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The flip side is really the question: Where does the money come from to buy the things produced by the robots if people are no longer being paid to produce thin

The flip side is really the question: Where does the money come from to buy the things produced by the robots if people are no longer being paid to produce things? If you answer something like UBI, then you're just passing the buck and the obvious question is, "where does that money come from?" This problem is secretly baked into the structure of the current crisis. More automation is inevitable, I'm not arguing about that, but it will only exacerbate the problem.

FeepingCreature 7y ago
The money is minted, which is to say printed, by the central bank. That is where the money comes from. That is where all money comes from.
- airstrike 7y ago
  That's not where the value of money comes from, though
  - mikepurvis 7y ago
    But there isn't much value in people spending their lives driving delivery cars or bagging groceries either. The point of UBI proposals is that there is enough total value in our national economies to meet everyone's basic needs— the question of where the money/value "comes from" is simple, it comes from taking it back from where it's been concentrated over decades of inadequate taxation.
    - vorpalhex 7y ago
      You're conflating financial value with moral value. There's a lot of financial value in delivery or bagging even if there's no moral value. Printing money doesn't increase financial value it only increases liquidity. > it comes from taking it back from where it's been concentrated over decades of inadequate taxation. Again you're not increasing the financial value, you're changing how it's disbursed. Whether your fuel is in the form of gasoline or electricity you still have a finite amount of it and once you burn through it, it's gone unless you're adding more to the system.
      - mrec 7y ago
        Could you expand on what you mean by "moral value" here? Something like job satisfaction, self-actualization etc? "Moral" as a descriptor seems likely to derail the argument here. There's nothing immoral about delivering groceries; it's providing a genuinely useful service, and can be intrinsically rewarding as evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of people volunteering to do it for free in the UK at the moment.
        vorpalhex 7y ago
        I am responding to the parent's line: > But there isn't much value in people spending their lives driving delivery cars or bagging groceries either. The parent is conflating different meanings for the word "value". The grandparent is talking economic value, eg receiving money for labor. Clearly there is economic value for delivery services since I'm happy to pay them and their drivers do infact get paid. Therefore the parent must intend a different meaning of value. The most likely meaning (that makes sense in this context) is moral value. There may be great moral value in being a doctor for instance - saving the lives of others. I am not saying that it is the case that there exists no moral value in delivery jobs or grocery. I am saying that even if it were the case that those jobs have no moral value they still have economic value. (I would argue all work well done has moral value, but that's irrelevant)
        mikepurvis 7y ago
        I do mean economic value— the jobs literally don't pay very much, mostly because there's a sizable pool of people willing to do them because they lack alternatives. In a UBI world where those people weren't working to avoid starvation and homelessness, it's likely that much of this bottom-tier work would start to look more like the kind of job a middle class teenager does while living with their parents— they're not there to survive, they're there to earn supplementary cash for a video game or prom dress. I'd expect then that: - Employers would experience some frustration with the flakiness of non-desperate personnel, and would be willing to pay at least something of a premium for labour that sticks around. - That premium and the promise of even greater reliability gains would lead to increased automation pressure at the bottom end. - Poor people who used to work themselves to the bone just surviving (eg, Stephanie Land) actually have the time to take training programs and ready themselves for higher-value work.
  - narrator 7y ago
