Within a few years I think UBI or UBS will be required for people to continue living, in which case basic needs (bills) won't be a concern. There's just no way for us to transition fast enough to avoid high unemployment as AI replaces large swaths of jobs. I do worry about the ~10 year transition it will take for societal governments to react.
I think UBI is a pipe dream. I live in the UK and even with our social safety net which is much stronger than the US's, I can't imagine the government ever handing out money adequate to live a middle class life to large chunk of the population.
UBI has problems that far as I know haven't been addressed. Vast numbers of people no longer being occupied doesn't seem like it would lead to a healthy society. And how do you uphold democracy when the government is effectively handing out the paychecks?
Whoever said anything about middle class? Ubi is the poverty level, it could never be anything else.
As for people not being occupied, the theory is that since ubi doesn't stop if you find employment, it would lead to less idleness than the current means-tested social safety nets. In test cases though it seems to depend a lot on culture, Finnish communities saw no difference in employment while Indian rates of business formation tripled.
>Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
Can't uphold what isn't there, lol
As for how do we avoid becoming WALL-E blobs... elite opinion seems to suggest the UBI will be just enough to prevent people from going into the streets with pitchforks, but not enough for a dignified life. (Enough to live in ze pod and eat ze proverbial bugs.)
I don't see employment being a very big thing (unless AI creates some kinda fake jobs economy to pacify the humans, which would be a rational thing to do).
The crisis of meaning is going to be worse than the economic crisis, and I think people would literally pay to work rather than question their existence on such a deep level.
Beyond fake jobs and human-only jobs (robot can't replace the cute barista at Starbucks!), I think entrepreneurship will be the only real vehicle. So... basically how it already is today.
Within a few years I think UBI or UBS will be required for people to continue living, in which case basic needs (bills) won't be a concern. There's just no way for us to transition fast enough to avoid high unemployment as AI replaces large swaths of jobs. I do worry about the ~10 year transition it will take for societal governments to react.
This strikes me as wildly optimistic. People aren't going to be able to live on UBI at a level where massive political and social unrest is averted unless it's like $2k per person per month, minimum. And I'm skeptical that the US government is going to start printing $8.5 trillion dollars of UBI in the next decade.
This also seems wildly unrealistic. In a world where we need UBI because automation is destroying most jobs, I'd also expect food to get cheaper. In fact, I think almost everything would get cheaper except real estate, which is actually where I worry you'd see the kind of inflation you're talking about.
UBI/UBS requires a very solidaric community. But the current situation (in Germany) is not about finding any job but taking a low paid, hard working or even dangerous job (nursing service, shifter, even soldier, public sector).
UBI makes it even harder to find people for that kind of jobs. Not paying any social benefits and increasing the pressure on the unemployed to take these jobs is much more interesting for everyone that is not unemployed. Please don't judge me for writing this. It's the feeling I have, not my view.
A lot, I'd say even most people in Germanys long term unemployment scheme which are not already working part time (Aufstocker) have severe mental and physical health problems. More pressure isn't going to help those people but it's the current Government's shtick.
I'd say UBI would make it easier to find people working in demanding jobs because you could to them part time, so they don't wear you down as much. It's much easier to work as a nurse for 20 hours a week.
Only way UBI works is if the govts increase taxes on all income or any income to almost 90%+...
And then re-distribute to each person accordingly. That ain't happening, no govt will be willing to try that, and rich won't let that happen, they will become slightly rich from very rich. that just ain't happening.
If we are able to fill our storefronts with magnificent AI creations for cents on the dollar, would that be profitable enough for the producers to pay enough tax to cover UBI? Producers would still face pricing pressure to lower margins to eat up all those productivity gains. Every path forward seems very uncertain
Great point! But for how many weeks will you enjoy your UBI before the rulers say "Okay, now that we're paying all of your salaries, it's time for you to do the work we need. Off you go to build the railroad or the giant dam! Here's a pick-axe."
UBI just inflates the currency. What will hopefully end up happening is that displaced workers can do jobs which aren't economically viable atm, but are still socially viable: Imagine an army of workers cleaning up the streets (literally) and transforming your town into a clean, well maintained cityscape. Etc etc.
IMO this cannot work unless there is enforcement to do such work. Most people would prefer to take their money and do fuck all in return.
