We may not need a univeral basic income in the future

Hey it's been a long while since I last posted anything, and never in the economics section, but I wanted to get the opinion of people more well-versed in economics to give their thoughts on my musings about the future.

I'm going to link to a video of an interview with author, Martin Ford, talking about automation in the future and why we'll need a basic income in the future. There is a thread arguing about the universal basic income elsewhere on here if you want a TL;DR version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKsrNKIEMBE

So what I'm thinking is this. Think about your smartphone. With an adequate internet connection, you can access any digitised piece of information produced by human beings. This includes anything from some trivial YouTube troll comment to a scientific paper. 25 years ago, this was impossible, nevermind expensive. You would have to travel (cost) to a library to access the information in 1 book, with an infinitely less helpful search system than Google, or buy (cost) one of these books from a bookstore. The advance of technology has led to a massive demonetisation of the cost of accessing knowledge. This applies also to games (a Nintendo 64 originally cost on the order of hundreds, now you can download an emulator and any games for free). My argument is that as technology progresses, it drives down the price of everything. It's by no means uniform or predictable, but it eventually happens.

Since there's talk of this happening soon to truck drivers, let's use driving as an example. Google has already developed driverless cars. They are by no means perfect: their LIDAR and computer vision systems are expensive and still have trouble with snowy roads. As these particular inventions are strongly coupled to Moore's Law (they are developed on, or depend entirely on, computers), their quality and price will increase and decrease respectively at an exponential rate if not equal to, then at least near, that of Moore's Law. There are arguments that Moore's Law will end in the next 10 years, and I agree, but Moore's Law describes only transistors, and the overall exponentially progress of computing power transcends that. Once the price point of operating a truck autonomously reaches parity with that of driven trucks, with all the necessary legislation in place, the technology will only improve and the price will only decrease, especially when batteries, solar power, and 3D printing become part of these vehicles. As the trucks become cheaper to produce, the price of hiring them to transport goods will also decrease. If a company is stubborn and opportunistic, they will be undercut by a company that isn't. When food is cheaper to transport, the price goes down. When we can 3D print food (we can already grow burgers in the lab and have slashed the cost in 2 years from $350,000 to $11: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXeAyoRsf-k), we bypass transport completely and slash costs further, and of course they decline further still as 3D printing improves. As 3D printing gets better, we improve the tools with which we procure natural resources, the only remaining constant in our human-free labo(u)r force. All of these things slash the "living wage" and mean we don't need as much money to buy the bare necessities as we do now. You might cry "deflation", but this is good deflation as these are necessities. People aren't going to hold off on buying food!

Now, it depends on the implementation, and the order of automation of the jobs, but all this may mean that we phase out money long before the need for a basic income ever arises. Still, what do you think? Have I missed something? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

 

This is a topic which can have lots of comments so I'll just make a couple at this point.

Regarding fresh produce, it would be great to grow 80% of it locally and max imports at 20%. Once upon a time farming was the main industry in the USA and today it's like 5% and this should be increased greatly at the local levels. Of course this requires Americans to 'eat locally' which means they can't get all produce at all times of the year. With millions more in retirement today, with millions more unemployed and/or simply not working, perhaps the government can revisit a 'Homestead' type program of providing 5-20 acres of land in return for a promise to grow local meat and fresh produce.

Regarding driverless cars/trucks, they are neat from a technology perspective, but IMO not practical for another 50-100 years or more. With population growth, and already having horrific traffic issues in all urban areas of the US, many places having 10-14 lane freeways, it is not practical or affordable to assume in our near future that we can expand all of our major roadways by 50% or greater to accommodate growth. Therefore, IMO any idea of transporting people must contain a reduction of personal vehicles on the road or at least a smaller square-area footprint per passenger.

Regarding an income, one thing for sure, is we cannot create anything in the future without paying for it. As long as we have a capitalist system, with business and consumers, people will need an income as applicable to their personal needs. Some things will reduce in price while others will increase and unless inflation can be removed from the economic system, the overall costs of everything will always be increasing as supply and demand allows. I think it would be great to eliminate as much cash/checks from society as possible by using our fingerprints, which link to our personal finances, to pay for our consumption.

