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We should not be employing people in jobs that can be automated. We should try and automate everything. We should develop technologies, processes, and abilities

We should not be employing people in jobs that can be automated. We should try and automate everything. We should develop technologies, processes, and abilities so that everyone can learn new things. The people that want to learn will be incredibly leveraged and provide a ton of value to society. Those who don't want to learn should be given enough for basic subsistence. A stipend which covers food, shelter, clothing, catastrophic healthcare, reasonable water access, and unlimited data. I would also push that all humans can be close to nature in some way, be it a park or otherwise. We have the technology to do this. Instead we have protectionism and fear.

savanaly 9y ago
I agree with this for the most part. There is a real human need though, and not one that makes a lot of rational sense, but a need nonetheless, to be needed. And for a lot of people in that world you described it wouldn't be met. It's kind of perverse right, because people don't want you to artificially create need for them (it wouldn't be fun to receive your basic income in compensation for digging and then filling in a big hole), they want it to be a genuine need for their talents. And unfortunately although we evolved that yearning to be helpful, we also evolved the ability to automate away most of the tasks that would have stimulated that.
- pstuart 9y ago
  tl;dr: we all need a reason to get up in the morning.
- seer 9y ago
  I think iain bank's "the culture" novels explore this future in depth quite well. I will not spoil it but the basic idea is "games" - people will just be able to play all the games they want and compete with one anoher without the need to survive.
  - marvin 9y ago
    Also, there is absolutely no abuse of power in Banks' society. This would certainly be a problem in a fully-automated capitalist society. I think Banks is a great inspiration, but it is not a world we will get by default. It needs active political effort.
    - bragh 9y ago
      IIRC not from humans, but some Minds still did abuse their power in Excession.
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      absolutely no abuse of power in Banks' society ':-|
      - noir_lord 9y ago
        That statement makes no sense either, the Culture had an explicit department for abusing it's power, Special Circumstances. I think his point was that even if you live in a post-scarcity anarcho-communist society where everyone is live and let live, the rest of the universe isn't an occasionally you need headbangers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Circumstances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Circumstances
      - RodericDay 9y ago
        finally a good plaintext candidate for the thinking emoji shortcut!
      - marvin 9y ago
        It's obviously more nuanced than that, but you'll end up in an argument of semantics pretty quickly. All the SC/Mind scheming is ultimately coming down to what we consider to be morally correct, so it'll be a discussion of whether e.g. letting a person die in order to serve a greater good constitutes abuse of power or not. The theme of the Culture series is what we would want to do if we could do anything we wanted, and there's not a clear-cut response to that. The egocentric part of the equation is reduced a lot.
    - 9y ago
  - lmm 9y ago
    Look at how little of the novels actually takes place within the borders of the culture though. The only place he can tell interesting stories is outside it, usually in neighbouring "primitive" societies - and the only way he can make relatable protagonists is to give them something equivalent to a job, despite this being supposedly extremely rare in the culture.
- acchow 9y ago
  > There is a real human need though... to be needed Get a pet.
  - Qantourisc 9y ago
    Some people also get a human.
- danbruc 9y ago
  This argument comes up time and again but I have never really seen someone attack it or someone substantiate the claim with studies or something. As far as I am concerned, I could not care less if I had no longer to work for a living.
  - lmm 9y ago
    If you're a typical HN reader you could probably retire to somewhere with a low cost of living tomorrow and live off your savings, or at worst you'd have to spend a few years saving up first. But you don't. Long-term unemployed people whose cost of living is subsidized (in the US due to various legal quirks this is mainly disability) are generally substantially less happy than employed people. I don't have studies to hand but would you dispute that result?
- pyoung 9y ago
  There is a ton of important work that needs to be done that gets the short shrift in our society. Taking care of our elderly and our children, teaching, cleaning up and looking after the environment, community service. There is a massive gap between the activities that our economy incentivizes and what is good for the health and happiness of our communities. Basic income doesn't have to involve useless hole digging, there is plenty of work out there that would be both useful and rewarding.
  - chii 9y ago
    all of those jobs you mentioned are all targets of automation.
    - ghthor 9y ago
      Well, using science we could construct a study where a large scale community has many services pro died by humans vs another large community where many services are provided by automatons. We could look at the strengths and weaknesses of both and maximize human happiness and well-being. The result could be as simple as machines just fill in gaps for when were tired, moody or on vacation. We could optimize for min usage of automatons, and target low performers for educational opportunities and psychological support.
    - seb1204 9y ago
      I much rather have window cleaning and fixing road pavement automated than looking after my kids and the elderly. I doubt that the machine or robot will be able to convey the empathy required for people interaction.
      - tropo 9y ago
        Nope, not going to agree on that one. The robot is not going to molest my kids and the elderly. The Robot will not cough tuberculosis spores onto them, will not touch their food after picking a nose or wiping an ass (both of which the robot lacks), and will not brush them with herpes sores. When the robot dies, an exact replacement can be had. The robot will never decide to kill out of frustration, religious fervor, or revenge. The robot will not steal.
- cperciva 9y ago
  Don't worry -- they'll get to play SimSteelFactory instead of working at (and possibly screwing up) a real steel factory. People can derive meaning from playing games.
- Suncho 9y ago