If I was a dictator that wanted to institute UBI, I would do it in exchange for every beneficient getting literally conscripted once in a while to do those shit jobs.
Why would the people with control of things go out of their way to keep the rest of us alive via UBI?
I get your point but what about a step before that - since when is that anyone's goal? From a sociopathic leader perspective, vast populations are only great for armies and tech has surpassed the need for raw manpower at that scale (and the AI you fear would make militaries require even fewer people).
In your AI scenario is it more likely the ruling class gives everyone free living standard or just lets like 40% of the population die? If all the leaders get together this is the ideal outcome for them -- vast power and control without enough civilians to rise up, climate change becomes easy to reverse with vastly lower power and food needs, and reduced threat of global war because nobody has an occupying size army anymore. This is like the new version of "mutually assured destruction" as a strategy for global peace. I can't speak for the world but I can imagine some of the twisted folks currently in power in the US seeing this route as their destiny and simply them doing the best thing for humanity as a whole -- longtermists are in, nazis know a final solution when they see one, and Christians are honored to have the duty of bringing forth the second coming.
One's job and the rest of one's life are not clearly delineated. Best friends and spouses are often met through work, which is inexplicably linked with one's actual performance on the job. This article treats them as if they are isolated. Also, it's worth noting that one's sense of purpose (as in career) is important to happiness, just as being part of a strong social network in one's personal life is. Balance is key.
I get exhausted because of the cognitive overhead of switching between 2 or 3 projects at once. I always want to be manually verifying or prompt writing, and keeping it all straight is taxing. But I’m getting so much more done.
funny story, figured out the root cause behind 3 years of brain fog just a few hours after i left this comment. it wasnt long covid; turns out my eyes were so swollen from screentime, that they were cutting off blood flow to my prefrontal cortex. started using a portable eye massage device, and poof - back to normal. just have to clean up the mistakes i made while i was sleep deprived and caveman like.
I work at a company that maintains one of the largest Rails codebases in the world (their claim, but believable). My experience has been the opposite - Claude and Cursor have done a wonderful job of helping me understand the implement new features in this gigantic codebase. I actually found out through AI that while I enjoy writing code, I enjoy building great software better, the coding was just a means to the end.
I am having a blast at work. I've been leaning hard into AI (as directed by leadership) while others are falling far far behind. I am building new production features, often solo or with one or two other engineers, at lightning speed, and being recognized across the org for it. This is an incredible opportunity for many engineers that won't last. I'm trying to make the most of it. It will be sad when software is no longer a useful pastimes for humans. I'm thinking another three years and most of us will be unemployed or our jobs will have been completely transformed into something unrecognizable a few short years ago.
I think what GP meant is that when it involves money, suffering is nearly impossible to prevent. That's why you have puppy mills, for example. Most people don't know how the puppies are raised, they just see the cute puppy in the shop. The same way people see a pretty piece of meat in the supermarket and don't know its history.
Raising animals for meat is theoretically doable with no suffering (not sure about milk), but it's not happening in practice. With pets the situation is better - a lot of people adopt and some care about how their pet was raised if they buy it from a breeder.
I didn't intend to. I think that domesticated animals have long had a harmonious relationship with humans so I find it a bit difficult to believe that it's always an ethical dilemma. Pets are just the most obvious lens to identify that.
I also think we need to be careful with the idea that we should entirely avoid suffering because it's impossible to do.
I think that it is what you know of the history of animal domestication and of pets that makes you think that there is an acceptable and low amount of suffering.
For pets, I don't think you understood what GP was saying: pet breeding involves massive amounts of death of puppies/kittens that aren't pretty enough or don't manage to survive infancy, the female breeders are basically confined to cages and "producing" all their life, some short-nosed breeds of dogs and cats are even illegal in some countries because they spend their life unable to breathe properly, pets are abandoned and killed, etc. The happy pets you see in the street are not representative of what it is to be a pet. But yes, these ones are not suffering.
As for long and harmonious, as much as we tend to see anything in the distant past as innocent, I'd remind you that the systematic killing of male chicks, the killing of veals to avoid them drinking all the milk, the killing of all animals as soon as productivity drops beyond a threshold, are not new practices. No animal wants to be enslaved. Same as no human wants to be enslaved.
I'm not attacking you, just attempting to give you an idea of why other commenters believe animal domestication is not ethical.
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