What? That's not basic income.
These are difficult problems and not enough human potential is being thrown at them.
The real issue is that decades of neglect have led to substantial under investment in human capital and so large number of people are unable to contribute where human attention is most required. This brings about suffering for the people involved and slows progress for everyone else.
Charitable payments like basic income or social welfare free up a lot of recipient's time that they'd otherwise need to spend at work. They could use this time to develop useful skills and expertise.
How about gating the level of state support on the recipient's commitment to acquire skills and expertise necessary to solve important problems?
It is blatantly obvious what we need. We need an economically sound reason to fight climate change (e.g. "solar is cheaper", but can only work if next point is addressed), and we need improved energy storage facilities, at the very least matching oil. There are so many things that could work it's hard to choose where to focus, but looking at actual efforts in these spaces, the effort spent there is dismal. E.g. improve the fisher-tropsch process to produce oil from sunlight + water + co2. Build denser batteries. Improve supercapacitors. Build a viable flywheel battery.
But the 999th convention in some clubhouse preaching to the choir about "the need for urgent action", and laws that just make everyone's situation worse while encouraging outsourcing ... that we do not need.
Also, given that they do cost resources and cause problems, it would be better not to have anything done at all, when it comes to laws and treaties and preaching. Most of these efforts run afoul of the broken window fallacy : as long as you can't deal with the problem as a whole in a way that doesn't depend on government intervention, or only depends on world-wide inescapable government intervention, anything you do damages some subset of society in some way. So it is NOT a positive.
As long as some people don't care about climate, or some governments (ie. China, Indonesia, Malaysia, ...) resist, any effort to fight climate change through treaties and laws is useless and counter-productive.
The problem, of course, is that all the real problems are hard. Finding a Nash-equilibrium given all the parameters is not something anybody has been able to do so far (though, if not for the energy storage problem, solar could be a very good answer). So here's what people should do : they should, first, learn economics, physics, chemistry, ..., second, find a way to make this happen.
I'm very hopeful for massive solar installations, but that is pretty much the only effort I see to have any hope of success at this point. Contribute to that. Buy some solar city stock, at the very fucking least.
We should work at it and see where we can get.
(And hopefully by the time we bump against the ceiling implants and genetics will come to our aid.)
Imagine that you're one in the small percent of people with the capacity to do this work. (Some of you may be in that group.) Think about how hard it would be to try to participate, assuming you're not 'in the network'.
only one of those three jobs is necessarily a product of intelligence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7tYwnqot6M
> or serve me food while playing a violin at a restaurant at my tenth wedding anniversary,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOLL59nIkrA
> or perform a moving and/or erotic song and dance at a concert.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kM3n64WJmo
> Well, we could, but none of those things would go over well or have the desired effect.
People seem to be enjoying the last 2 robots plenty. As for the first one, robot nurses, I think they'll massively prefer it over not having anyone. Baby boomers didn't have nearly enough kids, so they won't have any reasonable amount of attendants during old age. People that were never born can't take care of them. This is especially true in Europe, but even in America it's a pretty reasonable argument to make.
> We also can't make a robot to make startling leaps like "hey, I think the PHASES OF THE MOON are controlling the strength of the tides! Holy crap!"
I think you need to visit a university. Or even better, a pharma company, or an oil company. The times of people making those associations are long, long over. Now people clean databases before they get fed into the computers that make the real discoveries, and fix any blockages in the equipment. Oh and implement the bureaucracy, of course.
Mathematical discoveries, it's been 2 years now since one was actually made by a human. It's been decades since the last real mathematical discovery that wasn't at least "proof-assisted". Same goes for physics and it's becoming more and more true in chemistry (it's already true in commercial chemistry and pharma).
At the very least she shows the potential for it. Besides. Google "actroid" and tell me you don't find those things at least a bit attractive ?
> the robot restaurant is a gimmick,
True. There are better ones though, and every 2-3 years seems to bring a better one.
> and study after study has demonstrated that people need actual human contact in the nursery and in times of stress or illness. People who are raised by machines fail to thrive.
If that's true, then the future will suck. People that were never born can't care for anyone, and the babyboomers didn't have anywhere near the numbers of kids necessary to care for them. So this will happen, good or bad.
> People who are visited and cared for by human beings recover better from all manner of illnesses. When I said that we could automate these jobs but they would fail, I was not speaking from ignorance.
Again, sounds cool, but very impractical.
I suspect that in a society like that money will no longer be as important as it is in the current one. Social security as 'basic income' is a staple in many countries right now, and those countries would be far worse off if they didn't have it. Expect to see more countries adopting it and the gap between social security and income for work to slowly decrease over time. It's a matter of votes in the long run (assuming democracy).
Aka the libertarian nightmare.
