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And while doing that, cut the bureaucracy and stigma of having to continuously apply for welfare, food stamps etc. Not that this would offsets the cost of basic
by rixrax 8y ago
And while doing that, cut the bureaucracy and stigma of having to continuously apply for welfare, food stamps etc. Not that this would offsets the cost of basic income.
If we picture a dystopian future where due to the rise of automation, increases in population, lack of education and ability, ~90% of people cannot realistically work in a productive jobs, I think it's a good time to experiment now what and how to keep all these people busy, preoccupied, and happy.
- samnwa 8y agoWhy not just optimize human output like China did and incentivize education in fields that provide large scale value to society (STEM primarily) so that children are likely to deliver commensurate value to society to their costs?
- icebraining 8y agoIn Finland there's no tuition and almost all students get financial aid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_financial_aid_(Finland) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_financial_aid_(Finland...
- benj111 8y agoThat's kind of missing the point, if theres 90% unemployment, unless you arrange is so people are in education or retirement for all but circa 5 years of their life, most won't get a chance to use their skills, and no one will have money to buy the things they make anyway.
- ThomPete 8y agoI don't picture a dystopian future. I picture a post-scarcity future. So I am all for these experiments but judging them based on whether people stay jobless is missing the point of UBI in such a fundamental way it's hard to understate that.
- benj111 8y agoI always think of Star Trek. It isn't really explored in depth but there isn't money and people don't have to work, transporter rationing is alluded to though. I guess in a world where everything can be made in a replicator, 'employment' becomes untenable. You still need some way of rationing scarce resources, and allowing people to 'vote' for what they want more of though.
- Retric 8y agoScarcity is beyond just stuff. Land for example is a finite resource.
- AnthonyMouse 8y agoIt is and it isn't. Land in Manhattan is scarce. Land in the non-coastal western US or most of Canada or Australia is theoretically scarce too, but not so much in practice.
- michaelchisari 8y agoIf humanity lived at the density of Paris (21,438/km^2), we could all live in an area half the size of Texas (695,663 km^2). So if we're talking about material post-scarcity, land is more than plentiful.
- nostrademons 8y agoIf humanity lived at the density of Wyoming (5.97/mi^2), we would have to get rid of 50% of the U.S. population or 98% of the world population, because only 147M people could fit on the habitable land on earth. So yes, it is and it isn't. The question is how many people want to live in Wyoming-level densities vs. Paris-level densities, given the elimination of any cost constraints.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago> The question is how many people want to live in Wyoming-level densities vs. Paris-level densities. Do they get a choice? I want to live in Disneyland, but there's sadly a distinct lack of real estate available.
- chlvsl 8y agoMaybe we just do not need that many people to exist in the first place
- StephenAmar 8y agoThe Expanse (books and TV show) use that idea pretty well
- Roboprog 8y agoAmos was such a happy child :-)
- snarf21 8y agoDon't forget that all that bureaucracy is the source of thousands of good paying jobs that now also are worse off even when they get added to UBI. Also, don't forget that now that they have less money, their collective reduced spending means the business they used to patron will have to lay people off. Now those people also need UBI. This doesn't spiral to infinity but their is a huge ripple effect.
- ThomPete 8y agoThe overhead for condional basic income is huge, if most things are done by machine the cost of those will drop quite substantially whichmeans you need much less to get by.
- mcv 8y agoYes, bureaucracy provides a lot of jobs, but they're not jobs that produce anything useful. You're just paying people to check if other people should also get paid. Just pay everybody and be done with it, and maybe let people do something more productive or fulfilling.
- btbuildem 8y agoUsually war served to reduce that surplus, but with automation in the military as well, this is uncharted territory.
- mcv 8y agoThe Black Death in the 14 century killed a third of the population of Europe, which lead to a surprising rise in wages and standards of living. It's weird and uncomfortable how tragedy sometimes leads to very good things. Similarly in the opposite direction, automation should have been a good thing yet it leads to unemployment and poverty.
- unnouinceput 8y agoSo Thanos was right all along, no?
- mcv 8y agoIn a sense, yes. But if he has that power, he could just as easily have doubled the resources in the galaxy, and that possibility never even occurred to him. It seems like to him it's more a convenient excuse to kill lots of people.
- null000 8y agoThis isn't a dystopian future, it's a dystopian present. Most of the work people do today doesn't really need to be done, but we force people to do it anyway for various reasons. https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ (there's also a pretty decent free ebook on the subject by the author)