I disagree with the author here on UBI. The root of the issue goes deeper than deciding to prop up job markets so that there is enough supply of jobs to meet the demand. Based on the arguments in the article, this can only be a temporary fix; eventually automation will take over too many jobs for every person to have one—or at the very least, human labor is a commodity that eventually becomes so cheap that the laborers cannot survive.
The author seems to be solidly in the 'work == virtue' camp and argues that UBI decreases the incentive to work. While partly true, the REAL work we want done is not menial, but innovative, and leads to the next big breakthroughs that increase productivity and eliminate even MORE jobs. This is capitalism, no? UBI is there so everyone still survives to have a crack at it, if they want to.
This becomes an ethical question quite quickly: does being born make you worthy of survival?
Does the world owe you a living? Most would answer "no".
Civilization is often in direct opposition to nature, which is cruel and unforgiving. A civilization in collapse will revert to natural selection, in which the fittest survive and reproduce.
I believe that we are witnessing the breakdown of the social contract as the atomic unit of society shifts from the family to the individual. Atomized individuals are much more vulnerable, and replacing the family with the state will further alienate people. Entire novels have expounded on this idea.
The world does not owe me a living, but then again, it has no rules that I am bound to obey.
Civilization does owe me a living, in exchange for my good conduct. If civilization cannot or will not provide me with my survival needs, I will instead break its laws and prey upon its people and systems to get not just what I need, but also what I want. If your system cannot reasonably accommodate everyone, you will have outlaws fighting it.
You can build walls or commit genocides, but they are not going to play any game by the rules when the rules guarantee that they will lose it.
Well said, Civilization is indeed a contract. However there are various ways to enforce the contract. In the middle ages in Europe is was enforced via religion. Behave or go to hell. In communist countries it was contribute or go to work camps. In capitalist societies so far it has been behave and reap upward mobility or go to jail. When there is no upward mobility, I am not sure if jail is enough to enforce the contract.
Ok, what I said had nothing to do with violence though. Sounds like you are trying too hard to role-play as an outlaw or a revolutionary. Consider the homeless, they may be out of a job through no fault of their own, and most are non-violent. Even as a last resort, it is not justified for the homeless to hurt people. Violence as a first principle is the folly of ideologues.
You mentioned civilization. What, exactly, do you think that is?
For many thousands of years, the underlying principle of civilization has been "might makes right". The governments in it codify their laws such that the government itself becomes the regional monopoly on the justified use of force. Within the past few centuries, civilization has slowly been moving towards "the ends justify the means". While that is slightly better, as a fundamental organizing principle of civilization, it is still not ideal, in my opinion.
For now, civilization largely consists of a mutual compact regarding when it is morally acceptable to employ violence. In exchange for obeying the rules, we are promised some of the benefits resulting from collectively standing down from a state of universal hypervigilance.
A hungry and homeless person may perceive that he or she is not getting their fair share of society's mutual benefits. Civilization has not honored its end of the bargain, so they need not honor theirs. There is no moral reason for them to restrain themselves from committing any act considered a crime by civilization. They may still choose to remain within the law, for practical reasons, but it would not be because they are morally obligated to do so. They could rebel at any time. Many do not, and never will.
Consider that if no one ever went outlaw, civilization would have little incentive to give its underclass anything. If you only need a million warm bodies to run the machines, you dump 3 Mcal down the feed chutes every day, and let the rabble argue among themselves over who gets to eat it. If no one is willing to fight the system, everyone is safe to ignore.
Civilization would serve itself best by ensuring that its bounty is distributed evenly enough such that those at the bottom perceive that they would have something significant to lose by rebelling. Though it may also preemptively defend itself against such people by ensuring that they cannot present a significant criminal or military threat if they do turn. You can build shelters and bread lines, or you can build prisons and walls. Not coincidentally, those are the typical strategies of parties considered "left" or "right" politically, worldwide.
If it truly is a last resort, a human with nothing is not ethically restrained in any way from doing anything at all. It might be breaking your car window and stealing something out of your back seat. It might be beating you to death and eating your liver. It might be to give you the sad, puppy-dog eyes, shake some change in a coffee cup, and sing the blues. A civilization that provides no benefits cannot reasonably expect conduct different from the savage, naked savannah-ape in the wild. They don't always kill each other, but they certainly don't worry about laws when they do.
Cast aside the revolutionary rhetoric for a moment and reconsider what you are saying. Isn't that the same rationale of spree killers, rapists, and other violent low-lives?
