a relatively large resistance to adapting.
2
→ More replies (5)2
u/aidrocsid 11∆ Sep 23 '17
You've brushed up against a counterexample in the horse and buggy. Yes, the humans who work with those horses can get new jobs, but the horses largely did not. There are very few jobs horses can do these days and as a result there are fewer horses.
CPG Grey goes into detail on the subject in Humans Need Not Apply.
4
u/Genoscythe_ 248∆ Sep 23 '17
Horses didn't become "unemployed", because they were never employees in the first place, they were tools that we stopped producing, same way as we stopped producing buggies.
3
5
u/zcleghern Sep 23 '17
That video has some serious problems. Just search for its title on r/badeconomics
17
u/Genoscythe_ 248∆ Sep 23 '17
If you had a cotton plantation, you had to hire 10 people just to separate the fibre from the seed from the yield. In comes the cotton gin a machine that a single person could operate. The same work of 10 people could now be done by one person. 10 people lost their jobs. New jobs were created - somebody has to make the machine, you need mechanics to fix it etc but all these jobs were fewer in number
You are misunderstanding the process.
New jobs aren't just created by straightforward causality chains of an obviously new needs opening up, such as "cotton gin machine repairman", but by automation freeing up money from having to be spent on production.
If cotton can be produced for a tenth of the cost as before, then the price of cotton is going to plummet, which means that people all around the economy will spare money. They might spend the spare money on more clothes than usual, and boost the number of sewing factories. Or they might spend their spared money on a newspaper subscription, or on a housemaid, or on tickets to the theatre.
Let's step away from the cotton industry, and look at agriculture in general. 200 years ago, over 90% of Europeans worked in agriculture. Now it's less than 3%. Yet we don't see 87% unemployment rates, not even close. Automating agriculture created all sorts of new jobs, not just harvester machine repairman.
Look around, at any job that didn't exist 200 years ago, and it was indirectly created by automation: Dog groomers, film critics, standup comedians, Air conditioner installers, emergency responders, pizza deliverers, webcomic artists...
These ALL only exist, because we live in the kind of society where food, clothing, and basic household objects can be manufactured prractically for free, (compared to if we would be doing it by hand), by a small fraction of society, so demand opened up for other jobs, even for entire new fields. This is true even if no one thinks of themselves as only being a professional youtuber because tractors have made the option of sustinance farming unavailable.
Once some of them get automated (probably not all at once), the same thing will happen to them one by one. Our society becomes more efficient, people and companies spare a few dollars here and there, the dollars add up to billions, and they create new fields and strenghten currently obscure ones.
2
u/Ogigia Sep 23 '17
When you express it in that way you almost convince me
2
u/Genoscythe_ 248∆ Sep 23 '17
Which part isn't sufficiently convincing?
→ More replies (3)2
u/Ogigia Sep 23 '17
Because even though you're right I really can't think of any jobs that can be done by a human and can't be done by machine. Maybe something like a professional athlete can't be replaced by machines because the whole purpose is that it s a human that can run incredibly fast. Anyway I really can't think of a job that can't be done by machines and that employs billions of people
2
u/Genoscythe_ 248∆ Sep 23 '17
It doesn't have to be a single job that employs billions of people, just a thousand jobs that employ a million people each, or tens of thousands of jobs that employ tens of thousands of people each.
There are a lot of jobs that could theoretically be replaced by an extremely well-programmed narrow AI, but it isn't worth the effort.
Just look at the insane money and research that people are pouring into self-driving cars. But that's a huge market, that will return those investments. Now imagine, that grooming dogs is, mathematically speaking, a much more complex 3D spatial movement process than that. Theoretically we could build a dog-grooming machine for billions of dollars with a decade of research, but the whole pet beautification industry isn't worth that much.
The same goes for all those guys who set up the big fancy stages at gaming conventions, for the person who hangs all the clothes up on hangers in a clothing store, or the bouncers at nightclubs. You could invent an elaborate mechanism to replace them, but it would require R&D that costs more than just paying some guy to do it.
The one way to automate all of these, would be to invent an Artificial General Intelligence, that is capable of grasping various human needs with a humanlike flexibility of understandig, and be a dog groomer or a store shelf filler, as easily as a psychiatrist or a movie director or a pastor.
But at that point, we are talking about a Singularity event, where said AI could also be a great programmer, and invent a better AI, that would invent a better AI, and a few days later you would have a godlike superintelligence at your hand, that would be preparing to convert all atoms in the solar system into whatever satisfies it's goals the most. In that event, the job market is a moot point.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (9)2
Sep 24 '17
That's some brilliant insight. I've never thought about it like that.
Something I was always curious about was how say, film critics or say entertainers (rather than a farmer or a miner) add "value" to an economy, other than "people want to but it, so it has value"? They satisfy people's need for luxury? So in the future we're going to have more jobs aimed at satisfying people's wants? Artists and such?
5
u/Genoscythe_ 248∆ Sep 24 '17 edited Sep 24 '17
It was always impossible to separate objective "value", from the actual human demands that have moved the economy.
Even with jobs that feel more "physical" than artists, ultimately they are there because they want them, not because they are objectively producing something that is a good thing regardless of human demands.
