Comment by radpanda

Comment by radpanda a day ago

I’ve always seen UBI as part of a post-scarcity sci-fi future. Once the robots run the farms and deliver the food and build the buildings and so on, and there just isn’t enough work to go around for humans, of course the fruits of this productivity should be shared with the wider population (both morally and to prevent uprisings). Sure, in this sci-fi future you can live in your basic pod and eat basic food for free or you can work a little or a lot to try to upgrade your situation.

But I don’t think we’re there yet. We do have a lot of industries that rely on shit jobs that people would rather not do. If we, IMHO prematurely, try to institute a UBI now we’d be in for a world of pain along the way as the prices of basic services skyrocket without robots being ready to step in.

K0balt a day ago

“Of course”

But, that’s not where we are headed.

Instead, automation will make money irrelevant in the “we don’t need to make money because money ultimately only can be used to pay wages, and nothing else” way.

Since automation means you don’t pay wages anymore, you only need natural resources and energy.

When corporations no longer see (external) money as useful, but only as a way to apportion resources internally to stakeholders, that makes everyone outside of that system into ants.

It’s grey goo, just on a macroscopic scale.

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yorwba a day ago

If you make the "basic pod" a tent, wealthy countries could probably afford this sci-fi future today. But "enough money to live like a homeless person without having to beg or steal" doesn't sound so great as an aspirational goal, does it?

If the "basic pod" is supposed to be something more durable, probably the first step would have to be building enough homeless shelters for all the UBI recipients without another source of income.

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gruez a day ago

>If you make the "basic pod" a tent, wealthy countries could probably afford this sci-fi future today.
Don't you also need food?

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- yorwba 20 hours ago
  
  Yes, I'm saying that wealthy countries can definitely afford the "basic food" part of the "live in your basic pod and eat basic food" future, but the "basic pods" are more uncertain. If there's not enough money to build enough homeless shelters to house everyone, how could there be enough money to pay for UBI high enough that everyone can afford a roof over their head?
  
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int_19h 13 hours ago

Wealthy countries could afford this even with proper housing, food etc (not fancy, but not tent/slop either). Even not so wealthy ones could afford something. You have to go back all the way to hunter/gatherer societies to have a situation where each person's productive labor only generates enough wealth to feed themselves. In any modern industrial society, the productivity is long past the point where each person produces enough to satisfy multiple people's needs, in aggregate. The only problem is that most of this generated wealth is then directed to satisfy the whims of the very few people at the top who get to collect economic rent from the rest of us.

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insane_dreamer 21 hours ago

> of course the fruits of this productivity should be shared with the wider population

we're quickly getting closer to that stage with the promises of AI-increased productivity; and yet, there is not the faintest signal from those building and profiting from AI that the fruits of the increased productivity will be shared; quite to the contrary it will be captured almost entirely by shareholders -- why are investors pouring hundreds of $B into AI otherwise?

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