A few in recent history have been moderately wealthy, but their poverty lies not in the economic but rather sexual market. Society has denied their right to reproduce, and did not arrange a marriage for them which could have prevented their killing spree. Were they morally justified to harm others?
You are saying that gives them a license to kill. Society denied them something, so you are saying that a justifiable response is to lash out at others. You see there is no point negotiating with people like that, that's when violence is justified.
It's meant to be rhetorical; of course being born makes you worthy of survival! But what if working doesn't provide you enough sustenance? And what if you don't even have the opportunity in the first place, once the demand for human labor is low enough?
We have more than enough resources. If working does not provide enough sustenance then we need to replace the government. These are political issues not economic ones. We can solve the problem of production with automation, however the problem of distribution remains and if the government is not distributing resources to you then you need to take that government down and replace it with one that does. That ultimatum hopefully makes politicians understand that they are no longer serving their corporate overlords but the people. They have been ignoring the people so long that might get some getting used to.
Most innovation done today I would say a good 99% of what constitutes the job market is trivial and can be automated away in the next 50 years. What remains is the 1% of scientists and engineers that actually make shit happen and strive to change the game. It's fine with me if these people live like kings and the rest of us have enough resources and all the free time in the world to do whatever we want and not be encumbered by trivial work. Maybe we can bring back hunting gathering civilizations or other microcosms of civilization and ways of life.
>It's fine with me if these people live like kings and the rest of us have enough resources and all the free time in the world to do whatever we want and not be encumbered by trivial work.
One problem with this that springs to mind is that historically, relative numbers of young, bored, jobless men and crime rates are tightly correlated.
Gaming. Virtual reality. Virtual reality porn. They can be hooligans there. You want somewhere to prove yourself do it there. We should in fact create a de facto virtual reality simulation to take over lots of useless social things we do with material goods and services like expensive cars, clothing, and whatnot. All the conspicuous consumption can happen in virtual reality. That's much better for the environment too. Leave the actual real world alone and focus on implementing our imaginations in the virtual world.
I think that instead of creating pseudo-jobs to counter this, perhaps we look into the 'bored' aspect. Can we provide stimulation to avert the negative results seen historically? When we say that we have and distribute the resources needed to survive, do we include entertainment among these resources?
mmm, don't be so sure about that, at least not yet.
Drone strikes have failed to "crush" any insurgency thus far and there is a strong argument that they've inflammed the situation wherever they've been used as weapons.
Those ordering drone strikes on their own citizens might discover that some significant fraction of drone operators are unwilling to carry out such orders.
I would replace "own" with "control". They don't hoard production facilities and buildings in their locked cellar. The things they own are still being used to produce stuff consumed by other people than the owner.
No, but they control the economy. They decide what projects to start, and since they are so rich they only think in hundreds of millions at least. So we get less local control - which are all small projects - and more mega-projects/corporations. Which are better at producing at scale, but are (much) worse at providing a satisfying work environment. So we end up producing more than enough stuff, but much of it not actually needed - here you need clever marketing to convince people to consume stuff they don't need, from drugs to insurance to a new shiny car.
I think much of the discussion and the picture a lot of people have in their heads about "the 0.1%" is Scrooge McDuck, with all the money right there only for himself to even see. But in reality capitalist ownership is more a matter of control of what, where, how.
Apart from the means of production, the "body" of the economy, they also control a large share of the "blood" of the economy, the money. Wherever that flow is directed things grow, where it doesn't go lights go out.
While the rest of the population still has quite a bit of money taken together, there is another problem of psychology: Money is no problem for a rich capitalist. They can easily finance billions. But for the people who don't have such easy access to the streams of finance money is much more static, money is much more valuable for the majority of people. Also, "credit" has different meanings for someone investing in a small venture and a billionaire: The latter has financial instruments so that he ends up carrying little to none of the risk.
Not that I disagree with your sentiment, but it isn't quite so black and white.
6 men owning as much wealth as the poorest 50% of the planet doesn't actually mean much while ever they aren't keeping their money under the bed away from everyone else - it's still in distribution.
They still go to sleep at night, get up in a morning, have a shower and grab a cup of coffee then go to the bathroom, eat dinner, watch a movie and go to bed I would imagine.
The wealth that they have is an illusion even for themselves.
Now on the other hand, that six individuals have the power to control how their money is distributed is a very real problem, but the wealth itself isn't.
I haven't really been a fan of macroeconomics since the nineties when the whole thing was proved to be an illusion and then confirmed yet again in 2008.