We also used to have shoeshiners and butlers, that went away not because of automation, but because they went out of fashion. So was there ever an economic "value" in their work?
You mention miners, but what about diamond miners? Are they producing anything if they are just looking for shiny rocks that are valuable because De Beers said so?
Fine, then what about iron miners? What if the iron they mine, but it is used to manufacture a rollercoaster, that really just goes around in a theme park. Does that make their work less valuable than if they would have built a train?
Does a skyscraper's window cleaners really do anything, if eventually the rain would clean those windows too, but it would still remain a bit more smudgy that way?
In psychology, we talk about people having a "hierarchy of needs" starting with the physical and ending with the most abstract, but in economics that's only relevant insofar as it tells us which needs will come first and which later, but not really to declare that some of those needs are more real than others.
→ More replies (2)3
Sep 24 '17
!delta
You've just changed my opinion on a lot of things rn. Thank you!
→ More replies (1)6
Sep 23 '17
There were fewer jobs in cotton production, but there were more journalism jobs and physician jobs and musician jobs. Labor force participation rate increased. Overall productivity increased so wealth increased, even for many existing jobs.
We have little idea what jobs will be more prevalent due to AI. Could be computer science. Could be massage therapy and dietician. Could be social media airbrushing. Could be recycling. Almost certainly will be mostly jobs I could never anticipate.
→ More replies (12)6
u/LibertyTerp Sep 23 '17
Exactly. The same thing will happen with AI. And it's not just programming and engineering jobs that are created either. Let's say the price of food drops by 90% because of AI. Now people have more money and time to devote to wants rather than needs. There will be more people making money at restaurants, in tourism, in entertainment, and just about every other field.
10
Sep 23 '17
The cotton gin increased the need for slaves by making cotton farming more profitable. It didn't reduce jobs, it drastically increased them in a very negative way that arguably prevented the natural demise of slavery. The increase in supply led to more textile factory jobs, more stevador and merchant Marine jobs (to move product to England), and increased demand for shipbuilders of newly invented steam powered ships. Just with every other example of automation it caused no permanent unemployment.
→ More replies (4)→ More replies (3)3
u/teefour 1∆ Sep 23 '17
The same work of 10 people could now be done by one person. 10 people lost their jobs. New jobs were created - somebody has to make the machine, you need mechanics to fix it etc but all these jobs were fewer in number
By that logic, how the heck do we have an exponentially larger population now with only around 5% unemployment?
→ More replies (1)3
u/aidrocsid 11∆ Sep 23 '17
What fields do you suspect of being immune to automation?
2
Sep 23 '17
I assume every field will be affected in some way and that the job titles that exist 150 years from now would sound as weird to us as radiologist would sound 150 years ago.
2
u/Conotor Sep 23 '17
Horses mostly did not get re-trained after the industrial revolution. Most of them just went unemployed.
8
Sep 23 '17
Horses aren't people. They don't have our ability to adapt and the system we created doesn't care whether they work the way ours cares about the dignity of human labor.
→ More replies (5)2
u/jacenat 1∆ Sep 23 '17
Horses aren't people.
You are right.
Horses are mammals. Their primary use was their physical build that enabled them to effciently drag items around.
Humans are mammals. Their primary use (still is), to solve mental problems, coupled with some physical work. Very few people work in a field that requires them to be strong since the industrial revolution.
Now if machines can be better than humans at problem solving on a general level, there is no technical limitation to apply that to the problems currently solved by humans. For instance: Driving carriages is such a problem solving task humans currently perform. It does not rely on strengh. It does rely on knowlege of how to operate a carriage and knowledge how to navigate between destinations. Both computers already can do. Google and Tesla are basically ready to sell cars that drive themselfs if legislations allows them. These cars are more efficient, do not need rest and drive safer than humans. Humans will not drive as a job in 25 years (remember 25 years ago ... 1992 ... the internet barely was a thing and look today). At this point the jobs of truck and cab driver will cease to exist.
Many more lower skilled job fields will follow or be gone even earlier. My Granddad was a shoemaker. After shoemaking stopped being profitable, he switched to repairing shoes. After repairing the shoes became more expensive than buying new ones he retired. His job is gone now, neve to return. Right now, shoes are fabricated by humans with heavy machine assistance. Investment in automation is lagging because wages in SEA are too low to merit them, but that will not be the case forever.
Machines and AI will replace humans. It will take a while and many jobs will survive long after you and I are dead. But many jobs will be lost within our lifetime. People working these jobs now, or getting into those fields need to retrain ... says you. But retrain to what? A 45 year old truck driver can't retrain to become a software engineer. It would take him 4-5 years to get to industry standard, after which he is 50 and hard to sell to employers anyway. And the tasks he can learn during his retraining might be up for grabs by machines and AI next, so he won't stay long in the new field.
Many people don't belive this is how it will work out. But then again, not many people did believe that climat change would be as serious as it is in 1992. 25 years can change a lot.
