The Altman quote is on target "I think it’s good to start studying this early. I’m fairly confident that at some point in the future, as technology continues to eliminate traditional jobs and massive new wealth gets created, we’re going to see some version of this at a national scale."
However, it will likely be called something different in the near-term in order to gather momentum. Often the argument focuses on the concept as opposed to the practical benefits. Putting it in different terms could serve to reframe the argument to focus on the benefits.
In the US at least,wealth does not seem to flow downwards. Much labour was outsourced to cheaper countries with less laws and morale constraints. I don't see the guys displaced from US factories enjoying those savings. More likely the profits were taxed at low rate in another country while the real money went to exec compensation.
People who seriously think a basic income future is desirable should invest the bulk of their research efforts in automation technology. How do you build a fully automated farm? How do you build a fully automated factory and logistics network? How do you build a fully automated hospital? How do you build robots capable of maintaining and fixing all these automated systems?
All these things are way beyond current technology. If they could be built, we'd effectively be in a Star Trek post-scarcity economy, and money would probably no longer be needed. That day is a long way off, though.
There are things like hospitals that will be tougher to tackle. Money is the currency of power, and I don't see us abandoning power any time soon. So, "Star Trek post-scarcity economy?" I don't think so. However, we will likely experience a temporary(perhaps decades) imbalance between the supply and demand of human labor. In that time, elements of a basic income, or practical equivalents will rise.
I'm not necessarily an advocate of basic income, but an advocate for the basic welfare of everyone.
It isn't all or nothing. For farms, factories and hospitals, full automation would be desirable but we might not achieve that in a very long time. But what if we reach, say, 20% in ten years, 50% in twenty and 80% in thirty. At some point we are going to have to figure out what the increasing number of unemployed people are going to live of. Why not start early?
Agreed. Although I'm not optimistic about Basic-Income itself, I think something similar to that will take over. The longer we wait to experiment and see the pro's and con's of each system, the harder it is going to be to implement a working one once we need it.
I seriously doubt it could be realistically implemented. More probable outcome is ballooning law enforcement costs due to significant fraction of population becoming unemployable and resorting to crime, and almost endless, Japan-style economic stagnation in all developed countries. Sorry for sounding pessimist.
This time it gets serious and software is going to really eat the world. By the way in some countries (like Belarus) there is already significant public backlash against programmers because people see their incomes as unfair profiting at the expense of others.
This is a bit of a Luddite viewpoint. There will be some ups and downs as people adjust to the need for different skill sets however, automation won't simply wipe out any need for human labor. There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate.
I'm worried that the jobs that will be left to us at some point in the future will either be outside the capabilities of most people, or wholly undesirable.
We are already there, no? It is hugely undesirable to work in the service industry because there is no potential upward movement and you are disposable. Nobody wants to work at McDonalds, yet we have a crisis of over-certification for service jobs because people going to college get useless degrees.
If there were jobs within their capabilities that were not undesirable they would be doing them, so what that does mean is that for a huge portion of the economy, people are doing undesirable jobs because they don't have the skills to do desirable ones.
HN is in kind of its own reality sphere, since everyone likes coding and startups and thinks the work is great, when if you drive 100 miles in any direction from whatever tech hub bubble you are living in you will find entire counties in decline as the only work is at Walmart and there is no industry left to aspire towards for the residents. The main street of town is half condemned, there are old abandoned shoe and plastics factories and half the farmland is either abandoned or corporate owned and manned by a skeleton crew of a few dozen people farming the entire region.
The opposite of Luddite is believe that it will all get sorted out in the end inevitable.
As the fall of Rome, the middle ages, and several other dark periods in human history show, this is now always the case.
>There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate.
Several things, yes. A lot, no.
And even if those types of jobs were many, what matters is the number of positions they give us. E.g. being a brain surgeon might not be easily automated, but we don't need that many brain surgeons anyway.
On the other hand, truck driving can be automated, and when it does, it will take with it 1-2 million jobs. Automating fast-food serving and cooking? There go another 2-3 million. Automating office cleaning? There go some millions more.
As for more artistic jobs, like a musician or painter, those might not be realistically automated (because we value the human source of an art work etc), but they aren't going to pay much either, especially since most people wont have proper jobs and thus much money to spend on music (and even less so on art).
There are already programs that can compose music or paint pictures. But is that art if it means nothing to the program which created it? Or was unforeseen by the programmer? Of course, it could be passed off as art, or used as a substitute for it.
If you mean emotionally and intellectually, then yes, it has been an essential part of human civilisation since there were cavemen painting on caves. And it doesn't have to be Beethoven to fill the role of art, it can also be Cheap Trick or Skrillex.
If you mean financially, then yes again. If we include music, movies, comics, books and TV it's 300bn dollar industry. If we are to believe the news (1), more than €51 billion of fine art was traded in 2014 alone -- and that's a kind of art that concerns rather few people.
>I think automated/algorithmic music and art will happen quite quickly, if it hasn't already.
What would be the point? More than the artifact, we value the connection with the artist.
Of the many words mocking the opposite of a Luddite, I've always liked "Panglossian", from Dr. Pangloss in Candide.
> Dr. Pangloss was the pedantic old tutor in Voltaire's satirical novel Candide. Pangloss was an incurable, albeit misguided, optimist who claimed that "all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds." So persistent was he in his optimism that he kept it even after witnessing and experiencing great cruelty and suffering. The name "Pangloss" comes from Greek pan, meaning "all," and glossa, meaning "tongue," suggesting glibness and talkativeness.
You see people trying to articulate the desperation they feel about job loss, and some Pangloss sweeps by to comfort them by talking about how macroeconomically speaking they are more than offset by someone else's gain in welfare. It's bizarre.
A huge part of the musician's work is repeating the same performance over and over. This part is already mostly automatised: you don't need to look for an actual musician to listen to music, more often you turn on your radio / turntable / tape player / CD player / mp3 player / etc.
As far as the creative part is concerned, the offer is already huge and probably exceeds the demand depending how you consider it. So there is not much to expect in that domain either, as far as jobs (or even activities) are concerned.
It is a bit the same for painting. There are people who are willing to buy and can afford to do so, but their problem is then "where am I going to put this?. I already have many that I cannot display...". That's one of the limits the few painters I know hit. Then do have fans, known buyers but if one of these guys buy another painting, it is more to sponsor the painter than because they have a 'use' for the painting.
> There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate.
Could you give examples that are capable of providing living wages to 160-250 million people, in the US alone?
Technology has completely destroyed the value in human labor for most industries, in much the way we no longer use horses for farming, and is rapidly doing the same to "white collar" jobs.
I'm honestly curious what you think it is that <95th percentile humans will have to contribute to the future economy.
You are asking an unreasonable question; could the Luddites have predicted the economy of 1900, 1950, or 2000? If we have never been capable of making an accurate forecast, it would be unreasonable to expect that today.
Domestic labor for highly productive individuals. If you are a high productivity software engineer, trader or doctor, there is no reason any of your time should be devoted to driving, doing laundry or cleaning your bathroom.
Also, I'm not sure where your "160-250 million people" comes from. That's exactly how many workers there are today, many of whom are in no danger of having their jobs automated.
> "driving, doing laundry or cleaning your bathroom."
All of which can be automated.
Furthermore...
> "highly productive individuals. If you are a high productivity software engineer, trader or doctor"
None of those jobs are safe from automation either. Your personal productivity means diddly squat compared to fast automated interconnected machines that can teach themselves. Engineers and traders are just as expendable as the rest of us.
Today a middle class person will have a doctor, a dentist, an accountant, and a lawyer. That list could extend to include personal trainer, geneticist, travel agent, dermatologist... The list is endless. Some things will allow people to monetise talents that previously were not easily monetised (imagine having a "sense of humour" coach), others will be highly specialised requiring years of education, others will be more like trades which a large percentage of the population could learn with adequate training.
Let me put it like this, why would you pay a human to do those things when a machine could do just as good/a better job? Even if AI-based solutions were still subpar compared to human practitioners of the professions you mention, they only have to be "good enough" to take over the mass market, as they're likely to be far cheaper than the human professional.
However, the lack of job opportunities for humans need not be a problem. There are still plenty of things we enjoy doing, and could continue to enjoy doing on a voluntary basis. That way everyone wins, the machines take away the need to work to earn money, and humans get to spend their time doing things they enjoy. That's part of the reasoning behind UBI, to stop monetary needs getting in the way of making this future a reality.
I'd rather stick with the tried and tested "earn a living" model of human civilization.
How is a machine literally going to do these things? Is everyone going to buy a personal trainer robot? Is everyone going to install a home dermatology kit? I can't see it.
You think nobody would be interested in a personal trainer robot, but there'd be a substantiative jump in the number of people demanding new personal trainers?
> Is everyone going to buy a personal trainer robot?
