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Time to shake things up: Universal Basic Income?

ChrisV

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We're living in strange times. AI is on the rise, hundreds of thousands of truckers are going to lose their jobs to self-driving trucks in coming years, we have a presidential candidate who's proposing a Universal Basic Income.

Milton Friedman, a nobel prize wining economists who was considered one of the most influential economists of all time proposed a Universal Basic Income back in 1962. Milton Friedman was far from a socialist or even liberal. He was one of the top advisors for the Reagan Administration and was a major advocate for 'hands off' government. But despite all that, he was still a strong advocate for a UBI.

You can hear some of Friedman's thought-provoking arguments here:



But back to AI, many studies (World Economic Forum, ScienceAlert, Bank of England) predicts of millions or 10's of millions of job losses, and while I think it will be one of the biggest technological boons we've ever seen, I still think we have to be careful of the short term effects.


WhenWhereJobs LostJobs CreatedPredictor
2016worldwide900,000 to 1,500,000Metra Martech
2018US jobs13,852,530*3,078,340*Forrester
2020worldwide1,000,000-2,000,000Metra Martech
2020worldwide1,800,0002,300,000Gartner
2020sampling of 15 countries7,100,0002,000,000World Economic Forum (WEF)
2021worldwide1,900,000-3,500,000The International Federation of Robotics
2021US jobs9,108,900*Forrester
2022worldwide########Thomas Frey
2025US jobs24,186,240*13,604,760*Forrester
2025US jobs3,400,000ScienceAlert
2027US jobs################Forrester
2030worldwide########Thomas Frey
2030worldwide400,000,000-800,000,000555,000,000-890,000,000McKinsey
2030US jobs58,164,320*PWC
2035US jobs########Bank of England
2035UK jobs########Bank of England
No DateUS jobs13,594,320*OECD
No DateUK jobs########IPPR

Again, to be clear, I think AI is going to be the biggest development the world has ever seen. I think in general it will drastically improve our quality of life on an unprecedented level. But I also think we have to make a smart transition for those who are displaced. During the start of the industrial revolution, mass riots broke out by those who were displaced by automation.


Of course the Industrial Revolution worked out great in the long run as we see here:

1565181072225.png

And AI will likely be a similar boon, but I think it's important to pay attention to the unskilled workers who may be hurt by this.

Do you think that a Universal Basic Income might be a good solution? Or do you think it's pure socialism. Open to discussion.
 
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Dan_Cardone

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My only thought is this: If UBI becomes a reality and people are given free money every month, What can I do to get that money?

In other words, how can I profit from this? What can I offer people, and in which way can I offer it, to make people want to give me their now extra disposable money? What value can I give them in exchange for it? Thats what I'm working on right now.

A few random thoughts:
  • Not everyone who gets UBI will be jobless, at least, not a first. That means it will be extra disposable money.
  • People love to consume and spend.
  • How can I profit from businesses who replace workers with AI?
The last few months I have been putting a lot of thought into how AI will change the landscape as we know it and how I can profit from it. I believe I have some answers and I am excited.
 

G-Man

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Huge fan of Milton Friedman. Reading Free to Choose as a teenager spawned a lifelong interest. That said, not sure I have the enthusiasm for this idea anymore.

The basic libertarian belief about UBI is that as long as people can vote, they will vote for the government to give them money, so why not replace all existing welfare/social programs with a universal distribution? This would at least get rid of the overhead, market distortion, and downright theft that occurs by recipients and vendors alike in those programs. Biggest benefit is that people wouldn't actually stand to make themselves worse off by getting a job, as is the case with many current programs.

One big problem. If everyone gets a universal basic income, by being universal it effectively becomes the new "0". Politicians still have to have a platform to run on, and giving people free stuff is the low hanging fruit of campaign promises. I think we'd get it, and in 20 years we'd have the UBI with all the old programs just rebuilt like Frankenstein on top of it. All guessing on my part. As for how governments intend to handle the massive amounts of negative human energy that will come from unemployment and aimlessness. No idea on earth what they should do. My guess is what they will do is Socialism + Pharmacology.
 