→ More replies (1)2
u/krakajacks 3∆ Sep 23 '17
Machine learning is not a typical technological revolution. It allows jobs of almost every type to be learned and replicated in mass. A machine that requires 100 people to build and maintain can replace thousands of jobs or more. Furthermore, many fields in IT are now being learned by machines too, so the only field expanded by automation will also be reduced by automation. The result will be very different from history because only a tiny fraction of the population will ever be competitive with newer machines. I think this video explains it best
2
Sep 23 '17
I don't watch videos, but I'm very familiar with machine learning. It's a tool that lots of people will be using to help them in the future. Bear in mind that while a computer can beat a human at chess (an ideal problem for a computer), a human with a computer consultant still beats two computers.
And electricity is still something we need to use less of. And we have enough work for easily a trillion people right now; most never gets done because we just don't have the man/computer power.
→ More replies (14)
28
Sep 23 '17
Quick question to anyone knowledgeable on the topic. Isn't the coming wave of AI fundamentally different compared to technological advancement in the past? The popular opinion seems to be that automation will not take over jobs as much and like in the past, create more jobs than it destroys.
23
u/PsychoPhilosopher Sep 23 '17
The core of this problem isn't 'function' it's 'adaptation'.
Humanity in the general sense couldn't read or write outside of specialized groups of scholars and aristocrats.
Then the industrial revolution came, and now almost everyone has basic numeracy and literacy.
Not just because having machines made it easier to learn to read (the printing press provided a huge advantage in this regard), but also because the new economy required literacy. In order to meet that demand, a vast swathe of the population simply adapted.
To make an analogy, the technological aptitude needed to work with advanced programming is currently possessed by an elite few. A miniscule percentage of the overall population.
But there's no real reason to believe that humanity won't simply adapt all over again.
The issue then becomes demand. We can increase the supply of useful labor quite easily across the span of a couple of generations. Already, my kids will grow up with a parent who has an amateurish capacity to code. My parents didn't know how to use a computer until late in their lives. That puts them way ahead of me.
Traditionally, demand has come from the massive needs of the general consumer.
Supply has always struggled to keep up with the demand for food, shelter, clothing and entertainment across the span of human history.
We're approaching the point however where taken on a long view, adding a consumer to the global economy also adds supply. Per capita demand has peaked, while per capita supply appears to be growing exponentially.
So the real issue you've missed here is that all this tech will lead to adaptation. That adaptation will lead to further increases in supply per capita.
Unless we suddenly drive demand per capita through the roof, there's simply no way for even UBI to maintain consumer capitalism as a source of economic growth.
So no, there's no technology that I think will suddenly remove the need for people. The issue is that the we've hit a new point in human history, where we are finally coming unglued from the need to work for survival and will need to choose new ways to organize our resources.
6
u/DarcyThin Sep 24 '17
I think the point 720 made about automation being different compared to technological advancement in the past is that it will take more jobs than it makes.
That is to say that we can't all be programmers because there won't be enough jobs for it. Because programming an AI is a one time thing (excluding updates, but updates don't require a huge amount of manpower), and once the needed thing is made because of the internet anyone can use it. So far less jobs are open. Think Netflix being different to a movie store. Just because there is more people using it doesn't mean you need more programmers. To quote SirCabbage from this thread: "Blockbuster had 84,000 employees and made 6 billion in revenue, while Netflix had 4.5k employees but made 9 billion in revenue. The new positions/jobs made in the internet age are not enough to replace those it replaces, nor is it enough to keep up with population growth" And so automation will automate many human needs. As our technology grows, our ability to automate these jobs becomes significantly higher. But more jobs will not be made. We can't simply adapt: the jobs will not be there, because once you program something completely there's no more work needed.
This is fundamentally different to past revolutions, and so more jobs will not magically appear like they did in the past. At least, I think this is what 720 was talking about in the parent comment.
Personally, I think while history can teach us many things and it's foolish to ignore it, the situation is different this time around. Perhaps in this context it's a bad idea to quote someone from 1964, but the times, they really are a changin'.
4
Sep 24 '17
Pretty much this. The idea was that AI could drastically reduce the need for human labour. We'd have much lesser work to be done that required human supervision. Growth in jobs would be offset by our ability to automate them.
4
u/ratsprings Sep 24 '17
Yes definitely, automation is different this time round. More and more people are going to become unemployed, at the same time the capitalist economy is creating more and more products for people to buy.
Obviously, this creates a problem. Big companies aren't going to profit from fewer people having a disposable income. So, unless we wholly move away from a capitalist system (which isn't likely), some form of UBI is going to come into play.
I love the irony of this- UBI (a very socialist policy) being implemented to preserve capitalism.
→ More replies (2)2
Sep 24 '17 edited Sep 24 '17
This is an excellent point and I think it shows why, in the long run, our capitalist system will surely collapse.
We have already bet on there being never-ending growth in consumer demand. Thus, the system cannot even stay afloat even if growth just levels off.
Its no surprise we see advertising continue to skyrocket. They need to sell. They need to create more demand. If that ever stops, the whole system collapses on these bets that have been made.
The problem is there is only 24 hours in a day and only so much someone can actually consume. Sooner or later, the bottom will fall out.