Why would you need a robot? Millions of people today already use video-guided workouts off YouTube or follow semi-customised apps that tell them what workout to do, etc.
> "I'd rather stick with the tried and tested "earn a living" model of human civilization."
You can try, and depending on how close you are to retirement perhaps you'll succeed, but I'd argue future generations may not have this choice. Automation/AI is on course to touch every corner of human activity, it's not a question about if it's going to happen but rather how soon and who benefits. The idea behind UBI and other similar ideas is to let this upcoming change in our society be a force of good for all, rather than one that widens the gap between the rich and the poor.
As to the personal assistant robots/AI, other replies have addressed the main points, but I would say to think more in terms of PC accessories if you're struggling to get your head around it. For example, what does a fitness coach need to do? Set out training and diet plans, monitor form and performance and motivate. An AI solution can so all of these things, and in terms of hardware all you need is a TV, a webcam (or something more advanced like a Kinect) and a heart rate monitor. In some ways the automated fitness coach/personal trainer is already possible, it's just a matter of refinement.
I think you and the others have missed the point about jobs like personal trainers. We've had plenty of automated fitness stuff for years. What a coach brings you is motivation, empathy, nuance and flexibility, understanding, conversation, the human touch. That's why that particular job sector, far from becoming redundant, is growing fast.
> "We've had plenty of automated fitness stuff for years."
Not at the level of sophistication we're likely to see in the near future (e.g. in the next 10 to 20 years). Whilst the human touch is nice and all, look at what happens when technology reaches the point when it can do most of what a human does. For example, automated checkouts in supermarkets are popular despite lacking the human touch. Whilst you may argue that personal trainers are an area people want the human touch with, perhaps some do, but I'd argue the technology only has to be "good enough" to negate this for many. An automated personal trainer can monitor your progress better than a human one (as it can be with you throughout your day), can motivate you through gamification, can adapt your training regime just as easily as a human can, etc... It may be a different experience to having a human personal trainer, but I didn't say the automated version had to be the same, it just has to be good enough.
It should also be pointed out that the current growth in personal trainers is clearly a reaction to a surge in popularity in keeping fit. Personal trainers may be making the most of the halo effect that comes from this right now, but that says nothing about the future.
All the technologies for gamification, monitoring etc. seem to already exist in the mainstream. When do you predict the personal trainer jobs sector will die out?
Die out or be reduced? If we're talking about being reduced, I'd say 20 years from now the industry will be 50% of its current levels for paid human personal trainers. I'd predict the turning point will be about 3 years after VR becomes mass market. There's still going to remain a market for the human touch, as you say, so die out doesn't seem appropriate.
Also, I should clarify, I do want a world where people help each other people get fitter. What I can see happening isn't a world where we're any less social than we already are, but rather I can see a world where paid social interaction is reduced. In other words, if personal training is a vocation, something that people take pleasure from regardless of the money, it'll exist just as strongly as before. Once you take money out of the equation you can see that our human-focused society can continue to thrive, plus money is not going to matter as much when we can meet our needs without needing to earn it.
Is there a personal trainer that you can wear around your wrist, and possibly interface with a biometric chip inside your body that measures sugars/caloric intake and sends you automated feedback like: "Hey, you're overeating, is something wrong? Are you emotional eating?" -- or that charts and tracks every last ounce of calories burned, and can literally quantify the entire metabolic output of your body in a given day?
What about one that can track which workouts actually keep you motivated longer, which diet foods you like better, just by watching your behavior?
-- Nothing like this exists today, but it will, eventually. AI will be a lot like the AI in HER and it won't be very long of a wait, probably in 20 years or so..
A few lords with an army of domestics. That's a brilliant model of society you envision. Since it seems perfectly acceptable to you, I guess you imagine yourself in the ranks of the lords, not in those of the lackeys.
Take two things that could unlock numerous needs for jobs.
1) education, which we currently do en masse, but could be personalised to varying extents
2) remote working, which would free people from cities and allow them to have larger houses and gardens, and in general make service provision less efficient and require more labour (it's easy to serve urban dwellers since they are so concentrated)
Are you really trying to entrap me into turning my observation about the present into a prediction about the future that will be wrong?
Automation of personal trainers is already ongoing. People have been more successful on automating the "motivational" aspect of the job (probably because this one isn't regulated). But there are lots tentative initiatives to automate the "teaching and correcting" aspect too, from video games to in-lab research.
I just think predictions are worthless if you don't put any kind of time horizon on them and don't explain why existing trends indicate otherwise.
As you said, we have seen a proliferation of devices, equipment and information that make it easier than ever for people to form a fitness plan and measure progress. We have also, at the same time, seen a large increase in the number of personal trainers in employment. This would suggest that technological progress in this sector is complimenting/augmenting, not replacing, the work of humans.
As their job gets automated and more productive, we'll probably see more employment of personal trainers. At least for a while. There are many people that would like to hire one, but won't because it's too expensive - as it gets cheaper, more get hired.
Programmers are on this same stage of the cycle. But I expect we to last there much more than personal trainers.
If you went back 40 years, you'd probably find people saying accountancy was a dying profession, that it was only a matter of time before their function is entirely carried out by computers. And indeed we have software for probably every accountancy task, just as people imagined back then. We've had it for years. We still have accountants.
People are willing to pay to have someone shield them from the complexity, the diligence, and the organizational effort behind everyday endeavors. That's not going to change.
Also, automation's track record is incredibly overrated. It seems to only work in situations with exquisitely controlled conditions, like assembly lines. People bring up super-market check-outs, but this only works because the customer does all the physical work themselves. The bridge between automation and complexity is intelligence... and we're nowhere even remotely close to having AGI technology.
That's because there's relatively few of them, serving many customers. The GP post inverts that, suggesting the vast majority working service jobs for the relatively few customers who can afford to pay them. That's a servant/aristocrat relationship.
Don't forget that the Luddites were substantively correct in their analysis. "Some ups and downs as people adjust" really meant multigenerational economic negative effects in their case, and may be similar for people passed over for automation now. The Luddite families and those like them took 3 to 4 generations to recover fro the blow, economically speaking.
Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be done, but that any assertion that people will "retrain" or "find new growth industries" with anything like their current quality of life is at best naive, and more often disingenuous. The most likely case is that the losers in such economic shifts will remain so. Any society that leaves them to sort it out on their own should at Leastbe transparent and realistic about what that means.
Discouragingly enough , truck driving itself is a rare example of fairly successful transition to a new industry, as it had a low barrier to entry for people needing to leave a rapidly shrinking workforce in agricultural areas - due to some automation and a larger scale mechanization. One generation of that and it is going to fall off a cliff too, possibly leaving the rural US in a dire employment situation.
It's pretty likely that "automation won't simply wipe out any need for human labor" (or at least not for a long time.)
The problem is that we seem set on using the minimum wage to ensure a basic level of income. This means that we HAVE to make sure we have enough jobs for everyone, and that all of those jobs HAVE to produce enough economic value for the employer for them to provide that basic level of income.
The result is that we end up effectively paying people to do nothing, while effectively prohibiting jobs that don't produce enough value to justify the minimum wage. This seems blatantly inefficient and idiotic to me.
The problem is not that it will wipe out ALL need for human labor, but a lot of it.
Just truck drivers - millions of people getting unemployed. And don't paint a too romantic picture... a lot of them will NOT be qualified for another job.
We are also using software to enable people to perform tasks normally done by experts.
Drafting architectural plans is a recent example. The hand - drawing has been replaced by CAD software, and a LOT of architects now do these themselves or with little staff in-house.
I work in the financial sector, and supportive applications will enable "normal" client supporters to sell Investment packages.
Of course WITHOUT them really learning shit about investments .. result: Less experts needed (first step)
Second step:
Automated consulting / online use by the customer.
Gregory Clark's work on tracking English class mobility in the 1700s-1900 (The Son Also Rises & A Farewell to Alms) indicates that this isn't the first time this has happened (ie, the obsolescence of a large portion of the labor force), and that it's possible to manage the transition with a fairly minimal amount of law enforcement resources.
This time it's different. Our most valuable asset as workers is our minds, if AI can make inroads into white-collar work as well as blue-collar and pink-collar work, what will be left for humans to do? We're not just talking about low-skilled workers losing their jobs, we're also looking at previously safe jobs like doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc... due to be facing very strong competition from the growth of AI (both in terms of cost and aptitude).
If we do continue to work, the only scenario that makes any sense to me is if we do work for self-satisfaction rather than need. There's still going to be enjoyment to be had in refining skills and pursuing goals.
I would argue that we're already at the point where the law industry has begun shedding paralegals and clerks because of technology, and that we'll see this rapidly accelerate, followed by AI beginning to take over the work of lawyers as such, with only a few humans overseeing the AI teams. The medical industry is likewise on the cusp of beginning to have AI assisted diagnosis, which will put a dent in the number of doctors needed for routine check-ups and supervising patient care, eg, overseeing a course of chemo (in that a single doctor will be able to oversee more cases with AI doing the heavy lifting and the human merely verifying its conclusions).