  To the extent that people have a "need to be needed," we should ask ourselves what the most efficient way to meet that need is. Perhaps the answer is to keep "make-work" jobs around. Of course we'd hide the pointlessness of these jobs behind initiatives that "create jobs" and economic policies that "support small businesses" or "enforce fair trade." We've gotten really good at preventing workers (and perhaps ourselves) from knowing that the work they're doing is pointless. The reality is that a lot of people already are doing the equivalent of receiving their basic income in exchange for digging and then filling in a big hole. But maybe there's a cheaper way to meet people's "need to be needed" that's less wasteful of resources. Sports? Video game competitions? Intellectual debate? Volunteer work? There are a lot of possibilities here. I'd love to find out. In any case, I think it would be prudent to separate the debate about how people get most of their incomes from the debate about how people find meaning in their lives. Tying the two together is only one option and I'm not sure it's the right one.
  - Gracana 9y ago
    Military service is a good potential make-work program that can provide a sense of purpose.
RangerScience 9y ago
I'd add some more to that stipend - enough "stuff" that people can make their own art, and otherwise get started making physical things. I get that part of the point of "unlimited data" is to provide people what they need to join the "productive elite". It's just there's ways people can be amazing that aren't information-based; thinking in terms of Diamond Age, you'd want everyone to have a matter stipend, as well. (I think you get this tho)
attaboyjon 9y ago
The question is how will power be distributed between the owners of the automated plants and the 'subsistence' class? Will there be a true meritocracy, or will the children of the plant owners get all the best jobs? Judging from the way third world economies work, I would not assume the best. This I think is the reason for fear and protectionism.
- devoply 9y ago
  What sort of corruption is possible when everything is done by machines. The greatest argument to privatized enterprise is efficiency, but how does that argument hold up with factories that are massively automated. Why are owners of such an enterprise needed at all? If everything is automated then such companies need no owner as the ownership is to make sure the work gets done properly. It will be done properly no matter what the owners do. Why are they entitled to anything more than your average person. I would think in the future you have shareholders, people who own the machines, that employ like a few workers who are managed by machines. And therefore those shareholders can just be just about anybody or even governments... who take the profit or revenue that enterprise generates and distribute it to the people. I am talking about something like this sort of business which does not change, or grow much. It's a commodity. It can just be produced by pretty much anyone.
  - someSven 9y ago
    Civilized societys resepect property. They are entitled to it, because it's theirs. Besides, who would invest in a country where people have such a mindset? And what is with companies owned by local and international shareholders?
  - philipkglass 9y ago
    If we reach that point I would prefer to see people vote for government to construct new automated production facilities and provide their benefits to the people. Rather like how I think that voters should be able to vote for a government owned power plant, sewage treatment plant, library, broadband provider, etc. but I don't think they should be able to vote to seize the nearest privately owned book store for conversion to a public library. If you build public facilities in parallel there's no unjust seizure of existing assets. (Some people will complain that it's unfair to allow the government to do anything at all that could reduce the profitability of existing private assets, but I don't think that those people make up a prohibitive share of the population.)
dasil003 9y ago
Not everyone is capable of being a thought worker, but most people desire to feel useful. Providing UBI is just the tip of the iceberg, what you are proposing requires an unprecedented sea change in human psychology.
- drcross 9y ago
  Not really, Island people in some areas of Asia have bountyless fish, fruit and vegetables and the lack of a proper job doesn't seem to depress them.
  - esmi 9y ago
    Human psychology, probably not. Western psychology, most definitely. People don't even ask who your family is or where do you live anymore. The first question is always, what do you do?
    - nxc18 9y ago
      One of those things is how you spend 40+ hours of your non-sleeping week. The other two are completely irrelevant to anyone but yourself. What would you even say about your family? They exist? "My mom died of cancer, thanks for asking."? If you have a problem with the way things are, at least think of something reasonable to replace it.
      - freeflight 9y ago
        >The other two are completely irrelevant to anyone but yourself. Are they really tho? To know where you are going, you first need to learn where you came from. This also applies to other humans, knowing a bit about their background helps you empathize better with them and understand their reasoning better. In that regard "job" has become the new class to a certain degree. Tell somebody what you are working and many people will base their whole idea about you on just that. Even tho you might not even like working that job and are pretty much forced to do it due to a lack of better options. This also has the effect that specialization is considered the peak of knowledge, while jack-of-all-trade skills are increasingly undervalued. You either spent large parts of your whole life pursuing that one specific thing or you are considered a screw-up by many people.
Mz 9y ago
