Is Universal Basic Income (UBI) really the solution to the AI Apocalypse? - Pay people to exist?

[Yamaha YM2612]

No, it is a tool of the AI apocalypse.

The purpose of UBI is to eliminate autonomy

 

[𖦹Junkpop𖦹]

I'm going to play devil's advocate for a minute here. I think some form of well structured UBI is preferable to what we're doing now.

The history of human technology is to produce the same or more output with less human input. A large proportion of humanity used to be farmers. Now we only need a fraction of them to feed the world. We used to need legions of mathematicians to do long, complex calculations. Computers can do the same thing in a fraction of the time. There are undoubtedly limits to this, and I don't think AI is going to be nearly as impactful as the hype says. Doesn't matter.

We don't actually need everyone to work anymore. This isn't the future. It's already here. But we're still operating under the old paradigm that "having a job" is just a thing everyone does. Now that's great, if it does something productive for society, but that's no longer the case. Instead we get legions of HR commissars and grievance study majors. Bullshit jobs that contribute little to nothing to society, and in many cases are net negatives.

Now we can continue creating bullshit jobs just to give people something to do, or we can accept that we've become so prosperous that we don't actually need to do that anymore. This should be a GOOD thing.

But then what do we do with the people who don't need to work? Do we take from the productive people who now produce more with less? Is that fair to them? If we say it isn't, do we let the people who don't need to work starve and go homeless? I don't really see a third option, and we pretty much already do the first one with welfare.
I have no idea how to balance this practically and morally. I think it's going to be the biggest political question of the next generation.

I agree with some of your points (especially about some jobs being useless an the new one being nothing burgers) however I think if that if it it gets to that point i still wouldn't support ubi its too easy to use that against you. Honestly what I think should happen is that we grow out of currency. even that I'm unsure of.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

I agree with some of your points (especially about some jobs being useless an the new one being nothing burgers) however I think if that if it it gets to that point i still wouldn't support ubi its too easy to use that against you.

Ehhh. I know what you mean, but the welfare tugboat as it sits now is pretty damn hard to revoke for wrongthink. I'd say it's more secure than a regular job in that sense.

 

[umseriously]

If we're going to live in a dystopia, might as well have it. Can't have the cyberpunk hellscape without a bunch of neets addicted to their vr headset. Dead people can't be addicted to technology.

 

[Maker's Mark]

COVID proved it's not. Money printer went brrr for infinity. Now nothing is affordable. it would become worse with an actual UBI.

 

[Male Idiot]

I don't think UBI can be made to work without a top doen government planned economy.
It is like trying to put tyres on a boat's propeller and expecting it to move.


But I am sure that TPTB has an even worse plan than commies or various kiwi doomposters can envision here.

 

[Colon capital V]

I'm gonna throw something out there apropos of anything relating to a "wealthless" society:
If we truly go moneyless or UBI gibs and everything can be automated and provided for free, what about the people that are still problematic in the governments' eyes? What if you were in a position of someone like Null in this supposed new norm? Website hosting aside, will these people still be able to aquire food, housing, electricity for nothing, even when you're a "public nuisance" for thinking men in dresses aren't women? Just some food for thought.

 

[Male Idiot]

I'm gonna throw something out there apropos of anything relating to a "wealthless" society:
If we truly go moneyless or UBI gibs and everything can be automated and provided for free, what about the people that are still problematic in the governments' eyes? What if you were in a position of someone like Null in this supposed new norm? Website hosting aside, will these people still be able to aquire food, housing, electricity for nothing, even when you're a "public nuisance" for thinking men in dresses aren't women? Just some food for thought.

That's a good point, but not related. That is already happening without UBI or robots being needed.

 

[frozen_runner]

UBI is a completely unworkable, economically illiterate concept that is functionally no different than total government central planning of an economy. That means total government control of every human life it rules over.

You should view anyone who endorses the idea with a skepticism bordering on outright hostility. These are people playing with totalitarianism and fucking lying about it.

 

[Lemmingwiser]

UBI is a completely unworkable, economically illiterate concept that is functionally no different than total government central planning of an economy. That means total government control of every human life it rules over.

You should view anyone who endorses the idea with a skepticism bordering on outright hostility. These are people playing with totalitarianism and fucking lying about it.

UBI is a perfect system to control every aspect of human life.

It's process of domestication similar to making dogs from wolves or cows from aurochs.