The problem with AI isn't that it's going to get rid of all the people in any industry -- it's that it's going to get rid of 90% of them, skewed towards the lower skilled and entry level positions. If this happens across enough industries at the same time, it's a question of what the less talented and younger will do to be part of the economy.
For the medical industry, it's not the doctors that are ripe for being automated away; it's all of the administrative assistants managing paperwork and offices. If the mess that's today's US medical records, billing systems, and insurance ever gets straightened out, it can all be reduced down to a data-entry system that the doctor uses directly while interacting with patients. Just about everything else could be automated.
Actually-and perhaps surprisingly-a sizeable swathe of doctors are directly in the firing line for automation and have been for some time[0]. Medical and legal expert systems have been an AI research goal from the very beginning. Economically speaking, it may make sense to automate high cost labour sooner than low cost.
A peasant's most valuable asset was his mind as well; you have to go pretty far down the curve before you find a worker's manual labor power output to be their most valuable asset (oxen are usually cheaper) or where obvious mental retardation isn't a disadvantage.
The historical solution (eg in the context of manorialism) was that if you couldn't afford to have a family, you didn't (and if you did, the kid got shunted into a monastery or the equivalent and was prevented from reproducing), so the "surplus" peasant population effectively shrank, and the English lower classes ended up being the descendants of downwardly-mobile gentry, who mostly found employment in different sectors.
That solution breaks down in the context of modern welfare systems.
> "A peasant's most valuable asset was his mind as well"
All jobs require a certain level of intelligence to do, that much is true, but the call for creative thinking does vary from job to job, and there are plenty of jobs that are largely repetitive.
As for the historical solution, I'm sure UBI and population control aren't mutually exclusive, though I don't think it'll ever fly that population control only applies to the poor, if it's going to happen it should be applied across the board (i.e. to the rich too). This has the added benefit of making it in everyone's interests to find better solutions to overpopulation than forcing people not to have kids (it should ideally be voluntary if it's ever needed).
I disagree it is more probable that, "ballooning law enforcement costs due to significant fraction of population becoming unemployable and resorting to crime, and almost endless, Japan-style economic stagnation in all developed countries."
The most probable outcome is that societies adjust, and that is likely to include implementations of a basic income. In the US I doubt it will be sweeping in any manner. Rather certain "life-necessities," and "lifestyle standards" will be implemented piece-meal over long periods of time.
I think both you and @anovikov are on to something. A decline in crime is not incompatible with increasing law enforcement expenditures and the general militarization of civilian police forces that been much lamented here and elsewhere. Nor is a decline in crime in the recent past incompatible with an uptick in crime rates in the present and near future. (Some reference to recent national crime statistics -- especially property crime -- might be in order here but I can't find a reliable one offhand.)
As far as societal adjustment, this episode of This American Life, a couple years old already, takes a detailed look at how a de facto pilot program in Guaranteed Basic Income is already being "implemented piece-meal" in the U.S.:
I've seen this linked here before and it really is a great eye-opening journalistic investigation of the issue.
Will this scale? Would a more transparent implementation be politically palatable in the US?
I think this is one of the fundamental issues starting to get worked out in the current US presidential election with Sanders millenials tending to support an implementation of lifestyles standards like those found in European social democracies and Trump boomers seeming to suggest that protectionism and a re-assertion of vague nativistic principles will restore the lifestyle standards that well-paying blue collar jobs provided for them and their parents in the past.
Actually, the decrease in crime can largely be attributed to the the decrease in atmospheric lead (coming from lead-based gasoline and paint), which was proven to interact with children's brain chemistry such that it resulted in hyperactivity and behavioral problems later in life.
There will certainly be difficulties to overcome. People like to do stuff and Videogames actually will help with the transition as they provide outlets for that energy that are inexpensive (vs other forms of entertainment) and also build skills among the unemployed in a way that TV and Movies cannot.
One way to make the transition more cleanly is to pair a gradual introduction of basic income, with a commensurate gradual reduction of the minimum wage. The reduced labor costs will spur economic growth and innovation without any paired reduction in consumer spending which would inhibit that growth. A gradual introduction means we have time to notice and address problems as they crop up.
As long as all the work we want to have done is getting done, we are better off having people who enjoy and take satisfaction the work doing it
Really? You think that's more realistic than just taking it from the top 0.1%? There was a time in this country for nearly 40 years where the top tax bracket was above 75%, and for quite a while it was 91%, and for a short while it was 94%. Basically it was a policy of not letting a small number of people take all of the marbles. There is, in fact, a way to avoid that tax, it's called start a new business or expand one - those costs are tax deductible. The problem is tax policy at the top end is basically saying some tiny number of people can be hoarders, not innovate, and then aristocratically hand it off to their kids in the form of trusts that don't pay inheritance tax.
Very possibly some kind of basic income would help people be more mobile, move from expensive cities to less expensive cities. But I also think as likely is higher taxes would incentivize the very rich to invest. Rich investors = good. Rich savers = bad.
>There was a time in this country for nearly 40 years where the top tax bracket was above 75%, and for quite a while it was 91%, and for a short while it was 94%.
When we were at war. There was also a longer time when there were no taxes.
No income taxes I assume you mean, and only in the US. I think they were introduced at the federal level in 1861 to support the civil war, then it was repealed in 1895 via constitutional argument in the Supreme Court. This forced the government to pass a constitutional amendment in 1913 to keep the income tax in place.
So the income tax has existed for more that 50% of the US' history at this point. That doesn't include whatever States decides to impose.
This I don't get -- why are rich savers bad? How can a large number in some bank account possibly affect anyone else's life in any tangible way? The way I see it, the 'problem' with rich folks is when they use up a disproportionate amount of resources without creating any value, e.g. buying land, houses, cars and employing people to do their pointless (from society's perspective) bidding. I.e. spending money.
> This I don't get -- why are rich savers bad? How can a large number in some bank account possibly affect anyone else's life in any tangible way?
Quite the opposite - savings are integral to a healthy economy.
Investment (in an aggregate economy) must equal savings; this is an identity, not an equation. Any money that is invested (whether loaned to private individuals to buy a house or car, or whether invested by the state into public infrastructure) - all that requires others' savings in order to happen.
For some reason, people get mad when they think of other people "hoarding" money. But in reality, there's no such thing as "hoarding" money. You can hoard a rivalrous resource, but you can't hoard fiat money.
Not true. When you put it in a bank, the bank loans it out (usually at a multiple). Even if you put stacks of bills under your mattress, you're effectively making a loan to the mint to fund government operations.
Some invested money is bad, though. Investment in many businesses is bad for the world: cigarette companies, casinos, monopolistic roll-up companies.
Banks don't loan out savings. That's a myth. The money for the loan is created by the act of creating the loan. Loans are effectively banks 'licence to print money'.
I don't think that's accurate. In our fractional reserve banking system, banks loan out 90% of their reserves. The net effect of that repeating itself is that you end up with 10 times the amount of money in the system, which is maybe what you're referring to? That's just a side effect of our banking system though. Kind of wonder if there's a stat on how much banking has expanded the money supply at any given moment or if it hovers pretty close to the theoretical limit?
Nope, I'm not referring to fractional reserve banking. I'm literally referring to banks creating loans out of nothing but the promise to pay them back.
I realise this is fairly uncommon knowledge, and doesn't seem to make sense. I'd recommend watching this video for a brief synopsis of how it works.
> "Investment (in an aggregate economy) must equal savings; this is an identity, not an equation. Any money that is invested (whether loaned to private individuals to buy a house or car, or whether invested by the state into public infrastructure) - all that requires others' savings in order to happen."
Sorry to say but whilst what you say makes logical sense, it is in fact wrong.
When a bank makes someone a loan for a house, for example, it isn't based on anyone's savings. It's based on nothing. Creating the loan creates brand new money, backed by the value of the same loan. In other words, when the bank gives you the money for the loan, it is the contract to pay that loan back which is the asset the bank gets in exchange.
As for hoarding fiat money, it absolutely is a real thing, but it comes in many forms. When it comes to uses of money, not all uses are equal. For example, increasing house prices rob an economy of its productivity, as money becomes locked away in a non-productive form. Money can only 'do work' and help an economy grow as a medium of exchange. It is, in a sense, lubricant for the economic engine. One of the reasons we have economic inflation as standard is to ensure there's always enough money in the system to function as a medium of exchange, counteracting the money that is lost from active use by saving and other non-productive uses.
That's not to say saving is all bad, it still makes sense at a certain level, but it's not universally good.
Money creation is so poorly understood that the Bank of England undertook to clarify[0]:
• This article explains how the majority of money in the modern economy is created by commercial
banks making loans.
• Money creation in practice differs from some popular misconceptions — banks do not act simply
as intermediaries, lending out deposits that savers place with them, and nor do they ‘multiply up’
central bank money to create new loans and deposits.
