[hoaw]

The problem is that it isn't an income issue. It is a cost issue, which in turn is a power issue. As in who decides what and therefor who society is for. Taking underprivileged people, or even anyone else, and employing them at CERN isn't likely to work (Switzerland isn't exactly cheap or big on taxes). In the Nordic countries there are "folk high schools", which gives you education (paid via taxes), housing and food for ~$650 usd a month. They are mostly in the middle of nowhere though.

Is it a good idea to educate people who gets squeezed out of society? Sure. But most societies are going the opposite way even now. Like many other things it isn't a technical issue, but a social one. There isn't really a need to wait for society to collapse before giving people affordable access to housing, education, health care etc.

[PavlovsCat]

Those who are greedy and walk over corpses today will not suddenly start sharing once they have even more or "ultimate" power tomorrow. The red flags, the atrocities we see now are nothing compared to what will flare up when it all snaps shut.

> If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.

-- Stephen Hawking ( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3nyn5i/science_ama... )

> The frightening coincidence of the modern population explosion with the discovery of technical devices that, through automation, will make large sections of the population 'superfluous' even in terms of labor, and that, through nuclear energy, make it possible to deal with this twofold threat by the use of instruments beside which Hitler's gassing installations look like an evil child's fumbling toys, should be enough to make us tremble.

-- Hannah Arendt

[MrTonyD]

I agree that power is everything. Absolutely everything. Most people forget this when they have a good job where they aren't treated badly.

At the same time, it is worthwhile to decouple the problem of power from other problems - so that we can think clearly about how we might go about controlling power. This opens the possibility for solutions which would involve funding the arts and sciences. If we don't think clearly about both problems, we'll never be able to solve either.

[hoaw]

I don't see how it can be decoupled. Most programmers have (hopefully) created enough value when in their thirties for basic living the rest of their lives. The reason you can't is because you are, both before and after, paying someone else for opportunities. You could fund whatever human activity you want today if you could pay for housing, food and information at cost.

[MrTonyD]

I'm kind of confused by your comment. I've heard lots of ideas for ameliorating the "power problem" (distribute, weighted votes, various election strategies for decision teams, feedforward techniques, feedback techniques, and lots of ways to choose best decisions.) Many say that Communism and Marxism are fundamentally ways to shift power away from the wealthy.

If power can be made to represent community values, then it becomes possible to use Machine Learning and Robotics to provide all the basics for everyone. And it becomes possible to work on fixing the sustainability problem. So each of these needs to be examined and potential solutions to one impact the other. Things don't have to be the way that they currently are - we live in a time when extensive automation is possible for providing "basics".

[hoaw]

People in this thread have essentially been saying that in the future we could pay people to do other things. I am saying that we could already do that today.

Simplified, basics might cost $500 a month, but to live in New York you are paying maybe $5000 a month. The income isn't the problem, the cost of goods isn't the problem and the premium is the problem.

It doesn't really matter which way you do things unless you can remove the premium on success, progress, prosperity or whatever you want to call it. And if we do remove the premium we don't necessarily need these esoteric solutions.

Most, or at least many, people today already have money, it just doesn't go very far. So how is giving people a small amount of money going to change anything? It probably isn't, unless there is social change. Which the lack of is therefor the problem, not providing income as such.

For the record I do think a mixed market economy that keeps the cost of living in check and taxes automation is the most obvious answer. But Sweden already sort of tried that in the 1970's. Unsurprisingly very unpopular.

[MrTonyD]

Is it really unpopular in Sweden? I gave a conference talk there and everybody I spoke with liked their system, and said that all the coverage in the US criticizing it wasn't true. They were all laughing at me (when they weren't feeling sorry for me - since by their standards I live in a primitive pre-Renaissance society.)

[hoaw]

Not the mixed market economy as such (though that is losing its meaning as well), but taxing automation.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/08/sweden-social-democracy-m...