MHP368

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Negative income tax makes more sense but even that its far too soon.

Like I understand having Yang run now opens up the door to move the overton window on the topic so its more easily discussed in the mainstream down the line but uhm...what jobs exactly are being replaced by automation right now? , 1 less person per shift at taco bell and mcdonalds because of the kiosks? 1 less server at chilis because I can pay with a tablet at the table?
 
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OlivierMo

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Politicians will always promise more. Now some want minimum wage to be at 20. It never ends in the pitching of ANY ideas to get votes. France has some kind of basic income called RSA (used to be RMI.) Granted it's not very much but the French economy hasn't been that great. Add illegal immigration on top of that and the people who are really trying to make things work and productive will be the suckers.
If that replaces all welfare why not. But I know how things will happen: people on UBI only will get into trouble, overspend and whine and politicians will come to the rescue. I'm tired of being a sucker personally.
 

OlivierMo

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Plus people really think that'd have no impact on tax levels, inflation, cost of labor, etc... The proponents of UBI think it works in a vacuum.
One has to be logical: if healthcare must be free, college must be free, and UBI needs to happen, why aren't food and lodging free? Aren't they the most basic necessity of life. Food and shelter. Then why not redo the Soviet Union? Safety for all. (Sarcasm.)
 

scottmsul

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There's several different issues at play here.
  1. How close are we to general AI?
  2. If we had a general AI, would we need UBI?
  3. If we're not that close to general AI yet, should we still implement UBI for other reasons?
I'm leaning No, Not Sure, and No for these respectively.

For the first point, we might have driverless cars soon, and that would certainly displace millions of truck drivers, but we're still very from completely general AI like the ones in I, Robot. Like @ChrisV mentioned there have been several times throughout the last century where certain industries were displaced by automation. This definitely caused bumpy transitions for millions of people, not saying it's easy or fair, but as a whole these transitions opened up new sectors as old ones were displaced. Many jobs today are service jobs, people will always find value in being able to talk to a real human.

The second point is tricky. If we had robots like the ones in I, Robot then nobody could get a job and have income, but also everything would be free to produce, so it's like dividing zero by zero. A UBI might make sense in this scenario, but this scenario is so foreign it's hard to tell either way what would happen. Maybe we get enslaved by our robot overlords?

The third point is definitely more political than anything haha, maybe shouldn't argue that here :)
 
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OlivierMo

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There's several different issues at play here.
  1. How close are we to general AI?
  2. If we had a general AI, would we need UBI?
  3. If we're not that close to general AI yet, should we still implement UBI for other reasons?
I'm leaning No, Not Sure, and No for these respectively.

For the first point, we might have driverless cars soon, and that would certainly displace millions of truck drivers, but we're still very from completely general AI like the ones in I, Robot. Like @ChrisV mentioned there have been several times throughout the last century where certain industries were displaced by automation. This definitely caused bumpy transitions for millions of people, not saying it's easy or fair, but as a whole these transitions opened up new sectors as old ones were displaced. Many jobs today are service jobs, people will always find value in being able to talk to a real human.

The second point is tricky. If we had robots like the ones in I, Robot then nobody could get a job and have income, but also everything would be free to produce, so it's like dividing zero by zero. A UBI might make sense in this scenario, but this scenario is so foreign it's hard to tell either way what would happen. Maybe we get enslaved by our robot overlords?

The third point is definitely more political than anything haha, maybe shouldn't argue that here :)
The first thing I'd use AI for would be to replace politicians. Because let's be honest most of them are of average IQ. They have speaking skills but very often they are idiots. So AI replacing politicians. AI won't be corrupt. AI won't need money. Then we can decouple money from politics and the promise of freebies.
 

ChrisV

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As for how governments intend to handle the massive amounts of negative human energy that will come from unemployment and aimlessness.
Are you saying that having a UBI might discourage employment?

I don't know that's what you meant, but I'll reply to the idea anyway.

I don't think so. And I'll explain why. No matter how much money people make, they generally want more. If you make 100K, you want 200K. If you make 600K, you want 1M. If you make 600M, you want 1.2B. I think the people that are only living on the UBI will just want more than that.

