How Universal Basic Income Will Save Us From the Robot Uprising

A minimum standard of living should require a minimum standard of conduct. But that's the genius of freedom. Every act of labor and sacrifice in freedom bears a corresponding fruit or return. You cannot possibly legislate the economic variety and grace in freedom without dismembering the whole and killing the life of it in the process.

 

You're saying the system which created the rich cannot also conduct itself to prevent people from falling into severe poverty. Understand this is not the socialist ideology of eliminating private property, a basic income is to maintain private property, and use the wealth created by it to set a minimum standard of living. The introduction of private property created the very wealthy, native Americans didn't have private property, nor did they have a rich class. This is what Thomas Paine referred to as the civilized life and the natural life

"The life of an Indian is a continual holiday, compared with the poor of Europe; and, on the other hand it appears to be abject when compared to the rich. Civilization, therefore, or that which is so-called, has operated two ways: to make one part of society more affluent, and the other more wretched, than would have been the lot of either in a natural state. In taking the matter upon this ground, the first principle of civilization ought to have been, and ought still to be, that the condition of every person born into the world, after a state of civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born before that period"

Actually, single mothers have benefited quite significantly in the areas where a basic income has been experimented

http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/4100

For four years Dauphin was a place where anyone living below the poverty line could receive monthly cheques to boost their income, no questions asked. Single mothers could afford to put their kids through school and low-income families weren't scrambling to pay the rent each month.

For Amy Richardson, it meant she could afford to buy her children books for school. Richardson joined the program in 1977, just after her husband had gone on disability leave from his job. At the time, she was struggling to raise her three youngest children on $1.50 haircuts she gave in her living room beauty parlour.


the error in your notion is you are critiquing the number of the basic income as being too small WITHOUT a number ever being drawn

 

One day our ability to generate all the Energy we need and synthesize all the Matter in any form we need will allow Human Beings to no longer waste their lives attempting to accumulate wealth.

If Humans understood and developed a working UNIFIED FIELD THEORY like those who have been visiting Planet Earth for thousands of years have....it means Matter and Energy are INTERCHANGABLE.

Thus we could use either a Low Temp. Fusion Reactor or perhaps a Matter/Antimatter Reactor to generate all the Energy we need but MORE THAN THAT.....we could change Energy into any Mater we wanted.....as we could Make Gold, Silver, Platinum on demand.

We could make all the food in whatever matrixed pattern we desired.

Once resources and energy is available at no cost to everyone....people could use their lives to better themselves and Humanity.

This is not Communism or Capitalism or Socialism.....it is simply OVER ABUNDANCE OF ANYTHING.....thus Money would not exist.

AboveAlpha

 

No one likes other humans, most of us do our jobs anyway.

It might not be possible for you to envision it today, but humans will still manage, design, and utilize that technology to accomplish great things. You should strive to be one of them.




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Why are you so hung-up over the word “capitalism” … which is a term I consider to be poisoned beyond repair. The way I see it, capitalism is infested with nearly every conceivable form of state-issued legal privilege. In fact, capitalism – as defined today – requires state-issue privilege in order to exist. I advocate a system without privilege and a different system needs a different name … doesn't it? That new name could be “geoism” or simply “free markets”. I don't really care what it is called, but it can't be called capitalism.

And what do you imagine my “ulterior motives” are? If the rich have state-issued monopolistic privileges, then I believe the poor should have welfare. That doesn't mean that that is my favored system … just a compromise in what I consider to be a completely screwed-up economic system to begin with.

 

Yes. No one is saying the only way to receive wealth is by earning it. Life isn't that fair. Luck happens in the real world. And those of us who live in the real world realize reality isn't entirely a meritocracy.

Should our neighbors have to shield us from that reality?

If you want to require it, there is a cost. Society will be unfair. It will have to penalize some for their luck and value, to provide for those who due to bad choices or bad luck have less.

Fair results or a fair process, you can't have both in an unfair world.

I'm willing to live with a little bit of unfairness in the rules, to take some of the edge off of the life of my neighbor. But it's skewed pretty bad right now. The federal government alone spends $13,000 per person each year. The IRS collects that from less than 1 in 20 families.

That's more than bad luck.





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I didn't realize that I was "hung-up" over any word.

Capitalism does not require a state to exist. You seem to be the one hung-up on the word, for which you seem to be using a non-conventional definition.

You personally? I don't know...I don't know you from Adam. I find that modern Georgist proponents in general though seem intent on the destruction of capitalism as a whole instead of just working to end the hoarding of land and rent collecting.

 

Well that sounds nice! If I could I'd go to school and never leave.

But there's a hole in your plans. If what you've said about things in the world is true, than Unified Field Theory is forbidden knowledge and it will never be allowed to be developed. Because it requires developing certain knowledge and technologies that are classified and moreover will blow up the solar system.

And that bright future assumes humans won't be humans and mess it up somehow. The power-mad are still something to be feared. How about a dystopian future where the unlimited resources are funneled into mind control and suppression? There's going to be a Kim-Jong-Next.... And others.

 

Oh good, humans don't like other humans in general... (I was a little worried there for throwing that out there) But I was referring to when technology is chosen as the tool instead of humans by people who want to be alone.

Then I remembered something. My dad runs a greenhouse operation. We tried an automated planting machine one year but it didn't work out. The machine was supposed to pick up a line of plants from a plug-tray and insert them into holes in the cells of a flat tray. But, sometimes it would skip plants leading to holes in the flat. Other times it would pull too hard and rip the delicate roots of a less root-bound plant killing it. It was a terrible mess. We ended up returning to human labor.