If we truly go moneyless or UBI gibs and everything can be automated and provided for free, what about the people that are still problematic in the governments' eyes

They will get back their access to UBI when they pronounce their love of big brother publicly in a non subversive way.

 

[Male Idiot]

UBI is a perfect system to control every aspect of human life.

It's process of domestication similar to making dogs from wolves or cows from aurochs.


They will get back their access to UBI when they pronounce their love of big brother publicly in a non subversive way.

Or take the brain chip.

Elon's gay crashout with Zion Don delayed but not stopped that.

 

[Lemmingwiser]

Or take the brain chip.

Elon's gay crashout with Zion Don delayed but not stopped that.

No that's going to be mandatory anyways to receive UBI eventually.

Gotta get people used to it first, though.

 

[Grub]

You might say " Skilled trades that require dynamic movement like plumbing, carpentry, smithing, etc can't be automated" and you would be correct but there is a small issue, market saturation. There is only so much demand for trade workers, supply of workers will quickly outpace demand as automation ramps up

I work at a job that's been automated probably about as much as it'll ever be. The entire facility I work at is fairly highly automated. It still employs hundreds of people. Hearing about the way things were back in the day from some of the older guys, I'm glad some of those positions don't exist any more. They sound like they were brutal and mind numbing jobs that really sucked.

That's the thing people seem to forget with this ai shit. Blue collar industries have already been automated for a long time. Many of them reached the point of being as automated as possible a long time ago. Most industries don't actually need something like ai to automate. Photoeyes, limit switches, sensors and DCS systems have existed for along time.

 

[fuckingIncredable]

View attachment 7480588View attachment 7480584

Where did that except come from?

 

[NoBueno]

Where did that except come from?

https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/4A/4A92FD2FB4DAE3F773DB0B7742CF0F65_Coleman.-.CONSPIRATORS.HIERARCHY.-.THE.STORY.OF.THE.COMMITTEE.OF.300.R.pdf

 

[ZealotCrustacean101]

Honestly, I wish we could just jettison the concept of money entirely. Meaningless pieces of paper shouldn't determine your worth in this world. Your life means so much more than the amount of zeroes in your bank account.

I would like to partially disagree, by saying the concept of money was to hint or show that the person had a specific skill that got them above others survival wise, if ancient people weren't killing each other for resources they were trading grain, weapons, slaves or land with each other.

Money was a simplification of said system, meant to signal others how prominent someone was for the survival of the society they lived in, of course the concept became bastardized once it stopped favoring skills for ownership. The result is money separating from works related to nature and into pandering human behavior. (I.E you didn't need to learn how to farm anymore because you could just hire peasants to toll the soil if you had a farm)

The irony is that we have created so many complex systems around money, yet the moment you use it its so simple and easy, that the complexities become baffling and comedic (We are at a stage people are even re-defining the concept of money)

So no, removing money won't turn things fair and equal, we will adopt a means that values people who can survive, the problem is that currently money doesn't do that, despite the fact it was designed for that purpose.

 

[Nonga Tork]

If My memory serves me right.... UBI and/or a form of it was already implimented by a mighty super powa.... The Soviet Union.

They don't exist anymore now do they... heh.

No, it wasn't. The Soviet Union demanded everyone work, to the point that they created pointless jobs in order to ensure there was no unemployment.

 

[Squishie PP]

Maybe? I used to think it could be, but I have doubts about whether or not it will ever happen. The more likely scenario is that more wars are started to kickstart the economy once more, which we are seeing unfold right now.

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

Maybe? I used to think it could be, but I have doubts about whether or not it will ever happen. The more likely scenario is that more wars are started to kickstart the economy once more, which we are seeing unfold right now.

Sort of, the bigger problem was labor shortages and low productivity.

The Soviet model was overly focused on extensive growth, i.e. building more factories (or whatever) to increase production vs. investing in better equipment and processes to use labor and resources more effectively (intensive growth). That's OK early on in the industrialization process when you have a large pool of available labor, but eventually you hit a wall because there just aren't enough workers to fully utilize your capacity.

Your production growth will be capped at the growth in the labor force, so building more factories in excess of available labor just means they're understaffed and idle for longer periods of time. You can guess what happens when your population growth slows or turns negative, economic growth also grinds to a halt.

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

No? Biden/Trump tried it during the Pandemic and all it did was create inflation. People are always going to have to work to produce what we need for society. If anything, AI should make that work easier, less stressful, and more efficient. Ideally, you want stuff like AI, robots and technology in general to increase productivity to the point where the necessities of life are easier to get without having a traditional jobs.