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Why would the people who own the factories just give the output to people? What could people possibly offer, when all the things they're capable of making can

• cheez 6y ago
  You had the answer yourself. Legislation. Government-run factories for the benefit of the people.
  • negamax 6y ago
    You mean governments nationalize the factories?
    • adamnemecek 6y ago
      Build new ones.
    • cheez 6y ago
      either/or. History is full of these types of tradeoffs. In the completely hypothetical example from above, it would be worth it to figure something out.
      • negamax 6y ago
        I have another theory. Which is that people will beat machines and create and pursue things that we can't even imagine at the moment. I am rooting for human creativity over machines' brute incredible strength. Even if that's not possible, that's what we should strive for
  • hvis 6y ago
    You could see it in the history of countries that went through a socialist phase (such as Russia): it works, until it doesn't. As soon as there is no personal incentive (or real ability) to improve things, the tech sector starts to stagnate and fall behind the rest of the world.
    • cheez 6y ago
      The hypothetical case was zero human input, self sustaining factories that rely on renewable energy. In that hypothetical case... How could nationalizing screw it up since there is no human or non-renewable input required? I guess they can "overuse it" so we all become Eloi but we're on the way there anyway.
      • hvis 6y ago
        This implies having all the necessary factories for all things, to begin with. Which seems utopic to begin with, right? With renewable energy, etc, the country shouldn't fall apart like USSR did, but it is almost certain to fall prey to more entrepreneurial/militaristic neighbors, sooner or later.
        • cheez 6y ago
          Fortunately it's a completely hypothetical situation.
• jiofih 6y ago
  You just discovered utopian communism, the end game - the solution is that the people “owning” the factories are the same who receive its output!
• ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  I'm starting to see that UBI is becoming the "answer" to many things in the same way that crypto is the "answer" to many things.
  • james_s_tayler 6y ago
    "here, have some fungible tokens in return for doing nothing of value". Crypto was such a shit show.
  • chadcmulligan 6y ago
    > I'm starting to see that UBI is becoming the "answer" There's been a social experiment going on here at the moment (Australia) - everyone has had UBI for a while in the form of unemployment for everyone who needs it, and paid at a rate that you can live on. They're finding it hard to get people to pick fruit and so on - it used to be done by back packers who aren't coming because travel isn't happening. Strangely, no one thinks to pay people more to pick fruit and stop it from being a shitty job, instead they lowered the amount they're paying for unemployment. UBI effectively creates a new minimum wage, there are still a lot of jobs no one wants to do, so techtopia will have to wait a while imho.
    • XorNot 6y ago
      I am completely okay with letting off-season fruit become more expensive for a while and the tech companies and their vaunted AI divisions get funded by market sensible prices to actually develop the systems we need to do fruit picking robotically (it absolutely can be done, but funding to drive down costs is sporadic). I mean really one answer here is: maybe we as a civilization don't actually need mass-farmed fruit, because it's not actually cost-effective to produce and consumers clearly don't actually value it very highly. The point of UBI is a grand solution to stop us having goods and products which depend on creating a defacto underclass.
      • chadcmulligan 6y ago
        Yes, same, pay a couple of cents more for a piece of fruit. The trouble is, afaik, is that pushes up the price of local fruit. The local fruit producers are finding it hard to compete on price with foreign imported stuff, (and they like money I imagine), because its picked by slaves and children, the only way to compete is have slave conditions here. A rational response would be to have import duties on fruit and veg so we can pay people properly, but tariffs - no way thats anti global, one of the few things I agree with Trump on.
• rokobobo 6y ago
  I disagree with the other answers to your question. There's no guarantee that "the masses" would be able to lay claim and ownership on these automated factories. I very much think the world will move in a darker direction, where the owners of these factories ensure their perpetual control over the rest of us. As for what they get from it? The feeling of power and superiority. As for the forms of control they will exert, I can think of a few options: media, access to healthcare, and employing you to be a useless drone just so you don't rebel--or to stroke their ego by beating you in a video game, like the link below: https://www.wired.com/2017/02/clive-thompson-future-of-work-is-gaming/ https://www.wired.com/2017/02/clive-thompson-future-of-work-...
  • est31 6y ago
    Yeah it's likely that by the time the masses realize what the factory owners are up to, it's already too late and the mass produced AI-run robocops/robosoldiers can mow down any kind of violent protest. And the moment the elites realize that there's no guillotine waiting for them any more, they'll do whatever they want. Even if we land in a UBI world where people don't have to work any more and enjoy a "good" life from their UBI, economic mobility will still be extremely reduced, so gaining relative wealth will become much harder. That alone is quite dystopian.
    • XorNot 6y ago
      This was what had happened on Earth in the The Expanse. Most of Earth was on "basic", and you kept it provided you obeyed the rules (one of which was strict limits on breeding). But getting anywhere was almost impossible - in the series you have the street doctor who just can't get educated and trained as a real doctor because even being good at what you do, there's 10,000 more people in front of you who are just better.
      • est31 6y ago
        https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Basic_Assistance https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Basic_Assistance Wow, that's quite dystopian indeed.