    The value of money comes from the fact that most exchanges are taxable and taxes must be payed in federal reserve notes ("Federal Reserve Note" is what is printed on the top of any dollars you happen to have in your wallet.) If you were out in the middle of the woods self-sufficient except for some bartering with your friends, you would still have to pay property taxes and your barter transactions would be subject to taxation, which you would have to pay with Federal Reserve Notes or the government could come and take your stuff and imprison you. Before the income tax (1911) you could live in the countryside and you wouldn't even have to think about the federal government, just your state and local governments, unless you were importing things. People didn't even used to elect senators, that was the state government's job. Instead of big banks getting bailed out over and over again, before the federal reserve, you'd just call up the local rich guy, like Rockefeller who would bail out your company out of his personal bank account. People didn't need the banks to survive to move things along. These days, if there was no income tax, and the fed, you'd probably just call up some fabulously wealthy venture capitalist every time you needed some money. The low taxes on venture capital QSBS and carried interest have led to this phenomenon to some extent.
    - mixedCase 7y ago
      How does your theory of fiat value explain the value of the Argentinian peso or the Venezuelan bolívar, and their changes?
      - narrator 7y ago
        All countries of the world that purchase oil and most imports need dollars to do so. All dollars are created as debt. If there's a sudden collapse in the amount of debt created because the money multiplier is destroying debt faster than it's being created, dollars become more scarce and are bid up. The Argentinan and Venezuelans can't create more dollars to pay for their oil, so they print and have to chase scarce dollars along with all the other countries. Domestic U.S banks and companies get first access to any dollars that are created. This is essentially what happened to them in the 80s during Latin America's lost decade when the U.S interest rates went up a lot.
  - banads 7y ago
    The value comes from the robot producing things for much lower costs than the human, eventually paying for itself many times over.
- papermachete 7y ago
  That's currency, not money. USD is not money in the theoretical sense.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  Robots can help mint and deliver the money too! But never forget to tip your money delivery robot. And sometimes humans can even borrow money from robots, if they're really nice to them. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17353666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17353666 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubik “Five cents, please,” his front door said when he tried to open it. One thing, anyhow, hadn’t changed. The toll door had an innate stubbornness to it; probably it would hold out after everything else. After everything except it had long since reverted, perhaps in the whole city … if not the whole world. He paid the door a nickel, hurried down the hall to the moving ramp which he had used only minutes ago. […] “I don’t have any more nickels,” G. G. said. “I can’t get out.” Glancing at Joe, then at G. G., Pat said, “Have one of mine.” She tossed G. G. a coin, which he caught, an expression of bewilderment on his face. The bewilderment then, by degrees, changed to aggrieved sullenness. “You sure shot me down,” he said as he deposited the nickel in the door’s slot. “Both of you,” he muttered as the door closed after him. “I discovered her. This is really a cutthroat business, when —“ His voice faded out as the door clamped shut. There was, then, silence. […] “I’ll go get my test equipment from the car,” Joe said, starting towards the door. “Five cents, please,” “Pay the door,” Hoe said to G. G. Ashwood. [...] “Can I borrow a couple of poscreds from you?” Joe said. “So I can eat breakfast?” “Mr. Hammond warned me that you would try to borrow money from me. He informed me that he already provided you with sufficient funds to pay for your hotel room, plus a round of drinks, as well as —“ “Al based his estimate on the assumption that I would rent a more modest room than this."
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
narrator 7y ago
Well with oil prices going negative, maybe they just bundle free unlimited gas with your car when you lease it and the oil producers pay you to take it. The government can bail out these industries to sell for negative prices. This is one way to sort of take the benefits of increased efficiency and push them back to the people.
Scapeghost 7y ago
> where does that money come from? The people hoarding it.
- lolsal 7y ago
  Didn't they earn it? Didn't they trade for it?
  - Scapeghost 7y ago
    > Didn't they earn it? Can anyone prove it? Do they need it? Is a CEO with multiple mansions and private jets and billions in the bank more worthy of life than the guy working in the mines processing the raw materials of modern civilization but living from paycheck to paycheck and barely able to support a family? What about the mogul who raises essentials prices during a crisis? Or the traffickers running prostitution rings? There are many ways to make money without "earning" it. Can you make sure that only the people who earned their money can have it? The point of UBI is to not have to ask or try to answer these sorts of questions.
