Universal Income and Automation in the Near Future
Imagine not having to work, and just collecting a pay. Or working, and still collecting some money that doesn't require work. That's universal basic income. How does that sound? Is that a prospective future to look forward to? Would you want to pay more taxes to fund this type of system?
Source
We already have a similar setup in many countries people with a welfare system. Some people collect money from the state for various reasons, from being unable to work or unable to find work, or just scamming the system and being a lazy freeloading sloth or thief piggybacking off the work off others in society. Many honest people depend on a safety net, for taking care of themselves, or their disabled children that they can't afford to on their own. Perhaps charity could replace it in a better society, in a voluntary manner instead of a coercive tax-funded method.
Universal Basic Income
As automation displaces more jobs, more of us may come to rely on a type of welfare system of universal basic income (UBI). Would UBI be justified in that case? Do the robots get taxed?
The case for UBI has been gaining popularity in the media, especially thanks to the socialist ideas of Bernie Sanders in the last U.S. presidential election race. He's also a recent proponent for a federally funded "jobs for everyone" and "no more unemployment" new "New Deal".
UBI is an unconditional promise to pay people, for doing nothing other than living, in order for them to keep living. They can buy shelter, food, water and clothing. Proponents claim this improves community cohesion and health, while opponents say it promotes laziness and shirking responsibility to work.
The threat to jobs that automation poses means UBI is of focus to many. Ideas for generating revenue are about taxing enterprises that use the common land of the region/country. Oil revenues, hydro electricity, and other industries that make use of land they don't own because it belongs to the people, would have a percentage return to the people. Alaska has such a program, and returned over $2700 to each citizen in 2015.
Of course, you earn more if you also work. So it seems even if you work, you get the basic income anyways, as they propose it.
Lazy Couch Potatoes?
The gloomy prospect of lazy people sapping the system may be a reality, or it may not be so dark. In one study on Manitoba, Canada, the government supplementing people's income who fell below a certain amount. It showed a reduced hospitalization and depression rate while the experiment was ongoing. The trial allowed young boys to focus more on school, and mothers on nursing, rather than try to find ways to make money to survive.
Implementing UBI
Finland started a two-year trial for basic income last year, giving out about 600 Euros as a monthly payment. It's also a trial, so it will last for two years, but there are currently no plans to renew it at the end of 2018. Results of the impact basic income had on Finland will be released in 2019.
The aim is to test whether this promotes more people finding work, or if it does the opposite. They hope it allows people to enter the job market on their terms, rather than the stress and anxiety of being forced into a job to survive. Currently in Finland, people getting government assistance requires monthly paperwork. This UBI way is easier for them.
In areas where UBI is implemented, the municipalities recognize freeloading as an expected aspect. There is always good and bad behavior in policies they implement, they say. They want to analyze how many people this helps get a job, and how many people simply move to the couch.
The health and well-being aspect is tied to research from Colombia University, studying 1000 children. A strong correlation exists between family income and childhood brain development. It's reasoned that more economic stability at home means more time to spend with the child and help them develop. It's not a causal link though, just an interesting correlation.
A new study on low-income families is being done to support the previous conclusions. Out of 1000 low income mothers, 1100 transactions went to groceries, while only 3 went to alcohol purchases.
Cure-All?
This is a slippery slope of dependence. Next, government can be seen to be "needed" to step in when corporations decide to take advantage, and not pay any benefits, no pensions, no health care. If this is poorly designed, it could not end up changing society much at all, or end up making things worse as well.
Other plans include to not tax the poor but give them the UBI, not tax the middle class, and tax the rich. But performance at work changes under different taxation methods to steal your money. The more is stolen from you, the more you get pissed about it.
In a study, one group was given money to work and not be taxed, while the other had money to start but were taxed. Those who experience loss aversion of losing what they started out with tended to quit their tasks sooner in order to minimize their losses. This negative tax idea isn't as favorable as the UBI initiative for many.
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UBI, automation, and the like, is envisioned to bring about benefits to humanity as a whole. Freeing up time for family, to care for elderly, sick relatives, or pursue creative works, innovate and invent new things, like music, etc.
The question of "what do you do?" may in the future morph into "why do you do?". We won't be obliged to work to survive. We will choose to work, for a reason, purpose, goal and meaning in our lives apart from simply making money.
Voluntary donations trump coercive theft any day, as far as I see it. Coercive taxation to fund UBI isn't the direction I want to head towards, but it may be that society will be heading there regardless of what anarchists or voluntaryists want. I have trouble seeing UBI as a success in the long term. Whereas automation and opening up new niches for work I do see lasting. What do you think?
References:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43866700
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
https://www.newscientist.com/issue/3079/
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Any decent society needs to take care of those unable to care for themselves. People who are just unwilling to take care of themselves should fall into a different category. More attention needs to be given to training those who have an interest in technological advancements. Someone needs to be closely watching the transition to complete automation. Does anyone remember the song, In the Year 2525?