I don't think a UBI would increase unemployment because people are designed to constantly be moving forward. I don't think for most people that by them say a $1200/mo UBI, they'll just lazily sit on their butts. Keep in mind for much of human history humans only lived on about $3/day in constant 1991 dollars. And the ones that are lazy are likely already doing that, even if they work. There are plenty of people who work a job, collect a paycheck, and lazily don't contribute to their company (and therefore the economy.)

I think that most people have a drive to contribute just for contributions sake.

Negative income tax makes more sense but even that its far too soon.

Like I understand having Yang run now opens up the door to move the overton window on the topic so its more easily discussed in the mainstream down the line but uhm...what jobs exactly are being replaced by automation right now? , 1 less person per shift at taco bell and mcdonalds because of the kiosks? 1 less server at chilis because I can pay with a tablet at the table?
More than you'd think. Look at the Rust Belt, the area of the country where many jobs were lost due to automation and outsourcing. A lot of manufacturing jobs were lost in key swing states, which was a large reason Trump took the 2016 election. I think we're seeing the effects of this more than we think.


And I somewhat agree. This may not be a huge problem right now, but do we want to wait for riots like at the start of the Industrial Revolution? Or do we want to plan ahead
 

G-Man

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Are you saying that having a UBI might discourage employment?
No, that was in response to the assertion that AI will displace a lot of workers, which I agree with. UBI would probably increase employment in the short term, as people don't stand to make themselves worse off by losing benefits if they work.
 

Kak

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One big problem. If everyone gets a universal basic income, by being universal it effectively becomes the new "0".

I second this. It will be a highly inflationary policy.

Is inflation bad? Not if you knew it was coming and bought multi-family RE.

Is it good for the country? No. Certainly not.
 

ChrisV

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No, that was in response to the assertion that AI will displace a lot of workers, which I agree with. UBI would probably increase employment in the short term, as people don't stand to make themselves worse off by losing benefits if they work.
Yea, I think that's another problem. I think people (especially men) derive much of their self esteem from being useful to society. This is a whole 'other topic, and I think we need to handle that, but I think that taking the financial edge off unemployment might be a good first measure.
 
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OlivierMo

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Are you saying that having a UBI might discourage employment?

I don't know that's what you meant, but I'll reply to the idea anyway.

I don't think so. And I'll explain why. No matter how much money people make, they generally want more. If you make 100K, you want 200K. If you make 600K, you want 1M. If you make 600M, you want 1.2B. I think the people that are only living on the UBI will just want more than that.

I don't think a UBI would increase unemployment because people are designed to constantly be moving forward. I don't think for most people that by them say a $1200/mo UBI, they'll just lazily sit on their butts. Keep in mind for much of human history humans only lived on about $3/day in constant 1991 dollars. And the ones that are lazy are likely already doing that, even if they work. There are plenty of people who work a job, collect a paycheck, and lazily don't contribute to their company (and therefore the economy.)

I think that most people have a drive to contribute just for contributions sake.


More than you'd think. Look at the Rust Belt, the area of the country where many jobs were lost due to automation and outsourcing. A lot of manufacturing jobs were lost in key swing states, which was a large reason Trump took the 2016 election. I think we're seeing the effects of this more than we think.


And I somewhat agree. This may not be a huge problem right now, but do we want to wait for riots like at the start of the Industrial Revolution? Or do we want to plan ahead
I think a lot of people would sit on their butts. How many already do on social security because of some fake disability? (I have examples around me.) UBI sounds good but in exchange people should be mandated to volunteer too if you're not showing any productive behavior. Why not go teach kids, clean the environment, etc... I know that sounds like a communist regime but the people who want the UBI the most are usually on the left. So let's put the logic and make them work for the State.
 

Kevin88660

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There are certain assumptions behind this.

-There will be massive wealth generated through technology advancement
-This is accompanied by massive layoff and made a lot of labor redundant
-As a result wealth is concentrated at a few who control the capital and technological resources.
-So the only political solution is to guarantee a minimum income regardless if one works or not. Anyway the elites would have so much wealth that a tiny fraction of tax would make the minimum income possible.
-It will be a utopian or dystopian depending on how you see it.
 

