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To flesh out a large range of implications will take at least an effort worthy of a PhD dissertation. With successful embryo selection, at least we can keep up

• opportune 9y ago
  I find the underclass argument important and generally ignored. The whole drive for UBI is due in part to the fact that all but the most specialized human professions are being automated. Of course, specialization is not necessarily an indicator of intelligence, but I would guess that they are pretty correlated. Since intelligence is at least in part genetic (and the environmental portion seems to respond very poorly to poverty, which a UBI would likely put people in or close to), it is very likely that a society with UBI would have a very large generational underclass of those unable to sufficiently specialize enough for gainful employment. If we can make more people capable of becoming specialized, everyone will benefit. Perhaps fields like medicine are limited in the number of people it would make sense to employ, but software engineering and scientific research pretty generally benefit the more people get involved (wrt software I am thinking more in terms of FOSS and startups, not huge teams for simple tasks). The barrier to participation in the future economy might end up essentially becoming IQ. It's important that we give people the tools to help their children be successful as the economy changes.