• The amount of money created in the economy ultimately depends on the monetary policy of the
central bank. In normal times, this is carried out by setting interest rates. The central bank can
also affect the amount of money directly through purchasing assets or ‘quantitative easing’.
What's bad is the accumulation of power that comes with the saved money.
If you have locked away some large number in some bank account, that comes with the possibility to unlock that bank account at some point. if the right people know about that possibility, that will put you in a significantly different position.
You know when the tax bracket was above 75%, and 91% there were rich people that basically paid nothing in taxes? This was the result of existing exemptions in the laws.
You know the Rothschild? Rockefeller? In what period they made most of their money?. In those with the higher "rich taxes".
In fact that basically meant in practice that only a few could hold all the power, with no competition, by law.
It is very similar to what happens in Cuba today, when you can't earn more than 30 USD a month or so, no matter how good you are or how much you provide for the state. You could be the one responsible for the famous Che Guevara photo or a baseball player, you will earn millions that the State will take, and give you 30 USD.
An exception has been made recently for small business to this law, but of course some people in power are the gatekeepers to it(and you better pay them a significant part of your profits under the table for getting permission).
Of course the communist in power will spent lavishly your money because they can decide who spends what. No rich people in the country officially. Fidel officially has no money, extra officially it has billions outside the country.
Basic income means most of your money being taken away from you in taxes for someone else to spend for you. This has been already invented and tested before.
Those sky high tax rates were only applied to earned income. Capital gains was never anywhere near that high. All that means is the owners of capital stay rich and nobody can earn their way into being rich. You have to invest or already be rich.
If you tried taxing capital that much they'd flee the country.
"If you tried taxing capital that much they'd flee the country."
I keep encountering various forms of this. Can someone explain why rich people who do not significantly spend, invest, pay taxes or otherwise contribute "fleeing the country" is bad?
who cares? theyd have to pay an expatriation tax on their wealth in order to take their money out of the country anyways. Theyd have to forfeit their US citizenship in order to not owe US taxes.
If they think thats worth it, then let them. Why is this such a horrible outcome?
Why do each of these tax schemes feel like the poor want a consolation, and they would accept a compromise deal wherein rich would be made poor, just in case they can't be made rich.
Never heard a single argument why some human beings getting ahead of others is wrong.
No matter how hard you try there is always some people who are richer, some who can draw better, some who can compose music better, some who win nobel prizes.
This whole idea that losers will happy if the winners are punished seems to be wrong to even begin with.
Because it's a democracy and because I say so. That's all the reason I need in a democracy to push my idea out there, because I want it, I want a world with less disparity in how resources are distributed.
Not, mind you, because I think I'd come out on top, or in my case, even ahead (I wouldn't, under any redistributive scheme) but because there's millions of my fellow citizens who I think would come out a lot better in a less disparate world.
It seems like something's wrong in the world when people can work full-time jobs and need food stamps and rent support. That's all the reason I need to push for reduced inequality.
It seems like something's wrong in a world where billionaires pay a lower effective tax rate than their secretaries. That too is all the reason I need to push for reduced inequality.
At the end of the day, I'm not looking for natural laws that delineate winners and losers, I'm just looking at human-made systems that generate enough food for us all to be morbidly obese, and distribute it so poorly that a measurable proportion of my nation's children go hungry. I'm looking at that stuff and saying nope, gonna use my vote to make something else happen.
That's all, because it's a democracy and because I say so.
My intuition is that (1) unemployment will indeed continue to rise due to automation, (2) the world will not become a crime-ridden dystopian place, and (3) Guaranteed basic income will probably happen, in one form or another. I posted about this here, if you care to take a look: https://blog.foretellix.com/2016/05/10/the-next-20-years-of-...
It won't happen in USA first. Too much ideological baggage will prevent USA from believing it is possible (and actually oppose people who try it) before it is actually implemented and working in other countries.
I would like to believe that a dynamic EU country will implement it first but actually my money is on China. They fear riots, they need to keep people's income growing (even steady is not an option) and they don't mind being called communists.
This change will happen, but Trumpland won't herald it.
"Most of the blame for the struggle of male, less-educated workers has been attributed to lingering weakness in the economy, particularly in male-dominated industries such as manufacturing. Yet in the new research, economists from Princeton, the University of Rochester and the University of Chicago say that an additional reason many of these young men - who don't have college degrees -- are rejecting work is that they have a better alternative: living at home and enjoying video games."
What else can they do? With the new wave of AI and automation there will be no jobs left for people with below average intelligence. You will need more and more researchers and programmers but not everyone can do those jobs.
I did not have the impression that world needs 100m mediocre programmers or did you ?
We need a concrete problem solvers. If society gets fucked up because a lot of people will have nothing to do and a handful of other people will have all the money and power then I think that is a problem a programmer or a scientific researcher cannot fix.
Or do you really think that because you are a programmer you are safe ? :-)
> more researchers and programmers but not everyone can do those jobs.
Research is suited to fairly scientific minds but I think programming is totally something anyone who's interested can do.
Software development continues to modernize and become more accessible. If you're motivated, I'd say you can definitely do programming. And the best part is that it applies to virtually any existing job.
It's easy to think so if you've been programming for a while, but try to teach programming to kids (or adults) and realize this really does depend on some inherent ability and/or interest (and this is even with a self-selected group who chose to go to a programming course).
You probably can get most everyone programming at a basic level, like we did with reading and writing, by requiring it at a primary school level.
However, a lot of these people will be about as useful as professional programmers as the average person is as a professional author.
Some people cannot think analyticalally enough to maintain the state of a program in their head. This is why freshman CS classes can see retention rates in the single digits. You adapt your brain doing it over a long enough time, and when you start doing it early in life you evolve your brain to suit the task, but for anyone who lacks the critical thinking and logic to think programatically the later in life you are the less likely to be able to ever internalize it you get.
Yeah, less stimulating is a bit vague. I was thinking of the effects that playing video games has on the reward center of your brain - the creation of dopamine... more related to addiction than outright stimulation I suppose.
I also think art can include things like being a chef, barista, baker, barber, and brewer, distiller, wine maker; not just the things we typically call art. Things that are in more demand than paintings.
Except all those jobs are going away with the automation revolution. You can't have an economy based off the equivalent of getting carriage rides in central park where its just a frivolous humor to experience human powered food production or a haircut done by a barber.
Don't think automation will get rid of these jobs - have you seen the cronut? Don't think a computer would have been able to derive that creation... (not sarcastic)
Also, as we create more time, we'll have to spend it on these luxurious that currently seem frivolous.
> “When I play a game, I know if I have a few hours I will be rewarded,” he said. “With a job, it’s always been up in the air with the amount of work I put in and the reward.”
This is stunning to me. I know that among the world, we in the US sometimes have a different work ethic. But video games coming up in this discussion of rewards per time invested is mind-boggling.
> Happiness has gone up for this group, despite employment percentages having fallen, and the percentage living with parents going up
I've tried to summon some outrage here, but if they're really happier maybe it's not a bad thing. I'm surprised it doesn't cause more strife in their relationships with family. That's only hinted at in the article.
There are definitely dead-end jobs that don't make you want to get out of bed in the morning. Maybe something like the CCC would help with the feeling of meaningful labor.
I thought this was interesting from bullshit jobs:
"what does it say about our society that it seems to generate an extremely limited demand for talented poet-musicians, but an apparently infinite demand for specialists in corporate law? (Answer: if 1% of the population controls most of the disposable wealth, what we call “the market” reflects what they think is useful or important, not anybody else.)"
The obvious missed answer to the question posed is "talented poet-musicians scale much better than corporate lawyers." It's like asking why we produce more coffee machines than mobile operating systems -- it's not because 1% of the population wants more coffee machines.
I initially thought the same thingabout happiness, but the problem isn't in their 20s while they're relatively healthy and have their whole lives ahead of them.
Will they still be happy and fulfilled bagging groceries for half a day and going home to play GTA12 on their MagicLeap...rather than going to the doctor for that weird shooting pain or the cough they couldn't shake after being sick half the summer?
Will they simply opt not to get married? What about having kids? Both would be hard to reconcile with such a life -not saying anyone must or should do those things, but some might feel differently at 35 or 40 and find it hard to switch gears.
Yes, I don't know who in their right minds is thinking basic income will work out well for society based on the predilections of the masses.
Most people do. not. like. to. work. Period.
But work is good for society. Idle hands are the devil's tools after all, and where one finds high unemployment, they are almost certain to find crime, drugs, gangs, single mothers, and most everything else that reasonable people consider a step backwards in civilized society.
Now what's the other side of that coin? Young ambitious hackers that browse HN will have more leeway to easily start startups living in their parents' basements. That's a good thing, and honestly sounds very appealling even to me now (minus the parents and the basement though).