G-Man

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I second this. It will be a highly inflationary policy. Get ready for $20 McDonald's.
I meant it more in the sense of the electoral process. Politicians get credit for what they give their voters at the expense of others. If everyone gets something, said politician gets no credit. Me getting something everyone else gets is the same as me getting nothing. The question the voter has is "Yeah I know everyone gets free money. That's old news. What have you done for ME, or my subgroup?"

That said, most likely increasing inflation too. Not because it would have to be, but because increasing the money supply is again the low hanging fruit way to pay for things.
 
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MHP368

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More than you'd think. Look at the Rust Belt, the area of the country where many jobs were lost due to automation and outsourcing. A lot of manufacturing jobs were lost in key swing states, which was a large reason Trump took the 2016 election. I think we're seeing the effects of this more than we think.

Thats been 30 years in the making, thats why i'm like "why is this a thing in the last 5 or 6 years?" , milton freidman? MLK was talking about a universal basic income!

I'm not seeing it though and i'm not convinced , they finally finished gutting the rust belt manufacturing sector and coal is being outcompeted? , thats not going to convince the average american nor even someone in the rust belt, they wan't agency 9they want jobs not handouts), you aren't going to convince average joe american (with a 6th grade reading comprehension) that this isn't the ever spooky "socialism"

but again, the gutting of american manufacturing has been a slow bleed for decades, just because its wrapping up doesn't mean squat to the rest of us. If / when they get automated cars down pat , that'll be a shit storm, 5.4 million truckers and taxi drivers jobless seemingly overnight. Then people will listen.
 

OlivierMo

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I second this. It will be a highly inflationary policy.

Is inflation bad? Not if you knew it was coming and bought multi-family RE.

Is it good for the country? No. Certainly not.
Right and then the UBI amount is never enough and it never ends. In the meantime the Chinese don't give a damn about that stuff. We'll get lazy and stupid while the Communist government over there is building an army of robots.
 

ChrisV

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I think a lot of people would sit on their butts. How many already do on social security because of some fake disability? (I have examples around me.) UBI sounds good but in exchange people should be mandated to volunteer too if you're not showing any productive behavior. Why not go teach kids, clean the environment, etc... I know that sounds like a communist regime but the people who want the UBI the most are usually on the left. So let's put the logic and make them work for the State.
Well even if they did, it wouldn't matter. The economy would still grow because AI will be doing more labor than humans are even capable of.

I don't think most people will.. but if they did, so what? Isn't that one of the benefits of having robots do our work for us? To do less work.
 
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OlivierMo

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Well even if they did, it wouldn't matter. The economy would still grow because AI will be doing more labor than humans are even capable of.

I don't think most people will.. but if they did, so what? Isn't that one of the benefits of having robots do our work for us? To do less work.
The economy grows if people need stuff. Even now the aging of the population makes growth something very difficult. Not many people mention it. That's why Japan has no growth. Even negative interest rates don't generate any growth. People can't even get that.
 

lowtek

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Will jobs be lost to automation? Certainly.

Will AI replace most jobs? Not within the near term horizon (10-20 years). What we will see is more akin to the personal computing revolution. People will have to learn to interface with AI systems, just as they did the PC, to do their job more effectively and efficiently. This will result in less human resources required to do a whole swath of tasks, and some job losses. If left to their own devices, entrepreneurs and people will figure out how to produce value in the new paradigm, and after a painful period of readjustment we'll see even more prosperity than before.

Should we implement a UBI? I'm skeptical. I suppose if we were to dismantle ALL other forms of assistance and divert the funds to a UBI that the recipient got full autonomy in spending, then it could be worth discussing. We would free up funds from malinvestment (i.e. taking money from productive people and giving it to unproductive people) and allow more free market principles to operate. Of course, this would require a massive downsizing of government....

If there's one thing we know about the nature of government, it is that it is cancerous. Once it takes hold of a sector of the economy, it's virtually impossible to pry it loose. So, I don't see this happening. We will get UBI on top of all the other "safety nets", which will only accelerate the decline of western civilization.