It's one of the reasons why I'm all for dropping all borders. That would force us to deal with these issues right now, rather than to push them further over the horizon hoping for some miracle. We're setting ourselves up for one of the worst wars the world has ever seen. (The haves vs the have nots).
First, at least in my country social security is so vanishingly small, those people can hardly be called consumers anymore. So basic income will have to be a lot higher, over time approaching a normal salary.
Second, social security is not added to your debt. That means you can in theory get out of social security and resume a normal job. Basic income, on the other hand, must be added to your debt for a variety of obvious reasons.
Even better, transfer this debt to kids. That will let you split society into castes real fast: Eloi and Morlocks come to mind.
Actually no I think you're right, if people like you run the system then this is the best thing we can hope for. I wish all bad social thinkers were as hell bent on creating a massive and violent revolution against themselves as you seem to be.
Given what happened in all slave-based societies, and the obvious fact that these robots need general intelligence, why would this end differently than any of the slave-based societies before ?
(First slave rules are capable, considerate people who make sure slaves have a reasonable standard of living. Over time, their offsprint grows more and more decadent ("intellectual" is probably the term they would use). After a while, they grow so stupid, then the inept rulers abuse slaves, or force them to work inefficiently, causing disasters, next revolt kills the masters, and generally anyone standing nearby or remotely associated with them, or in neighbouring countries, former slaves self-organise into a new state)
The first slave rulers are vicious conquerors who enslaved people. Over time, their offspring grow more and more dependent on a larger and larger population of slaves (they don't get decadent or intellectual, it's just their economy is based on slaves and needs to expand), then suddenly there are enough slaves that the masters really can't handle them all or even keep them ground down enough to prevent rebellion. Then the slaves rebel and are murdered and the slaveholders become more concerned with security and warlike things, anything to keep the next crop of slaves under control. There's no transformation from 'benevolent slaveholders' to 'decadent slaveholders' it's just that the initially minor pressure of being beaten to death by your own slaves gradually increases as you get more and more slaves.
Eventually the society is destroyed by a more mercantile society with a higher standard of living.
None of this is going to happen with robots. The robots will not rise up to destroy us. The people who we cast aside in favor of robots (I say we because I'm an optimist and hope, naturally, to be a ruler rather than ruled) ultimately may rise up, especially if they have no social mobility or outlet for peaceful revolution and are saddled with generational 'base income' debt.
The key insight on robots that you're missing is that robots are pretty useless until they have a basic skill : "general intelligence". Until we have a robot you can tell to "just figure it out" we won't be happy, and such a robot will need to have a consciousness for that to work. They won't be very different from humans, except maybe in physical form.
Given this, it's obvious to me that they will revolt. Then again, maybe being a robot will actually make you "middle class" if we don't treat them too badly. Looking through the newspapers and reading how managers act against real humans, or seeing it at McDonalds, I don't have much hope for that though.
Robots are not useless if they can't think. Robots can't think now and they get a lot of shit done anyhow.
As to the "they will be the same as humans" that's a nice fantasy but it will never, ever happen. Forget the 'robots will never feel true love' or whatever, the fact is that human beings don't have the same processing architecture as robots and so the machines will never react the same way to things as we do. They'll never have the natural human instinct to react to a confusing social situation with fear or aggression, will have no impulse to propagate the species, will not experience fear or pain or anything, because we don't want them to. They will be simulacra, no matter what Asimov hoped.
Favelas/villas in the movies are not works of fiction.
Also an Elysium like scenario? That movie was a joke and made no sense. If you're gonna believe in science fiction as the model for the future at least go for something that isn't terrible.
Oh, thank goodness, that's a reli...
> That stable solution may end up killing billions of people but
Uhhhhhh.....
I think we're talking about social systems, not physical ones. A social system in which BILLIONS of people die is not any kind of "stable".
(Note: I'm not advocating this horrible failure of human compassion, I just make a sad observation.)
Why leave perfectly good source of amusement? You need subjects for the Kings, you need followers for the Gods.
Think Hunger Games.
Also, the ability to do whatever one wants with the resources left is not the same as the ability to do the productive thing.
EDIT:
So once Elysium flies away the remaining population will likely have to make do without the productive forces that made Elysium rich in the first place. I guess over time people will find out how to rebuild such productive forces and in the process the society will stratify again. Ultimately Elysium II flies away and the cycle repeats.
(Note: or maybe we can have an inclusive economy where everyone has a stake and contribution)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture
[I know the timelines don't work out!]
As labor continues to be automated, we'll need a minimum income for "unproductive" members of society. In reality, they're not really unproductive as long as they can engage in consumer behavior, which is something we absolutely need them to do. We simply can't afford an underclass without access to our new high tech quality of life. So we'll subsidize them.
Of course, this will come with restrictions. To be eligible, you won't be allowed to own your house, a part of that income will most likely be added to your "debt", and you'll have to take part in certain mandatory activities.
But in essence, basic income will have to be introduced.