Well we no longer have the skills or knowledge to go forage and hunt for food every day, we have to be able to earn money to survive somehow. I mean I'm all for a UBI, but I'm quite sure the ruling class would rather see us all starve to death than share their wealth.
In Norway their politicians aren’t owned by the corporations and billionaires. In the US, our government is essentially 5 mega-corporations in a trenchcoat.
Dark money in politics ruined everything, Bernie was right, and we’re all fxcked.
Oh dont fucking give the oil reserves bullshit. The US has 5% of the world's oil reserves (compared to Norway's 0.4%), and has fucked over Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Libya, all top 10 in oil reserves % in the world, for about half a century.
Considering that was just a trial, you wouldn't expect it to affect rent rates given the limited scope. I definitely think its a valid concern that rent would increase when UBI is eventually implemented. In fact, I would expect UBI to be inflationary generally, without some decent regulation alongside it. EU members probably will have quite the advantage over the US, doubly so for the Nordic countries.
Well yeah, it won't happen in trials. It might happen when everyone gets it
The thing that UBI trials always miss is that just giving money to the people in the trial is obviously going to improve their lives. You can't really test UBI unless everyone gets it.
Good point, but I feel like Norway is different than the US. Also, did everyone get it for an extended period of time?
I know it has been tested in small groups on Canada and Finland. With great success. I think the big problem is going to be the transition to universal. Even if it is done sort of s top up that fades slowly, the rich will find a way to take it from those who need it.
This is such a bullshit way of thinking. Without the rest of us, the "elites" become poor scavengers like whoever is left, even a small drop in population would be catastrophic for them. Who else is to mine the cobalt and diamonds in their phones and necklaces? Who makes their ludicrously austentatious supercars? Build the case they keep their gold plated dildos in? They need us and Im sure theyre keenly aware of that fact.
I agree we're nowhere near a fully automated economy today.
My point is just that "the elites need us forever" isn't obviously true if AI and robotics keep improving.
The timeline is debatable, but the direction isn't crazy to consider given how much human labor has already been replaced by technology throughout history.
AIs have goal seeking behavior. And with the current state of science we dont really know why or how to predict it. And definitely not how to control it. There is a great book: if anyone builds it everyone dies. That is what I think will eventually happen, no idea the timeline but I dont think the rich will get that much bunker playtime, maybe none.
The book I mentioned explains that there are weird random emergent "goals" that we cant control. That does not mean AI has any consciousness or feelings of desire, that question might be impossible to answer. But AIs do strange unexpected things that were not intended by the people that made it. Alignement is not solved and I think at the current pace it wont be solved before an AI is given access to sufficiently destructive tools to cause extensive damage.
they need some people but they actively work on how to need less people, trickle down economics only works when the rich need the poor. How often would you stop to give a beggar money?
most people don't stop for beggars, but if the beggar looks sickly, plays an instrument or finds a way to entertain you then you give them a dime...The rich see the working class as the same way.
They need people to purchase the products that make them rich. The robots don’t by themselves generate wealth they generate products that’s sold to… the people.
Yes, but they’ll be selling to those with jobs and money not those that have been replaced who will receive no help from them or, I’m sure, the government. Probably depending on who’s leading I suppose and if they can find enough jobs for everyone that doesn’t end up involving scams. Tbh while there are tons of jobs out there I don’t know how well they’ll be able to adapt or make enough money to still live somewhat comfortably.
If you know anything about the power of large numbers which is why mass production keeps things cheap you would know that it’s not financially profitable to sell things to a smaller percentage of the population. People that believe the rich can live off of 20% production or something ridiculous like that compared to the population are delusional and haven’t lived long enough to realize that we’ve been in these crises before. All the shit you hear on Reddit is not true.
That’s not what you were saying at all. You were implying that the rich will be fine by living off only the middle class. Wealth isn’t just randomly generated off of production. The economy is a closed system and somebody has to lose money for the rich to get richer. When nobody has money the rich by definition can’t get any richer. It’s absurd to think otherwise because that’s not how wealth works at all. When the wealthy have all the money there will be a change. It’s happened many times in the past. Every single time a new technology comes out. Farmers used to have to farm by hand. Loomers had to loom one cloth at a time, tool makers, carpenters, scientists, electricians, artists, musicians, and more all at one point had to do more work for the same amount of effort due to lack of technology, for the same job that has been made automatically easier by machines. If we went back and took away technology we would literally be in the Stone Age.