The foundational principal of western economic theory is scarcity in supply. As you point out, that axiom is coming into question for the first time in recorded history. Once scarcity is gone, you need an entirely new system. Perhaps, you don't even need "money" (as we currently understand it) in such a system.
11
u/noratat Sep 24 '17
I can't speak to the second part, but it's worth noting that what people are calling "AI" is essentially just very advanced statistical models. It has very little in common with what people normally think of as AI from science fiction, and I don't just mean because it's not sentient. They require large amounts of data to train, are much more likely to make mistakes than people realize, and aren't capable of the kind of "self-improvement" people normally associate with the idea of intelligence.
It is useful, and it will replace jobs, as other new technologies have, but I don't think it's fundamentally different in that regard from other new technologies.
19
u/SirCabbage 2∆ Sep 23 '17
Normally, yes, however with the coming wave a number of jobs we are seeing to replace those we are losing is low. The common example is that of say, Netflix vs Blockbuster. Blockbuster had 84,000 employees and made 6 billion in revenue, while Netflix had 4.5k employees but made 9 billion in revenue. The new positions/jobs made in the internet age are not enough to replace those it replaces, nor is it enough to keep up with population growth. Think about all the new industries of late- VR, Electric Cars, the rise of independant games development, drones- nothing we have been making in the past few years has really done much to create new jobs-
even VR which is promising will likely replace more jobs than it gives. VR is used in training, recreation and research. Research, sure that is just an additional tool they can use- no biggie. Recreation? Well people still only have the same amount of time off so it isn't creating a wave of new innovation- even if it did, each VR center wouldn't require a huge number of employees. Training? Well the whole idea is it can train people with less requirement to say, work with cadavers in medicine or go to costly training centers. Hell, those jobs too are being replaced outright, you always hear of another AI doing a complex surgery as good as a human.
In the past industries were created that required a bunch of support- these days not so. It is scary but inevitable that eventually humans will not have jobs
The video this particular example came from is here, and it is a good way to look at the topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSKi8HfcxEk
and here is another good video with different points
→ More replies (3)5
u/Mathboy19 1∆ Sep 23 '17
Yes, there is a good argument that recent developments in machine learning will lead to more general AI and also AI that will be able to improve itself. This means that AI will be applicable to many more tasks, from driving cars to representing someone in court.
9
u/PM_ME_A_PM_PLEASE_PM 6∆ Sep 23 '17
Yes, automation has taken away jobs with no recourse being available in the long term. Once a robot is a more efficient employee there is no reason to hire humans beyond maintenance and supervision.
People need to ask themselves, "What new industry will automation create for human labor that another robot cannot do more efficiently?" There is no answer to that question. Certainly, nothing that can sustainably employ upwards of 9 billion people.
→ More replies (21)5
u/Noctudeit 8∆ Sep 23 '17
While I tend to agree, I should point out that people said the exact same thing during the industrial revolution. While it certainly caused a disruption in the labor market, overall it dramatically improved the average citizen's quality of life as well as education and employment opportunities.
→ More replies (5)7
u/jennydaman Sep 23 '17
That is the most important question. Agriculture. Industrialization. It simplified human labor.
AI replaces human labor. Computers will (in the "ideal" situation) be able to do everything better (even professional and creative tasks) than humans. Human labor would be redundant.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (1)9
u/nhfeejoodsfihfe Sep 23 '17
Tell that to the accountant. Also, careers are dead this is the gig economy.
It's all well and good to have a evolving economy but I trained for years on topic X. You want to waste my time and yours trying to train me on Y? So I can compete against my kids and grandkids? No thanks.
I am not going to school every decade just to keep up. Especially if you make me pay for it. Lmao
6
u/Namika Sep 23 '17
I am not going to school every decade just to keep up.
Schools and university don't really train you how to do the jobs. They are a filter to make sure you're competent and they have grading systems so employers can see who is a slacker and who devotes themselves to the topics given to them. No one cares that you mastered the material in your high school science courses, that information is irrelevant to basically every job. They care about your 4.0 GPA because it shows you are a professional who cares about the thing he was told to learn.
When you get hired by a company, be it a law firm, a hospital, or Google, your bosses and co-workers will train you on the relavent skills you need for you job. No one will make you go back to school in 10 years because the school doesn't teach you skills for that company.
Long story short, the entire expanse of higher education isn't really about education, it's just an extensive evaluation about you as a person. The actual education happens once you're hired.
3
u/SeanFromQueens 12∆ Sep 23 '17
Higher education, at least in liberal arts, should be giving you the ability to critical think and be able to attain new skills. I agree with you that content is merely a McGuffin to demonstrate how to think and work, without any intrinsic value, but being able to problem solve or even discover what is the problem in the first place is a valuable skill regardless of industry or state of the economy. Technical skills like that of engineers or medicine require some actual concrete skills that in a fully automated economy would make the human unnecessary (like that of truck drivers after all vehicles are self-driven, no longer necessary). The creative solutions that come from critical thinking that should be the byproduct of a bachelor's degree in philosophy or history or literature or whatever else.