    - nybble41 7y ago
      > Can anyone prove it? The burden of proof is on you to show that they did not earn it. > Do they need it? Irrelevant. It's theirs whether they need it or not. And whether they need it is not for you to decide. > Is a CEO with … billions in the bank more worthy of life than the guy working in the mines…? No, they are equally worthy of life. Which has nothing at all to do with how much wealth each of them has earned. In any case these CEOs are rare outliers; as rich as they are, if you took all their assets combined and diluted them evenly among the rest of the population nothing would materially change, at least in the short term. In the long term, since you'd no longer have competent individuals administering things, the economy would implode and everyone would be far worse off. What, you thought corporate shareholders hired CEOs and offered them huge salaries for administering their companies at a loss? The difference they make in the company's bottom line far exceeds their pay. Moreover, if you actually liquidated those billions of dollars worth of shares in order to fund consumption then the companies and the productive capital they represent would rapidly cease to exist. Those few of us who survive can look forward to a bare subsistence standard of living in exchange for long, hard days of manual labor in the fields. But at least we'd all be equally poor, right? > What about the mogul who raises essentials prices during a crisis? Raising prices on scarce goods during a crisis is economically and socially productive. It ensures that these essentials will be saved for the situations where they are actually needed most and incentivizes the production of more essentials. If you hold prices low and pretend that it's just business-as-usual then you're going to end up with shortages. > Or the traffickers running prostitution rings? That's what the courts are for. But you'll have to prove it, not just throw around vague accusations. > Can you make sure that only the people who earned their money can have it? Guilty until proven innocent? That's not how this works. > The point of UBI is to not have to ask or try to answer these sorts of questions. That isn't really the point of UBI, and even if it were it wouldn't be a laudable goal. Solving the perceived problem of unequal outcomes at the expense of justice is not a trade worth even a moment's consideration—even if UBI actually had a chance of accomplishing that, which it doesn't.
TomMckenny 7y ago
If consumer buying power drops too low relative to production, you enter the downward cycle seen in 1929. Where consumer earnings come from in the future is crucially connected to how society decides who owns the robots.
freeone3000 7y ago
Where does the money currently come from? Currently, it's paid to companies by consumers, which pay workers, which in turn, consume things. So an alternate path would be money is paid to companies by consumers, which are taxed, the tax money is redistributed to consumers again. It seems a bit circular, but so does the first one.
- visarga 7y ago
  Money were once tied to gold, then became fiat. Most of society gets access to money by employment. Work for wage is a great equaliser, because the ability to work is distributed in the population. Now the equilibrium is under threat because automated work is not distributing money as much into society. I think money could be tied directly to people if we quantify human needs. Then fulfilling these needs of the population would be the source of money. The more needs a company fulfils - food, energy, housing, communication, health, child care, transportation, education, recreation, science, arts, sports, the more it earns. If it's not benefitting people, then it is should be worth nothing. Let them compete in serving the population, instead of us competing for jobs. Keep those incentives aligned with our real goal - to exist. We don't exist for money, money exist for us. If we redefine money to represent 'fulfilled human needs', we fix the goal alignment and the equal distribution problems.
  - gremlinsinc 7y ago
    What if we decided all resources and land were co-owned by Americans. If it is the ground or comes out of the ground. Land/oil specifically and minerals. Mining companies would still make bulk profit but there'd be taxes that are paid out in UBI. All land for skyscrapers, office buildings, etc -- all land would be taxed at a specific value, and that would also go into UBI. Then we could also have a VAT instead of income taxes so all Americans are also tax payers but UBI puts everyone above poverty so no biggie if we all pay tax on our purchases.
fiter 7y ago
We're not even close to the problem of not having any work to do. Let's limit the work week to 4 days, or give one week off every 5.

