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Universal Basic Income

TheAuthority

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Xela Grand Master

Xela

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1 minute ago, sidcow said:

@Xela will do OK too.

I will be applying oil to the arm of the burger flipping robot until the robot maintenance bot arrives. 

Flippy might be able to flip the burgers but he can't cater for special orders - like no cheese on one and extra gherkins on the other. 

Flippy needs to earn his 5 star badge first. 

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sidcow Grand Master

sidcow

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5 minutes ago, Xela said:

Flippy might be able to flip the burgers but he can't cater for special orders - like no cheese on one and extra gherkins on the other. 

Flippy needs to earn his 5 star badge first. 

I used to work at McDonalds and had my 5 stars. 

I can tell you if flippy worked at that speed in Birmingham Union Street on a Saturday afternoon he would be kicked to kingdom come. 

However its yet another case of what I keep seeing and worrying about.  This is just a novelty at the moment.  It's just an example of what's to come, day 1 of the future.  It will get better and better and faster and faster and less and less prone to mistakes until it is quicker and better than a human. 

At the same time costs will come down. 

This is the first report I have seen though that specifically states "no one seems to know what the other jobs are though" 

If a team of people in 99% of workplaces became totally unnecessary the company are not going to look around to see what else they can train them up to do, they are going to get rid of them. 

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LondonLax Grand Master

LondonLax

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There are always two schools of thought on technology taking jobs. The first says that technology will take human jobs and humans will become redundant whilst the second says that technology has always taken some jobs but others have been created so it will be fine in the future as well. 

There is a couple of things to consider though and the main one is the emergence of A.I.  The argument from the second camp always goes along the lines of ‘we will always need people to program the robots’ or ‘we will need people to think creatively where robots can only do rote tasks’. The trouble is, with A.I., that is no longer true. When we crack quantum computing robot processors will have the processing power required to think in creative ways, to create art or design software for other robots etc. 

The second point is that while in the past jobs have always been created in response to technological advances they have not been created at the same rate that other jobs have been lost. For example, prior to the industrial revolution people worked in agriculture from childhood through to death. The manpower that was required to produce demanded it.

It wasn’t until machines were invented that people were able to be released from this labour force and take up education prior to starting work in their teens. As time went on and more jobs were lost to technology people stayed out of the workforce and in education longer, now it is typical that people stay in education into their 20s.

In the future people will need to stay out of the workforce even longer, if they ever get an opportunity to join at all. 

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VILLAMARV Grand Master

VILLAMARV

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15 hours ago, blandy said:

This is complete rot. The whole notion that machines will take everyone’s jobs is rubbish. I’m short of time right now, so I’ll just mention footballers, as this is a football message board. People won’t pay to go watch Man City robots v Chelsea robots.

GOALLLL!!!

giphy.gif&f=1

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sidcow Grand Master

sidcow

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9 hours ago, LondonLax said:

When we crack quantum computing robot processors will have the processing power required to think in creative ways, to create art or design software for other robots etc. 

I was going to mention in an earlier post that I read something the other day about some new development which means that the cost of making quantum computers is going to fall massively.  Tech that is considered a barrier to most of this due to cost will get cheaper and cheaper enabling more development to happen. 

You hit the nail on the head about what is worrying me. Almost universally the people who think this is poppycock say that all previous technological revolutions have created more jobs, but this ignores the thing which is fundamental, that because of AI any new jobs can also be replaced. 

There will undoubtedly be fringe jobs where the actual point of what's going on is around human interaction but in terms of mass employment I just don't see a future.  

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snowychap Community Regular

snowychap

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On 04/03/2018 at 22:07, Michelsen said:

I have to say I am surprised by the tone of your post. We can disagree, sure, but I didn’t think anything about my posts was of such a nature that required taking our gloves off. 

1) My ideal society is a society without economic class structures. My fear is that by giving people a UBI, that is big enough to keep you from wanting to change the system but not big enough to erase class divisions, we’re only providing the capitalist class with another tool they can use to keep their privileges. I’d rather keep working for real equality. 

2) A UBI would give tories and neo-libs a very handy excuse when they want to cut something else next. It would be a terrible excuse, but when has that ever stopped them before? 

3) The context of my initial post was the, according to some, inevitable future scenario where automatization leads us to surrender a near-monopoly on employment to the capitalist class. If we accept that in exchange for a basic income, then I can’t see how that would not cement class divisions and make the rest of us de facto clients of the capitalist class. They wouldn’t accept financing the UBI out of the kindness of their hearts, they’d be paying to keep us happy enough not to challenge their position. 