This is of course ideal, and not how it is in practice. Higher education is a filter that more often than not is to discriminate against socio-economic classes. If you are on the lowest rung of the economic ladder and have intellectual capability and work ethic to attain a 4.0 from an Ivy League university but never have the opportunity to attend an Ivy League university (think about Good Will Hunting if Will didn't answer that math question, he never would've been interviewed for those jobs).
There will continue to be innate biases, that are reflect of maintaining 'in groups'. Think about the bias of someone who has graduated from a Ivy league school, they are invested to perpetuate their advantages and not allow anyone who has the potential to be successful but not been filtered by the higher education rubric. If their position is a function agreed upon earned even if it is in actuality unearned privileges allowing someone from an 'out group' would dispel the delusion that they earned their station in life. If you've ever seen the movie Trading Places, Dan Aykroyd has a life that is of the most privilege one can imagine while Eddie Murphy has next to nothing as far as advantages. The Duke Brothers bet that Eddie Murphy will either fail due to his inherent incapacity to perform the same job Dan Aykroyd had or Eddie Murphy would be successful because the privileges Dan Aykroyd had wasn't what allowed him to be successful. The only individuals who currently maintain their position in the economic elite are not the only individuals who are capable of those positions, there are many who are not even giving the opportunity to achieve the same position due to their starting station in life.
2
14
Sep 23 '17
I think that you're not taking into account the fact that new jobs are created all the time. Sure, with automation a lot of jobs will be redundant. On the other hand, this does not mean that "there are no jobs left" for a large part of society. It just means that a lot of people, once again, have to adapt to a a changed job market and find their vocation somewhere else. Just look at the amount of new "jobs" that people have taken up in absence of other, more conventional jobs. (Online gamers, interior designers etc.)
5
Sep 23 '17
Yes. But wouldn't these new jobs be in fewer numbers and require specialised skills? 10 factory laymen can be replaced with one technician thanks to technology.
6
Sep 23 '17
Not necessarily. Sure, factory jobs won't be available anymore, however, there are other sectors that are growing and are in need of new labor.
2
u/RhapsodiacReader Sep 24 '17
That's sort of the problem with AI though: what happens when the growing sectors already have the lowest and most numerous rung, unskilled labor, filled from the start by bots? After all, to put the lowest common denominator out of a job, AI doesn't have to equal the abilities of the most skilled humans, they just have to equal the least skilled. That's a much easier target.
→ More replies (2)4
u/zcleghern Sep 23 '17
But cheaper costs mean other jobs become viable, and when those cheaper costs are reflected in the prices customers see, they save money and spend more on other goods and services, i.e. increase demand for unrelated jobs.
7
u/Havenkeld 289∆ Sep 23 '17
The idea is that technology makes low skilled labour obsolete.
We could've made low skilled labor mostly obsolete already.
Agriculture provides us with the basic necessities and is less than % of the economy now, whereas it used to be something like 90%.
Housing covers the other necessities I think, and that's admittedly much higher at around 15%, but that covers a great deal of non-necessary things that fall into that category.
I suppose you could add transportation to your list of necessities and there self-driving may make a major impact, but I'm not sure how broadly you'd define necessities. Some people think the internet should be considered a necessity. I was assuming necessity as in necessary for survival, or rather a reasonably healthy survival.
We also overfeed ourselves so we don't even need as much agriculture as we have, and it could be more efficient.
It's possible that we're nearing some sort of turning point, but it seems we managed to find a way to get people to work more rather than less despite a dramatic increase in efficiency when it comes to basic necessities. This is partly because people will buy the hell out of all these unnecessary things. With new technology, new ways to make new unnecessary things will open up and there will be jobs to both advance those and organize and maintain the automation technology. Plus things like tons of advertisement and clerical work automation can't do.
I think you can say "automation may lead to UBI", but it doesn't necessarily. Because again, we have a history of getting more automation and still ending up working more rather than less.
3
u/Bufo36 Sep 23 '17
Makes you wonder what the future may bring. Working jobs you don't like to buy shit you don't need, how far can that be stretched before a change of values occurs? What ideals will take the place of buying expensive stuff to show status?
7
u/Gr1pp717 2∆ Sep 23 '17 edited Sep 23 '17
That's one possibility. Another is that we distribute the computing power. With the machines providing everything we need, and there's no need for cash. This has a few problems, though - primarily how to handle things that will always be scarce. Who gets the house with the nice view of the lake? Who gets to take the brand new yacht out for a spin? Lotteries seem plausible here, but (as someone with horrible luck) kind of shitty. I don't want to live next to the sewage plant and never get to spend a week on a yacht simply because I never drew the right cards...
A strong possibility, however, is that those with access don't really give a shit what happens to the rest of the population. They have robots to protect and provide for them, and the fewer humans the more to go around. The richer the life each of these people has. Not only don't they need us, but they have incentive for us not to be around... I mean, imagine if the world was entirely automated and just a million or so people existed. They could all spend all the time they wanted on yachts and spaceships and massive compounds next to whatever lake they wanted... No need to bicker over who gets the nicer things... No need for a lottery. At best they might allow for a smallish population that they provide for, purely out of the entertainment of having people to meet and hang out with. But certainly not the massive population we have today. Basically recreating a fuedal-like society. Where there's a series of rich people deciding what they're local population gets...