The machine could do things fast and in large quantities but it did things badly.


P.S. RE: "You should strive to be one of them." -- YES, yes I should!

 

In business, automation tends to be less driven less by what the employees 'want' and more about what results in the best business outcome.

But yea, in your private life you're welcome to buy a roomba vs hiring someone to clean your carpets. More power to you.






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Yup, first generation systems usually have rough edges. Same thing used to be true of combichem robots, robotic ovens, tax software, contract software, assembly line robots, self assembling software, 3D printers, automobiles, and ATMs.

For a lot of transactions, I still prefer going to a human bank teller.





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I think it's sad that manufacturing has left. China will not be able to abuse it's work force forever. The more aware it's people become the more they will demand fairness, which will even the odds. When certain countries don't play by the same rules as others it puts the abusers at an advantage. It's not going to last.

If you don't want to be average do your best not to be. The options to be better are obvious. If your best is average what can the world do? Artificially increase everyone s salary? That obviously doesn't do anything except make the average higher which increases everything as a result. Nothing gets better. The numbers just change.

 

Automation and AI will present real existential problems to capitalistic society the near future, but universal basic income is a (*)(*)(*)(*)ing terrible idea. Study after study have shown what happens when work leaves communities--crime, depression, and decay. The benefit work provides expands well beyond monetary compensation.

A far, far better idea is the negative income tax. Essentially, government subsidizes workers who earn under a certain threshold (every dollar you earn would actually be $1.10 and so on). This helps people take jobs that provide a valuable service and still have an incentive to work despite low pay.

 

that's not what a negative income tax is, but rather a good way to subsidize Walmart. A negative income tax (as introduced by Juliet Rhys-Williams and Milton Friedman) IS a basic income guarantee

as for your notion about the studies that show a basic income failing, that is not true

as I posted earlier http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/4100

most cases where a proto-basic income has been experimented have shown very positive results

 

Doing social experiments on a micro level doesn't yield much about how basic income would affect a gigantic, multicultural society. In Norway, perhaps the concept would work well--but in America? One only needs to go to a poor area in any major American city to see how well generational welfare without the incentive of work has treated them. A negative income tax would accompany stringent tax rules, one would assume. The point is that without the incentive to work, you see all kinds of negative impacts on society. We all know why we see more crime in the summer than the winter, and you would very likely see a similar dynamic if we throw that incentive out the window entirely. And the negative income tax is not basic income, as employment is a requirement to receive the benefit.

 

Most proposals do have a number, which I've already noted, $10,000 a year. And although your Canadian case study is interesting, I don't see how it applies to Universal Basic Income as being discussed in the United States. US versions of the plan are to replace the current social welfare system with UBI, not as an addition to it. So yes, Amy Richardson would of course benefit from getting extra money every month, and so would almost everyone else, but she didn't trade in her husband's benefits or their national healthcare for it.

 

The difference between a Basic Income and our current social safety nets is there is no welfare trap with a Basic Income. Thus the incentive to work is always there, in contrast to people who are put in a scenario of being better of making less money for fear of having their welfare drastically cut and being left worse off. In the areas which the basic income has been experimented, the only groups to see a decrease in work were teenagers and new mothers. School dropout rates declined, and so did hospital visits (both a consequence of poverty)

but the result of the Canadian experiment was a replacement of the standard welfare system

 

That's not really the case. I understand that qualifying criteria are lifted in a UBI scenario (other than citizenry I presume), but where is the incentive to work? That's my issue, the psychological impact of not being required to work or really do anything to sustain your existence. Some people see that as the utopian ideal, I see it inversely. Again, I think work is intrinsically valuable because it more or less keeps us honest. I'm all for mitigating the damage of the forthcoming AI revolution, but we need to keep our societal constructs in tact.

 

And where would this money come from? They'd have to steal it from someone else.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-E76f06AWk...M/h8n34O1dB8k/s1600/socialism-illustrated.jpg

 

Im always amazed at communists.

They never stop trying to impose communism, on America.

They get slapped every day, but they never stop.

Dear Commies,

Get a job

Thanks

 

Commies think your money belongs to them, cause you didnt earn that paycheck...

 

Unions could actually be of benefit. The problem is, they pump money into the Democratic Party, and end up having to support things that are counter to their goals. Like the immigration issue. More workers equals lower pay. Wages could be improved by rounding up these illegals and kicking them out of this country, which would decrease the labor pool and drive wages up. The other option would be to eliminate minimum wage and other government regulations, and let the unions negotiate for higher pay and better working conditions. Raise the minimum wage, and you reduce the chances of workers joining unions. Eliminate the min. wage. Now what happens when the union comes calling? A private sector solution. No closed shop unions, though. In a free society, people should have a choice of whether to join or not. And eliminate government unions because it allows government to steal peoples' money to pay for it, as it comes from taxes. Why should government workers have it better than us? Those benfits come from taxpayers who don't get them. So, yes, it is stealing money from citizens to pay for government workers' pensions and healthcare.

 

I do not believe your argument is consistent with what communism is, communism is a call to eliminate private property, because in their mind it is a theft from the proletariat by the bourgeoisie. A basic income guarantee is not a call to eliminate private property, Milton Friedman was not a communist, and his book Capitalism and Freedom was certainly not a call to instal communism

 

Your definition of communism is false.

"Universal Basic Income" is the forced redistribution of wealth by the state.

It is communism, wrapped with a rainbow ribbon.

no thanks, Ill keep what I earn.

 

No...or at least not in the source you linked.