4 ms·

Basic universal income makes sense to me. I imagine a society where everyone is free to create art or relax in hammocks all day. A basic universal income would

Basic universal income makes sense to me. I imagine a society where everyone is free to create art or relax in hammocks all day. A basic universal income would not be enough to fund world travel, your fav consumer items, or ambitious projects, so I don't foresee it causing an intellectual meltdown in society as some fear-monger (As an aside: I speculate people afraid of this may likely be the actual lazy members of our current society :-). If everybody had their basic needs covered, that should actually lead to more prosperity and reduced crime, leading to more people being able to produce superior knowledge, art and enterprises of all sorts. To make science or art or whatnot, you first need to be able eat! The question of whether Silicon Valley's "AI luminaries" are genuinely pursuing this utopia or have a more selfish hidden agenda is another matter entirely.

nightski 2y ago
There's no need for UBI imho. If the technology really advances to that point it will be very cheap to live.
- carapace 2y ago
  > If the technology really advances to that point it will be very cheap to live. Yes. But the flipside of that is that it's hard to earn money. The cheaper it is to live, the harder it is to make money. The problem UBI solves is when most humans can no longer compete with machines in the economic system. Once that happens there are only a few options, and the least unpleasant is simply to give them (us) money tokens.
  - emmanueloga_ 2y ago
    Right! Also note that some concerns in this thread include displacement of humans in jobs that are likely to be automated first. UBI mitigates a lot of those concerns.
  - nightski 2y ago
    Humans don't need to compete with machines in the economic system. Machines aren't out to make a profit. Only humans are. The truth is if this technology really advances to the point we are talking about money won't really be a relevant concept. Money at it's essence imho is a claim on future labor. If that labor is extremely cheap, then all money is nearly worthless. But LLMs/transformers are not this technology. We need some significant advancements before we start seeing things like this.
    - soco 2y ago
      Machines aren't out by themselves for anything. The machine owners on the other hand, they are out to make a profit. So human workers compete with machine workers for the profit f the owners, and at least here I'm sure we can agree who wins in the end. Because as popular the comparison with the horses vs cars might be, at some point the machines will be smarter than humans with or without AGI. From that point on, any job a human would be able to do, and I mean any job invented or not, a machine would do cheaper and probably better. Zero options for the jobless humans from that point on, zero money to spend except welfare/UBI. And even that doesn't sound very appealing, because humans will look at the machine owners with jealousy and yeah I expect quite some fuss with many only unpleasant outcomes.
  - haccount 2y ago
    UBI assumes the entire financial sector doesn't exist. That companies grow like plants without agency. That everyone just accepts UBI as an equal portion and that the future is rosy and fair. The predatory institutions will still be there in the UBI future and price things accordingly, do a little hostile takeover here and there, bribe some politician and get a totally not monopoly started in as many sectors as they can. For UBI to actually work it needs to spring out of the goodwill from a monstrous institution that brutalizes all other financial entities or from a financial apocalypse that leaves virtually no one standing. A much more likely entry point to "free living conditions" is free as in advertisment driven data mining and resale. Think of Google being your landlord, offering free Google fiber with some extra packet inspection clauses. McMeta down the street offering free fastfood adhering to the latest "dietary meta" catchphrase. And Palantir hands out free phones with preloaded internet and bomb homing beacons to streamline military interventions against you when the gov decides you're a terrorist. That's a more likely "UBI scenario", simplified by a few steps as whatever UBI money you'd get in a cash scenario would end up pocketed by the usual suspects anyway
    - ConspiracyFact 2y ago
      Advertising and data? Really? So people can’t pay for anything, but companies somehow see value in trying to sell things to them?
      - haccount 2y ago
        Money will still exist. Maybe you don't have any but other people might run around with pocket change. You'll be able to get a free meal from the poverty bot serving A/B testing burgers and cataloguing your emotional responses to receiving and eating them and giving up the rights to your footage for use in advertising material. Good business.
        ConspiracyFact 2y ago
        Again, if you--and, in general, your demographic--don't have any money, your data is useless for advertising and marketing purposes.
euroderf 2y ago
There's nothing stopping us from taking some baby steps. A nice idea from sci-fi is food machines in busy locations in every city. Insert an ID and get biscuits that are nutritious, kinda filling, and while not necessarily "tasty", they get the job done. Like Soylent but in dry, munchable form. Make an effort to omit the most common allergens, such as lactose and peanuts. I wonder what this would cost, and assuming it's affordable, why we don't simply do it.
jack_pp 2y ago
As someone who has enough passive income to live with my parents indefinitely without having to work more than 10 hours a month this view is ignoring the access we have to cheap gratification and escapism. If people didn't need to work I suspect a large portion of the population will feel depressed, without a purpose and will waste their life getting whatever convenient pleasure they can afford on that basic income (doom scrolling, Netflix, video games)
- defrost 2y ago
  What's a "large portion" and what's the concrete basis for your suspicion? People are aspirational, my observation of people that have sufficient means to just survive is that a large portion will apply themselves to levelling up in a variety of ways, some in crafts, some in small business, some in music, sports, etc. Of those that do, a number go on to join leaders in their chosen fields. Sure, another portion might also kick back and do little else but doom scroll, but that's on them and at least that's keeping them off the streets, adding to the crime stats, etc.
  - jack_pp 2y ago
    People that have sufficient means in the current system had to have discipline and motivation to get in that position and considering how few people are like this then that's where my theory comes from. I'm in a pretty unique position because I've never had a strong drive to work but got lucky and got that passive income without having it as a goal I worked towards. If I had no financial or social pressure I would do little else than play video games all day. Considering how popular social media is I suspect I'm right about most of the population. I mean just look on the streets, in subways etc. most people are addicted to cheap pleasure
nradov 2y ago
Basic universal income only makes sense to you because you haven't done the math. There is no conceivable way to tax productive people enough to enable a bunch of lazy people to relax all day. We are at least centuries away from fully automating the production of even basic commodities.