I often talk about the need to preserve the right to work for the masses. Many people rebut this with the idea that work is coerced for the masses and that it should not be. These are actually essentially unrelated issues. Wanting to not coerce people into working is not at all incompatible with my position. In theory, they both advocate greater choice. Unfortunately, in practice, people who are pro UBI are often taking a position that is highly likely to deny people choice rather than grant them greater choice. When Elon Musk and Sam Altman talk about creating a UBI, they talk about the need for it due to the expectation that robots will displace people and there will be widespread, permanent unemployment. The articles with interviews from them then tell glowing, affectionate stories of how UBI can supplement your current low wage job and make your life better. They never actually write about the scenario being proposed: A world in which large numbers of people have no hope of getting paid work. This scares me because people like Sam Altman and Elon Musk are job creators. And their vision of the future is "We eliminate your jobs, cut you a check for a pittance and call it even, then wash our hands of your pathetic future. Not our problem. You have your UBI." In the last Industrial Revolution when automation was threatening to eliminate jobs, we created the 40 hour work week to redistribute work more evenly and raise quality of life for the masses. We need the next step in the evolution of work here. I find it frustrating that this seems to be so hard to get across to people. But, earlier today, I left a comment elsewhere on HN* in which I noted that some quadriplegics can work and that I was mentioning this because new quadriplegics are often suicidal, feeling like life is over. Maybe think of it in those terms. For many people, UBI in a world with drastically fewer jobs would be like a tragic accident cutting you off from the ability to work. People seem able to understand how horrifying it is to be quadriplegic and feel completely useless. Why can't you understand how horrifying that would be if you are "the wrong kind of employee" and your job has been eliminated and now you are being handed some check for less money than you made previously and basically being told "Fuck you. You are useless and don't deserve a job." UBI and preserving the right to work are not necessarily antithetical. The problem is that most people who talk about UBI don't see that preserving the right to work is not going to just happen. It needs to be made to happen. And when job creators like Sam Altman are all "meh, you have your ubi, you don't need access to paid work" you are talking about a horrifying dystopian future which will almost certainly end in bloody revolution. Large numbers of unemployed people who have no hope of getting a job, time on their hands and just enough money to keep themselves fed but no hope of ever returning to a middle class lifestyle would make for a scary army. I would be suicidal in that situation. But quite a lot of people would be homicidal, in part because it would be legitimate to feel this had been done to them. This is really not a scenario we need to create in the world. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14606810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14606810
usrusr 9y ago
How about adding a very dark twist: pay people to not breed. Everything else would just be a buildup for universal suffering just a few generations down the line.
- majewsky 9y ago
  > Pay people to not breed. Wealthy people are already much less likely to procreate [1], although I'm not going to act as if that was planned. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility/#the-richer-the-people-the-lower-the-fertility https://ourworldindata.org/fertility/#the-richer-the-people-...
- kowdermeister 9y ago
  I don't see how that couldn't be trivially tricked. 1) I sign up and get a reasonably high compensation, like 4x basic income 2) While I'm enjoying this period, I build up the skills to get an even more rewarding life situation 3) Move a country and enjoy things even better Even if it would be permanent treatment for a high compensation over the years, I could freeze my juice and use it whenever I want it.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Paying people lowers the birth rate.
  - astrodust 9y ago
    More specifically: Women that are empowered and employed have opportunities other than raising children, and birth rates naturally decline.
    - Spooky23 9y ago
      No, although that's a thing too. People with more money have access to birth control and various entertainment options.
      - astrodust 9y ago
tpeo 9y ago
>We should not be employing people in jobs that can be automated. We should try and automate everything. Suppose that automation can be automated. Not that implausible, really. Will we just sit in a corner waiting through eternity on the machines to appear on their own? I like theorizing too, but we've gotta live in the meantime.
empath75 9y ago
> A stipend which covers food, shelter, clothing, catastrophic healthcare, reasonable water access, and unlimited data. I agree with this as a laudable goal, but what happens after a population free from work and want doubles and then doubles again?
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  Why would you keep having more and more children when you didn't have to? I have it on good authority that most women aspire to do other things than just pop out as many as they can.
  - nxc18 9y ago
    There are plenty of neighborhoods and even countries that might give you pause. There are plenty of people for whom having children is their only goal, their only live purpose, and the only meaningful thing they do in their life besides living.
  - Banthum 9y ago
    In any population, there are sub-populations with higher and lower fertility. Over time, because of differential reproduction, these sub-populations will eventually come to dominate, and form the majority of the whole population. At that point, overall population increase begins and accelerates indefinitely until it hits a Malthusian wall of scarcity. This process is the same regardless of what distinguishes the higher-fertility subgroups. It could be religion, or genes, or culture, or any combination of these. In any case, those characteristics will eventually dominate. So one way or another, we will overpopulate and be forced to stop, unless we stop the process of high-fertility subgroup domination using some sort of long-term planning. In the end the only permanent solution may be some fixed-proportion guided reproduction regime, or perhaps a fixed genome mix that we maintain at all times. No natural gene recombination may be allowed, no natural mutations may be allowed to persist. The current reprieve from this Malthusian tautology is the temporary result of the Industrial revolution and associated cultural shifts colliding with old-time cultural constructs. It couldn't last more than a century or so. Already, differential fertility of massive and obvious. Fertility of very conservative people is 2.35, of the most liberal it is 1.6. Subgroups like Amish, orthodox Jews, and conservative Muslims, and low-IQ people are rapidly growing in the population. The Amish population doubles every 20-25 years; a simple calculation reveals they'll be hundreds of millions of people within a couple centuries, and billions a couple decades after that. They will grow until something stops their reproduction. The only question is what that something will be. Evolution will win out in the end. Life finds a way. And it has all the time in the universe to do so.
anigbrowl 9y ago
