10 ms·

I seriously doubt it could be realistically implemented. More probable outcome is ballooning law enforcement costs due to significant fraction of population bec

I seriously doubt it could be realistically implemented. More probable outcome is ballooning law enforcement costs due to significant fraction of population becoming unemployable and resorting to crime, and almost endless, Japan-style economic stagnation in all developed countries. Sorry for sounding pessimist. This time it gets serious and software is going to really eat the world. By the way in some countries (like Belarus) there is already significant public backlash against programmers because people see their incomes as unfair profiting at the expense of others.

StriverGuy 10y ago
This is a bit of a Luddite viewpoint. There will be some ups and downs as people adjust to the need for different skill sets however, automation won't simply wipe out any need for human labor. There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate." What did you have in mind?
- booleandilemma 10y ago
  I'm worried that the jobs that will be left to us at some point in the future will either be outside the capabilities of most people, or wholly undesirable.
  - zanny 10y ago
    We are already there, no? It is hugely undesirable to work in the service industry because there is no potential upward movement and you are disposable. Nobody wants to work at McDonalds, yet we have a crisis of over-certification for service jobs because people going to college get useless degrees. If there were jobs within their capabilities that were not undesirable they would be doing them, so what that does mean is that for a huge portion of the economy, people are doing undesirable jobs because they don't have the skills to do desirable ones. HN is in kind of its own reality sphere, since everyone likes coding and startups and thinks the work is great, when if you drive 100 miles in any direction from whatever tech hub bubble you are living in you will find entire counties in decline as the only work is at Walmart and there is no industry left to aspire towards for the residents. The main street of town is half condemned, there are old abandoned shoe and plastics factories and half the farmland is either abandoned or corporate owned and manned by a skeleton crew of a few dozen people farming the entire region.
- coldtea 10y ago
  The opposite of Luddite is believe that it will all get sorted out in the end inevitable. As the fall of Rome, the middle ages, and several other dark periods in human history show, this is now always the case. >There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate. Several things, yes. A lot, no. And even if those types of jobs were many, what matters is the number of positions they give us. E.g. being a brain surgeon might not be easily automated, but we don't need that many brain surgeons anyway. On the other hand, truck driving can be automated, and when it does, it will take with it 1-2 million jobs. Automating fast-food serving and cooking? There go another 2-3 million. Automating office cleaning? There go some millions more. As for more artistic jobs, like a musician or painter, those might not be realistically automated (because we value the human source of an art work etc), but they aren't going to pay much either, especially since most people wont have proper jobs and thus much money to spend on music (and even less so on art).
  - FrozenVoid 10y ago
    >As for more artistic jobs http://ostagram.ru/static_pages/lenta?last_days=30&locale=en http://ostagram.ru/static_pages/lenta?last_days=30&locale=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VTI1BBLydE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VTI1BBLydE
  - trentlott 10y ago
    Do we value art? It seems to be hard to make a life that way unless you find some corporate niche. I think automated/algorithmic music and art will happen quite quickly, if it hasn't already.
    - DonaldFisk 10y ago
      There are already programs that can compose music or paint pictures. But is that art if it means nothing to the program which created it? Or was unforeseen by the programmer? Of course, it could be passed off as art, or used as a substitute for it.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >Do we value art? If you mean emotionally and intellectually, then yes, it has been an essential part of human civilisation since there were cavemen painting on caves. And it doesn't have to be Beethoven to fill the role of art, it can also be Cheap Trick or Skrillex. If you mean financially, then yes again. If we include music, movies, comics, books and TV it's 300bn dollar industry. If we are to believe the news (1), more than €51 billion of fine art was traded in 2014 alone -- and that's a kind of art that concerns rather few people. >I think automated/algorithmic music and art will happen quite quickly, if it hasn't already. What would be the point? More than the artifact, we value the connection with the artist. (1) https://www.artsy.net/article/editorial-the-art-markets-record-breaking-51-euros-billion https://www.artsy.net/article/editorial-the-art-markets-reco...
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  > There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate. Could you give examples that are capable of providing living wages to 160-250 million people, in the US alone? Technology has completely destroyed the value in human labor for most industries, in much the way we no longer use horses for farming, and is rapidly doing the same to "white collar" jobs. I'm honestly curious what you think it is that <95th percentile humans will have to contribute to the future economy.
  - nickff 10y ago
    You are asking an unreasonable question; could the Luddites have predicted the economy of 1900, 1950, or 2000? If we have never been capable of making an accurate forecast, it would be unreasonable to expect that today.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    Domestic labor for highly productive individuals. If you are a high productivity software engineer, trader or doctor, there is no reason any of your time should be devoted to driving, doing laundry or cleaning your bathroom. Also, I'm not sure where your "160-250 million people" comes from. That's exactly how many workers there are today, many of whom are in no danger of having their jobs automated.