> on the other hand, that six individuals have the power to control how their money is distributed is a very real problem, but the wealth itself isn't.
I wouldn't say the wealth is the problem, but wealth inequality is. Our current system allows for a few people to make millions of dollars a day while others can't even get jobs or afford a house. A certain amount of inequality is required to incentivize high performers to create more, but the current amount of inequality is obscene.
You can't eat money though. If they (the 6 most wealthy people) cashed in all their stock and re-distributed their wealth as best they could, the value of money would plummet since so much more is in circulation. It would crash the global economy and cause even more poverty.
Huh, it's already in distribution. Presumably those shares are held by institutions who use those for investments in projects.
That only the few can control which projects are invested in and compounded by [lack of] any semblance of "altruistic transparency" is the main concern not the wealth itself.
As usual the chorus will be something along the lines of:
"Nothing to see here. We've had these shifts before and more jobs will be created than lost and people will transition to new jobs etc..."
To which the response is, yes that's true, however never have we seen it at such a pace. Shifts are now likely to happen multiple times in a single working lifetime, as opposed to once a generation (1960-2000 - Solid State & industrial automation) or once every third generation (1800-1920 - Industrialization).
From years 0-1800 you could expect that your children would probably do the same job you and your grandfather did (more than likely farming). From 1950's on, children would likely go into a different line of work than their parents were in. Now it's common for a parent to have multiple careers with completely different skill sets and so on for their children.
This would be all well and good if one of these options were true:
1. People could adapt as quickly as advances in machine processes are changing (the outcome of which obviates machine efficiencies)
2. There was flexibility in the system which would allow people the time to adapt
The only other way to keep people around and not in poverty conditions would be to decouple human needs from business processes - which is effectively what UBI is trying to do in a roundabout way. I think has interesting long term outcomes, namely that a few dominant machine organizations would feed, clothe, house and train the population.
Tiny nit: generations are measured in 20 or 25 year increments, an "average" of how long it takes one group of humans to grow up and begin reproducing themselves. I've found that the media tends to use 20 year increments, even though 25 is a bit more accurate for an "average time for two people to have two children".
This would change your figures to around 2 generations for the current automation revolution, and industrialization to between 4-6 generations.
Thanks for that. I wrestled with using generational vs life span for that exact reason, but decided it was pedantic and not worth going into. So thanks for doing that math for me :)
I'm totally onboard with UBI if it is actually needed. The problem is people PROJECTING that it will be needed. In the current world human labor is very much in demand. Maybe people won't be able to use the specific degree that they went to school for but that just means a bit of retraining and/or a bit of mindset shift. If there is a massive outflux of jobs in America, then there are many questions that need to be answered before even approaching UBI as a solution. For example, "are all countries suffering the same job losses? If not, then why not?"
And even if they are right that we are less than a decade away from a sharp permanent decline in employment, it's still too soon for this kind of political change.
You couldn't get the new deal passed during the roaring 20's. Society has to actually realize that the old way no longer works. Radical change never happens without a great need already being present.
And we can't even really begin to guess how our society would be altered by this. Trying to predict the issue and fix them seems folly.
> In the current world human labor is very much in demand.
If this were the case, wages would be rising. Supply and demand is what kept unions around in the 60s, there was enough demand for labor that they could demand higher wages and better treatment. Now due to globalization and other things, the return on labor is incredibly low and still declining.
Wages are rising significantly in the China, India, etc and are catching up. Nobody really knows what will happen once all of the labor that is extremely cheap now is not as cheap. We can conjecture that their will be some upheaval, but nobody really knows what the effects will be.
Wages are rising for them regionally, but the return on labor is lower than it was before. Previously, a laborer working 9-5 could afford a middle class life with a house, car, and nuclear family. Can a laborer in India or China afford that now? I doubt it.
That is great, a true testament to the wealth-creating power of globalization, but it doesn't change the fact that the return on labor is significantly lower than it used to be.
You don't really have to speculate. Automation is going to do to the service industry what globalization did to manufacturing. Manufacturing got "automated" away by sending work to places where labor costs next to nothing.
Did the offshoring of manufacture jobs create joblessness?
Actually I'm not sure what the answer to that is. According to statistics the US is running at full employment. According to pretty much every other source of information, regions where manufacturing used to happen are devastated by joblessness, drug addiction, and violence...
Because the unemployment rate is a lie. It is denominated by the "labor force", which, if one excludes those who are no longer seeking work or chronically unemployed, it's basically being dishonest with statistics. One does not have to feign ignorance as to why there is a disconnect between the statistics and the reality.
