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One thing that might cushion the displacement of workers by automation is if the workers themselves had an ownership interest in the automation technology. Yes
by jawns 9y ago
One thing that might cushion the displacement of workers by automation is if the workers themselves had an ownership interest in the automation technology. Yes, they would lose their jobs, but having an ownership interest would allow them to generate income.
Maybe instead of UBI, we should consider a scheme where we grant an ownership interest in productive property.
One naive way to implement that is to just grant shares in an index fund that tracks the robotics/automation sector, such as the ROBO Global Index (http://www.roboglobal.com http://www.roboglobal.com).
Obviously, that's not the best way to do it, because if I've just been laid off and have to pay my mortgage, I'm going to turn all my shares into cash.
But there might be some more sophisticated way to grant ownership of productive property that would both generate income and also give influence to the very workers who are most affected by the technology's success.
- muninn_ 9y agoSo this is a naive, honest question, but why not just index funds?
- mark_edward 9y agomost people don't have enough wealth for investment income to matter much, and they probably will never have it. the average american has a negative net worth.
- orangecat 9y agoDisturbingly low, but not negative: https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/05/17/americans-average-net-worth-by-age-how-do-you-comp.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/05/17/americans-...
- aeorgnoieang 9y ago> Maybe instead of UBI, we should consider a scheme where we grant an ownership interest in productive property. A sovereign wealth fund that automatically distributes 'shares' to its citizens, prohibits them from selling their shares, and distributes a dividend regularly? Seems pretty functionally equivalent to a UBI.
- antisthenes 9y agoYes, communism would cushion the displacement of workers. But that's not viable politically in many western countries.
- jawns 9y agoWhat I'm proposing is not communism, where ownership is held by the state. In fact, what I'm proposing is starkly different. I'm proposing the direct ownership of automation technology/companies by the workers themselves, not by their government. This is in keeping with a political philosophy called distributism, which advocates for the widest possible (private) ownership of productive property. Proponents of distributism typically view both capitalism and socialism as systems that tend toward a small number of people holding power over a large amount of capital. (In the case of capitalism, super wealthy investors, and in the case of socialism, government officials.) They see widespread private ownership of productive property as a way of neutralizing the dangers of both Big Business and Big Government.
- spiralx 9y agoSocialism is literally where workers control the means of production themselves, and communism was the end-point where the state disappeared.