OP likely was sarcastic, and I agree with you that basic income appears to provide a better solution. That said, they're also extrapolating from existing trends

OP likely was sarcastic, and I agree with you that basic income appears to provide a better solution. That said, they're also extrapolating from existing trends. An inordinate amount of office work today (including a lot of software development) exists solely to keep people busy. While that might sound absurd, consider the following: * Companies, particularly large ones, need to have staff on hand for when heavy work hits, but can't just fire them in their off season, not without destroying morale. * Classic hiring practices are terrible at selecting for actual technical ability, and no one wants to trust the demonstrably valuable work to "the new person." Busy-work provides a way to test their proficiency without ruining the business in the process. * Management prestige (and pay) is often tied to one's direct report head-count. Worse, stack rankings and similar systems tie career survival to extraneous, buffer head-count. * Firing someone is surprisingly hard in most companies. A single lawsuit or a few days of outage from a legacy system maintained by only one curmudgeon can wipe out all the (on-paper) savings from firing an ineffective or even counter-productive person. * Some managers genuinely care about their employees, and want to shield them from the existential and health threats of losing their job and insurance.