Sounds like Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism. (not a joke, this is a tongue-in-cheek but serious project aimed at transitioning to a Star Trek type society).
rasz 9y ago
how to spot an American >catastrophic healthcare you already have one of those ;) What is it with US and lack of compassion?
- mee_too 9y ago
  Compassion and fast progress: choose one. The "catastrophic " healthcare subsides all other healthcares around the world - 99% of new drugs and medical equipment are first introduced in the US. After the US market pays to big degree for the R&D, the rest of the world gets em far cheaply. The lack of universal healthcare is a major factor pushing people in US to work harder. Hard work = Uber, FB, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc.
- fastball 9y ago
  Paying for someone else's healthcare shows compassion. Not paying for someone else's healthcare does not indicate a lack thereof. A line needs to be drawn somewhere, and many Americans seem to draw that line as "primary rights need to be protected, and all else is every man for himself". Let's say you really want new Macbook Pro. It costs a lot more money than you got. So someone else in society pays for it. Ok, same situation, but someone else doesn't wanna pay for it. Does that really make them a person without compassion.
  - onion2k 9y ago
    The suggestion that someone not having the money to buy a fancy computer and someone not having the money to buy healthcare are equivalent is an odd way of looking at the world. If those who didn't have a Macbook Pro were going to die then compassionate people would be buying luxury laptops for everyone around them.
    - crowaycrestcan 9y ago
      That's a slippery slope to argue on because eventually everyone is going to die. Where do you draw the line? Your post is ironic, because macs are overpriced, by some measure, and so is the american healthcare, from what I heard. Apple is said to derive value from exclusiveness (price differentiation). I'm not going to draw the analogy for medicine, although medication is controversial enough. Surely, nobody is going to die from not owning a macbook, that's indeed a strawman. A macbook is not a condition, but a property.
edpichler 9y ago
Totally agree. Here is an interesting video about automation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5OyrsHmjW0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5OyrsHmjW0
chroem- 9y ago
>The people that want to learn will be incredibly leveraged and provide a ton of value to society. Those who don't want to learn should be given enough for basic subsistence. A stipend which covers food, shelter, clothing, catastrophic healthcare, reasonable water access, and unlimited data. Great, so will that come before or after Donald Trump implements socialized medicine and free education? You're definitely going to get your automation, but the profits from that automation are going to accrue in the hands of a very, very small elite minority.
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  I'm starting to think that the tax rate on capital/profit should be somehow correlated with how advanced technology is. Increased technology -> greater productive leverage (inputs give more outputs) -> greater financial return. Thus, a larger cut should be used to better society overall, as the larger profits were made possible by the technology that a more advanced society enables. This says nothing about _how_ that tax revenue should be spent. I think the current generation of government programs could be immensely improved. Worst case, if we are unable to increase the effectiveness of targeted government spending, then we just start cutting dividend checks. I will admit, this is the part I'm most uncertain about. Relatedly, I also think there is a lot of work we can do to vastly reduce the corruption and inefficiencies that are found in even the most modern governments. The alternative would be letting those with the majority of capital increase their share of global wealth, as technology advances, at insane rates, and simply cross our fingers and hope they use their wealth wisely. Given that individuals have done nothing to bring about the tech that is present at the day of their birth, to me such a situation would feel incredibly unjust. This is tricky stuff, however. My thoughts are slowly continuing to develop.
  - Applejinx 9y ago
    It's possible that simply cutting dividend checks would be enough. Market capitalism is an interesting sorta-self-regulating mechanism for seeking products and services, and the big drawback is that it isn't a social structure: nowhere in there is any suggestion that the mechanism will produce a consumer class to keep the whole thing going. Without that class, it collapses. It's possible if you just harness the engine by forcibly redistributing capital amount X (nonlinear amount scaling from negative to positive) to all (citizens? humans? living things?) then you guarantee the consumer class's existence, and make it possible to compete for the capital of that class through producing goods and services. You might call it the Square Tax. Pay one tenth of one percent of your income, squared… proceeds to be divvied up equally as a human dividend. That neatly results in one dollar for every thousand you make, squared (or one dollar per every 'K' of income, squared). It also means you hit a limit at exactly a million dollars of income a year. I think it's safe to say if you're in a basic income/human dividend society and you still contrive to earn a million dollars a year you need to re-evaluate what you're doing with your life, and/or you already have enough resources that you REALLY don't need to be working yourself into the grave to get more: believe it or not, other people can do things too ;)
dgfgfdagasdfgfa 9y ago
Automation doesn't benefit the people when profits flow toward landlords and business owners.
phkahler 9y ago
>> The people that want to learn will be incredibly leveraged and provide a ton of value to society. Great, who is going to pay them? Serious question.
- Applejinx 9y ago
  Moochers looking for fun ways to spend their free money. (it boggles my mind how often people see an artificial consumer class as some kind of money sink into which the 'good' people dump their hard earned dollars. This is madness. What you're looking at in that event is a money ocean made up of would-be customers you just aren't selling to yet, and handled properly it's a titanic resource for anybody who DOES want to provide value and be compensated. You can't get paid unless there's people out there with liquid resources who are free to pay you if they like your stuff.)
mason240 9y ago
>Those who don't want to learn should be given enough for basic subsistence. Everyone should be be given that through UBI (universal basic income).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

