[untog]

> We're better off with something like UBI

I strongly agree... but we don’t have UBI. So for me it’s still a moral dilemma. That person is still out of a job and might be out of a job for a very long time if the economy is weak. Yes, there are answers to this problem like UBI, but as someone living in the US I can’t honestly say I can see it being implemented here any time soon. So my work has the potential to devastate someone else’s life.

(and yes, I know, I know, if I quit someone else will take my job and it’ll all happen anyway. Doesn’t mean it isn’t still a moral dilemma)

[virgilp]

But UBI won't just happen by itself. It needs a few things:

- Work actually getting done (through automation) - i.e. the "supply side" needs to be there

- People that demand it/ see it as necessary solution to _some_ problems (it won't just appear if there's no problem to be solved)

For me, it's simple: does it move society in the right direction? Yes, it creates some transient problems - but progress always does.

[untog]

That’s a very easy thing to say when you’re not the one on the receiving end of these “transient problems”, though.

Would you tell a homeless person to their face that their poverty is a shame but it’s the price we need to pay for progress? And that you don’t know with any certainty when positive change will happen?

[virgilp]

I have another argument that might be more convincing for you: automation makes things cheaper, so by definition it creates wealth for society. Now, you can argue that said wealth is unfairly distributed - and indeed wealth distribution itself is a thorny subject. But it is also a completely orthogonal one! I don't think we should stop from creating wealth until we find a "satisfactory" way to distribute it.... That feels like it would be a very bad idea to me.

[virgilp]

There's a difference between being needlessly cruel and believing something is necessary and good, despite it creating some problems for some people for a while.