FeepingCreature 7y ago

The money is minted, which is to say printed, by the central bank. That is where the money comes from. That is where all money comes from.

airstrike 7y ago
That's not where the value of money comes from, though
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  But there isn't much value in people spending their lives driving delivery cars or bagging groceries either. The point of UBI proposals is that there is enough total value in our national economies to meet everyone's basic needs— the question of where the money/value "comes from" is simple, it comes from taking it back from where it's been concentrated over decades of inadequate taxation.
  - vorpalhex 7y ago
    You're conflating financial value with moral value. There's a lot of financial value in delivery or bagging even if there's no moral value. Printing money doesn't increase financial value it only increases liquidity. > it comes from taking it back from where it's been concentrated over decades of inadequate taxation. Again you're not increasing the financial value, you're changing how it's disbursed. Whether your fuel is in the form of gasoline or electricity you still have a finite amount of it and once you burn through it, it's gone unless you're adding more to the system.
    - mrec 7y ago
      Could you expand on what you mean by "moral value" here? Something like job satisfaction, self-actualization etc? "Moral" as a descriptor seems likely to derail the argument here. There's nothing immoral about delivering groceries; it's providing a genuinely useful service, and can be intrinsically rewarding as evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of people volunteering to do it for free in the UK at the moment.
      - vorpalhex 7y ago
        I am responding to the parent's line: > But there isn't much value in people spending their lives driving delivery cars or bagging groceries either. The parent is conflating different meanings for the word "value". The grandparent is talking economic value, eg receiving money for labor. Clearly there is economic value for delivery services since I'm happy to pay them and their drivers do infact get paid. Therefore the parent must intend a different meaning of value. The most likely meaning (that makes sense in this context) is moral value. There may be great moral value in being a doctor for instance - saving the lives of others. I am not saying that it is the case that there exists no moral value in delivery jobs or grocery. I am saying that even if it were the case that those jobs have no moral value they still have economic value. (I would argue all work well done has moral value, but that's irrelevant)
        mikepurvis 7y ago
        I do mean economic value— the jobs literally don't pay very much, mostly because there's a sizable pool of people willing to do them because they lack alternatives. In a UBI world where those people weren't working to avoid starvation and homelessness, it's likely that much of this bottom-tier work would start to look more like the kind of job a middle class teenager does while living with their parents— they're not there to survive, they're there to earn supplementary cash for a video game or prom dress. I'd expect then that: - Employers would experience some frustration with the flakiness of non-desperate personnel, and would be willing to pay at least something of a premium for labour that sticks around. - That premium and the promise of even greater reliability gains would lead to increased automation pressure at the bottom end. - Poor people who used to work themselves to the bone just surviving (eg, Stephanie Land) actually have the time to take training programs and ready themselves for higher-value work.
- narrator 7y ago
  The value of money comes from the fact that most exchanges are taxable and taxes must be payed in federal reserve notes ("Federal Reserve Note" is what is printed on the top of any dollars you happen to have in your wallet.) If you were out in the middle of the woods self-sufficient except for some bartering with your friends, you would still have to pay property taxes and your barter transactions would be subject to taxation, which you would have to pay with Federal Reserve Notes or the government could come and take your stuff and imprison you. Before the income tax (1911) you could live in the countryside and you wouldn't even have to think about the federal government, just your state and local governments, unless you were importing things. People didn't even used to elect senators, that was the state government's job. Instead of big banks getting bailed out over and over again, before the federal reserve, you'd just call up the local rich guy, like Rockefeller who would bail out your company out of his personal bank account. People didn't need the banks to survive to move things along. These days, if there was no income tax, and the fed, you'd probably just call up some fabulously wealthy venture capitalist every time you needed some money. The low taxes on venture capital QSBS and carried interest have led to this phenomenon to some extent.
  - mixedCase 7y ago
    How does your theory of fiat value explain the value of the Argentinian peso or the Venezuelan bolívar, and their changes?
    - narrator 7y ago
      All countries of the world that purchase oil and most imports need dollars to do so. All dollars are created as debt. If there's a sudden collapse in the amount of debt created because the money multiplier is destroying debt faster than it's being created, dollars become more scarce and are bid up. The Argentinan and Venezuelans can't create more dollars to pay for their oil, so they print and have to chase scarce dollars along with all the other countries. Domestic U.S banks and companies get first access to any dollars that are created. This is essentially what happened to them in the 80s during Latin America's lost decade when the U.S interest rates went up a lot.
- banads 7y ago
  The value comes from the robot producing things for much lower costs than the human, eventually paying for itself many times over.
papermachete 7y ago
That's currency, not money. USD is not money in the theoretical sense.
DonHopkins 7y ago
Robots can help mint and deliver the money too! But never forget to tip your money delivery robot. And sometimes humans can even borrow money from robots, if they're really nice to them. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17353666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17353666 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubik “Five cents, please,” his front door said when he tried to open it. One thing, anyhow, hadn’t changed. The toll door had an innate stubbornness to it; probably it would hold out after everything else. After everything except it had long since reverted, perhaps in the whole city … if not the whole world. He paid the door a nickel, hurried down the hall to the moving ramp which he had used only minutes ago. […] “I don’t have any more nickels,” G. G. said. “I can’t get out.” Glancing at Joe, then at G. G., Pat said, “Have one of mine.” She tossed G. G. a coin, which he caught, an expression of bewilderment on his face. The bewilderment then, by degrees, changed to aggrieved sullenness. “You sure shot me down,” he said as he deposited the nickel in the door’s slot. “Both of you,” he muttered as the door closed after him. “I discovered her. This is really a cutthroat business, when —“ His voice faded out as the door clamped shut. There was, then, silence. […] “I’ll go get my test equipment from the car,” Joe said, starting towards the door. “Five cents, please,” “Pay the door,” Hoe said to G. G. Ashwood. [...] “Can I borrow a couple of poscreds from you?” Joe said. “So I can eat breakfast?” “Mr. Hammond warned me that you would try to borrow money from me. He informed me that he already provided you with sufficient funds to pay for your hotel room, plus a round of drinks, as well as —“ “Al based his estimate on the assumption that I would rent a more modest room than this."

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

narrator 7y ago

Well with oil prices going negative, maybe they just bundle free unlimited gas with your car when you lease it and the oil producers pay you to take it. The government can bail out these industries to sell for negative prices. This is one way to sort of take the benefits of increased efficiency and push them back to the people.