Lastly, one thing I can talk about at my age is that no matter how great ideas might be, everything takes enormous amounts of time to effect broad change in society. Like converting our 300 million fossil fuel combustion vehicles to some other technology...first we need the alternative, people need to approve the alternative, people need to have the money to buy the alternative and to achieve a wholesale conversion like this might take 100 years! And MONEY is IMO the biggest factor in our future since today most people don't have lots of cash, governments don't have cash, we are a nation deeply in debt, and costs continue to climb...this lack of money just expands the time necessary to effect change...

 

Everything is being automated today, even the year round indoor growing of produce in temperate climates, which is what makes it profitable to grow vegetables year round in cities like Chicago and NYC. Self driving cars and trucks will be on the roads by 2020, and ubiquitous by 2025. Uber will move to green driverless cars as fast as it can. With Uber and Lyft and others increasing the efficiency of personal transportation and the huge investments in public transit now underway in most cities the number of cars on the roads and their pollution could decline drastically by 2050.

Some changes in take a long time, others happen overnight. It depends on how useful the technology is to who and existing opposition. There is little opposition to self driving cars and their usefulness to society is huge. It will not take long for them to take over. Solar and wind energy are also hugely useful to society but there is massive resistance from existing entrenched stakeholders in old technology which it is taking a long time to overcome.

Regarding income, if the present state of consumer capitalism is to be maintained income from the ownership of income producing assets must be somehow redirected to consumers as consumer income from employment declines. Since this will occur over a semi-long period of time one less disruptive solution would be for the government to slowly accumulate shares in businesses and redistribute the income from those shares to citizen consumers. Consumer income will be shifted as employment declines.

 

If a driverless vehicle must communicate with the outside world this indicates to me that driverless cars will be at risk for hacking. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm thinking there is no way to control such a car by using a totally isolated and fully protected computer?

Will driverless cars be equipped with all the necessary equipment to drive the car without the driverless feature? What happens during a driverless failure?

There is resistance surely from the automobile insurance companies who stand to lose billion$ in income when this segment of insurance dries up. If a person is not driving a vehicle that person can no longer be held liable for anything that happens...it's the equipment maker who becomes liable.

How does a driverless vehicle find an empty parking space in a mostly filled lot?

Then there's the drivers of cars who like to go fast and with driverless cars they cannot go faster than the speed limit. And, how many people drive a certain type of car because of the enjoyment of driving that car, like shifting, going fast, quick around turns...like a Porsche or Aston Martin or even a Mazda Miata...none of them will ever be driverless.

Lastly, all it takes is a family of five, heading off to Disneyland, in a driverless car, and for whatever reason, an accident happens killing all of them. How long before passengers in a driverless car simply go to sleep during operation, or engage in some carefree road sex, etc. which would all be fine if driverless cars were the only cars on the road.

IMO driverless cars are more like riding in a train except the car goes precisely from Point A to Point B.

Regarding this thread, it's hard to imagine sometime in the future if all UPS and FedEx and cabs and cargo trucks and buses, etc. were driverless vehicles...tens of millions of US workers would be out of a job with zero income...

 

I've assumed that the first self driven cars will still need drivers to take over in certain situations. For product transport purposes I assume trucks would dock at a centralized warehouse at the target city. The products could be delivered by drones or human driven delivery vehicles from there.

Of course full automation will take awhile, but with a little determination we could eliminate the need for any human driver to spend hours driving on an interstate relatively soon.

 

Yep, I must memorize problems about Basic Income in the OpenOffice.

 

It will be interesting to see how it unfolds. If a car is driverless then it means no human involvement and no human liability and theoretically the passengers can sleep. I don't see how they can have cars that are proclaimed to be driverless yet require a driver?

On the news last night was a report about the truck driver problems in CA especially at the cargo ports and they indicated one answer was driverless trucks.

Although I appreciate the technology it truly does not make much sense as a viable solution to anything because our roads are already gridlocked and it is impossible and unaffordable to double our road/bridge infrastructure to handle more and more cars. We must do something to eliminate vehicles from the roads...