    - ZenoArrow 10y ago
      > "driving, doing laundry or cleaning your bathroom." All of which can be automated. Furthermore... > "highly productive individuals. If you are a high productivity software engineer, trader or doctor" None of those jobs are safe from automation either. Your personal productivity means diddly squat compared to fast automated interconnected machines that can teach themselves. Engineers and traders are just as expendable as the rest of us.
      - 10y ago
- ska 10y ago
  Don't forget that the Luddites were substantively correct in their analysis. "Some ups and downs as people adjust" really meant multigenerational economic negative effects in their case, and may be similar for people passed over for automation now. The Luddite families and those like them took 3 to 4 generations to recover fro the blow, economically speaking. Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be done, but that any assertion that people will "retrain" or "find new growth industries" with anything like their current quality of life is at best naive, and more often disingenuous. The most likely case is that the losers in such economic shifts will remain so. Any society that leaves them to sort it out on their own should at Leastbe transparent and realistic about what that means. Discouragingly enough , truck driving itself is a rare example of fairly successful transition to a new industry, as it had a low barrier to entry for people needing to leave a rapidly shrinking workforce in agricultural areas - due to some automation and a larger scale mechanization. One generation of that and it is going to fall off a cliff too, possibly leaving the rural US in a dire employment situation.
- shkkmo 10y ago
  It's pretty likely that "automation won't simply wipe out any need for human labor" (or at least not for a long time.) The problem is that we seem set on using the minimum wage to ensure a basic level of income. This means that we HAVE to make sure we have enough jobs for everyone, and that all of those jobs HAVE to produce enough economic value for the employer for them to provide that basic level of income. The result is that we end up effectively paying people to do nothing, while effectively prohibiting jobs that don't produce enough value to justify the minimum wage. This seems blatantly inefficient and idiotic to me.
  - zielperson 10y ago
    The problem is not that it will wipe out ALL need for human labor, but a lot of it. Just truck drivers - millions of people getting unemployed. And don't paint a too romantic picture... a lot of them will NOT be qualified for another job. We are also using software to enable people to perform tasks normally done by experts. Drafting architectural plans is a recent example. The hand - drawing has been replaced by CAD software, and a LOT of architects now do these themselves or with little staff in-house. I work in the financial sector, and supportive applications will enable "normal" client supporters to sell Investment packages. Of course WITHOUT them really learning shit about investments .. result: Less experts needed (first step) Second step: Automated consulting / online use by the customer. Not even AI needed.
h4nkoslo 10y ago
Gregory Clark's work on tracking English class mobility in the 1700s-1900 (The Son Also Rises & A Farewell to Alms) indicates that this isn't the first time this has happened (ie, the obsolescence of a large portion of the labor force), and that it's possible to manage the transition with a fairly minimal amount of law enforcement resources.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  This time it's different. Our most valuable asset as workers is our minds, if AI can make inroads into white-collar work as well as blue-collar and pink-collar work, what will be left for humans to do? We're not just talking about low-skilled workers losing their jobs, we're also looking at previously safe jobs like doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc... due to be facing very strong competition from the growth of AI (both in terms of cost and aptitude). If we do continue to work, the only scenario that makes any sense to me is if we do work for self-satisfaction rather than need. There's still going to be enjoyment to be had in refining skills and pursuing goals.
  - schrodinger 10y ago
    I don't think we're anywhere near doctors and lawyers losing their jobs to automation. It's mostly lower class jobs.
    - ZenoArrow 10y ago
      I'd recommend watching this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
    - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
      I would argue that we're already at the point where the law industry has begun shedding paralegals and clerks because of technology, and that we'll see this rapidly accelerate, followed by AI beginning to take over the work of lawyers as such, with only a few humans overseeing the AI teams. The medical industry is likewise on the cusp of beginning to have AI assisted diagnosis, which will put a dent in the number of doctors needed for routine check-ups and supervising patient care, eg, overseeing a course of chemo (in that a single doctor will be able to oversee more cases with AI doing the heavy lifting and the human merely verifying its conclusions). The problem with AI isn't that it's going to get rid of all the people in any industry -- it's that it's going to get rid of 90% of them, skewed towards the lower skilled and entry level positions. If this happens across enough industries at the same time, it's a question of what the less talented and younger will do to be part of the economy.
endswapper 10y ago
I disagree it is more probable that, "ballooning law enforcement costs due to significant fraction of population becoming unemployable and resorting to crime, and almost endless, Japan-style economic stagnation in all developed countries." Generally, crime is on the decline, even as we see technology and economies evolve to include more automation and less human labor: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/violent-crime/violent-crime-topic-page/violentcrimemain_final https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-... http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/what-caused-the-crime-decline/477408/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/what-cau... http://www.citylab.com/crime/2015/09/violent-crime-rates-still-declining/408103/ http://www.citylab.com/crime/2015/09/violent-crime-rates-sti... https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/americas-faulty-perception-crime-rates https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/americas-faulty-perceptio... The most probable outcome is that societies adjust, and that is likely to include implementations of a basic income. In the US I doubt it will be sweeping in any manner. Rather certain "life-necessities," and "lifestyle standards" will be implemented piece-meal over long periods of time.
