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The author makes a classical mistake, thinking that the displaced low-skill workers can and will gain high-tech skills. I think that's a complete pipe dream. Ye

The author makes a classical mistake, thinking that the displaced low-skill workers can and will gain high-tech skills. I think that's a complete pipe dream. Yes, millions are employed in IT and engineering, but we're talking about billions of uneducated or barely educated people who will lose their jobs very quickly. If you want to see what happens when people go into IT out of necessity, look at the Indian IT market. It's full of "programmers" who can't solve the simplest problems, who hate what they do, who produce really low quality code. (And don't get me wrong, India has their share of talented and brilliant guys, but the average case is rather bad). Not only that, we don't have the IT jobs, even if all of them did learn to code. As far as I can see, welfare state is inevitable, as much as I'm against it. It's still better than to let people lose their homes and/or starve.

atemerev 10y ago
The answer is that there is no solution. Basic income is economically unsustainable. Social crisis is inevitable (like in previous two installments, agricultural -> industrial and industrial -> knowledge economy), and there is nothing that can be done about it except of surviving through it. Any possible basic income solutions will only make the problem worse.
- elsurudo 10y ago
  In the current economic ideology, sure. But there is a lot of surplus (profit). What makes you think it's economically unsustainable? People would have to readjust their expectations, for sure. I'm not saying I know that it _is_ economically sustainable, but I haven't done the math. Have you?
- newyankee 10y ago
  If you think of giving everyone 6000 $ per mth it may be unsustainable , but i think 1500 $ per mth + a reformed healthcare is very much doable, it is less than 1 standard deviation from the mean per capita income
Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago
It seems clear to me that there is an IQ cutoff below which one cannot be an effective programmer. And this cutoff is actually quite high, comparatively. I'd be very surprised if more than 5 percent of the population, with the current distribution of intelligence, could become effective programmers, even if highly motivated. All psychometric evidence points to IQ being largely genetic, and the environmental components irreversible after after a very young age. It's odd, but my very "conservative" view on intelligence and heredity, that of agreeing with the scientific consensus, leads me to support some forms of wealth distribution.
- cm2012 10y ago
  Intelligence is not as set in stone as all that over time. The Flynn effect is well documented across different societies, showing a rise in the average population IQ by ~3 every year, and by 10 every 30 years. This means if you need an IQ of 110 to be a programmer, the average person will be able to do it in 30 years.
  - Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago
    It seems to have stopped in developed countries: https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2016-dutton.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2016-dutton.pdf
- api 10y ago
  You've really hit on the elephant nobody talks about because talking about actual inborn differences in human ability is taboo across the board. What we will see in the 21st century is a large fraction of the human population fall off the edge where the marginal value of their labor becomes <=0 no matter what they do. They can't change this because they got a bad hand in the genetic lottery, which is not their fault. This is very different from industrialization 1.0. That created a lot of jobs because the machines were dumb, and because economic growth was huge. Now the machines are smart and growth is slow. Welfare state, violent revolution, or absolute surveillance state totalitarianism and starving ghettos. Pick one dystopia. I think welfare state is definitely the least of these evils. Eventually we could fix this with augmentation and universally available genetic engineering, but the tech is not ready and the social, philosophical, and religious understanding and assimilation is even less ready than the tech. The process of cultural adoption cannot even begin until the tech is mature enough. Unskilled labor disrupting AI will arrive long before the means of improving ourselves. Edit: some have brought up the Flynn effect and evidence IQ is growing. Unfortunately even if true I think it's far too slow. Automation tech is advancing much faster with a decades shorter iteration cycle. Doubt digit median IQ growth over decades would probably be required to prevent mass unemployment at the scale of billions and that's pure sci-fi.