4) I can easily see questions being asked about the need for universial education if we accept permanent unemployment as the norm, rather than the exception. Many, many people have a strictly instrumental view of education. Again, they would be wrong, but again, when has that ever stopped them? 

5) I can easily see the capitalist class and their political allies using the UBI as a shield to protect them from egalitarian threats. ‘Look at the nasty socialists! They want to take our money! Since our money pays for all of your income...’ etc. 

6) I certainly didn’t attempt any theory of anything, and nothing I wrote was intended as a description of the status quo or the innate nature of all work. I was describing a belief that fair work for fair wages is a good thing and a better alternative than unemployment. It doesn’t strike me as too controversial, and I certainly don’t think having that position affects my ability to teach history, but I think you could have made your point without making such remarks anyway. 

7) I put in what I thought was obviously a self-depricating joke about semi-Marxism. I’m not sure if the lable actually applies to me, although I do find his beard impressive and believe we could probably find some common ground when it comes to, let’s call it, the potential value of work. 

I'll begin by reiterating my apology from earlier about the tone of my post.

The tone may well have been in response to the four slogans that you put forward as the part of your reply to my question 'why do you believe that it would do what you say?' It appeared a dismissive and unconsidered response to my question but that's a reason and not an excuse.

I'll go first to my comment about you being a history teacher. I didn't mean it to be a criticism of your professional abilities though I can understand that it may have come across that way and for that I wholeheartedly apologize. What I was trying to get at was that history is about change, that today is not what yesterday was and that we shouldn't believe that tomorrow will be as today. That's a little garbled so I'll quote this bod's tweet as a better way of expressing it:

 

You may counter that there are certain things within that ever-changing world that appear to be a constant and the battle for equality or for 'fair work for fair wages' is one of them. Quite possibly, but we haven't come anywhere near to solving that issue (and I wouldn't propose a UBI as the solution for it) and, separately, the issue would always have to be viewed as part of the system in which it exists (and therefore not quite the constant it would appear).

I think that your fight for equality in the terms in which you've put them forward are an attempt to fight the last war and what I mean by that is not to deride the notion of 'fair wages for fair work' (it isn't in any way controversial to me) but to question the mechanism for how you achieve this and how the process by which you achieve this is able to exist whatever the circumstances are (different levels of employment, different political and economic systems, &c.). That fight for fair wages for fair work is predicated firstly on there being sufficient work and then that the fair wages for that work provide enough to meet the needs of the workers. If either of those things does not hold true then a demand for fair wages for fair work is going to be of no good to those unemployed, underemployed or not sufficently recompensed.

Your comments about excuses for neo-libs and Tories or people with a strictly instrumental view of education are noted and accepted but, as with my comments to @VILLAMARV, that's a criticism of those groups of people not of a UBI. It would make sense to try and address those potential issues when introducing the system just as it makes sense to try and address any potential issues with any kind of system one may introduce.

I have to say that I'm not paricularly looking at a UBI only in terms of addressing an inevitable issue of permanent mass unemployment (I don't do inevitable predictions - all predictions are merely punts). I think it can have benefits (such as expressed earlier concerning the poverty trap) in a whole heap of situations from today's relatively low unemployment (but perhaps quite high underemployment and with significant issues for those at the margins of the labour market) to a hollowed out labour market where there is still relatively high employment but it is precarious in its nature and not particularly well recompensed (even though that recompense might still pass a test of fairness) to the doomsday that you've said is the context for your initial post.

I can see that if one is purely taking it as a response for a time when there is no work for the vast majority then it would simply appear to be a pay off from those that have to those that don't and, viewing it purely in that way, I can see why you may well come to the conclusions you have. I think that misses discussion of the thing itself and, by way of doing that, something that is part of the idea of a UBI that could be taken from it and implemented even if a UBI is not workable or not the solution or even a solution.

One other thing, which is more of an observation than a point about UBI, is that I remember in the (relatively) distant past having a discussion about universal benefits where our positions were somewhat reversed in that you were convincing me of the importance of universality in order to reduce the threat of the us v them type of argument.

 

Apologies if that's all a bit rambling and difficult to clearly digest. Lack of sleep & other excuses.

 

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VILLAMARV Grand Master

VILLAMARV

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11 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

This one is pretty good as well from a couple of years back. The guy with the hockey stick is playing a dangerous game!

 

All the QR codes everywhere makes this one very 'They Live' to me.

I suppose the thing that's a shame is we're effectively discussing military hardware here :(

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