savanaly 9y ago

I agree with this for the most part. There is a real human need though, and not one that makes a lot of rational sense, but a need nonetheless, to be needed. And for a lot of people in that world you described it wouldn't be met. It's kind of perverse right, because people don't want you to artificially create need for them (it wouldn't be fun to receive your basic income in compensation for digging and then filling in a big hole), they want it to be a genuine need for their talents. And unfortunately although we evolved that yearning to be helpful, we also evolved the ability to automate away most of the tasks that would have stimulated that.

pstuart 9y ago
tl;dr: we all need a reason to get up in the morning.
seer 9y ago
I think iain bank's "the culture" novels explore this future in depth quite well. I will not spoil it but the basic idea is "games" - people will just be able to play all the games they want and compete with one anoher without the need to survive.
- marvin 9y ago
  Also, there is absolutely no abuse of power in Banks' society. This would certainly be a problem in a fully-automated capitalist society. I think Banks is a great inspiration, but it is not a world we will get by default. It needs active political effort.
  - bragh 9y ago
    IIRC not from humans, but some Minds still did abuse their power in Excession.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    absolutely no abuse of power in Banks' society ':-|
    - noir_lord 9y ago
      That statement makes no sense either, the Culture had an explicit department for abusing it's power, Special Circumstances. I think his point was that even if you live in a post-scarcity anarcho-communist society where everyone is live and let live, the rest of the universe isn't an occasionally you need headbangers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Circumstances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Circumstances
    - RodericDay 9y ago
      finally a good plaintext candidate for the thinking emoji shortcut!
    - marvin 9y ago
      It's obviously more nuanced than that, but you'll end up in an argument of semantics pretty quickly. All the SC/Mind scheming is ultimately coming down to what we consider to be morally correct, so it'll be a discussion of whether e.g. letting a person die in order to serve a greater good constitutes abuse of power or not. The theme of the Culture series is what we would want to do if we could do anything we wanted, and there's not a clear-cut response to that. The egocentric part of the equation is reduced a lot.
  - 9y ago
- lmm 9y ago
  Look at how little of the novels actually takes place within the borders of the culture though. The only place he can tell interesting stories is outside it, usually in neighbouring "primitive" societies - and the only way he can make relatable protagonists is to give them something equivalent to a job, despite this being supposedly extremely rare in the culture.
acchow 9y ago
> There is a real human need though... to be needed Get a pet.
- Qantourisc 9y ago
  Some people also get a human.
danbruc 9y ago
This argument comes up time and again but I have never really seen someone attack it or someone substantiate the claim with studies or something. As far as I am concerned, I could not care less if I had no longer to work for a living.
- lmm 9y ago
  If you're a typical HN reader you could probably retire to somewhere with a low cost of living tomorrow and live off your savings, or at worst you'd have to spend a few years saving up first. But you don't. Long-term unemployed people whose cost of living is subsidized (in the US due to various legal quirks this is mainly disability) are generally substantially less happy than employed people. I don't have studies to hand but would you dispute that result?
pyoung 9y ago
There is a ton of important work that needs to be done that gets the short shrift in our society. Taking care of our elderly and our children, teaching, cleaning up and looking after the environment, community service. There is a massive gap between the activities that our economy incentivizes and what is good for the health and happiness of our communities. Basic income doesn't have to involve useless hole digging, there is plenty of work out there that would be both useful and rewarding.
- chii 9y ago
  all of those jobs you mentioned are all targets of automation.
  - ghthor 9y ago
    Well, using science we could construct a study where a large scale community has many services pro died by humans vs another large community where many services are provided by automatons. We could look at the strengths and weaknesses of both and maximize human happiness and well-being. The result could be as simple as machines just fill in gaps for when were tired, moody or on vacation. We could optimize for min usage of automatons, and target low performers for educational opportunities and psychological support.
  - seb1204 9y ago
    I much rather have window cleaning and fixing road pavement automated than looking after my kids and the elderly. I doubt that the machine or robot will be able to convey the empathy required for people interaction.
    - tropo 9y ago
      Nope, not going to agree on that one. The robot is not going to molest my kids and the elderly. The Robot will not cough tuberculosis spores onto them, will not touch their food after picking a nose or wiping an ass (both of which the robot lacks), and will not brush them with herpes sores. When the robot dies, an exact replacement can be had. The robot will never decide to kill out of frustration, religious fervor, or revenge. The robot will not steal.
cperciva 9y ago
Don't worry -- they'll get to play SimSteelFactory instead of working at (and possibly screwing up) a real steel factory. People can derive meaning from playing games.
Suncho 9y ago
To the extent that people have a "need to be needed," we should ask ourselves what the most efficient way to meet that need is. Perhaps the answer is to keep "make-work" jobs around. Of course we'd hide the pointlessness of these jobs behind initiatives that "create jobs" and economic policies that "support small businesses" or "enforce fair trade." We've gotten really good at preventing workers (and perhaps ourselves) from knowing that the work they're doing is pointless. The reality is that a lot of people already are doing the equivalent of receiving their basic income in exchange for digging and then filling in a big hole. But maybe there's a cheaper way to meet people's "need to be needed" that's less wasteful of resources. Sports? Video game competitions? Intellectual debate? Volunteer work? There are a lot of possibilities here. I'd love to find out. In any case, I think it would be prudent to separate the debate about how people get most of their incomes from the debate about how people find meaning in their lives. Tying the two together is only one option and I'm not sure it's the right one.
- Gracana 9y ago
  Military service is a good potential make-work program that can provide a sense of purpose.

