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But you're proving my point here. 90% was pushed out of farming, but that population isn't unemployed right now. We're doing other things, like being automation

But you're proving my point here. 90% was pushed out of farming, but that population isn't unemployed right now. We're doing other things, like being automation engineers. And as we automate other things, life will continue to improve, but humans won't ever run out of things to do.

jjk166 5y ago
People weren't pushed out of farming, people abandoned farming. The large investments in mechanization were made after migration to cities made it increasingly difficult to find low wage workers to tend farms. The automation wound up being much better than the humans it replaced, allowing agricultural productivity to skyrocket even as its labor force plummeted, but despite being the biggest beneficiaries, the farm owners had spent decades resisting these improvements. The average time from when a new farm mechanization was invented to when it started being commercially adopted was about 30 years. Progress begins with change. No one is arguing that humans are at risk of running out of things to do, nor is that at all relevant to a discussion of UBI. No one is going to leave a fulfilling and rewarding job to live around the poverty level on UBI, UBI is about getting people out of the low paying, menial work that should have already been automated were it not for the glut of cheaply available labor, the jobs people only take because they will starve to death if they don't. The moment you take away the risk of starving to death, these people can do things besides burn away their hours - they can learn new skills, move to areas with more opportunities, or maybe just work on themselves, and then opportunities which were previously out of reach become available. Not everyone will necessarily find something better to do, but whereas under our current system these people would clog up the gears of progress by continuing to work automatable jobs, with UBI they are taken care of while society advances.

jjk166 5y ago

People weren't pushed out of farming, people abandoned farming. The large investments in mechanization were made after migration to cities made it increasingly difficult to find low wage workers to tend farms. The automation wound up being much better than the humans it replaced, allowing agricultural productivity to skyrocket even as its labor force plummeted, but despite being the biggest beneficiaries, the farm owners had spent decades resisting these improvements. The average time from when a new farm mechanization was invented to when it started being commercially adopted was about 30 years. Progress begins with change. No one is arguing that humans are at risk of running out of things to do, nor is that at all relevant to a discussion of UBI. No one is going to leave a fulfilling and rewarding job to live around the poverty level on UBI, UBI is about getting people out of the low paying, menial work that should have already been automated were it not for the glut of cheaply available labor, the jobs people only take because they will starve to death if they don't. The moment you take away the risk of starving to death, these people can do things besides burn away their hours - they can learn new skills, move to areas with more opportunities, or maybe just work on themselves, and then opportunities which were previously out of reach become available. Not everyone will necessarily find something better to do, but whereas under our current system these people would clog up the gears of progress by continuing to work automatable jobs, with UBI they are taken care of while society advances.