 

I think thats coming too. With communications being what they are the ability for highly skilled workers to do their jobs at home (or anywhere) should start decreasing the need for so much work commute. If most people moving back and forth to work are low skilled labor and service workers public transportation should be a necessary investment everyone can get behind.

On the other side of that coin self driven cars may end up creating transportation services that do away with private ownership for most. Once the car drops you off it goes to the closest house for the next client. No need to park ever again.

I think there should be a middle step before we get to full "driverless". Automated driving on the highway with some limited inner city ability should come first. Maybe call it a "computer assisted driving system" or something along those lines. The first systems should have manual driver overrides and safety protocols to alert the driver if they need to take over, sort of like a train engineer has now.

I assume in the beginning drivers will have to be constantly alert to system crashes and the need to take over the wheel. The safety protocols should kick in at the first sign of any problem, external or internal, so doubtless the first models won't give anyone time to sleep. (sort of like having a three week old baby)

But if its promoted properly the tech will advance quickly and I assume that five years from release most of the bugs will be solved. Its all a matter of how popular the idea is with the big guys.

 

Well regarding time bringing down the cost of things, think about fruit. Sure it gets rid of its value real fast with time, but do you really want to eat the rotten piece of fruit?

As for truck drivers being replaced, what happens when the driverless truck makes a delivery and no one there wants to help unload the thing? Did you ever think of that?

 

The workforce participation rate is declining and automation continues whether it be to solve labor/quality/other problems or just for innovation. At some point in the future, less people will be working meaning less people will have incomes. However, no matter this trend, we still need to have a basic income in order to pay for our essentials...does this income come from the private or public sector?

I'm guessing the only way we can have no income requirements is for everything to have zero value meaning no bartering, trading, buying of stuff...on a personal level, government level, national level, world-wide level...and I can't fathom this scenario in the next several hundred years...

 

I agree the driverless concept has a long way to go and perhaps decades for wholesale implementation. IMO the only way we can add driverless cars and trucks into the existing system is for the existing system to be controlled by the limitations of the driverless systems and this ain't going to happen anytime soon.

Regarding unloading a driverless truck we can assume at the terminal or destination there are robotic systems in place to load and unload...

 

Okay, well I thought of another limitation. How to fuel up the engine ?

 

And what if displaced workers finally get angry, that is an issue, not everyone can do highly skilled work what about those people who do drive the trucks or load and unload them if the respond by voting or by violence, revolutions started often when the poor were so abused by the elite they felt that they had no choice to do anything but respond. Often with their anger.

 

The conversion, as slow as it will be, to electric vehicles slowly reduces the need for oil and gas stations, which will reduce business and employment in that industry. Even the increase in fuel efficiencies slowly reduce oil consumption and most gas stations are now automated so again a reduction in employees. It won't be long and we'll have tires that last for the life of the vehicle, as well as vehicle engines that require little to no maintenance. If we have more driverless cars, this greatly reduces traffic accidents which will greatly reduce car repairs and insurance. And, if we're just sitting in a driverless car, will we care about the performance or how it looks, and if not, these vehicles can last for 20-30 years which means a huge hit to automotive manufacturing and greatly reduced employment. It's pretty easy to see just in this one sector, including most all vehicles, with some innovation and public acceptance, tens of millions of jobs can be eliminated...

 

This is always a possibility as people become so frustrated and desperate that they turn to violence. This is just one reason why government and society should be discussing how things are going to change because of unfolding technology and innovation. Interesting common denominator in all of this is most all government levels are close to broke with our federal government very deep in debt so in a weird way money cannot be the solution as the workforce participation rate continues to decline...

 

This may be a little off topic, but I think the biggest danger we face is a "sore winner" mentality.

The new economic paradigm may create a winner/loser scenario of drastic proportions. We will lose something of our humanity if we deal with the lessening need for (mass) human productivity as we did with horses after the combustion engine took over.

If ambition is even slightly fed by a need to punish the losers we will be in for a very bumpy road.

 

Not sure who the 'winners' might be if and when we have insurmountable people without income? As common workers lose their jobs to technology/innovation, this greatly reduces their spending power which directly effects the wealthy. The wealthy own businesses and hold investments and depend on a healthy GDP so if the workforce participation rate greatly declines I'm thinking there won't be many winners.