RangerScience 9y ago

I'd add some more to that stipend - enough "stuff" that people can make their own art, and otherwise get started making physical things. I get that part of the point of "unlimited data" is to provide people what they need to join the "productive elite". It's just there's ways people can be amazing that aren't information-based; thinking in terms of Diamond Age, you'd want everyone to have a matter stipend, as well. (I think you get this tho)

attaboyjon 9y ago

The question is how will power be distributed between the owners of the automated plants and the 'subsistence' class? Will there be a true meritocracy, or will the children of the plant owners get all the best jobs? Judging from the way third world economies work, I would not assume the best. This I think is the reason for fear and protectionism.

devoply 9y ago
What sort of corruption is possible when everything is done by machines. The greatest argument to privatized enterprise is efficiency, but how does that argument hold up with factories that are massively automated. Why are owners of such an enterprise needed at all? If everything is automated then such companies need no owner as the ownership is to make sure the work gets done properly. It will be done properly no matter what the owners do. Why are they entitled to anything more than your average person. I would think in the future you have shareholders, people who own the machines, that employ like a few workers who are managed by machines. And therefore those shareholders can just be just about anybody or even governments... who take the profit or revenue that enterprise generates and distribute it to the people. I am talking about something like this sort of business which does not change, or grow much. It's a commodity. It can just be produced by pretty much anyone.
- someSven 9y ago
  Civilized societys resepect property. They are entitled to it, because it's theirs. Besides, who would invest in a country where people have such a mindset? And what is with companies owned by local and international shareholders?
- philipkglass 9y ago
  If we reach that point I would prefer to see people vote for government to construct new automated production facilities and provide their benefits to the people. Rather like how I think that voters should be able to vote for a government owned power plant, sewage treatment plant, library, broadband provider, etc. but I don't think they should be able to vote to seize the nearest privately owned book store for conversion to a public library. If you build public facilities in parallel there's no unjust seizure of existing assets. (Some people will complain that it's unfair to allow the government to do anything at all that could reduce the profitability of existing private assets, but I don't think that those people make up a prohibitive share of the population.)

dasil003 9y ago

Not everyone is capable of being a thought worker, but most people desire to feel useful. Providing UBI is just the tip of the iceberg, what you are proposing requires an unprecedented sea change in human psychology.

drcross 9y ago
Not really, Island people in some areas of Asia have bountyless fish, fruit and vegetables and the lack of a proper job doesn't seem to depress them.
- esmi 9y ago
  Human psychology, probably not. Western psychology, most definitely. People don't even ask who your family is or where do you live anymore. The first question is always, what do you do?
  - nxc18 9y ago
    One of those things is how you spend 40+ hours of your non-sleeping week. The other two are completely irrelevant to anyone but yourself. What would you even say about your family? They exist? "My mom died of cancer, thanks for asking."? If you have a problem with the way things are, at least think of something reasonable to replace it.
    - freeflight 9y ago
      >The other two are completely irrelevant to anyone but yourself. Are they really tho? To know where you are going, you first need to learn where you came from. This also applies to other humans, knowing a bit about their background helps you empathize better with them and understand their reasoning better. In that regard "job" has become the new class to a certain degree. Tell somebody what you are working and many people will base their whole idea about you on just that. Even tho you might not even like working that job and are pretty much forced to do it due to a lack of better options. This also has the effect that specialization is considered the peak of knowledge, while jack-of-all-trade skills are increasingly undervalued. You either spent large parts of your whole life pursuing that one specific thing or you are considered a screw-up by many people.