- klenwell 10y ago
  I think both you and @anovikov are on to something. A decline in crime is not incompatible with increasing law enforcement expenditures and the general militarization of civilian police forces that been much lamented here and elsewhere. Nor is a decline in crime in the recent past incompatible with an uptick in crime rates in the present and near future. (Some reference to recent national crime statistics -- especially property crime -- might be in order here but I can't find a reliable one offhand.) As far as societal adjustment, this episode of This American Life, a couple years old already, takes a detailed look at how a de facto pilot program in Guaranteed Basic Income is already being "implemented piece-meal" in the U.S.: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/490/trends-with-benefits http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/490/t... I've seen this linked here before and it really is a great eye-opening journalistic investigation of the issue. Will this scale? Would a more transparent implementation be politically palatable in the US? I think this is one of the fundamental issues starting to get worked out in the current US presidential election with Sanders millenials tending to support an implementation of lifestyles standards like those found in European social democracies and Trump boomers seeming to suggest that protectionism and a re-assertion of vague nativistic principles will restore the lifestyle standards that well-paying blue collar jobs provided for them and their parents in the past.
w8rbt 10y ago
Aren't crime rates very low in Japan?
shkkmo 10y ago
There will certainly be difficulties to overcome. People like to do stuff and Videogames actually will help with the transition as they provide outlets for that energy that are inexpensive (vs other forms of entertainment) and also build skills among the unemployed in a way that TV and Movies cannot. One way to make the transition more cleanly is to pair a gradual introduction of basic income, with a commensurate gradual reduction of the minimum wage. The reduced labor costs will spur economic growth and innovation without any paired reduction in consumer spending which would inhibit that growth. A gradual introduction means we have time to notice and address problems as they crop up. As long as all the work we want to have done is getting done, we are better off having people who enjoy and take satisfaction the work doing it
cmurf 10y ago
Really? You think that's more realistic than just taking it from the top 0.1%? There was a time in this country for nearly 40 years where the top tax bracket was above 75%, and for quite a while it was 91%, and for a short while it was 94%. Basically it was a policy of not letting a small number of people take all of the marbles. There is, in fact, a way to avoid that tax, it's called start a new business or expand one - those costs are tax deductible. The problem is tax policy at the top end is basically saying some tiny number of people can be hoarders, not innovate, and then aristocratically hand it off to their kids in the form of trusts that don't pay inheritance tax. Very possibly some kind of basic income would help people be more mobile, move from expensive cities to less expensive cities. But I also think as likely is higher taxes would incentivize the very rich to invest. Rich investors = good. Rich savers = bad.
- friendlygrammar 10y ago
  >There was a time in this country for nearly 40 years where the top tax bracket was above 75%, and for quite a while it was 91%, and for a short while it was 94%. When we were at war. There was also a longer time when there were no taxes.
  - bluejekyll 10y ago
    No income taxes I assume you mean, and only in the US. I think they were introduced at the federal level in 1861 to support the civil war, then it was repealed in 1895 via constitutional argument in the Supreme Court. This forced the government to pass a constitutional amendment in 1913 to keep the income tax in place. So the income tax has existed for more that 50% of the US' history at this point. That doesn't include whatever States decides to impose.
  - chefkoch 10y ago
    So there is no war now?
- svantana 10y ago
  This I don't get -- why are rich savers bad? How can a large number in some bank account possibly affect anyone else's life in any tangible way? The way I see it, the 'problem' with rich folks is when they use up a disproportionate amount of resources without creating any value, e.g. buying land, houses, cars and employing people to do their pointless (from society's perspective) bidding. I.e. spending money.
yoav_hollander 10y ago
My intuition is that (1) unemployment will indeed continue to rise due to automation, (2) the world will not become a crime-ridden dystopian place, and (3) Guaranteed basic income will probably happen, in one form or another. I posted about this here, if you care to take a look: https://blog.foretellix.com/2016/05/10/the-next-20-years-of-automation/ https://blog.foretellix.com/2016/05/10/the-next-20-years-of-...
Qantourisc 10y ago
We are not talking a little crime here, we are talking a lot of crime ...
Iv 10y ago
It won't happen in USA first. Too much ideological baggage will prevent USA from believing it is possible (and actually oppose people who try it) before it is actually implemented and working in other countries. I would like to believe that a dynamic EU country will implement it first but actually my money is on China. They fear riots, they need to keep people's income growing (even steady is not an option) and they don't mind being called communists. This change will happen, but Trumpland won't herald it.
- gjolund 10y ago
  China will just go to war, easiest way I know of to get rid of an unemployable population.