nightski 2y ago

There's no need for UBI imho. If the technology really advances to that point it will be very cheap to live.

carapace 2y ago
> If the technology really advances to that point it will be very cheap to live. Yes. But the flipside of that is that it's hard to earn money. The cheaper it is to live, the harder it is to make money. The problem UBI solves is when most humans can no longer compete with machines in the economic system. Once that happens there are only a few options, and the least unpleasant is simply to give them (us) money tokens.
- emmanueloga_ 2y ago
  Right! Also note that some concerns in this thread include displacement of humans in jobs that are likely to be automated first. UBI mitigates a lot of those concerns.
- nightski 2y ago
  Humans don't need to compete with machines in the economic system. Machines aren't out to make a profit. Only humans are. The truth is if this technology really advances to the point we are talking about money won't really be a relevant concept. Money at it's essence imho is a claim on future labor. If that labor is extremely cheap, then all money is nearly worthless. But LLMs/transformers are not this technology. We need some significant advancements before we start seeing things like this.
  - soco 2y ago
    Machines aren't out by themselves for anything. The machine owners on the other hand, they are out to make a profit. So human workers compete with machine workers for the profit f the owners, and at least here I'm sure we can agree who wins in the end. Because as popular the comparison with the horses vs cars might be, at some point the machines will be smarter than humans with or without AGI. From that point on, any job a human would be able to do, and I mean any job invented or not, a machine would do cheaper and probably better. Zero options for the jobless humans from that point on, zero money to spend except welfare/UBI. And even that doesn't sound very appealing, because humans will look at the machine owners with jealousy and yeah I expect quite some fuss with many only unpleasant outcomes.
- haccount 2y ago
  UBI assumes the entire financial sector doesn't exist. That companies grow like plants without agency. That everyone just accepts UBI as an equal portion and that the future is rosy and fair. The predatory institutions will still be there in the UBI future and price things accordingly, do a little hostile takeover here and there, bribe some politician and get a totally not monopoly started in as many sectors as they can. For UBI to actually work it needs to spring out of the goodwill from a monstrous institution that brutalizes all other financial entities or from a financial apocalypse that leaves virtually no one standing. A much more likely entry point to "free living conditions" is free as in advertisment driven data mining and resale. Think of Google being your landlord, offering free Google fiber with some extra packet inspection clauses. McMeta down the street offering free fastfood adhering to the latest "dietary meta" catchphrase. And Palantir hands out free phones with preloaded internet and bomb homing beacons to streamline military interventions against you when the gov decides you're a terrorist. That's a more likely "UBI scenario", simplified by a few steps as whatever UBI money you'd get in a cash scenario would end up pocketed by the usual suspects anyway
  - ConspiracyFact 2y ago
    Advertising and data? Really? So people can’t pay for anything, but companies somehow see value in trying to sell things to them?
    - haccount 2y ago
      Money will still exist. Maybe you don't have any but other people might run around with pocket change. You'll be able to get a free meal from the poverty bot serving A/B testing burgers and cataloguing your emotional responses to receiving and eating them and giving up the rights to your footage for use in advertising material. Good business.
      - ConspiracyFact 2y ago
        Again, if you--and, in general, your demographic--don't have any money, your data is useless for advertising and marketing purposes.

euroderf 2y ago

There's nothing stopping us from taking some baby steps. A nice idea from sci-fi is food machines in busy locations in every city. Insert an ID and get biscuits that are nutritious, kinda filling, and while not necessarily "tasty", they get the job done. Like Soylent but in dry, munchable form. Make an effort to omit the most common allergens, such as lactose and peanuts. I wonder what this would cost, and assuming it's affordable, why we don't simply do it.

jack_pp 2y ago

As someone who has enough passive income to live with my parents indefinitely without having to work more than 10 hours a month this view is ignoring the access we have to cheap gratification and escapism. If people didn't need to work I suspect a large portion of the population will feel depressed, without a purpose and will waste their life getting whatever convenient pleasure they can afford on that basic income (doom scrolling, Netflix, video games)

defrost 2y ago
What's a "large portion" and what's the concrete basis for your suspicion? People are aspirational, my observation of people that have sufficient means to just survive is that a large portion will apply themselves to levelling up in a variety of ways, some in crafts, some in small business, some in music, sports, etc. Of those that do, a number go on to join leaders in their chosen fields. Sure, another portion might also kick back and do little else but doom scroll, but that's on them and at least that's keeping them off the streets, adding to the crime stats, etc.
- jack_pp 2y ago
  People that have sufficient means in the current system had to have discipline and motivation to get in that position and considering how few people are like this then that's where my theory comes from. I'm in a pretty unique position because I've never had a strong drive to work but got lucky and got that passive income without having it as a goal I worked towards. If I had no financial or social pressure I would do little else than play video games all day. Considering how popular social media is I suspect I'm right about most of the population. I mean just look on the streets, in subways etc. most people are addicted to cheap pleasure

nradov 2y ago

Basic universal income only makes sense to you because you haven't done the math. There is no conceivable way to tax productive people enough to enable a bunch of lazy people to relax all day. We are at least centuries away from fully automating the production of even basic commodities.