Mz 9y ago

I often talk about the need to preserve the right to work for the masses. Many people rebut this with the idea that work is coerced for the masses and that it should not be. These are actually essentially unrelated issues. Wanting to not coerce people into working is not at all incompatible with my position. In theory, they both advocate greater choice. Unfortunately, in practice, people who are pro UBI are often taking a position that is highly likely to deny people choice rather than grant them greater choice. When Elon Musk and Sam Altman talk about creating a UBI, they talk about the need for it due to the expectation that robots will displace people and there will be widespread, permanent unemployment. The articles with interviews from them then tell glowing, affectionate stories of how UBI can supplement your current low wage job and make your life better. They never actually write about the scenario being proposed: A world in which large numbers of people have no hope of getting paid work. This scares me because people like Sam Altman and Elon Musk are job creators. And their vision of the future is "We eliminate your jobs, cut you a check for a pittance and call it even, then wash our hands of your pathetic future. Not our problem. You have your UBI." In the last Industrial Revolution when automation was threatening to eliminate jobs, we created the 40 hour work week to redistribute work more evenly and raise quality of life for the masses. We need the next step in the evolution of work here. I find it frustrating that this seems to be so hard to get across to people. But, earlier today, I left a comment elsewhere on HN* in which I noted that some quadriplegics can work and that I was mentioning this because new quadriplegics are often suicidal, feeling like life is over. Maybe think of it in those terms. For many people, UBI in a world with drastically fewer jobs would be like a tragic accident cutting you off from the ability to work. People seem able to understand how horrifying it is to be quadriplegic and feel completely useless. Why can't you understand how horrifying that would be if you are "the wrong kind of employee" and your job has been eliminated and now you are being handed some check for less money than you made previously and basically being told "Fuck you. You are useless and don't deserve a job." UBI and preserving the right to work are not necessarily antithetical. The problem is that most people who talk about UBI don't see that preserving the right to work is not going to just happen. It needs to be made to happen. And when job creators like Sam Altman are all "meh, you have your ubi, you don't need access to paid work" you are talking about a horrifying dystopian future which will almost certainly end in bloody revolution. Large numbers of unemployed people who have no hope of getting a job, time on their hands and just enough money to keep themselves fed but no hope of ever returning to a middle class lifestyle would make for a scary army. I would be suicidal in that situation. But quite a lot of people would be homicidal, in part because it would be legitimate to feel this had been done to them. This is really not a scenario we need to create in the world. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14606810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14606810

usrusr 9y ago

How about adding a very dark twist: pay people to not breed. Everything else would just be a buildup for universal suffering just a few generations down the line.

majewsky 9y ago
> Pay people to not breed. Wealthy people are already much less likely to procreate [1], although I'm not going to act as if that was planned. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility/#the-richer-the-people-the-lower-the-fertility https://ourworldindata.org/fertility/#the-richer-the-people-...
kowdermeister 9y ago
I don't see how that couldn't be trivially tricked. 1) I sign up and get a reasonably high compensation, like 4x basic income 2) While I'm enjoying this period, I build up the skills to get an even more rewarding life situation 3) Move a country and enjoy things even better Even if it would be permanent treatment for a high compensation over the years, I could freeze my juice and use it whenever I want it.
Spooky23 9y ago
Paying people lowers the birth rate.
- astrodust 9y ago
  More specifically: Women that are empowered and employed have opportunities other than raising children, and birth rates naturally decline.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    No, although that's a thing too. People with more money have access to birth control and various entertainment options.
    - astrodust 9y ago

tpeo 9y ago

>We should not be employing people in jobs that can be automated. We should try and automate everything. Suppose that automation can be automated. Not that implausible, really. Will we just sit in a corner waiting through eternity on the machines to appear on their own? I like theorizing too, but we've gotta live in the meantime.

empath75 9y ago

> A stipend which covers food, shelter, clothing, catastrophic healthcare, reasonable water access, and unlimited data. I agree with this as a laudable goal, but what happens after a population free from work and want doubles and then doubles again?

anigbrowl 9y ago
Why would you keep having more and more children when you didn't have to? I have it on good authority that most women aspire to do other things than just pop out as many as they can.
- nxc18 9y ago
  There are plenty of neighborhoods and even countries that might give you pause. There are plenty of people for whom having children is their only goal, their only live purpose, and the only meaningful thing they do in their life besides living.
- Banthum 9y ago
  In any population, there are sub-populations with higher and lower fertility. Over time, because of differential reproduction, these sub-populations will eventually come to dominate, and form the majority of the whole population. At that point, overall population increase begins and accelerates indefinitely until it hits a Malthusian wall of scarcity. This process is the same regardless of what distinguishes the higher-fertility subgroups. It could be religion, or genes, or culture, or any combination of these. In any case, those characteristics will eventually dominate. So one way or another, we will overpopulate and be forced to stop, unless we stop the process of high-fertility subgroup domination using some sort of long-term planning. In the end the only permanent solution may be some fixed-proportion guided reproduction regime, or perhaps a fixed genome mix that we maintain at all times. No natural gene recombination may be allowed, no natural mutations may be allowed to persist. The current reprieve from this Malthusian tautology is the temporary result of the Industrial revolution and associated cultural shifts colliding with old-time cultural constructs. It couldn't last more than a century or so. Already, differential fertility of massive and obvious. Fertility of very conservative people is 2.35, of the most liberal it is 1.6. Subgroups like Amish, orthodox Jews, and conservative Muslims, and low-IQ people are rapidly growing in the population. The Amish population doubles every 20-25 years; a simple calculation reveals they'll be hundreds of millions of people within a couple centuries, and billions a couple decades after that. They will grow until something stops their reproduction. The only question is what that something will be. Evolution will win out in the end. Life finds a way. And it has all the time in the universe to do so.

anigbrowl 9y ago

Sounds like Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism. (not a joke, this is a tongue-in-cheek but serious project aimed at transitioning to a Star Trek type society).