StriverGuy 10y ago

This is a bit of a Luddite viewpoint. There will be some ups and downs as people adjust to the need for different skill sets however, automation won't simply wipe out any need for human labor. There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate." What did you have in mind?
booleandilemma 10y ago
I'm worried that the jobs that will be left to us at some point in the future will either be outside the capabilities of most people, or wholly undesirable.
- zanny 10y ago
  We are already there, no? It is hugely undesirable to work in the service industry because there is no potential upward movement and you are disposable. Nobody wants to work at McDonalds, yet we have a crisis of over-certification for service jobs because people going to college get useless degrees. If there were jobs within their capabilities that were not undesirable they would be doing them, so what that does mean is that for a huge portion of the economy, people are doing undesirable jobs because they don't have the skills to do desirable ones. HN is in kind of its own reality sphere, since everyone likes coding and startups and thinks the work is great, when if you drive 100 miles in any direction from whatever tech hub bubble you are living in you will find entire counties in decline as the only work is at Walmart and there is no industry left to aspire towards for the residents. The main street of town is half condemned, there are old abandoned shoe and plastics factories and half the farmland is either abandoned or corporate owned and manned by a skeleton crew of a few dozen people farming the entire region.
coldtea 10y ago
The opposite of Luddite is believe that it will all get sorted out in the end inevitable. As the fall of Rome, the middle ages, and several other dark periods in human history show, this is now always the case. >There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate. Several things, yes. A lot, no. And even if those types of jobs were many, what matters is the number of positions they give us. E.g. being a brain surgeon might not be easily automated, but we don't need that many brain surgeons anyway. On the other hand, truck driving can be automated, and when it does, it will take with it 1-2 million jobs. Automating fast-food serving and cooking? There go another 2-3 million. Automating office cleaning? There go some millions more. As for more artistic jobs, like a musician or painter, those might not be realistically automated (because we value the human source of an art work etc), but they aren't going to pay much either, especially since most people wont have proper jobs and thus much money to spend on music (and even less so on art).
- FrozenVoid 10y ago
  >As for more artistic jobs http://ostagram.ru/static_pages/lenta?last_days=30&locale=en http://ostagram.ru/static_pages/lenta?last_days=30&locale=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VTI1BBLydE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VTI1BBLydE
- trentlott 10y ago
  Do we value art? It seems to be hard to make a life that way unless you find some corporate niche. I think automated/algorithmic music and art will happen quite quickly, if it hasn't already.
  - DonaldFisk 10y ago
    There are already programs that can compose music or paint pictures. But is that art if it means nothing to the program which created it? Or was unforeseen by the programmer? Of course, it could be passed off as art, or used as a substitute for it.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >Do we value art? If you mean emotionally and intellectually, then yes, it has been an essential part of human civilisation since there were cavemen painting on caves. And it doesn't have to be Beethoven to fill the role of art, it can also be Cheap Trick or Skrillex. If you mean financially, then yes again. If we include music, movies, comics, books and TV it's 300bn dollar industry. If we are to believe the news (1), more than €51 billion of fine art was traded in 2014 alone -- and that's a kind of art that concerns rather few people. >I think automated/algorithmic music and art will happen quite quickly, if it hasn't already. What would be the point? More than the artifact, we value the connection with the artist. (1) https://www.artsy.net/article/editorial-the-art-markets-record-breaking-51-euros-billion https://www.artsy.net/article/editorial-the-art-markets-reco...
SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
> There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate. Could you give examples that are capable of providing living wages to 160-250 million people, in the US alone? Technology has completely destroyed the value in human labor for most industries, in much the way we no longer use horses for farming, and is rapidly doing the same to "white collar" jobs. I'm honestly curious what you think it is that <95th percentile humans will have to contribute to the future economy.
- nickff 10y ago
  You are asking an unreasonable question; could the Luddites have predicted the economy of 1900, 1950, or 2000? If we have never been capable of making an accurate forecast, it would be unreasonable to expect that today.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  Domestic labor for highly productive individuals. If you are a high productivity software engineer, trader or doctor, there is no reason any of your time should be devoted to driving, doing laundry or cleaning your bathroom. Also, I'm not sure where your "160-250 million people" comes from. That's exactly how many workers there are today, many of whom are in no danger of having their jobs automated.
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    > "driving, doing laundry or cleaning your bathroom." All of which can be automated. Furthermore... > "highly productive individuals. If you are a high productivity software engineer, trader or doctor" None of those jobs are safe from automation either. Your personal productivity means diddly squat compared to fast automated interconnected machines that can teach themselves. Engineers and traders are just as expendable as the rest of us.
    - 10y ago
ska 10y ago
Don't forget that the Luddites were substantively correct in their analysis. "Some ups and downs as people adjust" really meant multigenerational economic negative effects in their case, and may be similar for people passed over for automation now. The Luddite families and those like them took 3 to 4 generations to recover fro the blow, economically speaking. Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be done, but that any assertion that people will "retrain" or "find new growth industries" with anything like their current quality of life is at best naive, and more often disingenuous. The most likely case is that the losers in such economic shifts will remain so. Any society that leaves them to sort it out on their own should at Leastbe transparent and realistic about what that means. Discouragingly enough , truck driving itself is a rare example of fairly successful transition to a new industry, as it had a low barrier to entry for people needing to leave a rapidly shrinking workforce in agricultural areas - due to some automation and a larger scale mechanization. One generation of that and it is going to fall off a cliff too, possibly leaving the rural US in a dire employment situation.
shkkmo 10y ago
It's pretty likely that "automation won't simply wipe out any need for human labor" (or at least not for a long time.) The problem is that we seem set on using the minimum wage to ensure a basic level of income. This means that we HAVE to make sure we have enough jobs for everyone, and that all of those jobs HAVE to produce enough economic value for the employer for them to provide that basic level of income. The result is that we end up effectively paying people to do nothing, while effectively prohibiting jobs that don't produce enough value to justify the minimum wage. This seems blatantly inefficient and idiotic to me.
- zielperson 10y ago
  The problem is not that it will wipe out ALL need for human labor, but a lot of it. Just truck drivers - millions of people getting unemployed. And don't paint a too romantic picture... a lot of them will NOT be qualified for another job. We are also using software to enable people to perform tasks normally done by experts. Drafting architectural plans is a recent example. The hand - drawing has been replaced by CAD software, and a LOT of architects now do these themselves or with little staff in-house. I work in the financial sector, and supportive applications will enable "normal" client supporters to sell Investment packages. Of course WITHOUT them really learning shit about investments .. result: Less experts needed (first step) Second step: Automated consulting / online use by the customer. Not even AI needed.