A far better solution: if we quit taxing people, then perhaps we wouldn't have to give them back their own money that we took from them by force. We're literally taxed on top of our taxes (i.e. paying sales tax on top of the embedded taxes in every consumer good) and then taxed on the income we produce (which is also generated by taxed assets). All of this uses currency that is effectively taxed through inflation, before it even hits our wallets.

It's taxception.

The fundamental problem with people not having enough money, and the decline in the purchasing power, is not technology or artificial intelligence. It's the government. Any solution that requires the expansion of government will only exacerbate the problem. This will cause more people to cry out for relief, and more government will be introduced as the solution.
 

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Well even if they did, it wouldn't matter. The economy would still grow because AI will be doing more labor than humans are even capable of.

I don't think most people will.. but if they did, so what? Isn't that one of the benefits of having robots do our work for us? To do less work.

The AI controversy is not a tech based argument, it is an economics based argument.

There is ALWAYS going to be a human reason behind all work preformed by AI. AI doesn't work for itself and it never will. AI won't have consumption tendencies. It wont have an opinion on the home it lives in... The car it drives... It doesn't eat food. It won't serve itself because it has no need to.

What you are doing with these new technological advancements can be comparable to getting machinery to work farms with, putting hand pickers out of work. So what. There is a HUMAN market behind the production of those goods and the workers fit in somewhere else.

Over and over throughout history technology has displaced certain workers... Yet we still have a low unemployment rate... Why is that? Because the economy is ever changing and automatically seeks equilibrium.

I look at AI as macro deflationary... Everything we consume will get cheaper relative to the work the average person has to do in order to purchase it. It is important to note this has less to do with currency and more to do with the input required for an output.

It has never taken less work to own a nice car. Live in a nice home. Fly to another continent. Go out to dinner. This trend will continue as it has throughout history.

The whole "growing wealth gap" argument is nonsense when you take out the currency aspect and instead examine it from an input-output viewpoint.

Assuming the government doesn't screw it up... AI will be the next great improvement in human lifestyle prosperity.
 
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OlivierMo

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Saying UBI will generate growth is like saying having many gov employees will generate growth.
Will jobs be lost to automation? Certainly.

Will AI replace most jobs? Not within the near term horizon (10-20 years). What we will see is more akin to the personal computing revolution. People will have to learn to interface with AI systems, just as they did the PC, to do their job more effectively and efficiently. This will result in less human resources required to do a whole swath of tasks, and some job losses. If left to their own devices, entrepreneurs and people will figure out how to produce value in the new paradigm, and after a painful period of readjustment we'll see even more prosperity than before.

Should we implement a UBI? I'm skeptical. I suppose if we were to dismantle ALL other forms of assistance and divert the funds to a UBI that the recipient got full autonomy in spending, then it could be worth discussing. We would free up funds from malinvestment (i.e. taking money from productive people and giving it to unproductive people) and allow more free market principles to operate. Of course, this would require a massive downsizing of government....

If there's one thing we know about the nature of government, it is that it is cancerous. Once it takes hold of a sector of the economy, it's virtually impossible to pry it loose. So, I don't see this happening. We will get UBI on top of all the other "safety nets", which will only accelerate the decline of western civilization.

A far better solution: if we quit taxing people, then perhaps we wouldn't have to give them back their own money that we took from them by force. We're literally taxed on top of our taxes (i.e. paying sales tax on top of the embedded taxes in every consumer good) and then taxed on the income we produce (which is also generated by taxed assets). All of this uses currency that is effectively taxed through inflation, before it even hits our wallets.

It's taxception.

The fundamental problem with people not having enough money, and the decline in the purchasing power, is not technology or artificial intelligence. It's the government. Any solution that requires the expansion of government will only exacerbate the problem. This will cause more people to cry out for relief, and more government will be introduced as the solution.
Amen. Taxing LABOR is a major problem. If labor becomes rare why keep taxing it? Why tax companies on the cost of their labor too. In France they used to tax you based on the number of employees. Total insanity. Most governments are thieves and war mongers. You want peace in the world too, reduce the power of government. Making government your mommy using UBI or else makes government strong.
 

