You realize when you get automated out of your job, you need a new job? The "interesting problems" you'll be left with are hoping that you don't need to go to the ER after your health insurance ends
You’re posting on a site where many people think that for-profit employment will be replaced with UBI in the sense of a stipend which will free most people up to pursue their dreams and desires.[1] So 200+ years of for-profit employment and wealth extraction which created a very impressive wealth disparity until One Weird/Genius Policy proposal by Andre Yang/Musk will usher in the post-scarcity era.
[1] As opposed to something that will keep you alive but perhaps not give you any means of expressing or pursuing your interests. If UBI even becomes a thing.
> You’re posting on a site where many people think that for-profit employment will be replaced with UBI in the sense of a stipend which will free most people up to pursue their dreams and desires
Sure, but until you actually see evidence that this will become a reality instead of a pipe dream, you should be planning accordingly, right?
Even the most UBI optimistic people should expect there to be a very painful period of time where things are being automated and people are unemployed en masse which could last a long time before any kind of UBI is enacted
There's already UBI. It's called fake jobs. Programming has already mostly automated itself out of existence for a long time. Very few developers ever get the opportunity to write data structures and algorithms, because most of what they do is just slapping together glue code for existing libraries at cushy sinecures at places like Google, where PhDs are paid to write HTML and play air hockey. If the machine can write the HTML and glue too, then there won't be much left over about the job aside from the ideology and politics. People will be given positions not for their skill but for their loyalty to land owners. The only solution I feel is to use technology to make sure our brains continue to be smarter than the latest $300 graphics card.
How come is it a US only problem? Well, the way the problem is stated is US only, but everyone will need a new job to bring bread on their plate or pay other bills? Whether they live in the US or not. Is it not true?
You're not wrong - but healthcare is the concern here because it represents the risk of sudden, unexpected, and massive costs at the worst possible time. Whereas having to eat and pay rent/mortgage is a known and predictable cost we can plan and prepare for.
While the ACA filled a lot of gaps, it's still possible to find yourself without insurance and without any insurer who will take you on - or being unable to afford it (which is what unemployment tends to do to people...), especially if you're above the cut-off limits for state and federal aid.
As you know that is only one of the potential problems caused by unemployment. Pointing out a concrete, potential life-or-death problem gives more punch than just saying abstractly that there will be problems.
So the boring version: you will be left with the problem of a sudden loss of money as (concurrently) labor power vanes because LLMs don’t go on strike and you have no one to complain to since no one with any power has to care (see: LLMs don’t strike) that unemployed person #5468 today couldn’t pay their mortgage again and/or started on an opioid death-of-despair campaign.
You're getting hung up on an irrelevant detail and missing the point. The point is that one will still have bills to pay even after they don't have a job. That is not a US-only problem, that is a human existence problem.
Programmer's job isn't writing code - it's solving customer problems. And it's unlikely that customers will stop having (and creating new) problems.
"No job" is only a problem for someone who refuses to learn and move on. It's similar to having a child - first you have a job as a technician, then teacher, then mentor and lastly you are out of job until your customer makes you grandkids to care for, or something. ;-)
Put a programmer out on the street, and they'll be on LinkedIn in 5 minutes with a big "For Hire" sign on their profile, like 99% of other people.
The idea that programmers serve some higher purpose in society ("solving customer problems") that frees them from the whims of corporate restructuring or bad management is laughable. Pray tell, how many programmers employed by Google or Netflix are solving actual problems? As opposed to helping build a bigger competitive moat?
Customer in this situation is the corporation - it's not much different; someone pays for some result. And there's enough reasons to hire programmers even when they don't write any code (look at the amount of people FANG hire - programmers who actually write code are minority).
Jobs as we know them have only been around for 500 or so years. There have been other ways of living beforehand and I expect we'll be about to figure another way in the near future. The only real argument I see for keeping jobs around even when human labor isn't needed anymore is the protestant moralistic one, and I don't buy that one.
The abstract occupations of most people for all the thousands years of advanced society (marked by the ability to accumulate and hoard food or other kinds of wealth) have been marked by subjugation in service to some elite classes. Naturally some people are a bit concerned about their future and are not content to just stumble/bumble into the future and see what kinds of “ways of living” the powers that be have in store for them.
Automation doesn't replace human work, it just amplifies how much work can be done.
There is -plenty- of work out there that's currently not worth taking that will be suddenly worth it if you can code 100x faster than you can now. It might be for jimbob's landscaping company instead of google, but that hardly matters outside of your ego.
So the US folks will have a real problem rather sooner than later. Of course, we others as well, better start investing time in woodworking, mechanics, healthcare or agriculture...
But health insurance is easier if you’re getting paid (as are many other things including eating and rent/mortgage) is different from the idea that healthcare is tied to a job post-ACA.
I’m not totally seeing your point. Being paid allows you to spend more money. I agree with that statement.
Many countries have managed to separate healthcare coverage from your current employment status with better results and at lower costs than in the US. The US should learn from others solving problems better.
Also healthcare has been tied to work in the US since long before the ACA.
[1] As opposed to something that will keep you alive but perhaps not give you any means of expressing or pursuing your interests. If UBI even becomes a thing.