h4nkoslo 10y ago

Gregory Clark's work on tracking English class mobility in the 1700s-1900 (The Son Also Rises & A Farewell to Alms) indicates that this isn't the first time this has happened (ie, the obsolescence of a large portion of the labor force), and that it's possible to manage the transition with a fairly minimal amount of law enforcement resources.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
This time it's different. Our most valuable asset as workers is our minds, if AI can make inroads into white-collar work as well as blue-collar and pink-collar work, what will be left for humans to do? We're not just talking about low-skilled workers losing their jobs, we're also looking at previously safe jobs like doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc... due to be facing very strong competition from the growth of AI (both in terms of cost and aptitude). If we do continue to work, the only scenario that makes any sense to me is if we do work for self-satisfaction rather than need. There's still going to be enjoyment to be had in refining skills and pursuing goals.
- schrodinger 10y ago
  I don't think we're anywhere near doctors and lawyers losing their jobs to automation. It's mostly lower class jobs.
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    I'd recommend watching this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
  - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
    I would argue that we're already at the point where the law industry has begun shedding paralegals and clerks because of technology, and that we'll see this rapidly accelerate, followed by AI beginning to take over the work of lawyers as such, with only a few humans overseeing the AI teams. The medical industry is likewise on the cusp of beginning to have AI assisted diagnosis, which will put a dent in the number of doctors needed for routine check-ups and supervising patient care, eg, overseeing a course of chemo (in that a single doctor will be able to oversee more cases with AI doing the heavy lifting and the human merely verifying its conclusions). The problem with AI isn't that it's going to get rid of all the people in any industry -- it's that it's going to get rid of 90% of them, skewed towards the lower skilled and entry level positions. If this happens across enough industries at the same time, it's a question of what the less talented and younger will do to be part of the economy.

endswapper 10y ago

I disagree it is more probable that, "ballooning law enforcement costs due to significant fraction of population becoming unemployable and resorting to crime, and almost endless, Japan-style economic stagnation in all developed countries." Generally, crime is on the decline, even as we see technology and economies evolve to include more automation and less human labor: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/violent-crime/violent-crime-topic-page/violentcrimemain_final https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-... http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/what-caused-the-crime-decline/477408/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/what-cau... http://www.citylab.com/crime/2015/09/violent-crime-rates-still-declining/408103/ http://www.citylab.com/crime/2015/09/violent-crime-rates-sti... https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/americas-faulty-perception-crime-rates https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/americas-faulty-perceptio... The most probable outcome is that societies adjust, and that is likely to include implementations of a basic income. In the US I doubt it will be sweeping in any manner. Rather certain "life-necessities," and "lifestyle standards" will be implemented piece-meal over long periods of time.