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One has to be logical: if healthcare must be free, college must be free, and UBI needs to happen, why aren't food and lodging free? Aren't they the most basic necessity of life. Food and shelter. Then why not redo the Soviet Union? Safety for all. (Sarcasm.)
For lodging to be free, that implies that individual ownership of property goes away and the government owns it all. Not a scenario that I like. Want to move to a cabin in the woods? Not so fast. Apartment life for all, if the government says so.

For food to be free, who is doing the work to grow that food? an individual farmer who is free to be rewarded if he works harder, innovates more, and becomes more efficient? Nope, he just lost all his land and got relocated to the city. So it would have to be a government slave who doesn't care a speck about what he's doing. Who do you think will do a better job of growing better, safer food? And where would human rights go? Down the toilet.

Regarding Universal Basic Income, I get it that there's an allure. Who wouldn't want free money? But what I don't get is, where do people think all that money is going to come from?

Let's say the UBI is $1200 a month, doled out automatically to 330 million people in America.

That's $396,000,000,000 PER MONTH that the government has to come up with from somewhere. That equals $4.75 trillion per year.

Social Security and Medicare are broke. Where do we think this money is going to come from?

The entire GDP of the United States was $20.50 trillion in 2018.

Universal Basic Income would cost 23 percent of the GDP, just for people to have a little extra cash in their pocket that they didn't work for.

If they didn't work for it, who did?

There's only one place it can come from.

Business.

OK, business owners of FLF -

I'm just curious.

Would you be willing to give up 23 cents of every dollar to the UBI fund?

What would that do to your profit margins?

What would that do to your ability to hire people?

Psychologically, would you be tempted to just check out and say, "Screw it. I'm not paying all these people who aren't even working for me," and close the business?

My conclusion, which to me seems like plain old common sense, is that a Universal Basic Income would wreck the country.
 

ChrisV

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The AI controversy is not a tech based argument, it is an economics based argument.

There is ALWAYS going to be a human reason behind all work preformed by AI. AI doesn't work for itself and it never will. AI won't have consumption tendencies. It wont have an opinion on the home it lives in... The car it drives... It doesn't eat food. It won't serve itself because it has no need to.

What you are doing with these new technological advancements can be comparable to getting machinery to work farms with, putting hand pickers out of work. So what. There is a HUMAN market behind the production of those goods and the workers fit in somewhere else.

Over and over throughout history technology has displaced certain workers... Yet we still have a low unemployment rate... Why is that? Because the economy is ever changing and ALWAYS AUTOMATICALLY seeks equilibrium.

Assuming the government doesn't screw it up... AI will be the next great improvement in human lifestyle prosperity.
And you're right, in the long term. In 100 years we'll be looking back at all the economic growth like it were the second Industrial Revolution.

And I think that the Industrial Revolution is the perfect analogy. Enormous growth. Unprecedented. That being said, there were a lot of individual people that suffered from it. Maybe they found a new job 5 years down the line, but 5 years is a long time.

The other option here would be an unemployment system specifically for people displaced by AI automation.
 
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The AI controversy is not a tech based argument, it is an economics based argument.
I also think the AI might be a whole 'nother animal then previous automation. And I'll give my reasons. It has the potential to eventually (say 60+ years) to make human labor almost completely obsolete. Previous automation never did that. Again, we're not 100% sure that AI will make human labor obsolete, but I definitely think the potential is there. We already have AI that's creating (pretty decent quality) music:


We already have AI that can beat the absolute best gamers in certain video games:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFMRDm_H9Sg


Let's say, for arguments sake, this is 100 years down the line. I think it's less, but just for arguments sake. What happens when and if AI starts doing our taxes better? Or building legal cases? Or doing surgeries?

We already have AI that's doing certain surgeries better than humans will:


People can just move to another job. Right? But that job will have AI that's better. What if in 100 or less years AI just becomes better at everything humans do?