yummyfajitas 10y ago
Consider a Trump voting factory worker who lost his job. There is nothing (besides his own pride) preventing him from taking up elder care, house cleaning, nursing or something similar. This is a necessary economic transition. As the article notes, a BI makes it easy for this person to avoid making the necessary transition into the pink collar economy. The result is that our elderly are not sufficiently cared for, our high skill labor has dirty houses, our patients don't get adequate nursing care, and similar things. Why should the elderly suffer without adequate care simply because this person's misguided pride is preventing him from taking on pink collar jobs?
- wrsh07 10y ago
  At some point there won't be jobs to transition to, though. How do humans survive when they simply aren't needed? (And how do we make them feel valued by society?)
  - tarr11 10y ago
    How do you know that there won't be enough jobs?
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    If that day ever comes then perhaps a BI might be helpful. It'll certainly be cheap. Right now the problem we have is too little labor, not too much.
    - Turing_Machine 10y ago
      Evidence? 95 million adult Americans are currently out of work. That doesn't sound like "too little" to me. What you really mean is "too few willing to do scut work for a pittance". That's an entirely different thing. https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS15000000 https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS15000000
      - yummyfajitas 10y ago
        You realize that your number includes children, the disabled and retirees, right? It's not an entirely different thing that people are refusing work because they prefer the laziness that government programs enable. That's the whole point. BI only makes this problem worse.
ddebernardy 10y ago
FWIW no need to go as far as India (or China or SE Asia) to find mediocrity. There's also plenty in Europe and North America. The main difference is you're in the same office as the bad developers, so you spot them faster.
gjkood 10y ago
Would it be possible to make cogent arguments without resorting to stereotypical India bashing? Would you make the same arguments using Chinese manufacturing and the fact that it leads the world in electronics manufacturing? India is large. Population: 1,250,000,000+ Population employed in IT: 10,000,000+ (i.e <1% of population) In a group of 10,000,000+ people you will find all kinds of competencies, capabilities and behaviors statistically speaking. I assume you have non-anecdotal data from which you have derived your generalizations. I don't think any Indian child grows up dreaming that his greatest goal in life is to replace an American IT worker. If you have been affected by Indian IT workers, blame it on your management. Somebody is definitely benefiting.
- cderwin 10y ago
  With all due respect, OP did note this: "And don't get me wrong, India has their share of talented and brilliant guys, but the average case is rather bad".
holydude 10y ago
People forget that IT is not the final product. Facebook is not big because they solve technical challenges (related to code and infrastructure). They are big because they are solving a specific problem people had. They are not a special snowflake. If FB would disappear the world would not loose anything. We would just move to something else and which basically happened in China due to chinese gov's protectionism. We do not need that many programmers,sysadmins,engineers. We do not need zillions of compilers,programming languages, frameworks or crud apps. If we want to be effective at using and consuming resources we need to be effective at redistributing the wealth. I am a capitalist by heart but in a dystopian world of mega corps we just do not need billionaires. We do not need brilliant businessmen the same way we do not need that many workers. In such a world we do not need capitalism. We do not need companies competing with each other (well at least not on planet earth). We can move on and reward the 1% of scientists and provide them with much more money and resources. If we want to keep people in line we can make them study more and provide good standards of living. We are talking more or less socialism / communism here but the reality is that we will not need to compete with each other anymore. Our only problem will be to avoid a war between superpowers and people revolting against governments. The fact is we do not really need improvements that much when compared to the past. We do not need faster iphones and more efficient batteries. It would be nice to have but it's not that important after all. The only purpose of iphone is to be connected and consume. The only purpose of a car be it electric or normal is to transport people or goods from point A to point B.