There is no need to censor the data, as long as one can present it in a way that is favorable to a particular viewpoint. The fallacious argument being made with the unemployment rate lends itself to misinterpretation.
Why would we expect such? The best lies are the ones that provide deniability, have enough truth to satisfy some, and yet mislead to the extent desired.
Creating a measurement that gets blasted on the front page of news that is largely misinterpreted, while keeping the actual figures out of public view enough so that only a small fraction of the population sees it seems to not be too different from a lie.
this guy needs a little more humility. as dan boudreaux writes:
"It’s called “history.” Since humans first controlled fire and carved arrows, history is a long tale of the invention and use of labor-saving techniques and devices. Domestication of oxen and horses. Pulleys. Levers. Irrigation channels. Metal saws. The printing press. Concrete. The wheel. All save labor, yet none has led to permanent increases in unemployment.
"It’s true that the pace of introducing new labor-saving techniques has magnificently quickened in the past two hundred years. This fast pace continues today. Yet still we encounter no evidence that labor-saving techniques permanently increase unemployment.
"You’ll reply “This time is different!” Perhaps, but I doubt it"
To me, it's a lack of imagination -- not the ability to imagine the kinds of work people will be doing in 100 years (which is very difficult), but the lack of empathy/ability to get out of the here and now. In 1800's over half of US workers were in agriculture, today it's under 2%. If you were to tell a farmer that in 1900 they'd freak out, very similarly to how this guy's freaking out today.
1. We can set up a social safety net to transition displaced workers to a new trade/career.
2. Protectionism.
3. We do nothing.
4. basic income
---
Doing nothing is silly.
Basic income isn't going to pass in USA, universal healthcare haven't even pass yet.
Protectionism goes against capitalism and it doesn't help in the long run. It just extend a dying market like coals. We chose to become specialized a long time ago and not specializing is crazy.
The elephant on the room, the old question that it seems nobody wants to mention is, in a totally automated economy, "who owns the means of production?".
I don't think we are going to arrive nowhere in the discussion until we face that question.
> UBI reduces the incentive to work, and risks stranding millions of people in a subsistence living trap, able to just about get by, but cut off from the opportunity for upward mobility, as this essay details well.
The claim is prima facie false, so I looked at the source provided ("this essay" is [1]) and it doesn't support that claim AT ALL.
I think i've read one too many articles on the "oh no, the robots will flip our burgers. Let's make burgers that's unflippable by robots so we can keep doing it." Even people who don't mind working, maybe loves working will be okay with automating things and moving on. They will have other things in their hobby list/ bucket list/ garage that they have been meaning to work on.
I understand these articles are still needed/useful for people not yet aware about this issue so it's not a criticism of the article but of myself.
You're assuming that this is a rising tide that will lift all boats. What I'm afraid of is that the world will be split into capital owners who own all the robots, and the perpetually poor, who can't get jobs because they've all been automated and the only jobs remaining are minimum wage "service" jobs. And that's assuming there will be enough service jobs to go around.
We're already seeing this split occur in USA. The middle class is basically gone at this point, and the majority of people are either upper-middle class or lower class. This is not a just or equal society at all right now.
The middle class is basically gone at this point, and the majority of people are either upper-middle class or lower class.
This is only true if you have some bizarre definitions that you're using. The decline of the middle class has been a few percentage points. It's certainly not "gone".
More than 50% of households in America make $25-100k. That's solidly middle-class.
25k isnt even enough to pay rent after taxes in quite a few cities where the jobs are. If you take Boston for example and follow the rule of thumb of 30% of your net income for rent, youd need around 80k to afford a 1 bedroom apartment without roommates
What's wrong with service jobs? If the problem is not the nature of the work but rather the pay, then that seems solvable by various forms of wealth redistribution. Universal basic income can be a good component in that.
They don't pay anything like jobs of the past used to. There used to be a large middle class that could afford things like housing, new vehicles, vacations, and hobbies on a regular basis. Service jobs generally don't provide that quality of life.
I think you are looking at the past a bit optimistically. First off, many houses in the past were MUCH smaller. I know people of the WWII generation that raised their families in working class Detroit neighborhoods. They were considered middle class but raised a family of 7 in a 900 sq. foot house. Yes they went on vacations, but they drove and didn't go out to eat. They had usually only a single car. My point is that they didn't live as extravagant as you seem to think. By the way, you can still buy one of those houses for about 65k in Detroit today. A 30 year mortgage with 10k down on that is less than $300 a month for a mortgage payment.