Scapeghost 7y ago

> where does that money come from? The people hoarding it.

lolsal 7y ago
Didn't they earn it? Didn't they trade for it?
- Scapeghost 7y ago
  > Didn't they earn it? Can anyone prove it? Do they need it? Is a CEO with multiple mansions and private jets and billions in the bank more worthy of life than the guy working in the mines processing the raw materials of modern civilization but living from paycheck to paycheck and barely able to support a family? What about the mogul who raises essentials prices during a crisis? Or the traffickers running prostitution rings? There are many ways to make money without "earning" it. Can you make sure that only the people who earned their money can have it? The point of UBI is to not have to ask or try to answer these sorts of questions.
  - nybble41 7y ago
    > Can anyone prove it? The burden of proof is on you to show that they did not earn it. > Do they need it? Irrelevant. It's theirs whether they need it or not. And whether they need it is not for you to decide. > Is a CEO with … billions in the bank more worthy of life than the guy working in the mines…? No, they are equally worthy of life. Which has nothing at all to do with how much wealth each of them has earned. In any case these CEOs are rare outliers; as rich as they are, if you took all their assets combined and diluted them evenly among the rest of the population nothing would materially change, at least in the short term. In the long term, since you'd no longer have competent individuals administering things, the economy would implode and everyone would be far worse off. What, you thought corporate shareholders hired CEOs and offered them huge salaries for administering their companies at a loss? The difference they make in the company's bottom line far exceeds their pay. Moreover, if you actually liquidated those billions of dollars worth of shares in order to fund consumption then the companies and the productive capital they represent would rapidly cease to exist. Those few of us who survive can look forward to a bare subsistence standard of living in exchange for long, hard days of manual labor in the fields. But at least we'd all be equally poor, right? > What about the mogul who raises essentials prices during a crisis? Raising prices on scarce goods during a crisis is economically and socially productive. It ensures that these essentials will be saved for the situations where they are actually needed most and incentivizes the production of more essentials. If you hold prices low and pretend that it's just business-as-usual then you're going to end up with shortages. > Or the traffickers running prostitution rings? That's what the courts are for. But you'll have to prove it, not just throw around vague accusations. > Can you make sure that only the people who earned their money can have it? Guilty until proven innocent? That's not how this works. > The point of UBI is to not have to ask or try to answer these sorts of questions. That isn't really the point of UBI, and even if it were it wouldn't be a laudable goal. Solving the perceived problem of unequal outcomes at the expense of justice is not a trade worth even a moment's consideration—even if UBI actually had a chance of accomplishing that, which it doesn't.

TomMckenny 7y ago

If consumer buying power drops too low relative to production, you enter the downward cycle seen in 1929. Where consumer earnings come from in the future is crucially connected to how society decides who owns the robots.

freeone3000 7y ago

Where does the money currently come from? Currently, it's paid to companies by consumers, which pay workers, which in turn, consume things. So an alternate path would be money is paid to companies by consumers, which are taxed, the tax money is redistributed to consumers again. It seems a bit circular, but so does the first one.

visarga 7y ago
Money were once tied to gold, then became fiat. Most of society gets access to money by employment. Work for wage is a great equaliser, because the ability to work is distributed in the population. Now the equilibrium is under threat because automated work is not distributing money as much into society. I think money could be tied directly to people if we quantify human needs. Then fulfilling these needs of the population would be the source of money. The more needs a company fulfils - food, energy, housing, communication, health, child care, transportation, education, recreation, science, arts, sports, the more it earns. If it's not benefitting people, then it is should be worth nothing. Let them compete in serving the population, instead of us competing for jobs. Keep those incentives aligned with our real goal - to exist. We don't exist for money, money exist for us. If we redefine money to represent 'fulfilled human needs', we fix the goal alignment and the equal distribution problems.
- gremlinsinc 7y ago
  What if we decided all resources and land were co-owned by Americans. If it is the ground or comes out of the ground. Land/oil specifically and minerals. Mining companies would still make bulk profit but there'd be taxes that are paid out in UBI. All land for skyscrapers, office buildings, etc -- all land would be taxed at a specific value, and that would also go into UBI. Then we could also have a VAT instead of income taxes so all Americans are also tax payers but UBI puts everyone above poverty so no biggie if we all pay tax on our purchases.

fiter 7y ago

We're not even close to the problem of not having any work to do. Let's limit the work week to 4 days, or give one week off every 5.