I've been retired for many years, but have filled my time with volunteering. Even simple things like transcribing ancestry records or books for text search always made me feeling satisfied. It's human nature to want to help others. But if I earned wages, and having my sweat and tears taxed for someone unwilling to work would be very discouraging.
Yeah, taxation is the problem I have with it. TO make a new currency that would gain or lose value based on use of some other metric that doesn't involve taxation would be supportable.
The biggest problem is that such a system, under today's expanding, extortionist govern-cement will lead to more control.
As soon as UBI was implemented, being caught for anything would take some of your UBI and give it to the police.
Thus, don't get caught, or you lose the UBI. Don't fail to file form BA 1100 N or your stipend will be cut off.
What our govern-cement loves is control. And that is what UBI will be.
Just like O-bomb-a unHealth care. Its about control. Baby Alfie has to die.
So, until the govern-cement changes from this mode, i will oppose UBI with my life.
Further, there are better ways than UBI.
Yeah, that's what digital economy and no more cash would promote as well :/
I could make some shitposts everyday, and ask for all the whales to upvote me for my universal basic income! ;0
I think that if the state controls the flow of money to you then they control you, it is a different kind of slavery. It may be a slavery that many people submit themselves to without realizing what it is, then when some tyrant gets into power and turns it into the Hunger Games or Terminator to kill off all the lazy good for nothings people will wonder "what went wrong" and say "it wasn't true Universal Basic Income".
Technocracy + something I am not sure of the term for.
But I think what really will happen, is that things go backwards to the times of people owning their own land and farming for their own food. It worked then and can work again! Think about that for a second, FOOD could be organic again and could have a bunch of people in the fields helping to tend their own food supply. It is on them to do something with it or they starve, the Amish do it pretty well and lazy people are ostracized out of their society. If everyone comes together to help a guy build a barn in a day, they all can be sure everyone else will help each other when they need their barn or something else built/fixed. Technology really alienates us from how we evolved due to helping each other, if we all just freeload and "pursue our own interests" I highly doubt society will last very long as people can be selfish as hell
I imagine a bunch of trust fund babies later in life wanting everything for free, that's what UBI would turn into i think, a bunch of spoiled brats with no responsibilities who do nothing but party.
Working ethics and ostracizing laziness are social pressures to make people work harder, but the ultimate goal of working is to produce valuable resources, that you can use yourself or sell to other people. If automation take completely over, you will not be able to compete with robots. You can go dig holes with shovel, but a robot will do it faster.
Yet the Amish still live just fine despite massive tractors and everything, and their products they sell are worth more.
It's a small community that produce organic products, but it's impossible to implement it country wide. Another question what is your goal, do you want technological development that will bring huge social changes or do you want traditional society where people have to work hard and productivity is very low?
The entire world used to be made of small communities that produced organic products, for you to say it is "impossible to implement country wide" is very odd.
Over 200 years ago, 90 percent of the U.S. population lived on farms and produced their own food to eat. But today, only two percent of the population produces food for the world to consume. That’s a large change in the amount of people associated with producing food and making sure that everyone has enough to eat.
I have no particular goal, just saying that people won't be sitting on their asses all day collecting money because money always runs out and governments will have 100% control over you if they control 100% of your money. It is literally a "benevolent dictatorship" that you would trust the government to not genocide everyone, it is fantasy thinking that is child like. Having a super majority do absolutely nothing and somehow get money will never happen.
check the world population 200 years ago. Traditional farming can't sustain almost 8 billion of people on this planet. Standards of living got much higher since 200 years ago and yes technology free us from physical labor step by step.
Ok, so in both scenarios you presented the population will die off. If robots take all jobs and people free load eventually the govt will kill them off due to them not being worth it(it always happens that way). If people can't farm for themselves they will die off once the robots take their jobs.
I am trying to point this out to you, that both of the things you say result in massive amounts of people dying. And "Traditional Farming" + today's modern tractors and tech sure could sustain most of the world population, there is plenty of unused land all over the world, so no I don't agree.
It's a complicated issue, if we continue to innovate, we might get the problem that there might be no jobs for average people( at the same time I might miss something in this prediction, there might appear new niche that I can't even imagine today, where majority of people will be able to work. For example we might develop pills that will make people smart on the PhD computer science student.) Or fertility rate will go drastically down as we see in most developed countries right now
LOL, but it wasn't true Universal Basic Income... it wasn't true communism...