I think one of the problems is that even if you're frugal with your resources, you're barely making it. In the suburbs, two parents with a single car working 9-5 (if you're lucky) is barely sustainable with two young kids. It isn't sustainable when those kids get a little older and have to go off and do their own activities in order to (hopefully) grow into well rounded human beings. In the a major city, transportation cost have increased too.
I cook every meal, and I can tell you, food prices are starting to look iffy to me. I can only imagine someone on a fixed/restricted income. Let alone having a spouse or a kid or two.
I also think you over estimate the average person's ability to save, even if you're not buying a bunch of extravagant crap. In the "middle class" there isn't as much spending going on as people think.
Also, sure you may be able to buy that type of home in Detroit for that little (which i argue really isn't that little... especially if you have no savings and shot credit), but if it's in the city proper, you have increased food costs, lack of public transportation, deficient police, fire and ems, high taxes as Detroit tries to recoup loses... etc. If you live in the suburbs (which most people do in Detroit, which eroded their tax base and caused their current problems), you have the issues I highlighted above.
Combine that with little job mobility and lack of a viable path to increase income... the "middle class" is taken for a ride... the poor are screwed.
That can be fixed by policy. There's enough wealth to let everyone live decently and have hobbies without having to pretend that a person must deserve it by spending eight hours per day at an assembly line.
No, I see your point. And its valid. But I was getting at something slightly different. I don't think the "tsunami" prophecy will come to be true over night. Speaking in terms of average rate of change would be over valuable rather than instantaneous rate of change. Ofcourse, the average might equal the instantaneous at some point if mean value theorem hold true, but just talking in terms of instant change makes it sound all doom and gloom when it's really not.
Even the Earth might not go out of orbit instantaneously if the Sun were to suddenly disappear.
As someone automating noodle production, I feel compelled to respond to your automated burger flipping comment.
In about 2009 I went to Europe's largest craft fair, held near Aylesbury just outside of London. There were many people there practicing woodwork with traditional hand tools (some of which they had made themselves), metalwork with traditional hand tools, pottery with hands. It was very quaint. I bought nothing but thought the people and processes were very interesting.
I think that's basically how manually building anything will look in the future - quaint, perhaps a sign of eccentricity and questionable priorities, but respectable in its own right as a pursuit - if you have the luxury of time to follow it up.
We just need to accept Marx was right, but he got the timescale wrong. I say this as a staunch Randian. I just can't not see the obvious trend towards the future.
Pixar's WALL-E is the Marxist utopia we'll soon be living in.
"There’s been downward pressure on jobs since the Industrial Revolution due to leaps in productivity brought about by human ingenuity and lucky discoveries."
[citation needed]
there were never more jobs
Automation is the natural consequence of computer technology, which is a natural consequence of human intelligence. Any effort to fight or control automation is doomed.
Believe it or not, the future is gonna be much different and you either accept it, or get crushed by the power of The Machine.
I don't think in the article is suggesting that we should "fighting or controlling" it, but, taking it for granted that is going to happen, find a way to address its consequences.
"Bill Gates suggested we tax the robots in order to slow the progress of automation and re-direct money toward human-service jobs that require a level of empathy and compassion that artificial intelligence cannot yet offer."
The article does hint at the possible need for control though.
Ok. What do we do during the transition while millions of blue collar workers take to blaming brown people for job losses?
EDIT - seems I could have done a better job with the satire here. There have been several reports that Donald Trump's Mexican wall is misguided and that the major driver of job losses these days is increased effeciency due to automation.
Yes, Democratic Party, please keep insulting working-class American citizens by calling them vile names. The Republican Party will be happy to receive their votes.
First, I'm a conservative though I lean heavily towards libertarian. That said, who called anyone names? Would you have felt more comfortable with my statement if I had substituted xenophobia for brown people? I don't think racism is as huge a factor as simple scapegoating and opportunism by politicians. The public is being misled and comments like the parent's ignore the very real impact automation is having on society.
Please don't use HN for partisan battle. It's not good if an account veers into using this site primarily for politics. We eventually have to ban those (regardless of what their politics actually are) because it's destructive of the things HN is really for.
The author seems to be solidly in the 'work == virtue' camp and argues that UBI decreases the incentive to work. While partly true, the REAL work we want done is not menial, but innovative, and leads to the next big breakthroughs that increase productivity and eliminate even MORE jobs. This is capitalism, no? UBI is there so everyone still survives to have a crack at it, if they want to.
This becomes an ethical question quite quickly: does being born make you worthy of survival?