rasz 9y ago

how to spot an American >catastrophic healthcare you already have one of those ;) What is it with US and lack of compassion?

mee_too 9y ago
Compassion and fast progress: choose one. The "catastrophic " healthcare subsides all other healthcares around the world - 99% of new drugs and medical equipment are first introduced in the US. After the US market pays to big degree for the R&D, the rest of the world gets em far cheaply. The lack of universal healthcare is a major factor pushing people in US to work harder. Hard work = Uber, FB, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc.
fastball 9y ago
Paying for someone else's healthcare shows compassion. Not paying for someone else's healthcare does not indicate a lack thereof. A line needs to be drawn somewhere, and many Americans seem to draw that line as "primary rights need to be protected, and all else is every man for himself". Let's say you really want new Macbook Pro. It costs a lot more money than you got. So someone else in society pays for it. Ok, same situation, but someone else doesn't wanna pay for it. Does that really make them a person without compassion.
- onion2k 9y ago
  The suggestion that someone not having the money to buy a fancy computer and someone not having the money to buy healthcare are equivalent is an odd way of looking at the world. If those who didn't have a Macbook Pro were going to die then compassionate people would be buying luxury laptops for everyone around them.
  - crowaycrestcan 9y ago
    That's a slippery slope to argue on because eventually everyone is going to die. Where do you draw the line? Your post is ironic, because macs are overpriced, by some measure, and so is the american healthcare, from what I heard. Apple is said to derive value from exclusiveness (price differentiation). I'm not going to draw the analogy for medicine, although medication is controversial enough. Surely, nobody is going to die from not owning a macbook, that's indeed a strawman. A macbook is not a condition, but a property.

edpichler 9y ago

Totally agree. Here is an interesting video about automation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5OyrsHmjW0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5OyrsHmjW0

chroem- 9y ago

>The people that want to learn will be incredibly leveraged and provide a ton of value to society. Those who don't want to learn should be given enough for basic subsistence. A stipend which covers food, shelter, clothing, catastrophic healthcare, reasonable water access, and unlimited data. Great, so will that come before or after Donald Trump implements socialized medicine and free education? You're definitely going to get your automation, but the profits from that automation are going to accrue in the hands of a very, very small elite minority.

dwaltrip 9y ago
I'm starting to think that the tax rate on capital/profit should be somehow correlated with how advanced technology is. Increased technology -> greater productive leverage (inputs give more outputs) -> greater financial return. Thus, a larger cut should be used to better society overall, as the larger profits were made possible by the technology that a more advanced society enables. This says nothing about _how_ that tax revenue should be spent. I think the current generation of government programs could be immensely improved. Worst case, if we are unable to increase the effectiveness of targeted government spending, then we just start cutting dividend checks. I will admit, this is the part I'm most uncertain about. Relatedly, I also think there is a lot of work we can do to vastly reduce the corruption and inefficiencies that are found in even the most modern governments. The alternative would be letting those with the majority of capital increase their share of global wealth, as technology advances, at insane rates, and simply cross our fingers and hope they use their wealth wisely. Given that individuals have done nothing to bring about the tech that is present at the day of their birth, to me such a situation would feel incredibly unjust. This is tricky stuff, however. My thoughts are slowly continuing to develop.
- Applejinx 9y ago
  It's possible that simply cutting dividend checks would be enough. Market capitalism is an interesting sorta-self-regulating mechanism for seeking products and services, and the big drawback is that it isn't a social structure: nowhere in there is any suggestion that the mechanism will produce a consumer class to keep the whole thing going. Without that class, it collapses. It's possible if you just harness the engine by forcibly redistributing capital amount X (nonlinear amount scaling from negative to positive) to all (citizens? humans? living things?) then you guarantee the consumer class's existence, and make it possible to compete for the capital of that class through producing goods and services. You might call it the Square Tax. Pay one tenth of one percent of your income, squared… proceeds to be divvied up equally as a human dividend. That neatly results in one dollar for every thousand you make, squared (or one dollar per every 'K' of income, squared). It also means you hit a limit at exactly a million dollars of income a year. I think it's safe to say if you're in a basic income/human dividend society and you still contrive to earn a million dollars a year you need to re-evaluate what you're doing with your life, and/or you already have enough resources that you REALLY don't need to be working yourself into the grave to get more: believe it or not, other people can do things too ;)

dgfgfdagasdfgfa 9y ago

Automation doesn't benefit the people when profits flow toward landlords and business owners.

phkahler 9y ago

>> The people that want to learn will be incredibly leveraged and provide a ton of value to society. Great, who is going to pay them? Serious question.

Applejinx 9y ago
Moochers looking for fun ways to spend their free money. (it boggles my mind how often people see an artificial consumer class as some kind of money sink into which the 'good' people dump their hard earned dollars. This is madness. What you're looking at in that event is a money ocean made up of would-be customers you just aren't selling to yet, and handled properly it's a titanic resource for anybody who DOES want to provide value and be compensated. You can't get paid unless there's people out there with liquid resources who are free to pay you if they like your stuff.)

mason240 9y ago

>Those who don't want to learn should be given enough for basic subsistence. Everyone should be be given that through UBI (universal basic income).

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