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Taxing automation is absolutely wrong. We want automation. In the same way it would be wrong to say landlords of condos make too much profit because there are s
by zanny 7y ago
Taxing automation is absolutely wrong. We want automation. In the same way it would be wrong to say landlords of condos make too much profit because there are so few condos so we are going to tax condos more. More automation is required to contribute to liberate resources to eventually push our civilization to the next level. If anything, incentivize it. We want things behind made with "infinite" productivity. But we need to provide for one another, to guarantee a quality of life worth living, even when you yourself aren't necessarily contributing to that productivity anymore.
In particular, you can use tax policy that actually pushes the economy in the directions you want to fund UBI. Carbon taxes are opinionated in the right direction, or a VAT tax is not opinionated but closes loopholes exploited by businesses like Google and Amazon. You don't want taxes that disencentivize behavior that you want - it is one of the reasons I'm flabbergasted US property tax law exists as it does, because it could be opinionated to incentivize ownership but isn't because of a mix of inertia and manipulation by vested interests to keep it the way it is.
- stjohnswarts 7y agoThis would be nice if it were true. Since the top 0.1% have figured out how to own the nation via politics and trying to dumb down the general populace to ignore what they're doing I don't have nearly as much confidence in automation as you do.
- zanny 7y agoI'd go insane if I weren't optimistic that we can eventually reach a post-scarcity, totally automated, enlightened civilization. The alternative is our destruction anyway. Its going to happen in much the same way as space colonization or uploading our consciousness if we continue on. And there is kind of a doublethink in that statement. To stop automation requires state intervention in the first place. It would, naturally, be done on behest of corporations who want to prevent automation competing with them in some form, but I imagine the money backing automation outweighs the resistance on that front. If the government is out of the control of the people, automation cannot be stopped anyway. Reclaiming democracy is necessary regardless of if you have an automation employment crisis or not because if you don't have influence over your own destiny malicious entities that do will insure you suffer for it.
- james_s_tayler 7y agoI wonder what the guy who lived like 300,000 years before you thought... Probably just trying to get something to eat and not die.
- ptah 7y ago>we can eventually reach a post-scarcity, totally automated, enlightened civilization this won't happen automatically. it will have to be a conscious decision. how do you propose to get there instead of the dystopian future where things are infinitely more scarce for some and not for others which seems to be our default trajectory
- repolfx 7y agoHow is that our default trajectory? Things aren't infinitely more scarce for some these days. Poverty has been in long term decline across the world. The poor today are much better off than they were in the past despite huge populations; this is essentially because of improved technology. Much of it automation.
- aeternum 7y agoThe top 0.1% very much enjoy their iphones, yachts, entertainment options, and the other products of a strong economy. They don't have much incentive to tear it all down. Automation has overall improved quality of life significantly. We can now grow so much food that we can easily feed the world many times over. Clothing has become so cheap that many items are practically free. And trips around the world are no longer accessible to only that top 0.1-1%. It's not all gloom and doom.
- cannonedhamster 7y agoWe could feed the world, we don't. We could vaccinate, give clean water, nearly free electricity to every person on the planet. We don't. It's not that we don't have the resources, we consciously choose not to do these because they would cause a minor inconvenience to those who have enough. The top .001 percent don't even live in the same reality as the rest of us, and there's plainly no way they could. The don't interact with anyone who isn't like them.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 7y ago> We want automation But we might just not want it _yet_. There’s a lot of work to be done first to prepare people for being layed off, reskilled, or retired en masse.