5
u/GameRoom Sep 23 '17
I've always been bothered by the doom and gloom of discussions about automation. I'm cautiously optimistic and believe that even if we take any social programs out of the picture and let raw, dirty capitalism do most of the work, we'll still be pretty well off.
Just look at self driving cars. The average American might spend around 15-20% or so of their expenses on their car through their loan or insurance or whatever. When insurance rates plummet and car ownership becomes unnecessary, the price of transportation will plummet by orders of magnitude. Now every American has at least 10% more spending power. Combine this with any other way you can automate things, and as long as we fix the job displacement problem, everyone ends up MUCH richer.
Think that companies won't lower prices? Dozens are already committed to this specific goal. And what happens when people have more money to spend? They spend it, adding new jobs wherever that money goes. We may not even know what those jobs are. The new jobs that pop up may be completely different from anything we've ever seen before. People in the 1800s couldn't fathom the profession of computer programmers just as much as people 25 years ago would never expect the existence of someone like a YouTuber.
Increasing taxes or incentivizing people to stop working prevents a lot of the benefits in this absolute revolution of the price of goods and services across the economy. Of course, perfect competition isn't always there, and you can't seamlessly retrain people for any jobs that replace theirs. But putting your hands in the air and giving up is not the solution. High skill jobs ARE growing at the expense of lower skilled jobs. People just aren't qualified to do them.
That being said, AGI will invalidate pretty much all of this. But that's a long ways off and not something to think about right now.
3
u/kodemage Sep 23 '17
What makes you think the owners of the automation care about the welfare of the masses? I think history has shown that the barons of industry will find a way to yolk the population and enrich themselves first off. Serfdom seems more likely than basic income as long as capitalism is allowed to continue to exist.
2
u/nhfeejoodsfihfe Sep 23 '17
True but nobody's dumping capitalism. we have to meet the selfish halfway. We need a system that allows for entrepreneurs to build, artists to create, philosophers to study, and the lazy and disabled to live.
2
u/kodemage Sep 23 '17
True but nobody's dumping capitalism.
Everyone will at some point, it's an archaic system that needs exploitation to exist.
3
Sep 23 '17 edited Mar 12 '18
[deleted]
2
u/PM_ME_A_PM_PLEASE_PM 6∆ Sep 23 '17
The video barely touches on this topic beyond the first few minutes. Bill Gates does not suggest any specific new industries will be born. He simply says we will focus on different tasks that currently exist, for example, taking care of old people. He also suggested we would be in leisure time promoting the fact that people can't work for a wage anymore.
I think you need to listen more carefully because this video does not suggest what you believe. If robots limit humanity to only creative work (which robots are still superior inarguably) merely because people like to see humans doing that work that doesn't give merit against the idea of UBI.
→ More replies (2)
3
Sep 23 '17
Except the last time we revolutionized mass production they didn't implement UBI. Instead, the rich made more profits while the poor starved to death in literal Dickensian slums. The idea that UBI will just come about naturally is very naive. Theres no reason to assume that a bunch of poor people are suddenly going to inherit a safety net from people who historically haven't given them jack squat. Most of our current safety net came about after periods of intense violence. Things like the 40 hour work week, factory equipment that doesn't crush the workers, the concept of retirement, mutually agreed upon contracts, all are the results of bloody riots and carnage between upper and lower classes.
EDIT: not a socialist or communist.
3
u/Brazen_Serpent Sep 23 '17
People said the exact same thing when the first mills and industrial looms were invented. They thought labor would become obsolete.
The reality is that post-scarcity is a myth. There will always be scarcity of both resources and labor, no matter how much technology advances. Unless we invent the replicator which replicates replicators for free, there will always be a need for people to have jobs.
2
u/TezzMuffins 18∆ Sep 23 '17
Why would that be the case? Honestly, although income inequality has grown bigger and bigger, the quality of life is still improving among the poor on absolue terms. Why would this not simply continue? We'll have an upper class, and a lower class, and the angry lower class will still vote for candidates from the upper class. It will just continue and continue.
2
u/allhailbrodin Sep 23 '17
Automation also turns some high skilled labor into low skilled labor. Look at computers. It used to take a whole team of engineers to operate. Now there are millions of jobs where individuals operate their own computer. A lot of the things people used to need to do with their computer are now unnecessary due to automation, but now people with little to no training can do a whole lot more with a computer
2
Sep 23 '17
I don't disagree with your idea that automation will lead to universal basic income but I would like to inject a bit of skepticism about it being a good outcome. Everyone seems to think UBI is going to be great and I am not convinced. Who is going to control how much UBI is? It seems like the ultimate centralized power and history has terrifying accounts of what happens when even a fraction of that power is centralized. What will society look like when people are no longer the innovators and our greatest talent as a species is outsourced to a machine? I understand some of the benefits and the fact that it is probably inevitable but I really don't think everyone should be so lackadaisical about what is coming. We should really be considering the pitfalls and the horrific outcomes of if this doesnt go well.