• wjmao88 6y ago
  If the people who own the factories can make everything they want, then they have no incentive to expand their factories beyond what is necessary to give them what they want, and, unless their factories takes up all available resources, then what prevents other people from making their own factories? So everyone will just have enough factories to be self sufficient on their own. However, there are two conditions for that to happen: 1. That there are enough resources to build factories for everyone 2. Everyone have access to the knowledge and means to create those factories. The way I see it, space exploration is vital in guaranteeing the first condition, and having an open forum of knowledge sharing and research is needed guarantees the second condition.
  • Avtomatk 6y ago
    Your second condition has to do with one of my biggest dreams: "to create a digital library of Alexandria, full of scientific and cultural information, moral debates with their solutions and projects at the planetary level, all open to the public, open to contributions, corrections, debates and with an excellent presentation of the information in all languages "
    • dexwell 6y ago
      Isn't Wikipedia just that?
      • Avtomatk 6y ago
        Believe me that Wikipedia is light years away from being "The library of human knowledge", it is more like an encyclopedia of "general culture" that "scratches" the surface of multiple topics so that you can find your answer quickly, but there you cannot find technical information , because much of the technical or "scientific" information is monetized .... (I am not an academic researcher, I am a simple teenager, so my answer is open to correction)
        • colinmhayes 6y ago
          You'd be surprised how much you can find by chasing wikipedia references.
• ummonk 6y ago
  Art (with factory owners patronizing artists), luxury restaurants, sex industry, etc. There is plenty of room for unautomated work to redistribute money from rich people to ordinary people in the absence of government action. There would be extreme levels of socioeconomic stratification, but I don't think people would just starve or whatever due to lack of jobs.
• didibus 6y ago
  > Why would the people who own the factories just give the output to people? What could people possibly offer, when all the things they're capable of making can be produced at zero cost? The answer is simple, protection from them taking it by force. This is literally the reason for liberal democracies. Dictatorship, feudalism, and other forms of authoritarian structure always come with the downside that the ones at the bottom are trying to get the ones at the top. Thus if you are at the top, you live in worry and fear of a rebelion, revolution, a coup, from your family or friends to betray you, etc. In that scenario, your day job becomes maintaining your power and authority at all times. Which like any other job, is taxing, tiresome, and hard work. So even though on paper it seems you've got all the goods and services at zero cost, there's a tremendous cost to yourself to maintain that position when others are trying to steal it from you. That's why, the "right to property" is fundamental. You want a society which can guarantee that right, and give you piece of mind that what you own is yours and no one is going to take it by force. So you can relax and enjoy the fruit of your labor (or inherited factories output). One solution for this is to create a system that is governed by the rule of law, where no players is in such a bad state that they could be willing to risk it all to steal your piece of the pie. Thus a balance must be struck, where everyone can find satisfaction, even if some get to have a lot more than others.
  • kukx 6y ago
    "and give you piece of mind that what you own is yours and no one is going to take it by force" except for the government that takes stuff by force eg by collecting taxes etc.
    • didibus 6y ago
      That's one solution to not have people take it by force. You agree to a taxation scheme, which trickles down, yet you still retain most of it yourself, and it satisfies everyone. You know exactly how much to give, and you can achieve the right balance of just enough to keep everyone content. So its way better to willingly agree to participate in a tax scheme, than being at risk of beheading from masses or poison in your drink. There are other schemes, but it's always the same idea, you need to keep people happy enough and satisfied so they don't come for your stuff. That way, you can enjoy it in peace. Edit: Well assuming a liberal democratic taxation system. Otherwise taxes can be a way to take even more from people at the bottom, like in feudalism, where land owners tax their labourers for the right to use their land.
• rizpanjwani 6y ago
  What if people who control UBI decide you are no longer worthy of receiving it?
  • calmworm 6y ago
    Then it’s no longer universal. What are you trying to say/ask?
    • pm90 6y ago
      There’s a valid scenario where eg felons lose these rights. This is how large some sections of society are disenfranchised today. Not hard to imagine this kind of stuff happening with UBI as well.
      • rizpanjwani 6y ago
        Exactly. Not just felons. It's not hard to imagine people labelled as "terrorists" or "trouble makers" being excluded.
        • XorNot 6y ago
          The point of UBI though is to dismantle the administrative overhead and waste of existing welfare systems. A proper UBI implementation deliberately ensures it is administratively difficult to try and selectively remove people from the system.
          • nybble41 6y ago
            You can't just replace a system where a very few people with real needs receive a large amount of targetted support with one where the same amount of money is distributed evenly throughout the entire population. Handing out free money is always popular; leaving people to suffer or die from lack of necessary medical treatment costing far more than the UBI payments, not so much. The introduction of a UBI would not automatically eliminate the need-based welfare system and its administrative overhead. Even if it did, in the end there would still need to be a system to keep track of who is qualified to receive UBI payments (even if it's just based on citizenship / residency), who has or has not been paid, where the payments are to be deposited, etc. Stopping one person's UBI in response to a court judgement would be trivial.
• ajwin 6y ago
  Competition will push prices to almost zero too ideally. This is how capitalism should work. Technologically driven deflation is key but cronyism likes to mess with it and try prevent it thus the complex financial system.