[Trundle]

Again, I feel you haven't read the spirit of this comment accurately.

The comment specifically talked about those people not wanting to do another form of work. It wasn't a generic "lets talk about mass automation induced redundancy" which appears to be what you're trying to discuss with me.

As you'll note, I'm pro basic income. I just don't think it's fair to say I'm not properly addressing the spirit, when in this case that means ignoring the specific language the commenter chose to use and just having the same generic conversation that's continuously being had all over the internet. I'm interested in debating this guy if he does actually think work is something people only do if it's intrinsically motivating and thus we should consider taxi drivers desire to spend their day driving around rather than doing math, I'm not interested in just having a standard /r/futurology back and forth.

I mean hell, I even hedged against this with my last paragraph.

[acidburnNSA]

I didn't say they don't want to do another job. I said they don't want to go back to school. They either hated school or were bored sick of it. So they'll generally look for other jobs available at their skill level. That's why inequality grows. Disruptive tech creates jobs for educated ambitious people while displacing people who are less so. Yeah we as a society can tell them it's their problem, but there might be a lot of them, and they might be a force to be reckoned with politically. Will it escalate beyond Trump, Brexit, etc.? Who knows.

Telling people to get more school is something educated people often do, but it's sometimes a bit self-serving. It makes themselves feel like they're a winner and they deserve it when often their circumstances positioned them better to be able to get that education in the first place.

[sokoloff]

I'd like to be fit and in-shape. OK, great. Yeah, but I don't want to change at all what I eat nor do I want to do any physical exercise.

At some point, personal initiative and responsibility is going to come into the picture. Those who demonstrate it will have better outcomes in the aggregate than those who don't.

There's a genuine question of how much we should take from those who do and transfer to those who don't in order that they don't starve. It's far from obvious that the answer should be "none" but it's equally far to suggest the answer should naturally be "a lot".