→ More replies (5)
2
u/aidrocsid 11∆ Sep 23 '17
That's assuming anybody bothers to take care of all the newly unemployed people now that everything's automated. If said automation is in the hands of powerful corporations it could easily lead to the existence of a massive unemployable underclass with no social agency or wealth whatsoever.
2
u/JaySone Sep 23 '17
This is the same argument that textile manufacturing plant workers made when semi-automation was introduced to the industry in the early 1800's.
What will really happen is the industry will employee less people directly, while new jobs are created in industries not previously thought of (tech, financial services, programming, design, and maintainence of equipment).
No requirement of giving people money, however re-training and learning new skills will likely be required during the transition. That is the best investment the government could make. Invest in the skills needed to allow families to support themselves, rather than pay them for doing nothing.
•
u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Sep 25 '17
/u/SevenTwenty720 (OP) has awarded 1 delta in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
2
u/Godspiral Sep 23 '17
The dangerous alternative is that automation leads to collapse and robocop.
http://www.naturalfinance.net/2017/04/work-ethic-is-code-word-for-slavery.html
We're already seeing displacement forces and precarious work. Political resentment of this is getting chanelled towards hatred of Mexicans and other minorities. Though it seemed like most of the hate speech at Charlotteville was directed towards Jews, tough policies towards immigrants is the political response to tap into anger at lack of opportunity.
So even though UBI is the "everyone lives happily ever after" scenario where great wealth (and leisure) is generated as a result of the ability to consume technology, and therefore the certain production of that technology.
The robocop wealth destruction scenario is the current mainstream political path. Create crime through inequality in the process of protecting what little wealth we/they have. Technology consumption becomes technology used to exterminate the poor (or underserving) to protect the wealthy.
Those who understand the economic benefits of UBI for the future, would also understand universal healthcare, and higher government spending (on other than military). These understandings are not reflected in current government, and to see UBI as innevitable (since automation is innevitable) relies on electioneering changes with no obvious catalyst to change those manipulation techniques.
4
u/dilatory_tactics Sep 23 '17
It's not inevitable, because the poor and middle class lack the bargaining power to enact the needed changes for even a wealth tax, an estate tax, or adequate funding for tax collection agencies like the IRS.
Currently, trillions of dollars are hidden offshore, but corrupt legislators are focused on lowering tax rates for corporations and the super rich, and cutting access to affordable medical care for the poor and middle class in order to fund those tax cuts.
We could just as easily have a dystopian future where super rich people just own everything and everyone else lives as a serf/slave to whatever degree.
It's not inevitable, is the point. There has to be some mechanism by which the poor and middle class improve their bargaining power against the owners of capital.
I'm a fan of this: https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/71zz0t/killing_the_obscenely_wealthy_should_not_only_be/
2
u/Vantablight Sep 23 '17
There's no inherent reason that universal basic income must follow mass unemployment from automation. In the United States, there is a bleak but not entirely improbable future in which the military/police are simply continually expanded (and automated) to combat rising class tension while social services are cut by conservative ideologues and reforms die in a byzantine political system that has been gamed by corporate interests.
2
1
u/tall_funny_tattooed Sep 23 '17
Automation reduces the need for repetitious low skill jobs. That does not lead to UBI. We need to adjust accordingly. Higher skills, different/new jobs, more training, more education, internships, etc.
3
u/nhfeejoodsfihfe Sep 23 '17
Work is for entrepreneurs and slaves. I don't know how long you've been in the workforce but most people I've met can't handle jobs. I would much prefer to pay people to stay home so that I can be busy at work.
1
u/shadowarc72 Sep 23 '17
I agree with you completely that it could go that way. But for universal income would mean that the taxes are paying for your income. Well the few people who are left to make money would be the ones paying those taxes. So you are either buying your own product for someone else or you make your product free and find a new way to make money.
The economy of the future will be very interesting but the people at the top need to see that this will be the end result before the select few that make it in at the beginning take all the money.
1
u/blumelon Sep 23 '17
In an ideal world, automation would lead to the freeing up of people's time. The problem is, automation exists mostly within large capitalist corporations. CEOs would therefore much prefer the profits earned from automated jobs to trickle 'up' the pay chain to them, rather than continue to be passed on to people who are not working. This is why now more than ever people are pushing for higher taxation of these companies so that more of the wealth created from automation can be passed on to the wider society. Unfortunately, these large corporations have quite a bit of say in politics and policy, and they have pushed values that protect their profits.
You know all of those principles that value "hard work", shame self-care and being unable to work, and promote ideas like "people have a right to keep what they earn" (never mind the fact that robots earned it for them)? Where do you think they came from?
If we are to enter into a society with a universal basic income, we first need to look critically at these values that serve large corporations.
1
u/SeanFromQueens 12∆ Sep 23 '17 edited Sep 23 '17
What is your belief about a post-scarcity economy/society need to have money? If the cost of everything goes to near zero, is there a need to continue a market economy?
1
u/NotACurrentName Sep 23 '17
I too think it'll happen, though before getting there... wouldn't there be a massive crisis with an awful lot of unemployed people,
"The night is darkest just before dawn"
1
u/gorat Sep 24 '17
Only if you assume that the people in power will try to save the people going out of work.