However, you have to do what is best for the most people, and while a few percent will benefit and be able to further contribute, the majority will flounder and sink into degeneracy.
That's the problem with utopian thinking. Reality and human nature always get in the way.
Nope. Look at the history of big housing projects in the days of generous welfare payments. Food, clothing, shelter, and some spending money were provided. Huge crime rate.
Welfare programs in the past may be relatively generous compared to today, but I'd be interested to know when this golden era of welfare payments was, which era did you have in mind?
Also, it takes more than money alone to make people happy. It's possible to be financially comfortable but still live in a ugly, uninspiring place with very little that's enjoyable to do. I'd much rather be poor in an interesting/beautiful place like Venice than comfortably well off in a cultural wasteland.
So, to cut a long story short, you're pointing to the early 1960s as a point of generous welfare payments, yes?
If so, what factors do you believe contributed to the gang culture and drug use outlined in that story? Do you believe decent welfare payments were the cause? An enabling factor? A coincidence?
To convince yourself that you live in a perfect meritocracy where anyone who fails does so solely because of moral deficiency or laziness is the most dangerous delusion you could inflict upon yourself. The story of millennials playing video games in mom's basement conveniently fits that narrative of moral outrage.
In fact there is a growing group of people who, being force to work in sectors where they compete with overseas workers who are brutal exploited by ruthless dictatorships or, to a much lesser degree, have their work obsoleted by technology, realize they have no hope of a 'normal' life. No hope of home ownership, of giving their kids a better life via college and who look at an old age of likely homeless or at best extreme poverty.
If we continue to disregard the problem of lack of mobility and the inequalities the current economy is producing, it will be forcibly fixed for us in catastrophic ways and we will end up with political extremism that dwarfs the current election cycle.
> where they compete with overseas workers who are brutal exploited by ruthless dictatorships
Or, in the US at least, not even overseas workers, but prisoners who are able to do the same job for much less because their living costs are paid by taxpayers, not their "employers"
I haven't heard a good political-economic explanation of how a universal basic income that actually finances the living expenses of a large portion of the population avoids spiraling into yet another welfare program.
The point of a UBI in the academic literature is to enable dismantling of high-overhead welfare state in favor of a low-overhead and higher-level grant (check out eg the overhead of Social Security Retirement income vs Social Security Disability income), but that tradeoff is somehow never actually offered.
> "I haven't heard a good political-economic explanation of how a universal basic income that actually finances the living expenses of a large portion of the population avoids spiraling into yet another welfare program.
The point of a UBI in the academic literature is to enable dismantling of high-overhead welfare state in favor of a low-overhead and higher-level grant (check out eg the overhead of Social Security Retirement income vs Social Security Disability income), but that tradeoff is somehow never actually offered."
Two main points:
1. UBI is a form of welfare, but if you're concerned about UBI spiraling into a welfare program in the sense of means-tested welfare, why would it? If everyone gets the same, and the basic needs are all met (including free education and free healthcare) the only reason it would change into a means-tested program is if the government couldn't afford it. Which leads us onto point 2...
2. When it comes to financing UBI, it's best not to do so through taxation. Instead you do so through money creation. At the moment the system used in countries like the UK and US for money creation effectively is a money-making venture for the banking system. By moving to debt-free money and using UBI as the vehicle for new money to reach the system, you minimise the risk of UBI contributing to government debt.
Lastly, there is another way to not use UBI but still tackle the same issues, and that's to make the basics of life free for all. However, I'd suggest that would require coordinated effort on the international level, UBI seems like a more realistic transitionary approach.
It's worth looking into in advance, but not writing about every week. It's a bridge we'll cross if and when we come to it. So far, automation has displaced some jobs and created others. Will it start doing the former more than the latter? Only time will tell - we are not there yet.
"Take an IPhone - you find a variety of technologies - each one was created by some government grant... The collective production of wealth, which is then privately appropriated.. it's very easy to start thinking of basic income as a dividend that goes to the collective that was responsible for collectively producting the wealth."
"We need to create a system whereby society stakes a claim to the returns to aggregate capital, and this claim becomes an income stream that goes to everyone. I don't see why my children and your children have a right to a trust fund [or] why Paris Hilton has a right to a trust fund, when nobody else does, or very few people do.
Think of basic income as a trust fund for all our children - to be financed by dividends from our aggregate capital, which was after all, created collectively."
Since WW2 most basic research has been funded by governments, but prior to WW2, the industrial revolution happened without state funding. Varoufakis' argument is that since the state has been taxing the productive to fund research, that gives it a moral right to tax the productive some more.
Paris Hilton obviously didn't earn her money, but her parents chose to give it to her, and millions of people chose to stay at Hilton hotels. If you assume ordinary citizens have a right to the money they earn, you have to grant Paris the same right to her trust fund. (Which is going to be invested or spent anyway). There's no consistent way to assert the right to violate property rights, without abolishing property altogether.
I'm not sure things are as zero-sum as you imply - he's not saying Paris can't have her trust fund.
> There's no consistent way to assert the right to violate property rights, without abolishing property altogether.
Is this a false dichotomy? It seem like defining it as a 'violation of property rights' that 'abolishes property altogether' renders things completely implausible by pushing it to it's extremes.
> Varoufakis' argument is that since the state has been taxing the productive to fund research, that gives it a moral right to tax the productive some more.
Regardless of if the research done prior to WW2 was funded privately or publicly, that knowledge is part of our shared culture heritage.
The fact is, regardless of how well they run their hotels, the Hiltons could not be where they are without the travelers who pay to stay at their hotels. Without the government regulation, infrastructure and security that makes such travel safe and easy there would not be the market for the Hiltons to have made their money in.
The government has a critical responsibility for keeping our shared economy healthy, growing and stable. Taxation to do this is not a moral RIGHT, but a moral RESPONSIBILITY.
You sound like you think we'd do OK with no taxes, and thus no government. That is more idealistic and unrealistic than even the most ardently blind arguments for BI.
one note about Taxation. He's careful about using that word because he doesn't want the money to go federal coffers that the state can spend as they see fit. It almost has to be a side-channel that doesn't use the normal tax machinery - which is the talk of 'dividends' and such.
The government is needed to enforce the laws. This does not mean the goverment needs to redistribute wealth, regulate business or manage the economy. A government which stuck to this role could be funded by tax rates of about 5-8%.
My ideal society would have said funds made by voluntary donations. This is a far-off ideal, but it is achievable - unless you think humans cannot form a society without coercion.
> This does not mean the goverment needs to redistribute wealth, regulate business or manage the economy.
Regulating business, managing the economy, and redistributing wealth are not strictly necessary roles for the government.
However, having a government that a good job of doing those roles increases economic efficiency and social well being.
We don't HAVE to have public education, but public education dramaticly increases the productive output of a society.
We don't HAVE to have the government regulating business, but having government imposed standards that are well thought out increases consumer trust, decreases economic risk, decreases economic friction, and increases economic efficiency.
We don't HAVE to have the government distributing a basic income, but I think gradually replacing the minimum wage with a basic income will increase economic efficiency (lower labor costs) without the corresponding deflationary drop in demand. There is obviously a limit to how much we as a society can afford to provide as a UBI. I don't claim know what that limit is (I suspect it is currently well below the poverty line), but we can find it using gradual increases to UBI and decreases to the minimum wage.
We want out government to fulfill these roles because it makes our society safer, fairer and more efficient. We could probably get by with 5-8% tax rates, but the society we would live in would be much poorer.
> My ideal society would have said funds made by voluntary donations. This is a far-off ideal, but it is achievable - unless you think humans cannot form a society without coercion.
Sure, one day that would be great. One day we will have free energy, benevolent AIs, and instantaneous transportation anywhere in the galaxy (i.e. no scarcity). Until then, we will have to depend on coercion like ever other society in human history has.
I particularly like the point he makes at 16:14: "The right to turn down a job is essential to a well functioning labor market"..."to have a genuine right to turn down a job, you must have an alternative, an outside option, because desperate people will accept to do desperate things".
Because "trust fund kids" is something to aspire to.
Having nothing to do day-in-day-out, really messes with you. Not everyone, but on average. It's an open question if society can handle it. In the short-term it will evoke bitterness in those that work against the able-bodied that choose not to (remember the 'food-stamp surfer'?)
he addresses this at 15:30 (we can still censure idlness, but we don't need to throw them onto the street / let them starve). also previously states we need to overturn the narrative that giving to the "undeserved" (the beach bums) is something we should avoid.
> "people need to feel they are needed in the society."
That can be achieved in different ways. The health of communities does not need to rely on earning money, there are plenty of other ways to build a vibrant society that still values the contribution of individuals.
Without having to toil for survival, people would be much more open to participating in bettering their communities outside just doing whatever can net them the most profit. Easily expect volunteering and charity to dramatically rise under a UBI.
I'm treating the "Basic Income" topic on the Internet as a spam/cult type thing nowadays. Probably there is some type of browser addon that can hide it from clogging up everywhere I look.
At this point, I have grown sour on Guaranteed Basic Income and would rather a Prorated Guaranteed Minimum Income. I do realize it would be more open to fraud, but I just cannot see something without means testing going into effect. I would also hope the thing pays out in daily amounts, as opposed to the once a month problem of our current payments.
I still believe there will be non-ai jobs. In the near term, I'm wondering what an industry / government acceptable certificate (trade program) would be for robot technician. The government could probably help a lot of job prospects if it banned companies from barring third-party service of robots.
The reason no-one wants means testing is that it adds a massive bureaucratic overhead to the system, which actually defies part of the point of basic income, which is to get rid of most other, costly to run, social programs.
I believe that GMI also gets rid of all the other social programs. I just don't think it will fly that Bill Gates gets a payment. That is going to be a big opposition to overcome.
I don't get where you can say "no one" since plenty of people want means testing for Social Security, etc. right now.
1) decide that limits will need to be imposed on our demographics and start a plan of population control. if that population is not already in effect (zika?)
2) let the market regulate itself, pushing people into poverty and reducing their fertility and life expectancy.
We are approaching a level of technology which is not human-oriented but software-oriented: the crucial idea here is that the transition will be not about "jobs will be harder or require more intelligence" - its about the emergence of artificial labor pool that is inherently better, smarter and less demanding. There is no way to "retrain people" to compete with robots, there is only "retreat to segments" where automation hasn't arrived yet - a narrower subset of potential jobs(there are no magical 'new jobs' coming).
Lets take for example Joe The Programmer as someone who doesn't fear being automated.:
He is confident he can write software better than a program trained to do so, and all his life beliefs hinge on that idea.
He could do a less mentally-challenging job - but they are all taken by robots and automatons, doing it at fraction of minimum wage.
Suppose a neural-net generator emerges that can produce software from requirements and diagrams of the middle management types. At first its used only for the simplest, mind-numbing tasks or viewed as debug aid. It develops to covers creation of modular pieces of code and its code quality is superb. Now the time come and grown complex enough to create functional software by itself without human input.
The management looks at it, and decides to cut down on their software division. Jobs in the segments become fewer and fewer.
Joe The Programmer now has to retrain himself to do something the code generator can't do, or hasn't expanded to area yet. But with progress there is nothing left, the most complex software can be done with minimal bugs and without unreliable human programmers. Software proven itself much cheaper to maintain with minimal staff - even it will be eventually replaced by helper software.
Joe The Programmer is now fired. Now that there is no need for much middle management, as there is little to manage: the company shrinks and becomes more productive. At ultimate point the key personnel/directors/Chief officers are replaced by expert systems trained with their domain knowledge and the company become a purely digital entity producing income for its owners or shareholders. There is no point adding human back in the chain, as it will reduce efficiency and increase complexity(labor laws, taxes, paper trails,etc).
What is key here, is we only lack the software..the hardware is here now.
i.e. all this retraining/re-specialization of the labor market will not matter, when software will be also "re-trained"(neural nets, generic algorithms,general artificial intelligence ) much cheaper to do equivalent of a human mind-work. Now it simply a hardware problem:
At X investment a machine would outperform similar X investment for a human worker/employee, with none of the extra needs/limitations/laws regulating labor.
Obviously the result in mass poverty and breakdown of class-based society if there is no moderating factor: basic income becomes a necessity, not an option "to stabilize the economy" - without it there is no economy and no society(as even third-world countries depend on job(for a very liberal definition of a job) income existing).
The company probabaly can't entirely be replaced by machines because there would be still a need for someone who is familiar with decent tech and is responsible for selection of technology stack, because there would be a number of competing AI workers manufacturers.
If I am getting free money, is 'society' going to be my boss, but in real life? Will I be more subservient to society than I currently am? What is my role in society, what am I giving back to it?
As the cost of production falls and demand increases, I'm fairly confident the cost of materials will rise, if we continue to live in a capitalist society that'll be the mechanism that controls the level of demand. The other option that could work is more material wealth in the commons, for example sharing the use of cars rather than owning one outright.
Marx' theory starts with the same assumption as those arguing for basic income: That labour will eventually - as a natural effect of the drive of capitalism to compete - need to be automated away or squeezed on income, until capitalism faces the dual thread of causing mass unemployment (and so unrest) and too high manufacturing capacity (by driving incomes and employment down and so killing demand). This is outlined many places, but most prominently in the Communist Manifesto.
If that gets bad enough to lead to revolution, Marx "plan" was for a socialist government to use methods such as extremely progressive taxation and the like to basically drive capitalists into the working class. This is outlined in the Communist Manifesto and Critique of the Gotha Programme and many other places.
Once this leads to the end of class rule, Marx believed society would eventually take advantage of the overcapacity built by capitalism to allow distribution according to need. This is also covered in the Communist Manifesto, but expanded on at length in the Critique of the Gotha Programme.
Marx did make the assumption that class struggle will cease if everyone basic needs are met, but he also cautioned a number of places, and most notably in The German Ideology, that attempting redistribution in a society that was not sufficiently advanced to be able to meet the needs of everyone would just restart the class struggle all over again.
You may be right that the threshold for what people "need" before they will be satisfied may be higher than what Marx may have thought, but the point Marx made was not that people won't want more, but at some point peoples willingness to fight for a bigger share than what others get will be lower than such a society's willingness and ability to resist special treatment. Where exactly that point would be, we don't know.
The more immediately relevant question is whether Marx' prediction of capitalist boom and bust cycles eventually running out of control and driving unemployment so out of control as to trigger revolutions will prove correct.
Basic income would be a simple way of proving him wrong, by creating a safety net that would prevent things from getting bad enough to trigger revolutions.
Marx argument there is that the ruling classes will resist these types of redistribution, with violence if necessary, and that is the reason for the Marxist idea that revolutions are in general necessary - it comes not from any idea that they are desirable, but from an assumption that any working class majority for large scale redistribution will be faced with an army. If that proves wrong, then that pulls the rug under large parts of Marx' historical materialism (the idea that history is defined in part by the predominant modes of production, and that these inevitably evolve in certain ways culminating with the end of class rule).
Yes, but Karl Marx's plan relies on motivating self interested humans, who have a natural desire to minimize their output energy expenditure. Machines can make us more and more stuff all through the night, and never ask for vacation. Functional communism/socialism is only realistic at a point when labor becomes trivial - e.g. walk over to the replicator and grab the cheeseburger it made you.
Eatsa is not automated. It's just an automat[1], with people in a conventional kitchen in back filling the glass-fronted boxes.
The Government as the employer of last resort (see Works Progress Administration) has a better track record than a basic income. Plus you get a lot more infrastructure built.
Good thing Swiss citizens just refused the basic income, by vote. Goes along with today's vote: Swiss have authorized their own government to perform surveillance on them to "prevent terrorism"...
Hum, do we really need to see this as white and black. Work or no-work? Why not just introduce 30 hours/week or even 25 hours/week. And by that I mean employees keep the same weekly salary, companies use the gain in productivity by automation to give back some family time to employees. What we get in exchange, is one or 2 extra days of consumer spending. People tend to spend more during weekends anyways, so everybody is a winner. We keep the same salary, we have an extra day free in the week, companies get the 15% increase in consumption, and get slowly ready for full work automation.
Businesses don't want to hire people at 20 hours a week if they are willing to work 40. And this isn't black and white - we have been in transition to mental labor automation for the past 50 years. We have just been replacing desirable industry jobs with service jobs that people hate with a passion, as wealth inequality grows and those dropped out of economic potential switch to basically waiting on those that have not yet fallen.
UBI I would argue is much more desirable, if you were going to try to legally force 20 hour work weeks. UBI actually lets you absolve a lot of historical regulation that holds industries and growth back, that was all established as an attempt to protect the poor and uneducated from exploitation. When everyone has an easily accessible minimum standard of living, regulations in the workplace can be retired to enable more innovation since the workers can finally negotiate evenly with the employer rather than being exploited to survive. It also lets those workers with the ethic to do so to spend as much time as they want making as much money as they want, knowing they won't starve or go homeless when they stop.
Either you keep cracking up the extreme regulatory machine currently asphyxiating the American corporate sphere (ever wonder why all the innovation is in software? It isn't just because its new, it is also because relative to almost everything else it is extremely unregulated) or you just use increased taxes on unfettered growth to provide for the masses so that the unleashed potential doesn't destroy lives.
So basicly, let's deploy UBI, and if people want to work 3-4 day weeks, it is up to them. I agree with this idea, and it clears up the work-no-work part of my argument. I just felt that UBI is such a big step, that just lowering the number of weekly hours had a precedent (from 7 to current 5 days a week) and was not associated with a more leftist sentiment, thus being easier to pass.
UBI is as big a step as you want to make it. Alaska has an effective UBI with its dividend from oil revenue, and nothing really stops you from starting it at a lower amount and ramping it up over time.
Your point about consumer spending is spot on. The five day week is only 100 years old, and it was none other than Henry Ford who was partly responsible, so that his own staff (who happened to be some of his best customers) could take time off to drive their cars.
> What we get in exchange, is one or 2 extra days of consumer spending. People tend to spend more during weekends anyways, so everybody is a winner. We keep the same salary, we have an extra day free in the week, companies get the 15% increase in consumption, and get slowly ready for full work automation.
It dost not work this way :-)
Most people spend all they have, and it just happens when they have time to spend it. Since you don't raise the salary, there is nothing more to spend. The same amount of spendings will be spread along 3 days instead of 2.
Increase in spending can only concern people who do not spend everything. Even in this limited set, those people are not going to eat more, they are not going to buy more sofas or whatever, they are not going to buy a bigger house because they have an extra free day, they are not going to consume 15% more, not even close.
Fundamentally, we're all animals and due to physics and material constraints, there's scarcity involved. By giving a basic income, we're pretty much ignoring the fact that eventually we will run out of water and food and manufactured goods.
You can't relate the rodent utopia experiments as a defense of having to keep people in need of basic necessities to survive or they lose the will to live.
Besides the fact you are comparing rats to people, even the study itself considers all the localized factors that contributed to societal collapse:
* You are isolating them in a relatively small space with one another.
* You have uncontrolled population growth.
* You are using a species that naturally trends towards "clan wars" for territory.
* They are rats, and thus have nothing productive to do with their time in the absence of survival.
In the same reason you cannot just compare horses to humans and say that when physical and mental human labor is obsoleted there will be no new jobs for people because horses do not have the capability to invent their own work, rats are the same. Fundamental to our establishment of society is our ability to invent things for us to do beyond the survival every other animal dedicates their life to.
Also, it is incredibly nihilistic to think that human beings need to toil to survive or else life is without meaning or we will collapse society.
We already know that in first world countries people reproduce less. That isn't even a function of economic well being directly but a function of education, which relates precisely back to how humans aren't just animals acting on instinct. If your post-scarcity society is uneducated hairless monkies, yes, they would go the way of the rat colony dystopia. If you have a culture of education and intellectualism, and let people invent their own work, you have an actual utopia. It is the same mind that elevated mankind above all other animals that can stop us from destroying ourselves as we eliminate survival as a daily concern.
> * You are isolating them in a relatively small space with one another. * You have uncontrolled population growth. * You are using a species that naturally trends towards "clan wars" for territory. * They are rats, and thus have nothing productive to do with their time in the absence of survival.
Are we talking about rats or humans now? Only your fourth assertion is rat specific. All the other observations are true of the human condition. We now have 7.4 billion human beings in the world right now, and it's the developing countries, you know with clan warfare and living in relatively small spaces that have uncontrolled population growth.
> Also, it is incredibly nihilistic to think that human beings need to toil to survive or else life is without meaning or we will collapse society.
Just because it's nihilistic doesn't mean it doesn't hold truth. It seems that your objections are rooted more in your worldview and philosophy rather than objective arguments you're bringing up. They even bring up this point in the experiment, where he mentioned the "beautiful ones", who forgot how to breed and spent all day grooming themselves.
> We already know that in first world countries people reproduce less. That isn't even a function of economic well being directly but a function of education, which relates precisely back to how humans aren't just animals acting on instinct.
I don't think it's a function of education. Do you have a citation? You could easily read this as saying, people in the first world are incented not to have children, as they have seen how children generally make parents unhappier and would prefer against that.
> It is the same mind that elevated mankind above all other animals that can stop us from destroying ourselves as we eliminate survival as a daily concern.
I think that's where the difference lies between our points of view. I think that most people are creatures of instinct, and our conscious mind is constantly trying to justify our actions after the fact with logic. If we really have elevated minds, how come many intelligent and educated people have differing opinions on things? Why are we still debating global warming, and having wars over religion?
We are not restricted to confined spaces with other people. Even the most destitute could walk down the street and leave. And we see in people that are so restricted the same kind of psychological problems you find in the rats, such as in prisons.
Population growth is not uncontrolled. Educated populations are equalizing and declining in growth. Once women are educated and empowered in society and people have a standard of living where their own survival isn't dependent on many children taking care of them in old age, you see birthrates decline dramatically.
The clan war problem is truly something mutual, but its something we might be able to surpass one day.
> would prefer against that.
Which isn't something reflected in rats, at all. The population decline was due to a breakdown of society. We are not having that at all, yet our replacement rate declines dramatically once you no longer need the kids to survive in your later years and you are educated on how to avoid getting pregnant. The only reason rats reproduce like... rats is because they don't have the rational mind to understand what contraception is, how to use it, and how it can avoid them the unhappiness later of having kids.
> Why are we still debating global warming, and having wars over religion?
Neither of these are rational arguments. For all intents and purposes, scientific consensus is the basis of rational thought, and everything else is emotional response to rationality. It is that scientific process that separates us from the animalistic emotional squabbles.
> The clan war problem is truly something mutual, but its something we might be able to surpass one day.
What gives you that assertion? We've been trying to surpass it for literally thousands of years.
> Neither of these are rational arguments. For all intents and purposes, scientific consensus is the basis of rational thought, and everything else is emotional response to rationality. It is that scientific process that separates us from the animalistic emotional squabbles.
But yet we still have these arguments, even though they're not rational.
Primarily, I don't think we've evolved much in the past couple thousand years. We are not much smarter than our ancestors. We might have improved nutrition, but fundamentally we're just cave dwellers that think scary things lurk in the dark, and make up excuses to justify our actions that are primarily instinctive.
For instance, a couple of extreme examples. Most people and all scientific evidence points to the fact that if you eat less and work out more, your life becomes exponentially better, and you tend to lose weight. There's a fringe movement that comes in with the idea that you can be healthy at every size (HAES) which goes against all science, just so you can feel good about being fat and unhealthy.
Also, WRT to your comments about population declining naturally, the Catholic Church is a huge bulwark against that. They're even against pulling out. Every time I see a commercial about how somebody had four children starve to death, I think to myself not "What an unfortunate person", but "Just stop having kids and slowly torturing them to death by hunger."
My main point is that we already have conclusions we want to reach, mostly caused by biological instincts, and we use our logical brains to justify the decisions to ourselves, so we can get to sleep at night. We're not really that much more elevated than animals, if elevated at all.
Why would we run out of any of those things? We can achieve water, food, and goods sustainably. There is plenty to go around as long as population growth is kept in check, which based on current trends seems to be happening by itself.
The error here is to assume an isolated development of one trend. If AI becomes as sophisticated as imagined, it will make most (if not all) other technologies evolve with it. When talking about manufacturing/production, better tech correlates to lower production costs, lower prices. If you still pay $500 for a mobile phone then, it is more a subject of brandwashing than economics. Same thing with services, medicines, food, etc. In sum: we'll need less money. If that money comes from universal min wage, or from working less hours, or from working more hours at lower wages, seems irrelevant next to this question: who will own AI?
My issue is the power over the people that the Basic Income would give the government. "Vote for me and basic income goes up!!" and the ways it will be manipulated by those in government in 10,20,100 years. Sounds good, but I can think of a million ways this can easily be abused.
For me its different in a few ways. For one the amount given will never go down, people would flip. Second by the sales pitch of "taxes goes down" the government does not get more control over and of the money. Vast majority don't like the idea of taxes being raised on them no matter who they are.
The sales pitch of "get more money" will also be used to hide and justify taxes going up etc. They will do things like only talk about how you get more money and not mention things like they will tax more. Its an easier more manipulative sales pitch that it becomes capable of.
Also over the course of time tons of changes, additions, etc will be added to it. I am not completely against the idea, it sounds great in practice but I just see way too many things that can go wrong.
I also don't think its wise to put too many eggs in one basket.
I'm curious, and this may have been discussed elsewhere, but how would that work in a country like the US (both in terms of size of population and capitalistic greed)? For instance, when student loans became ubiquitous, universities raised their rates. Now there are many theories as to why that was but I feel the simplest explanation is that a) it created greater demand, and b) easy/cheap money (look at ITT). What's to stop rents/mortgages from increasing, cost of goods increasing, basically the cost of everything going up b/c a) people have guaranteed money and demand more goods, and b) simple greed? In my mind it wont be long before that "basic income" isn't enough live on at all. Now I know this seems to be a difficult problem to solve, but I don't think throwing "free" currency at it is going to do anything but drive the value of that currency and it's buying power way down. Im most likely very wrong ( i have zero knowledge sady enough of money and how markets and economies work) - I would just love someone to explain to me how this is even an option - I want to understand?!
If there is demand for cheap food as well as an assure flow of money into the hands of that demand, it seems reasonable to believe the market will address that demand. Am I missing something?