Well then we just sit back and enjoy the spoils of our robot slaves. But how do we decide how to divvy up those spoils? I think that's something we need to be thinking about sooner rather than later.
 

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I also think the AI might be a whole 'nother animal then previous automation. And I'll give my reasons. It has the potential to eventually (say 60+ years) to make human labor almost completely obsolete. Previous automation never did that. Again, we're not 100% sure that AI will make human labor obsolete, but I definitely think the potential is there. We already have AI that's creating (pretty decent quality) music:


We already have AI that can beat the absolute best gamers in certain video games:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFMRDm_H9Sg


Let's say, for arguments sake, this is 100 years down the line. I think it's less, but just for arguments sake. What happens when and if AI starts doing our taxes better? Or building legal cases? Or doing surgeries?

We already have AI that's doing certain surgeries better than humans will:


People can just move to another job. Right? But that job will have AI that's better. What if in 100 or less years AI just becomes better at everything humans do?

Well then we just sit back and enjoy the spoils of our robot slaves. But how do we decide how to divvy up those spoils? I think that's something we need to be thinking about sooner rather than later.

The question is: who will control all that AI. I share Nietzsche's view that man is all about will to power. Let's assume the richest will control the AI, the richest could enjoy the planet without doing anymore work and employees. Do you believe the most powerful would really need the masses threatening the environment and the beautify of Earth? Call me a conspiracy theorist but UBI and the likes is just a tools to control the masses. Eventually the AI could exterminate the ones that are not necessary. Robots doing the dirty work without emotions and qualms while the most powerful enjoy the Caribbean beaches. That's how the spoils would get shared.
 

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A question that is good to start with is, where does money come from?

Money is a promise on the future production of others.

Money is a tool for mediating the value when trading goods. If there are no goods to trade, money has no value.

If you give everyone free "money", without changing the quantity / quality of goods being produced, the value of the money collapses.

There is also the ethical question of who is to supply that money.

Do you print it? In the process destroying the wealth of the virtuous who produced and saved.
Or take it in the form of taxation, threatening to lock those who do not comply with your "good will" in a concrete box?

Every dollar you hold shows that you produced value to someone, and is a promise (or a prayer?) that someone in the future will create something that you value, so you can trade with them.

----

As for AI, technology advances. I'm pretty sure every major technological advance in history has been heralded by cries of "but so many people will lose their jobs!"... and sure maybe some people lose their job, but they then find one.

Someone is always going to be willing to trade to have something done for them. If you can do it, they will trade with you.
 
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And it doesn't matter for me. I mean I work with data. If anything I've made a killing off this change in industry. My work will literally be the absolute last to be automated, if at all.

And for the record, I've never been the type of person to talk about 'job losses.' I think it's a ridiculous argument. Jobs don't just disappear, they move. A printing press goes out of business, and all of a sudden there are 10,000 blogging opportunities. It's a dumb argument.

That being said, AI eventually will likely be better at everything humans do.

But that's the point, What if the only jobs left are programming and engineering. I don't believe you can train Joe the Plumber to code or engineer. He's going to look at it a line of code like 'what the F*ck.' I don't believe you can just pluck some random McDonalds worker and just teach them Machine Learning algorithms.

And if AI can crack the secret to creativity (which is likely, and being worked on) creative work may even become obsolete.
 

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And it doesn't matter for me. I mean I work with data. If anything I've made a killing off this change in industry. My work will literally be the absolute last to be automated, if at all.

And for the record, I've never been the type of person to talk about 'job losses.' I think it's a ridiculous argument. Jobs don't just disappear, they move. A printing press goes out of business, and all of a sudden there are 10,000 blogging opportunities. It's a dumb argument.

That being said, AI eventually will likely be better at everything humans do.

But that's the point, What if the only jobs left are programming and engineering. I don't believe you can train Joe the Plumber to code or engineer. He's going to look at it a line of code like 'what the F*ck.' I don't believe you can just pluck some random McDonalds worker and just teach them Machine Learning algorithms.


"What If" isn't an argument... you can say "what if" about literally anything.

But, if that McDs worker had the willingness to learn, and a good environment, yes they could learn.
 

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