klenwell 10y ago
I think both you and @anovikov are on to something. A decline in crime is not incompatible with increasing law enforcement expenditures and the general militarization of civilian police forces that been much lamented here and elsewhere. Nor is a decline in crime in the recent past incompatible with an uptick in crime rates in the present and near future. (Some reference to recent national crime statistics -- especially property crime -- might be in order here but I can't find a reliable one offhand.) As far as societal adjustment, this episode of This American Life, a couple years old already, takes a detailed look at how a de facto pilot program in Guaranteed Basic Income is already being "implemented piece-meal" in the U.S.: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/490/trends-with-benefits http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/490/t... I've seen this linked here before and it really is a great eye-opening journalistic investigation of the issue. Will this scale? Would a more transparent implementation be politically palatable in the US? I think this is one of the fundamental issues starting to get worked out in the current US presidential election with Sanders millenials tending to support an implementation of lifestyles standards like those found in European social democracies and Trump boomers seeming to suggest that protectionism and a re-assertion of vague nativistic principles will restore the lifestyle standards that well-paying blue collar jobs provided for them and their parents in the past.

w8rbt 10y ago

Aren't crime rates very low in Japan?

shkkmo 10y ago

There will certainly be difficulties to overcome. People like to do stuff and Videogames actually will help with the transition as they provide outlets for that energy that are inexpensive (vs other forms of entertainment) and also build skills among the unemployed in a way that TV and Movies cannot. One way to make the transition more cleanly is to pair a gradual introduction of basic income, with a commensurate gradual reduction of the minimum wage. The reduced labor costs will spur economic growth and innovation without any paired reduction in consumer spending which would inhibit that growth. A gradual introduction means we have time to notice and address problems as they crop up. As long as all the work we want to have done is getting done, we are better off having people who enjoy and take satisfaction the work doing it

cmurf 10y ago

Really? You think that's more realistic than just taking it from the top 0.1%? There was a time in this country for nearly 40 years where the top tax bracket was above 75%, and for quite a while it was 91%, and for a short while it was 94%. Basically it was a policy of not letting a small number of people take all of the marbles. There is, in fact, a way to avoid that tax, it's called start a new business or expand one - those costs are tax deductible. The problem is tax policy at the top end is basically saying some tiny number of people can be hoarders, not innovate, and then aristocratically hand it off to their kids in the form of trusts that don't pay inheritance tax. Very possibly some kind of basic income would help people be more mobile, move from expensive cities to less expensive cities. But I also think as likely is higher taxes would incentivize the very rich to invest. Rich investors = good. Rich savers = bad.

friendlygrammar 10y ago
>There was a time in this country for nearly 40 years where the top tax bracket was above 75%, and for quite a while it was 91%, and for a short while it was 94%. When we were at war. There was also a longer time when there were no taxes.
- bluejekyll 10y ago
  No income taxes I assume you mean, and only in the US. I think they were introduced at the federal level in 1861 to support the civil war, then it was repealed in 1895 via constitutional argument in the Supreme Court. This forced the government to pass a constitutional amendment in 1913 to keep the income tax in place. So the income tax has existed for more that 50% of the US' history at this point. That doesn't include whatever States decides to impose.
- chefkoch 10y ago
  So there is no war now?
svantana 10y ago
This I don't get -- why are rich savers bad? How can a large number in some bank account possibly affect anyone else's life in any tangible way? The way I see it, the 'problem' with rich folks is when they use up a disproportionate amount of resources without creating any value, e.g. buying land, houses, cars and employing people to do their pointless (from society's perspective) bidding. I.e. spending money.

yoav_hollander 10y ago

My intuition is that (1) unemployment will indeed continue to rise due to automation, (2) the world will not become a crime-ridden dystopian place, and (3) Guaranteed basic income will probably happen, in one form or another. I posted about this here, if you care to take a look: https://blog.foretellix.com/2016/05/10/the-next-20-years-of-automation/ https://blog.foretellix.com/2016/05/10/the-next-20-years-of-...

Qantourisc 10y ago

We are not talking a little crime here, we are talking a lot of crime ...

Iv 10y ago

It won't happen in USA first. Too much ideological baggage will prevent USA from believing it is possible (and actually oppose people who try it) before it is actually implemented and working in other countries. I would like to believe that a dynamic EU country will implement it first but actually my money is on China. They fear riots, they need to keep people's income growing (even steady is not an option) and they don't mind being called communists. This change will happen, but Trumpland won't herald it.

gjolund 10y ago
China will just go to war, easiest way I know of to get rid of an unemployable population.