atemerev 10y ago

The answer is that there is no solution. Basic income is economically unsustainable. Social crisis is inevitable (like in previous two installments, agricultural -> industrial and industrial -> knowledge economy), and there is nothing that can be done about it except of surviving through it. Any possible basic income solutions will only make the problem worse.

elsurudo 10y ago
In the current economic ideology, sure. But there is a lot of surplus (profit). What makes you think it's economically unsustainable? People would have to readjust their expectations, for sure. I'm not saying I know that it _is_ economically sustainable, but I haven't done the math. Have you?
newyankee 10y ago
If you think of giving everyone 6000 $ per mth it may be unsustainable , but i think 1500 $ per mth + a reformed healthcare is very much doable, it is less than 1 standard deviation from the mean per capita income

Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago

It seems clear to me that there is an IQ cutoff below which one cannot be an effective programmer. And this cutoff is actually quite high, comparatively. I'd be very surprised if more than 5 percent of the population, with the current distribution of intelligence, could become effective programmers, even if highly motivated. All psychometric evidence points to IQ being largely genetic, and the environmental components irreversible after after a very young age. It's odd, but my very "conservative" view on intelligence and heredity, that of agreeing with the scientific consensus, leads me to support some forms of wealth distribution.

cm2012 10y ago
Intelligence is not as set in stone as all that over time. The Flynn effect is well documented across different societies, showing a rise in the average population IQ by ~3 every year, and by 10 every 30 years. This means if you need an IQ of 110 to be a programmer, the average person will be able to do it in 30 years.
- Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago
  It seems to have stopped in developed countries: https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2016-dutton.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2016-dutton.pdf
api 10y ago
You've really hit on the elephant nobody talks about because talking about actual inborn differences in human ability is taboo across the board. What we will see in the 21st century is a large fraction of the human population fall off the edge where the marginal value of their labor becomes <=0 no matter what they do. They can't change this because they got a bad hand in the genetic lottery, which is not their fault. This is very different from industrialization 1.0. That created a lot of jobs because the machines were dumb, and because economic growth was huge. Now the machines are smart and growth is slow. Welfare state, violent revolution, or absolute surveillance state totalitarianism and starving ghettos. Pick one dystopia. I think welfare state is definitely the least of these evils. Eventually we could fix this with augmentation and universally available genetic engineering, but the tech is not ready and the social, philosophical, and religious understanding and assimilation is even less ready than the tech. The process of cultural adoption cannot even begin until the tech is mature enough. Unskilled labor disrupting AI will arrive long before the means of improving ourselves. Edit: some have brought up the Flynn effect and evidence IQ is growing. Unfortunately even if true I think it's far too slow. Automation tech is advancing much faster with a decades shorter iteration cycle. Doubt digit median IQ growth over decades would probably be required to prevent mass unemployment at the scale of billions and that's pure sci-fi.

yummyfajitas 10y ago

Consider a Trump voting factory worker who lost his job. There is nothing (besides his own pride) preventing him from taking up elder care, house cleaning, nursing or something similar. This is a necessary economic transition. As the article notes, a BI makes it easy for this person to avoid making the necessary transition into the pink collar economy. The result is that our elderly are not sufficiently cared for, our high skill labor has dirty houses, our patients don't get adequate nursing care, and similar things. Why should the elderly suffer without adequate care simply because this person's misguided pride is preventing him from taking on pink collar jobs?

wrsh07 10y ago
At some point there won't be jobs to transition to, though. How do humans survive when they simply aren't needed? (And how do we make them feel valued by society?)
- tarr11 10y ago
  How do you know that there won't be enough jobs?
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  If that day ever comes then perhaps a BI might be helpful. It'll certainly be cheap. Right now the problem we have is too little labor, not too much.
  - Turing_Machine 10y ago
    Evidence? 95 million adult Americans are currently out of work. That doesn't sound like "too little" to me. What you really mean is "too few willing to do scut work for a pittance". That's an entirely different thing. https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS15000000 https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS15000000
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      You realize that your number includes children, the disabled and retirees, right? It's not an entirely different thing that people are refusing work because they prefer the laziness that government programs enable. That's the whole point. BI only makes this problem worse.

ddebernardy 10y ago

FWIW no need to go as far as India (or China or SE Asia) to find mediocrity. There's also plenty in Europe and North America. The main difference is you're in the same office as the bad developers, so you spot them faster.

gjkood 10y ago

Would it be possible to make cogent arguments without resorting to stereotypical India bashing? Would you make the same arguments using Chinese manufacturing and the fact that it leads the world in electronics manufacturing? India is large. Population: 1,250,000,000+ Population employed in IT: 10,000,000+ (i.e <1% of population) In a group of 10,000,000+ people you will find all kinds of competencies, capabilities and behaviors statistically speaking. I assume you have non-anecdotal data from which you have derived your generalizations. I don't think any Indian child grows up dreaming that his greatest goal in life is to replace an American IT worker. If you have been affected by Indian IT workers, blame it on your management. Somebody is definitely benefiting.

cderwin 10y ago
With all due respect, OP did note this: "And don't get me wrong, India has their share of talented and brilliant guys, but the average case is rather bad".

holydude 10y ago

People forget that IT is not the final product. Facebook is not big because they solve technical challenges (related to code and infrastructure). They are big because they are solving a specific problem people had. They are not a special snowflake. If FB would disappear the world would not loose anything. We would just move to something else and which basically happened in China due to chinese gov's protectionism. We do not need that many programmers,sysadmins,engineers. We do not need zillions of compilers,programming languages, frameworks or crud apps. If we want to be effective at using and consuming resources we need to be effective at redistributing the wealth. I am a capitalist by heart but in a dystopian world of mega corps we just do not need billionaires. We do not need brilliant businessmen the same way we do not need that many workers. In such a world we do not need capitalism. We do not need companies competing with each other (well at least not on planet earth). We can move on and reward the 1% of scientists and provide them with much more money and resources. If we want to keep people in line we can make them study more and provide good standards of living. We are talking more or less socialism / communism here but the reality is that we will not need to compete with each other anymore. Our only problem will be to avoid a war between superpowers and people revolting against governments. The fact is we do not really need improvements that much when compared to the past. We do not need faster iphones and more efficient batteries. It would be nice to have but it's not that important after all. The only purpose of iphone is to be connected and consume. The only purpose of a car be it electric or normal is to transport people or goods from point A to point B.