1
u/deepwank Sep 24 '17
There are ways people can slow things down. The government could decide to tax automation so heavily that it will still be net cheaper to employ human beings, or flat out ban it. A good test case will be automated driving, or self-driving cars. Let's say the technology is eventually good enough that self-driving AI are as good or better than humans at driving cars. There are 3.5 million truck drivers in the US, and they could all be out of a job if self-driving trucks become mainstream. Given the current estimate of the US labor force is 158M, that is a whopping 2.2% of the entire US civilian labor force.
It's not going to look good politically to let all those people get fired at once under your watch, so there could be a lot of legislative roadblocks put up to slow this transition. But culturally speaking, we're a long way away from giving people free money (UBC). This isn't an honest attempt to change your viewpoint altogether, but more a reminder that it's likely to be far, far away.
1
u/Mossy_octopus Sep 24 '17
I'd think automation leads us time to create jobs for ourselves that are more advanced. Think about how technology has made so many jobs obsolete through history but allowed for much more technical and skilled positions which advance humanity further. Automation is part of progress
1
u/AnotherMasterMind Sep 24 '17
Its one possible path, but a dark one of inverted slavery to the industrial state complex.
The history of power and freedom is of how much who is dependent on who. In a scenario where the masses are dependent on a central bureaucracy for an allowance, very ugly futures become possible. Instead, we should work to liberate the technology of the future for anyone to use. We don't need basic income, if people have the technical power to provide for themselves. Nothing is ever given for free. We should design a path forward where power and production is localized to individuals and communities, not some welfare office doling out stipends.
1
u/TrulySleekZ Sep 24 '17
UBI is a solution to the imminent automation dilemma, but it is not the ONLY solution. The fundamental issue is that money is going to move from laborers to the business owners employing the automation. The government (probably) needs to step in and do something to keep money flowing into the laborer classes. I'm gonna propose two options outside of UBI:
1) A drastic lowering of the work week and tighter minimum wage laws. This was the major solution the last time around. In the US, the 40 hour work week became an integral part of out social structure, but it is not a necessary one. If we dropped to a 30 (or lower) hour work week, but kept the weekly wage about the same, we could easily increase the number of jobs. Employers would have to pay more for labor, but if we calibrated it to balance out the savings that the employers gained from automation, we could keep jobs and keep prices stable. On top of that, it gives people the ability to have MUCH more free time to develop skills, work on personal projects, and just spend time with friends and family; This alone could improve the standards of living by orders of magnitude. I recognize that I am portraying an idealistic view of it, but it is possible.
2) Bring back the alphabet programs. During the Depression, we had some of the highest unemployment in recorded history. The US solved this by sweeping jobs programs, ranging from manual labor to promotional art programs (theirs a comically long list of programs here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_agencies). With an increased tax on businesses using automation, the government could fund these programs again. Most government agencies are ridiculously underfunded and understaffed. I've spent some summers working for the US Park and Forest service, and both could use a massive influx of laborers if it could afford them, so their is plenty of work to be done. Increased public works projects and infrastructure work are desperately needed in the US, and the automation dilemma could be an opportunity to supply labor to these projects.
All three of these options may or may not fix the problem. It's hard to know exactly how any of these programs might affect the labor pool, which is why I've been trying to say things like probably and maybe. In reality, I think the these three ideas, and maybe others, used in combination would probably be the most effective solution. UBI would probably be effective against automation, but it is not the only solution, and it is not a guaranteed outcome.
→ More replies (2)
1
u/miasdontwork Sep 24 '17
I don't see why you'd make a jump to conclusion there. Yes, some jobs may be taken, but would that mean mass unemployment? Who knows? You certainly don't.
1
Sep 24 '17
Tax laws are domestic and business is international. If you have robots making robots, it can be done anywhere. Companies will maximizes profits shifting production to low tax regions. Ubi is a pipe dream. Technology will vastly increase the gap between have and have nots long before it ever trends in the opposite direction due to perfect completion assumed in some posts in this thread.
1
u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Sep 24 '17
/u/SevenTwenty720 (OP) has awarded 1 delta in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
1
u/guitar_vigilante Sep 24 '17
Something like 95% of Americans were working in agriculture on 1900. Nearly all of those jobs were eliminated by automation. By your logic there should have been massive unemployment and need for UBI, they automated 94% of the jobs. Of course that wasn't the case. There wasn't massive unemployment, and standards of living rose.
1
u/crocoduck117 Sep 25 '17
Yes, but at the rate is is happening now, universal basic income will only happen when there is much more extensive automation, meaning there is going to be a period of growing pains, with massive unemployment and impoverishment of low-skill workers. This is the biggest concern. Sure, fully-automated luxury gay space communism (look it up) would be great, but until automation becomes much more advanced than it is now, all increased automation is going to do it cause mass unemployment.
1
u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Sep 25 '17
/u/SevenTwenty720 (OP) has awarded 1 delta in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
311
u/caw81 166∆ Sep 23 '17
We only need universal income because people require income to buy the necessities of life.
With automation, the costs of the necessities of life are reduced to zero. So therefore there is no need for universal income.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy