[Perfectionist]

Some of the greatest minds of ancient past... accomplished their best work by being able to focus on their passions... without worrying about day-to-day bullshit, like having a job and paying the bills...

Id the humdrum of daily routine is removed from all of us... maybe we could all achieve greatness?

[zatara]

UBI won't work in most countries at present, but in 50-100 years time it will have to be common place. Its not some global elite conspiracy, but an acceptance of reality. Automated vehicles will kill off somewhere around 10million jobs in the near future in the US alone. You can add on plenty of service jobs that will be replaced (have any of you experienced a McDonalds in Europe recently? Few employees, many touch-screen ordering units) to that. And any remaining manufacturing jobs. White collar jobs aren't safe either; look at discovery work in the legal field for example.

Some new jobs will appear, but they will be at the upper-middle class level in the 'knowledge economy' and be few in number. Fleets of cars will require fleet managers and software engineers, automated factories management engineers etc. For an intelligent, upper class or upper-middle class, person there will be opportunities. The problem will be for the millions of low skill, low education, working class men and women. what new jobs will these 25-50million Americans, half of whom will be middle aged, with no third level education, step into? I wouldn't want to be a suddenly unemployed 55 year old truck driver in a country with no more human commercial drivers...

Within 50 years, depending on a country's social/economic values, automation will lead to one of two outcomes:

A- A society built on massive amounts of inequality. The middle class and upper working class disappears as the vast majority fall into poverty. Most jobs are outsourced, or automated. A tiny elite reaps the benefits of controlling almost all of the available financial capital. They own the factories and the robots inside of them. A situation comparable to apartheid South Africa, but based on finance instead of race, results. The extreme upper class is richer than ever, but society will also be extremey unsafe due to inequality. Look at parts of Africa or South America for a 'light' version of this as it exists today. Violent revolution probably occurs in the medium/long term.

B- A society built around a UBI based wealth transfer system. Higher taxes on the upper class reduce their wealth. Middle/working class jobs will still be outsourced and automated, but a UBI ensures a minimum standard of living for the entire population. Living standards will still fall due to the loss of jobs, but with nobody starving or homeless society will at least remain 'civilized' and sustainable. A man who has enough money to feed and house his family from a UBI is far less likely to stab his richer country-man over the contents of the latter's wallet.

People need to bear in mind that during the Great Depression unemployment in the US was only 25%. And that was a society breaking number. Oxford University did a study last year that estimated 35% of jobs in the UK are at risk of automation in the next 20 years alone. UBI mightn't be ideal, but it's the most realistic solution to the coming wave of automation.

[SlickyBoy]

(06-08-2016 06:57 PM)zatara Wrote:  

Living standards will still fall due to the loss of jobs, but with nobody starving or homeless society will at least remain 'civilized' and sustainable. A man who has enough money to feed and house his family from a UBI is far less likely to stab his richer country-man over the contents of the latter's wallet.

Ironically, we have a society in America (and much of the west) where obesity is synonymous with poverty - nobody is starving in spite of all the hunger drives and initiatives talking up this supposed problem. "Homeless" people get bussed to and from their free shelters in San Francisco and stand in line at soup kitchens with their smartphones. While it may be inevitable, I'm not sure a UBI would do anything but make this situation more permanent and widespread, at best. I think I'd rather live in the backcountry chopping logs, growing what I could and shooting deer.

[Travesty]

Phoenix your examples are obscene and show you are too idealisitc. Japan has 150M people?

They are smart people. They almost took over half the world. They are disciplined.

I am talking about the 3B+ idiots in other places including the USA.

You can't say with a straight face most of Africa or South America let alone the US where only I believe 25% graduate from college.

Any job that is currently done for little above min wage is inherently a near valueless job due to excess supply and ease of entry.

If your solution is everyone will be a waitress for hospitality or a guidance counselor or some other soft human touch job that is not an economy! It cannot happen.

Someone post a Big Lebowski:

"You're out of your element Donnie!"

You guys want to be close to the truth you cannot place principles over an inevitable reality.

You can however build walls and have everywhere else turn into Venezuela or you can hand out min living to the people that do not have an ability to beat a computer or robot.

[zatara]

(06-09-2016 07:59 AM)SlickyBoy Wrote:  

Ironically, we have a society in America (and much of the west) where obesity is synonymous with poverty - nobody is starving in spite of all the hunger drives and initiatives talking up this supposed problem. "Homeless" people get bussed to and from their free shelters in San Francisco and stand in line at soup kitchens with their smartphones. While it may be inevitable, I'm not sure a UBI would do anything but make this situation more permanent and widespread, at best. I think I'd rather live in the backcountry chopping logs, growing what I could and shooting deer.

Nobody is starving, and few are homeless, currently in the US/EU because unemployment is so low. When there's only a tiny number of homeless/permanently unemployed its relatively easy to take care of them through private sector charity. The soup kitchens, homeless shelters etc that you mention. This won't be the case if 25%+ of the population becomes permanently unemployed. Have a look at South Africa today for an example if you want to see what a broken society with 25.2% unemployment looks like - this is the future without an UBI. Extreme inequality, resulting high violent crime rates, actual starvation in the ghettos etc.

[The Beast1]

(06-08-2016 10:56 AM)Travesty Wrote:  

The Beast have you ever flown over America?

Have you ever seen Wyoming or driven through it?

We have insane amounts of land.

People can be a complete complete fuck up and easily survive in high fashion in first world nations.

This is only possible because of excess resources.

Without resources these people would have been eaten by wolves or frozen.

If anyone notices the anti UBI posts are based on strong feelings and not solutions.

I grew up in fly-over country and left it like most people for the allure of the big city. With a UBI I would happily move to BFE, get some guns, farm, and home school my kids.

However, good luck trying to convince the basic bitches of the US to live in the middle of nowhere Nevada or Wyoming instead of San Fran or NYC.

Our current economic "miracle" of cheap excess resources is propped up by monetary machinations that devalue the money of the 3rd world against western currencies that are artificially propped up. If anything disrupts this set up what good is a UBI if your clothes made in Indonesia costs 50-60$ and your foreign imported electronics costs upwards for $4-5000?

Hopefully, the market would fix this by having cheaper local versions. There will be some pain until this set up occurs.

(06-08-2016 12:20 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

Lots of bad Libertarian assumptions in this thread which are easily refuted:

Quote:

You can't make more land and it still takes limited resources to make goods humans consume.

False. You can make more land by learning how to transform different environments into livable ones. Why can't we eventually live underwater, or in outer-space?

These aren't bad libertarian assumptions. They're honest questions because it is a poor assumption to think that our current economic system and technological innovations would be able to handle a UBI system.

The inventions you've brought up are all fine and dandy but you're assuming these inventions will come along very quickly, which they haven't yet nor do we know how long it will take to develop these.

We don't have the current technology to make underwater cities possible nor have we discovered how to bridge the massive distances between orbiting bodies in outer space.

Does that mean the technology won't come? No, of course not, but it doesn't mean it'll come any faster. If anything, if you give a basic income to everyone who is to say that the scientist who wanted to make an innovative power system, faster than light space drive, or underwater sim city just doesn't go off and move to the country to live in peace?

Granted some folks are out for glory, but i'm more interested in the societal effects that would occur right now if we implement a UBI.

At best we're at least 10-30 years out for having all of these nifty inventions you've stated. That includes automated vehicles.

(06-08-2016 12:20 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

Resources aren't limited either. All resources are a product of human ingenuity. If we suddenly discover how to operate fission power, we'll have unlimited power running on H2O.

Come on Samsaeu this is basic science.

First, you mean fusion. We've already discovered fission power (that's what nuclear power plants are doing). Secondly, there's no such thing as "unlimited" power. Perpetual motion does not exist. We already have the means for cheap power (nuclear fission) and I hope under a Trump presidency he expands this cheap energy source. Nuclear waste is radioactive because it still has stuff in it that can be used to make more fuel rods.

Secondly Samsaeu, when you go digging underground and find a gold lode can you pic at the gold lode indefinitely? No, you're going to run out of gold in that specific location and you'll need to go looking elsewhere whether it's deeper underground, in space, underwater, or in someone's nose.

That is the definition of scarcity and no amount of robotics and automation will change that. We'll still need to grow and expand into other areas to find more resources to consume in order to feed our need for more.

That isn't to say i'm not for UBI, we're going to need something to help folks hurt by automation and I hope that once we reach the point where we can travel the stars and colonize planets as much as possible. Still, there are a lot of questions that will need to be looked at. To be honest, if humans didn't have to work most would do nothing but drown themselves in hedonistic pleasures (drink, drugs, and p4p).

This is just my rant against the term post-scarcity (post labor is a better term) along with my own societal concerns about such a system.

[Samseau]

I'm not saying we need UBI now, right now it would seriously hasten our country's bankruptcy, but I'm arguing that UBI may be possible in the theoretical future.

[PowerGame]

If it wasn't for the hidden agenda, I'd like to see a future earth civilization with abundant resources,offering everyone positive life experience. The universe is - for us - endless and still expanding

But not this century.

[zero1]

The support of radical socialism as being "inevitable" and "standard" by so many in the west is truly worrying. Evolution, free markets and nature exist for a reason. They're quite simply the most efficient system that is capable of accepting inevitable suffering in some, however much tinkering "visionaries" might like to do to prevent it for everyone (that inevitably millions will die over and much more suffering will result anyway). It's worrying that not many can see the pattern. I predict millions more lives lost in the not too distant future, perhaps billions this time, due to the wide social acceptance of this ideology.

[redpillage]

(06-17-2016 03:58 AM)zero1 Wrote:  

The support of radical socialism as being "inevitable" and "standard" by so many in the west is truly worrying. Evolution, free markets and nature exist for a reason. They're quite simply the most efficient system that is capable of accepting inevitable suffering in some, however much tinkering "visionaries" might like to do to prevent it for everyone (that inevitably millions will die over and much more suffering will result anyway). It's worrying that not many can see the pattern. I predict millions more lives lost in the not too distant future, perhaps billions this time, due to the wide social acceptance of this ideology.

Easy prediction to make but I voted you up as you aptly summarized their misguided ideology.

[Blaster]

(06-09-2016 04:50 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

I'm not saying we need UBI now, right now it would seriously hasten our country's bankruptcy, but I'm arguing that UBI may be possible in the theoretical future.

I understand and somewhat agree with the general concern but I do think UBI is likely to be a really bad way to address the problem, especially with current values. Serious thought has to be given to the potential unsustainable and dysgenic effects that polices like this will cause, and how real markets will be affected.

Even as labor costs approach zero, there are still other fixed costs. Eventually you'll run into scarcity of resources-- land, component materials, food, energy.

People will still status-strive. They will find something of value to signal status and it's nearly impossible to predict what that will be. In ancient Rome, it was slave ownership and Patronage. Being a patron of many clients was a sign of high status. Clients earned their livelihood, essentially, by maintaining social relationships with their patrons. The wiki entry says clients "perform services" for patrons but remember that slaves did most of the labor so services were likely much less formal economic exchanges.

[seniol]

I don't understand UBI in any way.

This "Money for nothing" UBI has 2 very obvious results:

1. Everyone will be lazy and not work.

2. As money is received for doing nothing, the inflation will rise skyhigh and the value
of the money will collapse

[72 and sunny]

Quote:

Guy Standing, is a British professor of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London,and co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN). Standing has written widely in the areas of labour economics, labour market policy, unemployment, labour market flexibility, structural adjustment policies and social protection. His recent work has concerned the emerging precariat class and the need to move towards unconditional basic income and deliberative democracy.

Standing's best-known book is The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, published in 2011

Standing calls on politicians to make ambitious social reforms towards ensuring financial security as a right. He argues for an unconditional basic income as an important step to a new approach. If politicians fail to take the necessary decisions, he predicts a wave of anger and violence, and the rise of far-right parties.

At this year's Bildergeberg Group meetings, ^this guy^ was not only an official participant bilderbergmeetings.org/participants.html the UBI topic was on the official agenda menu bilderbergmeetings.org/press-release.html

Current events
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[SlickyBoy]

(06-09-2016 11:09 AM)zatara Wrote:  

(06-09-2016 07:59 AM)SlickyBoy Wrote:  

Ironically, we have a society in America (and much of the west) where obesity is synonymous with poverty - nobody is starving in spite of all the hunger drives and initiatives talking up this supposed problem. "Homeless" people get bussed to and from their free shelters in San Francisco and stand in line at soup kitchens with their smartphones. While it may be inevitable, I'm not sure a UBI would do anything but make this situation more permanent and widespread, at best. I think I'd rather live in the backcountry chopping logs, growing what I could and shooting deer.

Nobody is starving, and few are homeless, currently in the US/EU because unemployment is so low. When there's only a tiny number of homeless/permanently unemployed its relatively easy to take care of them through private sector charity. The soup kitchens, homeless shelters etc that you mention. This won't be the case if 25%+ of the population becomes permanently unemployed. Have a look at South Africa today for an example if you want to see what a broken society with 25.2% unemployment looks like - this is the future without an UBI. Extreme inequality, resulting high violent crime rates, actual starvation in the ghettos etc.

If you're going by official unemployment rates, you should get the bigger picture. It's much worse already and the government has every incentive to downplay the real statistics, especially when headed into an election.

As for the concept of UBI, don't we kind of do this already with the lowest elements of society with the prison system? They've got an imputed income, if not actual cash, in the form of a housing, food, medical care, education, etc. It's obviously not ideal but it's happening - and yet every community bitches about the cost of this system, a tiny fraction of the general population.

What happens when the prison-like lifestyle of low end living applies to everyone unable to support themselves by way of zero skills and/or no desire to do anything other than steal oxygen? The costs will be as crushing as they are mismanaged.

[MikeMcLaren]

The Global Elite do not want to give anyone UBI (that would be money coming from their pockets). If you are not worth 5 million USD + and are not considering the benefits of UBI, you are fighting against your own financial interests. There are three ways this is going to go: (1) Democracy and national sovereignty with the EU dismantled and UBI and job creation programs occurring (2) feudal system (the de facto state of 3rd world countries currently) (3) some magical technology being invented that creates millions of good paying jobs (not likely).

[scorpion]

UBI is a pipe dream. It is, at best, a temporary measure that will be used as a Trojan Horse to implement the real solution to the insoluble problem of overpopulation, automation and unemployment: massive population reduction. You're totally naive if you think the elite (or any rational person, for that matter) would support the idea of billions of human beings lounging around consuming resources and engaging in essentially zero productive activity. What would be the purpose? They would be totally superfluous. Such people would essentially become zoo animals. Do you really think everyone has it in them to engage in creative activity or other passion projects to beautify and enrich society? Do you really think that, left to their own devices with no external pressure to provide for themselves in any way, that most people would not just become consumed with laziness and various forms of vice? We already know that isn't the case. Look at welfare and disability recipients, lottery winners, celebrities and children of the very wealthy. These are populations that have no need to provide for themselves. Not coincidentally, these populations are wracked by drug abuse, apathy, vice and all manner of anti-social outcomes.

The best case scenario: UBI is deployed as a temporary measure for a generation or two, with the stipulation being that in order to receive it one must be sterilized. In this manner those who are economically unproductive would self-select out of the gene pool in exchange for being supported during their lifetimes. Over a few generations the world population would decrease drastically and eventually stabilize at a level where most people could engage in some form of productive labor.

The worst case scenario: the elite think that multiple generations of UBI is too expensive and slow for their taste, and instead decide that starting WW3 or unleashing a global pandemic to kill a few billion people in 3 to 5 years is the preferable option.

But there's simply no way the future will see billions of people being supported in lives of luxury by benevolent robots and elites. It just isn't going to happen.

[Chevy Woonsocket]

(06-20-2016 06:08 PM)scorpion Wrote:  

UBI is a pipe dream. It is, at best, a temporary measure that will be used as a Trojan Horse to implement the real solution to the insoluble problem of overpopulation, automation and unemployment: massive population reduction. You're totally naive if you think the elite (or any rational person, for that matter) would support the idea of billions of human beings lounging around consuming resources and engaging in essentially zero productive activity. What would be the purpose? They would be totally superfluous. Such people would essentially become zoo animals. Do you really think everyone has it in them to engage in creative activity or other passion projects to beautify and enrich society? Do you really think that, left to their own devices with no external pressure to provide for themselves in any way, that most people would not just become consumed with laziness and various forms of vice? We already know that isn't the case. Look at welfare and disability recipients, lottery winners, celebrities and children of the very wealthy. These are populations that have no need to provide for themselves. Not coincidentally, these populations are wracked by drug abuse, apathy, vice and all manner of anti-social outcomes.

The best case scenario: UBI is deployed as a temporary measure for a generation or two, with the stipulation being that in order to receive it one must be sterilized. In this manner those who are economically unproductive would self-select out of the gene pool in exchange for being supported during their lifetimes. Over a few generations the world population would decrease drastically and eventually stabilize at a level where most people could engage in some form of productive labor.

The worst case scenario: the elite think that multiple generations of UBI is too expensive and slow for their taste, and instead decide that starting WW3 or unleashing a global pandemic to kill a few billion people in 3 to 5 years is the preferable option.

But there's simply no way the future will see billions of people being supported in lives of luxury by benevolent robots and elites. It just isn't going to happen.

The biographer Paul Johnson once said that there were just two things he was sure of: one, that money is the root of all evil, and, two, that the only cure for unhappiness is hard work.

In my life the second one has been certainly true. I've been unemployed several times, and the listlessness that accompanies having no meaningful work is soul crushing.

[debeguiled]

Talking about sterilization is grim.

That said, you don't have to force sterilization. You could get people to sign up for it in exchange for entering a drawing where the winner gets the latest iPhone before everyone else.

You could also open up a whole bunch of government centers where they buy plasma, but include raffles to meet celebrities, government lotteries, liquor stores, tobacco shops. It could be a whole mall dedicated to getting back all the money the government gives to the people they want to get rid of. At the same time, they could get bonus payments for selling corneas, kidneys, etc.

It would be the perfect system. You would have to include free counseling from psychologists who keep reminding people that they are making their own choices and have no one to blame but themselves for their monthly checks slipping through their fingers.

If business got slow, the Kardashians could go on tour and hit all the plasma malls with Brit Brit opening for them.

You could also make walled cities where there were super fancy plasma malls with higher payment for selling your bodily fluids, plus a promise of a nice plot and beautiful marble headstone so you can feel like you aren't burdening your kids on top of everything else. On the inside of the city walls would be inspirational slogans like:

"You can't win if you don't play."

and

"That's right baby, Hollywood here I come."

If you promise to live your whole life in the walled city, you get 100 extra dollars a month, that will be passed on to your kids at the time of your death.

The joke would be on you because you are sterilized.

On your way to your new home, you would be in a deluxe party bus, or, if you have already pledged your own kidney, a stretch limo of your own. There would be no windows on the vehicles so you don't see the large inspirational slogans on the outside of the walls. Not slogans, really, just a portmanteau word, repeated over and over for the edification of people who don't live there:

"LOSERVILLE"

This would allow the people who don't end up living there to thank their lucky stars, and, sometimes, wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat for reasons they know not why.


For people who don't end up living there, there would be tours of the outside of the cities, and parents could scare their children with stories of what sort of people end up inside the gates, with waxworks in vivid tableaux of all sorts of scariness.

Every now and then, a lucky tour bus would get to see an actual resident try to escape the high fence and get shot, falling to the desert floor (It would have to be off in the desert) and landing on the ground in a puff of dust just like the Roadrunner in cartoons.

The tour bus would have air conditioning and sound dampeners with state of the art, green, energy recovery ventilators, so you wouldn't hear anything. Just see the fall and the puff of dust.

This is just off the top of my head. I am sure there are as many variations on this principle as there are currently genders.

What if liberal arts majors with major loan debt could have their debt forgiven if they promised to live there forever?

I am seeing nothing but possibilities.

What if people who cannot get past the forum software that tests your ability to figure out what a robot considers a picture of food, soup, a body of water, or a store front are automatically transferred to losertown?

If that happens, judging by how many attempts it took me to post this, I am in big trouble. I wonder if they have internet in there.

[The Lizard of Oz]

The whole discussion of this subject rests on a very dumb and historically false assumption, which is for some reason taken completely for granted. The assumption is this: technological progress and automation will "eliminate jobs", so in the future vast numbers of people will have nothing to do and will have to be supported by the state in one way or another.

To see why this is such a dumb idea, consider that 200 years ago, about 90% of the population in western countries was employed in agriculture. Today, the number is less than 3%. Presumably, if you told people 200 years that at some point hence only 3% of the population could easily produce enough food to feed everyone else, they would have asked: in that case, what is there to do for the other 97%?

The answer -- of course -- is that while technological progress eliminates jobs in certain fields through efficiency and automation, it creates new jobs that have not existed before and could hardly be imagined. Over the past two centuries the workers that were previously employed in agriculture moved, in part, to manufacturing -- creating things that could not have been envisioned in any way, using methods that could not have been envisioned, either. Things like trains, airplanes, cars, clothing from completely new materials and later electronics, TVs, stereos, computers and smartphones as well as thousands upon thousands of other things which did not exist 200 years ago even as concepts. In addition, vast new service industries sprang about to variously enable sale, delivery, and repair of all these myriad new things, and to attend to other human needs using tools that could not be imagined by the most reckless thinkers and dreamers of that time.

This is how it's been throughout human history -- innovation and technological progress allow the human being to master a certain aspect of its relation to the material world; as that aspect is mastered, the conditions are created for us to address the next challenges. What a "job" really is, at the most basic level, is a way of organizing human activity to enable progress in our struggle to master and control the materials that embody and surround us. Since we are nowhere near the end point of that struggle -- to the extent that it has an end point -- there is absolutely no danger that further progress in automation will create a condition in which "jobs" are absent. As some jobs are eliminated by automation and progress, new jobs -- new kinds of jobs -- will appear, as if by magic (but actually through strict inevitability) that will tackle new tasks that do not even exist in today's world. This is how it was, how it is, and how it will be.

Lastly, it's worth addressing a related dumb idea which is that even if there are new jobs they will all be jobs requiring some unthinkable levels of skill or intelligence, and so vast numbers of stupid or uneducated people will still have nothing to do and will therefore need to be supported by the state. What this idea misses is the obvious fact -- or one that should be obvious by now -- that technological innovation extends the scope of human intelligence.

Despite all the whining about "idiocracy", the Internet has functionally made every human being much smarter than ever before through access to relevant streamed or imaged information that directly aids the task at hand. What this means in practical terms is plumbers and electricians walking around with iPads that directly enable them to solve problems in real time that they might not have solved otherwise. The integration of information technology into every aspect of everyday life will mean that people that are not particularly "intelligent" when left to their own devices will be able to perform tasks that would have been difficult or impossible for yesterday's sharpest knives. We are just starting to see this happen: a revolution in the blue collar professions and trades that become brilliant through integration with technology. This will only accelerate in the years to come. There is no need even to mention advances in innate human intelligence through germline intervention, but of course these advances will also happen in due time.

In short, the idea on which the whole inane discussion of things like UBI is premised -- that automation and robotics will "eliminate all jobs", resulting in the need to artificially support vast swaths of the populace -- is false, and a result of the most basic failure of imagination and of understanding elementary lessons of history. As old jobs are eliminated, new jobs -- performing tasks that we cannot currently envision in fields that we cannot currently name -- will come about; and normal human beings will be as well or better suited to the tasks at hand as they have always been.

[Phoenix]

^ I've tried, Oz. You're just talking to a brick wall on this topic. The luddite position is the same as the anti fractional banking position -- religious. You can appeal to reason until you're blue in the face, for years, and it will make zero difference. There is literally nothing you can say or explain to make them budge a single inch.

All we can do is damage control. Throw a fire blanket of reason over the fire of alarmism to contain its spread.

[Samseau]

Scorpion:

Quote:

You're totally naive if you think the elite (or any rational person, for that matter) would support the idea of billions of human beings lounging around consuming resources and engaging in essentially zero productive activity. What would be the purpose? They would be totally superfluous. Such people would essentially become zoo animals.

The purpose would be for these people to sit around and consume. The Democrats have been employing this strategy for votes for the last 60 years and it's working great for them politically, and it shows that it can be done technologically.

People will argue that giving more disposable income for consumption will also create more jobs. The stipulation would be that the money must be spent domestically.

And for reproduction, they don't need to be sterilized right from the get go, they could be limited to 2 or 3 kids (depending on population pressures).

Don't get me wrong, I don't think this shit will ever happen before the next major war.

Liz of Oz:

Quote:

The assumption is this: technological progress and automation will "eliminate jobs", so in the future vast numbers of people will have nothing to do and will have to be supported by the state in one way or another.

What a "job" really is, at the most basic level, is a way of organizing human activity to enable progress in our struggle to master and control the materials that embody and surround us.

I don't think that's the key assumption but I agree with you jobs will never disappear. For example, entertainment jobs certainly aren't going anywhere.

The key assumption isn't that jobs will disappear. It's that basic needs will be so easily met, that it will be mandated by law to be provided to all. It would be no different than a public drinking fountain. No one believes that having a public fountain will make the city run out of water, do they? Likewise the same way the fountain is able to tap into a cheap and freely available resource, so too someday will stuff like housing/food/healthcare will be as common as water.

The argument is fundamentally sci-fi, but still strikes most as plausible given how far technology has gone.

So don't think of a world without jobs, or even a world where jobs are in short supply, but a world where the basics of life are cheap as water. Of course it would be provided - why wouldn't it be?

That said, our current level of technology isn't even close to sufficient to support such a utopia, which is where socialists and communists fail. Also, there is the very real problem of spiritual abasement in a world of plenty. I can't imagine the women would be too appealing in such a world either.

[Graft]

$2600 a month? I thought it'd be a few hundred, maybe $1k tops. Shit, with 2600 take home I'd consider quitting my job and pursuing some passions. I wouldn't live in NYC, but I'd see if I could live in Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta, or outside the country if I could.

[scorpion]

(06-20-2016 07:04 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  

Despite all the whining about "idiocracy", the Internet has functionally made every human being much smarter than ever before through access to relevant streamed or imaged information that directly aids the task at hand. What this means in practical terms is plumbers and electricians walking around with iPads that directly enable them to solve problems in real time that they might not have solved otherwise. The integration of information technology into every aspect of everyday life will mean that people that are not particularly "intelligent" when left to their own devices will be able to perform tasks that would have been difficult or impossible for yesterday's sharpest knives. We are just starting to see this happen: a revolution in the blue collar professions and trades that become brilliant through integration with technology. This will only accelerate in the years to come. There is no need even to mention advances in innate human intelligence through germline intervention, but of course these advances will also happen in due time.

I always appreciate your perspective but I can't even see where you're coming from here. The average person is more intelligent because of the internet and technology? Are we using the same internet? Sure, there are corners of the internet that nurture and enhance the intellect. But the vast majority of the internet is used for pornography, entertainment/streaming, social media, clickbait and money-making. The fact that the internet has the potential to make people smarter is completely irrelevant. A set of olympic weights and a squat rack has the potential to get almost anyone into tremendous shape, but how many fat fucking blobs do you see walking around everyday versus people in great shape? The internet is the same way: access means nothing without motivation/ability. The internet and all technologies are simply tools, and these tools are limited by our human nature and ability. Stupid people do not become intelligent because they have access to advanced tools. In most cases, they simply use those advanced tools for stupid purposes.

(06-20-2016 07:04 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  

In short, the idea on which the whole inane discussion of things like UBI is premised -- that automation and robotics will "eliminate all jobs", resulting in the need to artificially support vast swaths of the populace -- is false, and a result of the most basic failure of imagination and of understanding elementary lessons of history. As old jobs are eliminated, new jobs -- performing tasks that we cannot currently envision in fields that we cannot currently name -- will come about; and normal human beings will be as well or better suited to the tasks at hand as they have always been.

Everything works. Until it doesn't. You're extrapolating a trend from the past into a future that is likely to be far different than anything humanity has previously experienced. Cavalry charges were a staple of warfare for centuries, but they're not so hot against an armored column of tanks. The issue in this case is not a change of degree, but entirely of kind. A buggy whip maker can work in a factory, and a farmer can learn to be a carpenter. But when you have massive employment dislocation occurring across entire industries in the span of just a decade or two, people simply can't adapt quickly enough, especially given the complexity of most marketable skills these days (how long will it take the average 90 IQ truck driver to become proficient at C++? How many retail clerks have what it takes to make it as entrepreneurs?).

I think your error here, due to your incorrigible optimism (never change, btw), is vastly overestimating not only the intelligence but the essential quality of the lower range of humanity. I mean this not in a moral sense - that they are somehow bad people - but rather in their inability to master themselves and adroitly steer the ships of their lives. Most people with sub 90 IQs (over 1/3 of the population) could not even make sense of this post you're reading right now. If you take away millions of the jobs these people do (the sort of jobs that automation/robots/AI will soon claim) what is left for them, exactly? You can't just handwave and say, "Well, jobs we can't even imagine, just like a few years ago there were no internet entrepreneurs or app developers or SEO optimizers!" These people can't do those jobs. Full stop. Show me the millions of new jobs created over the past decade that sub-100 IQ workers can move to en masse. You can't because they don't exist. The only jobs being created lately are low level services jobs, and those will be mostly eliminated except for at the high level (fine dining servers and attractive bartenders can stay, fast food workers and retail drones: tough luck). Unemployment has been a slow bleed for the working class for decades, and in the coming years that bleed will become a torrent, then a flood. Millions of people walking around with iPads jerking each other off on YouTube and Facebook is not a sustainable economic model.

Samseau Wrote:

The key assumption isn't that jobs will disappear. It's that basic needs will be so easily met, that it will be mandated by law to be provided to all. It would be no different than a public drinking fountain. No one believes that having a public fountain will make the city run out of water, do they? Likewise the same way the fountain is able to tap into a cheap and freely available resource, so too someday will stuff like housing/food/healthcare will be as common as water.

Ask the residents of lovely Detroit what happens when something as (relatively) simple as the public water system is treated as a fundamental human right rather than something which must be funded and properly maintained through human effort. The issue becomes a question which we can potentially estimate but not definitely answer: what percentage (X) and quality rating (say 1-10) of a population can support a second percentage (Y) of freeloaders? If you had a super high quality population of X (rate them 10 of 10) then perhaps you'd only need 10% of them to support 90% freeloaders. But what if they drop down to an average quality of 7? Now you might need 20 to 25%. These numbers are obviously pulled out of thin air - but the point is we have to ask ourselves: how many freeloaders can a productive society realistically sustain, not up until it collapses, but until the productive minority "goes Galt" and says fuck it? What's their incentive of the productive minority at that point? They're basically slaves to an undeserving, ungrateful population of miscreants.

We simply have to be honest in recognizing the failings of human nature. Most people are lazy and not particularly intelligent. They will do the minimum required to get by and not much more. They are not capable of great originality in thinking or creative output of any kind. Most of us are simply worker bees. So what becomes of our society when the hive starts to run itself?

[Travesty]

Scorpion and LOZ are both just out of their element and wrong (comically so) if this forum is here in 30 years come back and check this post.

To scorpion's point - yes the dumb people will be turned into zoo animals in your words if you want to treat them that way. They will play with their children and have BBQ's in this new ultra-welfare society that has already begun. The entertainment in virtual reality will be unimaginable. Travel in 50 years will be insanely cheap.

The average person lives in utter luxury compared to the same person with the same smarts and drive would have lived in 100 years ago in 1916. You don't think it will be an exponential jump by 2116? You sound like you are a man making this theory living in 1925.

LOZ - how do you explain 90+ million Americans unemployed? This proportion and percentage will not be turned around. People are not smart enough on average they aren't even the highly educated (especially women). There is no next easy step. You must be bright and creative to make the cut in the new world. Otherwise you are an average that is handed down goodies from the top.

I could however see a UBI where everyone to get fulfillment helps teach others. Like 10 kids to a classroom and lessons in plenty of extracurricular activities for free.

[Phoenix]

Of course, you expect LOZ to explain the unemployment rate of the US, which has already been done multiple times, and you won't accept any explanation other than "because automation!".

Similarly, you won't pay attention to the unemployment rate of Japan, which is even more automated, and if forced to you'll consider any junk explanation you can conjure up an adequate dismissal.

So I'll just bet you a gold penny that in 30 years it will be your position that's proven 'comical' and ridiculous. You simply have no understanding of how the world works.