Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

Re:Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic... by zxcdw on Thursday July 11, 2013 @02:08PM (#6027866)

Automation. Can you imagine the consequences of a driverless car on transportation industry for example? Or automated cashing machines on cashiers? Or cleaner robots for cleaners? You see, simple jobs are going to be replaced in the future. These people will go unemployed, because there will be no simple jobs for them. This is a trend, yes, and it won't happen overnight. But there's one crucial fact -- it doesn't just stop at replacing simple jobs. It will eventually replace even more demanding ones, such as knowledge workers. Infact, only human creativity seems to be the only thing which we can't automate YET, but perhaps eventually will be able to. What this means is that the current capitalistic system has to fail eventually because we lose jobs, and it seems very certain that automation is going to be the beginning of the end.

This has been happening in China too -- recently(late last year) there was news about Foxconn replacing over a million jobs with robots in China. What this means is cheaper products which are also accessible to those who don't work. It narrows the purchasing power gap between those who work and those who don't.

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Re:Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic... by tomjen3 on Thursday July 11, 2013 @02:38PM (#6028171)

You point has been argued a lot recently, but if it were true then surely nearly everybody would be unemployed by now? After all how many of you are scribes, weavers, carpenters and farmers (or farmers helpers)? Less than 20%?

Then why don't we have 80% unemployment? Because we found other jobs for those people, the economy is much, much bigger, life is much, much better and everybody is better of.

And it isn't like that hasn't happened again and again and again through history.

So I ask you, what proof do you have that this time it is really different? As opposed to every other time we thought it was different through history?

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Re:Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic... by hackinthebochs on Thursday July 11, 2013 @02:54PM (#6028300)

I'll tell you why this time is different. Each time we had growth in technology that had the potential to displace a huge number of workers that technology also enabled a massive decrease in the costs of transactions (railroads, motor vehicles, the internet, etc). This allowed a massive growth in the economy which enabled these displaced workers to find new jobs. Also consider that the growth in technology didn't eliminate jobs, but it shifted them. The technology of old still required a mostly proportional human energy input to produce output. New technology decreased that proportion, but it didn't eliminate it.

This last point is the difference that this new wave of automation has compared to the waves of past. It is unprecedented in human history to be facing a future where human effort can be multiplied by such enormous multiples that the value of labor approaches zero. This coming automation revolution would have to simultaneously grow the economy to greater proportions that automation reduces the cost of labor. I don't believe this will ever be possible, but definitely not in the time period that a properly developed AI and robotic technology could corner the market in labor (once developed, less than a decade). Society is not prepared for what is coming, and it will be disastrous.

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