Regarding the past and current economy, it has always been presumed that the economy will always grow, no matter the short-term hiccups. Not long ago everyone presumed the value of property will always grow, which still might be true, but when there are longer-term downward pressures on property values lots of people get hurt. Perhaps with increasing population growth, continued international geopolitical issues, the introduction of technology and innovation, at some point the per-capita economy must decline. Perhaps we won't reach a time when no income is required, but instead we might create our lives around much less income...like 50-75% less income. The same technology/innovation that eliminates millions of jobs can also create housing, food, etc. at greatly reduced costs compared to today. If some form of equilibrium cannot be achieved as these changes take place, we will definitely be in for a bumpy ride...

 

There is no real demand for a driverless car. It is engineering looking for a problem. People in most places underutilize public transit, which is comparable to it in relation to whatever need one imagines exists. I sugesst you folks do some research into the PRT system in Morgantown WV created by WVU. It is essentially a driverless public transit system and the only reason it still exists is because it is cheaper to maintain it than to destroy it. It is a novelty that has never had a real demand.

 

The new economy could be a drastic winner/loser scenario in that technology gives huge advantages to the top tier in every venue. Essentially it allows a few people to provide what used to take lots of people, those few profit while everyone else suffers. (Mind you I am only talking about business and employment, of course tech benefits everyone on an individual non-income basis.) Tech makes what the very,very,very best do available to everyone. Very good, or even very very good will not be profitable in the near future.

This may make the successful a small enough number that they can weather out a huge economic decline.

On the other hand I suspect things are changing for most businesses. Big providers are able to put on a happy face despite the gradual erosion of consumer spending due to global dominance and emerging markets at this point. The most dramatic growth seems to be happening in businesses that have nation states and other global businesses as clients. Serving the individual consumer is gradually becoming less profitable, we just have enough overall economic activity to mask it right now.

 

I completely disagree.

We currently have cars that will parallel park themselves. I think plenty of people would be happy to read a book or watch a movie during a 6+ hour drive rather than hold on to a steering wheel and stare at the road.

 

And I think they are plenty more who buy a car because they want to be seen driving the car, not riding in the passenger seat. Automobiles are often an extension of a person. They are not going to sit in a passenger compartment. If they were interested in that, they would take the Metro instead of sitting in ungodly DC traffic, for instance.

 

Outside large metropolitan areas public transportation is a joke. Most people buy cars to get from point A to point B, at least in the US. Our small cities and suburbs were designed for cars, not walking, and public transport in most areas adds hours to your trip.

For a few its a personal statement, but look around, how many cars do you see on the road designed for individual vanity? I see tons of grey sedans and SUVs that were obviously designed for utility and safety.

Many would be happy to let someone else drive if that person were available 24/7 and didn't have an attitude.

 

Which is in part why it won't happen. The infrastructure would be too expensive. Regardless, once people figure out the government would be able to track your every movement with those, the idea dies.

 

They can track us with our smartphones now and I don't see us throwing them in the trash.

Its just a matter of time. I think sooner than most think, but maybe you are partially right and it will take a bit longer. It will happen eventually though.

I think you're partially right in another way too, in that with automated driving cars may become a form of public transportation.

Time will tell.

 

Technology and innovation benefit all of society. Imagine the mistakes and the high cost if today we tried to build cars the same way we did in 1915? Each step along the manufacturing evolution might eliminate some jobs but it also creates some jobs in other areas and it gives the public better quality and less expensive cars.

IMO the primary reason for your 'erosion of consumer spending' is a lack of viable options to purchase. Car manufacturers update their models every single year and most of the time they are identical to last year's model except for the exterior look. Some consumers fall for this while others will keep their cars for 5, 10, 15 years or more. Apple iPhones are selling by the millions but do we need another new phone every year...how about every 3 or 5 years? IMO it will sort of depend on what the manufacturers present to us that determines whether or not we must consume more of the same old crap.

In all cases it is the individual consumer who energizes the economy...manufacturers and business, etc. are only a means to an end...