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At what point should society decide that robots have provided sufficient work that people should have the choice to work or not? This is why Universal Basic In
by kmkemp 10y ago
At what point should society decide that robots have provided sufficient work that people should have the choice to work or not? This is why Universal Basic Income needs to become a mainstream concept ASAP.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoAt the point where the people can all stop working and nobody starves.
- dbcurtis 10y agoWell, if that is your criteria, and if you are working on robots you are working on the wrong problem. (Disclaimer: Robots are by day job). Starvation is a distribution problem. We grow enough food to feed the world. Poor distribution systems cause some people to starve and some food to be wasted. Robot farmers won't fix that.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoPart of the problem is politics. You can't fix that with technology or with basic income. (I mean, maybe you can fix the political problem in, say, the US, with basic income. You can't fix the political problem in Sudan with basic income, because it's a tribal and religious war.) But, sure, there's enough food today. Then all the farmers quit. You need robotic tractors and combines. Plus you need seed, fertilizer, and pesticides, all produced (and distributed) by robots. Once the food is grown and harvested, you need every step of the distribution done by robots. You also need robots producing the gasoline, vehicles, tires, and roads that are needed for that distribution. Otherwise, if the people stop working, the food stops, and people starve. Are we there yet? No. We're getting close enough that we can see that it might be possible to get there, though.