Technocracy + scientific dictatorship ;)
Maybe owning land can happen, that requires governments, monarchs and lords to not tax us for having it ;)
First of all you're replying to a slippery slope nonsense rant that posits people who are disabled or anyone who isn't employed as working the land, when menial labor like growing food can be accomplished organically in aeroponic grows by a handful per hectare and indeed growing food on much larger scales could be accomplished by automation more effectively the larger the scale. I don't think you'd have a leg to stand on if you're arguing about morality to jokingly remark that moral truth wasn't truthful enough, but you can jeer at what time will bring, a mass redundancy which you can see peeking over the horizon. The rich and confused such as your self will be confronted soon enough with either Civil War, begat of the suffering of unemployment, as the catalyst for the declaration of independence did coming closer and closer to a quarter millennia ago or develop the known and time proven art of Taxing the gluttony of man for the benefit of people, which without, the gluttonous wouldn't have to harvest, as the good old racist faggot evveridt harharhared over "a fools soon parted with his money". The problem is not going to fix itself with a "propose a piece of land for everyone", and it would behoove people to look back to exactly what free trade meant in the days of the unprecedented prosperity of Colonial Script and the genius unmatched that said:
because land was involved.
And not to mention this:
Fuck the rich, proper, they used to be taxed PROPER -AT-93PERCENT, o wait I'm sounding like a wealth inequality who is against progress and industry and you know what, that's why monopolized money, monopolized technology and monopolized industry, health care and education, monopolized telecommunications and monopolized service and monopolized real estate is the reality, because excess is applauded as the inhumane treatment of the people by theses monopolized sectors is equated to "freeloaders who deserve nothing of their country, and who's country could care less what they do, the can die in a ditch like Ira Hayes when they're consumed and "retired" while progress only churns out almost exclusively profit motivated obsolescence or profit hobbled innovation, like the war on hemp, in a free trade world... Harhar, progress, not if it hurts the bottom line. Capitalism is monopolized world, and not taxing the rich is probably the worst thing that we can do, because like it or not, redundancy ain't going to come with "propose a piece of land"
It wasn't enough UBI they said, those freeloaders.
The single worst part about UBI for me, was when it was talked about at the g4, and at the bildeberg meeting 2 years ago - the largest round of applause heard at both meetings, were speeches about giving ubi to us plebs as long as we vote, put me off instantly, as they stated also - no vote - no UBI, which equals they can offer up cancer as 1 candidate or a genital disease as the other, and if you do not choose the lesser of the two evils, you get no scraps, and as I see it, the candidates they offer up at the moment are not far off those two options I stated before, just my 1 cents worth anyway.
Yeah, control by centralized authority is always a major issue.
I think a global economic collapse might happen before UBI. I think we will always need workers.
Is this a Joke? Universal Basic Income Leads to one thing & one thing Only- Complete Dependence Upon The Government- for the very basics of life- by every man, woman & child = SLAVERY!
Yup, that seems to be what would happen... :/
You can find such initiatives on steem as well, there is one about UBI, you can search for pay it forward, it's a campaign they did recently and how I found out about it. Then there's manna as well, I'm wondering if that's a different token, since Decentraland's token is also called mana, ok that's right :)
So overall I'd say it's good for society to help itself and build/regulate it's own, that's what government was supposed to be for, sadly people don't like responsibilities and principles.
So on this topic, if the income is generated and distributed, by voluntary methods great, if not, it's welfare ...
Anyways you are going to get more of what you are getting since that's a form of stimulation, I would use it one way, some other person would use it in another and a third person might abuse the opportunity and ruin it for everybody.
Thanks for the information and the time and dedication it takes to make good posts :P
It works with Steem because Steem is unique. In the real world, measures of work put in to accomplish a specific task are rewarded differently. On Steem, it's all willy nilly, not for accomplishing specific tasks for specific remuneration. UBI can work if most is automated and people do other things for the benefit of humanity, like Star Trek, otherwise not really going to work honestly and fairly while some do work and others don't.
I think the problem is as we move forward, automation get more low skill jobs. At some point we might have only really high skills positions for people and to work there you would need really high IQ to perform required tasks. So majority of the people wouldn't be able to work there and at the same time productivity will be so high, that you wouldn't need too many people to work. The question is what are you going to to do with the rest of people?
Teach them to be more skilled?
skills might be too complicated for their intelligence to master
Since i found out steem, and what a blockchain is / can do to our benefit, evolution, is amazing!, i like the idea of a blockchains to help us evolve
Something like steemit in the sense that you can get some rewards by sharing knowledge, ideas, being helpful.. and also with some kind of basic income earned by giving something in exchange, like part of cpu/gpu (ram?), or by working in some way for the community, like promoting new people, etc. Also it should protect against sybil attacks to help the platform grow free from greed, manipulation of it. Should be protected against the people it is helping because we are also the problem :)
To me, current work model is not right, in the sense some people work from 9 to 9, and the compensation not always worth it, that is too much time of the day giving out for a stable but unbalance compensation for the time and effort. 9 to 2. then the afternoons to enjoy with others, learn, study, etc with the same compensation sound better / fair.
Work like machines when we already have them, giving it to banks when we have blockchains!
banks so powerful they own the houses, make the deals to you, owned by them in debt? wtf?
decentralize this world! :) with blockchains!
Thank you for the post!
Yeah I tend to agree with most of what you said... I think a 3 day work week would be great.