You answered my question with a question? Ok. Yes, in answer to your question, my understanding would be that if there is a market/demand for cheap food, then yes, someone will supply cheap food. However, let's assume for a minute that "cheap food" is a finite resource, and lets assume people are being guaranteed money to purchase the aformentioned "cheap food". Eventually that cheap food becomes more expensive. You know, demand being greater than supply. So someone else comes along and produces cheaper food to address the situation but they face the same eventual problem. Also, its only so cheap you can make food without gov't subsidies b/c a) the cost to produce/distribute and b) gov't regulation on quality. But what we have here, in a sense is artificially created demand b/c of free money, free being money given, not necessarily earned. Again, I know nothing about these things and I want someone who does to actually educate me not give me some bullshit snarky fucking reply.
Markets have been given almost half a century to solve world problems, and we haven't seen these problems solved.
I understand that one may argue that they didn't get the opportunity. But from macro indicators to flagship cases, what we see is that while market brought us a wealth of new products, they are slow to solve acute problems, especially when these problems are hard to explain to the population.
Basic Income I'd not a solution to housing issues or tertiary education which have a heavy positional/signaling component, so we need reform in both those areas as well as basic income.
There is no such thing as free money. If you're not creating more work (or more productive work) then it is simply taking from someone and giving to someone else.
However, the point is that through automation we're creating more work and from who we're taking is the robots. If there are no new automation or robots to take from, then it is most likely that we're going to take from middle class, either directly or indirectly.
I get the premise behind your answer I believe. What I am asking is, what's to stop the markets (especially in the US where greed reigns) from increasing the cost of things such as food and shelter artificially b/c of this free money, making this "basic income" all but useless? Meaning at some point it wont even cover the most basic and modest of necessities.
Costs could inflate in the way you say, it all depends on the health of the particular market (e.g. how resistant the market is to collusion/price fixing).
If you wanted a more reliable way to ensure UBI would remain effective, one way would be to treat it as a separate currency that could only be used for the necessities of life. Moves could then be taken to limit profits made on these goods without distorting prices in the rest of the economy. Could also couple this with government support to encourage automation and other savings in these industries. I'd argue both of these changes in combination can result in a UBI system that is protected against price hikes.
Average annual cost of inmate is $30K, which is more than $2000 per month.
Criminals get "basic income" already today.
In K-12 education in Europe, lowest-performing students are given a lot of attention (with "special" classes etc), low-performing get the bulk, and little attention is generally given to high performers. The effort distribution is roughly normal, biased toward lower-end because of people with disabilities.
Goal seems to be to bring people to a reasonable average, but not above it.
Education effort seems logical (the bell curve). Inmate "subsidy" does not seem as logical - perhaps a more bell-shaped subsidy distribution would increase the average/mean and also reduce recidivism (if in context of criminal law).
A reasonable imementation of the current argument is to gradually "normalize" the subsidy distribution into bell shape, which will move the "target average" threshold higher along the way.
Generally "normalizing" subsidies along the range of any metric theoretically sounds right.
Sadly, given that value of any one person's life (and possible accomplishments) is not defined (=infinite) science cannot provide a solution. F.e. there is more benefit to aociety to help people with minor disabities, then with major ones, but people feel "inhuman" about supporting such statements and decisions this entails. This will become harder still when AI will need to choose allocation of effort to support/save lives.
No one really knows the long-term effects of basic income, so it's all a bit of speculation and it's certainly possible that what you think will happen actually does. I personally think some costs would go up while others will not, largely determined by competition and supply/demand.
For example, if we look at food, it's a competitive industry and prices tend to only rise when costs (labor, food supply, rent) increase. I don't see why this will change under basic income. People aren't going to want to start spending $20 at McDonald's just b/c they can afford to do so and if Carl's Jr can undercut McDonald's at $15 w/o taking a loss, they will.
I can see housing costs increasing. Everyone wants to live in the same areas, so the supply of good housing is constrained. This is reflected in housing increasing in proportion of a person's income over the last couple of decades while food and clothes have fallen. But I also believe alternatives will start appearing to meet the demand for basic income level housing. It won't be as nice, but at least people can have a roof over their head. As an example, dormitory style living or elderly care facilities.
Lastly, what are the alternatives? If you agree that the problem is that automation is going to make a lot of ppl unemployed while concentrating wealth to the few, what other solutions exist besides wealth redistribution? If we have to redistribute wealth, how else would we do it?
There's a bigger question to be asking here, which is that once we've reached a point where labor is not required for the provision of basic needs, are we going to liberate all of humanity from labor, or are we going to let a smaller and smaller fraction of the population horde the benefits of automation?
I believe we can liberate humanity from forced labor in my lifetime. And I think that the product of that liberation, in terms of cultural production and scientific discovery, will have a bigger impact on human civilization than anything we've seen in recorded history. Because when people don't have to be baristas to pay the rent, and have the resources to pursue whatever they were really passionate about before they had a landlord, beautiful things will develop.
"Basic income" is one possible tool in the box but it's not the only one. And instead of having dumb arguments about the minutiae of handing out free currency in our economic system as it's currently constituted, I would rather see more debate about the principle.
Agreed. Once we build a clanking replicator, or it's biological/nano counterpart, we'll be approaching a state where thought manifests reality.
As a thought experiment, if every one has a replication device like in Star Trek or Drexler's universal assembler, how will the materials and energy to run such a device be distributed? Presumably we would allocate some to everyone, which would function as a basic income.
If we continue on the current path where resources are consolidated into the hands of the few, and these few have no need for the labor of the masses...
Basic income aside (I really like the idea) I don't agree with the general premise that we will all be automated out of a job. I think it's ignoring a lot of the human qualities that have created the world around us.
In the past ~300 years we've automated more than we could ever have imagined. Our basic needs are produced in massive quantities in factories that rely on humans only for orchestration. Yet we don't work much less than we did in the past (per person or as an economy). We still work 40-50 hours a week, 48-50 weeks a year. So why are we convinced that a life where we don't have to (or choose to) work is right around the corner?
We are underestimating the human desire for novelty and an ever-increasing standard of living. Huge new product categories will spring into existence and we'll discover we suddenly want these new things, really badly. This will create opportunity for labor to meet the demand, just as it always has,
What will change is the distribution of rewards. Each human becomes more and more productive as technology advances as a whole. Look at the market cap of a tech company with 50,000 employees versus an oil or automotive company from 30 years ago. This value is captured by the executives and investors, employee pay is not keeping up with employee value.
I think the society might shift toward more entrepreneurial lifestyle. More and more people will own automatons, robots, AIs that do stuff for them, and either use or sell the results of their labor. There will likely be a scale of 'intelligence' of robots - some might be similar to dogs or dolphins or highly specialized for particular jobs. Lots of people might own taxi cars that work for them. Or a bunch of robot-workers that build houses. Or robot actors or something. You rent them out, lease them, make some money, take care of their energy needs, fix them up, maybe train them for other jobs...
An alternative to the basic income is free access to (basic) food, shelter, health services, education, etc. Which is called (basically) socialism. The (important) difference between that and basic income is that with basic income you get free access to non-essentials, such as entertainment, restaurants, alcohol, tobacco, etc.
Basic income probably isn't the answer, but instead basic needs being met through education and proper allocation of resources is a very viable answer. FDR had a vision during his time in office which was for every person to own land. Theoretically, if everyone had access to use some amount of land through entitlement - they would be able to use natural means to provide themselves and their family with certain basic needs like food and shelter. With the advent of technology and GMO crops - anyone should be able to understand growing their own food and building their own home when suddenly presented with more free time in the absence of traditional industrial work. I hate to go all Atlas Shrugged on y'all - but Galt's Gulch was effectively this. It was a commune that recognized an individual's power to provide for themselves when presented with the means to meet their basic human needs.
When I visited some of the smaller pacific islands the question of unemployment benefits came up and the response was basically what you describe. On the island there's enough room for everyone to live and grow food and take care of themselves. Presumably with the help of others if they are incapacitated.
I'm not sure how that can work though on a global scale of 7 billion people while also allowing for the aggregation of people into cities that is so necessary for everything our modern civilization builds.
On top of this naturally you now have unfairness in the system as some peoples land will be better than others, and by virtue they will be richer than others through greater productivity.
In the end UBI works around all this and simply says - let the market sort it out, so that the best uses of capital, land, people's time can be found, but we're going give people enough to live so that if the most efficient result is that half the population sits on their hands and the other half work programming robots, then from a systems perspective we are adequately compensating those half that sit on their hands for their misfortune not to be a robot programmer.
However, it will likely be called something different in the near-term in order to gather momentum. Often the argument focuses on the concept as opposed to the practical benefits. Putting it in different terms could serve to reframe the argument to focus on the benefits.
These are interesting as well: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/universal-basic-income/ https://salon.thefamily.co/enough-with-this-basic-income-bul...
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