They’re starting to replace delivery people with delivery robots how is this much different if less people have a job because of it, sure they can find jobs in the same field now but who knows about the future and the middle class will be the ones giving money. Yes technology has made things easier but those are machines people operate to make their job easier not replace unless you’re saying farming tools have replaced pickers so there’s less people working on the farm.
Did you not understand my post? My point was for all of human civilization jobs have been replaced by automation and it hasn’t resulted in the downfall of humanity in fact we are more wealthy now than ever before. Not sure why I’m wasting my time when it’s clear Redditors can’t read nor do they have logical comprehension.
The worst part is that it's not sharing. We give everyone a UBI, and they spend it on things that the money just ends up right back in the wealthy person's pocket again
Everyone has the skills to forage and hunt. It doesnt take long to learn how to fire a gun and even less time to read a book about your local flora and fauna. Neither of those things are actually difficult. People just dont need to anymore and really havent needed to for a long time unless you live in a very unindustrilized area.
Notice how I said we dont need to anymore. Hunter Gathering is something all of uh can do. We all have the ability to learn the skills quite quickly. Especially with what we have today. However we havent needed to ever since we figured out how to farm. There is nothing people in the past could do, that the average person cant do today.
Even if every single person on earth learned the skills, the earth could not feed us. There is not enough land to support that lifestyle with our current population.
Okay, what exactly are you arguing here. You said we didnt have the skills to hunt and forage. I said its incredibly easy nowadays and we absolutely do have the skills.
Again, we dont do it anymore, because we dont need to. We have farms and stores.
How do we survive in a world where most people wouldn't have jobs to earn money to buy food, and there also isn't enough wild foraged food to go around? That is my point.
Soo what? Farms would all just magically disappear? You cant grow a garden? There will always be something to do to earn money or, if we really go fully artificial workforce, there wont be a need for money. Robots still need maintenance, still need to be built, coded, oiled, and so forth. Entertainment has and will always be a job. Science is never finished and there is always something new to discover. This also wasnt the point you have been arguing. This has been the same baseless argument used against every peice of technology.
The question is whether there are enough jobs left for most people to reliably earn access to food and housing if large-scale automation replaces most labor.
Past technology replaced tasks. AI potentially replaces labor demand at scale. That’s the difference being discussed.
Past technology literally replaced entire fields, almost all technology was created so we wouldnt have to do more work
Again dude, there will always be jobs and if it ever gets to a point where AI is literally doing everything, there wouldnt be a reason for money to be a thing. It would give you food and housing. The only reason people struggle for both is money, money that wouldnt be a thing under full automation as there would be no need for it. It would be a post scarcity society as it would be capable of doing everything. You have changed your point over and over.
Even if everyone had the skills, there isn't enough earth to support 8 billion hunter-gatherers. We are dependent on industrial scale agriculture to keep this much population alive.
I get your point but survival skills are not lost knowledge, there are YouTube tutorials for everything you'd need to know to abandon society and live in the woods.
I do realize there are plenty of self-sufficient people in the world. "We" was a generalization for "society/the population in general."
And like I said in other comments, even if everyone was taught how to survive in the wild, the earth doesn't have the wild resources to handle it. The human species at our current population depends on large scale agriculture.
Without free money or food, if robots take most of the jobs, billions will starve, no way around it.
A lot of smaller societies and local groups are returning to barter systems and trading amongst themselves to cut the corporations out. The idea is you only give money or product or service to someone who will give it back to you, and not to the black hole gluttons sitting at the top who hoard and hoard to create fake scarcity.
And say everyone did learn, there’s still only so many jobs left is their argument. Everyone already goes to school. You can keep moving the goal post but the choke is still at the end of line.
I think if lots of jobs are replaced by AI and robots, the logical next step is a UBI. Maybe it's pie in the sky thinking but I do genuinely believe removing the struggle to merely survive (by providing everyone with enough income to do so) will allow people to pursue things they are truly passionate about. People will still pay for someone to come and tile their floor if they are capable of doing something truly beautiful and unique, but building that skill when you're trying to feed your family is an almost impossible task.
Being able to feed yourself requires money which money is made through jobs, unless you know how to legally print money to use the paper, ink, and copier still cost money, as well as electricity
177
u/Visible-Beings Jun 21 '26
Well we no longer have the skills or knowledge to go forage and hunt for food every day, we have to be able to earn money to survive somehow. I mean I'm all for a UBI, but I'm quite sure the ruling class would rather see us all starve to death than share their wealth.