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If robots take all the jobs, then nobody has to work anymore and everything will be very cheap. Think robot maids, drivers, and robot-cooked meals. People are s

If robots take all the jobs, then nobody has to work anymore and everything will be very cheap. Think robot maids, drivers, and robot-cooked meals. People are so used to today's world of not-so-many-robots that people think not having a job is bad.

visarga 10y ago
Not having any money or job is bad, though. I don't see the state as being reliable enough to care for the mass of useless and unemployed. They will probably set the UBI at a level below the necessary, there will be protests and riots, people will ask for more, politicians will tell them their excuses for why it isn't possible. If push comes to shove, owning some land and cultivating it could be a job. The earth will hire people its owners to work it. That is, if people will be legally allowed to cultivate their own seeds on their own land. I see a possible utopia where individual farms or larger agricultural areas will be owned and worked by communities of people. They will be independent as a community from state welfare. They will be able to implement their own lifestyle as a consequence of their independence. Technologies working for this are: solar, batteries, 3d printers and robots.
- drabiega 10y ago
  This is roughly the starting conditions for large parts of America. The problem is that is isn't very efficient. The people who have the resources to do this generally have better options and the people for whom this would be preferable to the lives they are living have neither the knowledge or resources to do this. There are certainly groups in the middle, farming cooperatives are still present in the area where I grew up, but those that exist do so largely for ideological reasons: family tradition or religion.
drabiega 10y ago
Cheap is relative to what you have. If you have no money, no one is going to build the robot that will make things for you. When automation increases without basic income, the share of resources going to those who are automated away gets squeezed, not increased.

visarga 10y ago

Not having any money or job is bad, though. I don't see the state as being reliable enough to care for the mass of useless and unemployed. They will probably set the UBI at a level below the necessary, there will be protests and riots, people will ask for more, politicians will tell them their excuses for why it isn't possible. If push comes to shove, owning some land and cultivating it could be a job. The earth will hire people its owners to work it. That is, if people will be legally allowed to cultivate their own seeds on their own land. I see a possible utopia where individual farms or larger agricultural areas will be owned and worked by communities of people. They will be independent as a community from state welfare. They will be able to implement their own lifestyle as a consequence of their independence. Technologies working for this are: solar, batteries, 3d printers and robots.

drabiega 10y ago
This is roughly the starting conditions for large parts of America. The problem is that is isn't very efficient. The people who have the resources to do this generally have better options and the people for whom this would be preferable to the lives they are living have neither the knowledge or resources to do this. There are certainly groups in the middle, farming cooperatives are still present in the area where I grew up, but those that exist do so largely for ideological reasons: family tradition or religion.

drabiega 10y ago

Cheap is relative to what you have. If you have no money, no one is going to build the robot that will make things for you. When automation increases without basic income, the share of resources going to those who are automated away gets squeezed, not increased.