Response to Automation: Universal Basic Income?

in ubi •  8 years ago  (edited)

As a person generally interested in technological trends and as a follower of the transhumanist movement, I’ve been repeatedly hearing about this “new” concept called the Universal Basic Income. UBI is a concept that has popped up in the transhumanist movement in response to the increasing automation we all see coming. Many believe that the level of automation will get to some point in the relatively near future that it will make the capability of average humans obsolete in comparison. They believe that the answer will be to have a minimum amount of income guaranteed for all in response to this “problem” of automation.
There are a couple of glaring problems that I see with both the assumptions that people are making about the results of automation and the perceived solution to it. First, this argument that automation will eliminate jobs has been used before, and so long ago and so frequently that there’s a word for people who use this argument. They’re called Luddites, named after a fictional character, Ned Ludd, invented by workers who were displaced from their entrenched work by automation in the early 1800’s. They and others like them have since claimed that with the advent of machine automation, that people would lose their ability to work, en masse, and that there would be dwindling economic opportunity for your average worker and economic chaos would ensue.
This is obviously not the case, and the empirical evidence for the falsity of the above assumption is so resounding, that anyone who is aware of the history of the last few hundred years should laugh it off as ridiculous. The world has seen both an unprecedented population explosion, coupled with steadily increasing standard of living in every corner of the globe since the time of the Luddites. Both of these trends completely run counter to the predictions of the Luddites. They were so completely wrong that the word Luddite is often used today as an insult, implying backwards or conservative thinking that prevents adaptation to and adoption of beneficial technological advancements.
A possible counter-argument to this glaring empirical evidence against the Luddite perspective, is that this time is different due to the exponential nature of technological advancement, and the speed with which it will happen will overwhelm people trying to survive in the new economy. Ray Kurzweil, extending Moore’s Law to other technologies, has invented a concept called the Law of Accelerating Returns, showing that all technologies advance exponentially in the same way that information technology does. I believe that Ray Kurzweil has discovered a trend in technology that’s accurate and empirical in nature. The claim that humanity will be unable to cope with such a trend is not empirical in nature, because it fails to acknowledge the tendency of the human animal to very quickly adapt to technological change, in the past and especially in recent history. For example, just 15 years ago, most people didn’t even own personal computers that were connected to high speed internet connections, but now they carry them around in their pockets and nearly everyone can afford them.
These are the technological trends that the Luddites claim will displace workers, and yet people are more prosperous in general every single time we’ve seen such increased automation. All automation does to workers, is allow them more time to do more important tasks, and therefore to be more productive in their work. People create value for each other no matter how little time they need to spend doing physical, or even mental labor.
This is not to mention the rebranded economic folly that is the concept of the Universal Basic Income. UBI is a socialistic policy directive, plain and simple. It assumes, like all socialist policies, that people are unable to care for themselves, and that state intervention is the only way to protect them from the evils of industrialized society. It’s an income redistribution scheme, and like all others before it, it will tend to have the opposite effect of the claims its proponents put forth.
Again, empirical evidence is on my side on this one. Income redistribution always results in a two pronged disincentive to be productive. First, it discourages productive people from continuing to produce, because it penalizes them for being successful; and the more successful people are, the more they tend to be penalized in these systems. Second, it discourages people on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum from taking any kind of initiative, since many are satisfied with simple subsistence living, which is what a proposed UBI would provide, work-free. I’m speculating here, but it’s an educated guess based on trends I’ve seen with other government subsidies; but I also think that a UBI would nearly immediately cause price inflation in markets for things like housing, food, utilities and clothing. This would necessitate a continual increase in the UBI year after year, hastening the demise of such a scheme should it be put into place. Because of the subsidized price inflation, people at the bottom end would be kept on the bottom, and as the few productive people go about their lives, they will accelerate away from the rest of society economically speaking, increasing the gap between the rich and the poor.
People who are afraid of the coming technological wave are simply Luddites, and are unable to comprehend what things of value people will shift to when they don’t have to sit in a cubicle all day, or push buttons on a cash register. As a result, the fear-based response to their erroneous assumptions is the UBI, a socialistic, forced income redistribution program. Like all others before it, it will fail, and it will stifle not only general economic growth, it will help to widen the gap between the upper and lower economic classes.

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Nice post overall. The UBI would work just the way current government subsidies do to keep the poor where they are, as you more or less stated. I also agree that price inflation would be almost immediate with the implementation of a UBI. Another great point is that the UBI is not free, but is wealth redistribution--either through direct taxation of actual producers or a reduction of the currency's purchasing power for everyone (if they simply 'print' the UBI money), which of course leads to price inflation.
There is one issue I have with automation that no one ever talks about: "What happens when the lights go out?" What happens if the cost of fuel gets too high to fuel the machines? Yes, there will be new technologies for energy, but will they be destroyed like Tesla's Tower when there's no money to be made from it? What happens when human beings get so far away from knowing how to take care of themselves without the machines that they cannot survive without them? It is not difficult to imagine, using the very idea of exponential technological advancement. Extrapolate the basic life skills lost by the majority of youth of today over the next couple of generations. Beyond the boomers, most of us have not seen true hardships in our lifetimes--like wars requiring drafts of our loved ones, the Great Depression, Hurricane Katrina, etc, where the world around you simply falls apart and you don't know what to do. We have a false belief that things could only possibly get bigger and better from here on out. It is not a sense of doom I'm pushing. It is a realistic observation of the ebbs and flows of societies throughout the history of mankind. Civilizations rise and fall. Catastrophe happens. Humans must never lose the ability to take care of themselves without having to google it. Nature cannot always be conquered.

Thanks for the comment. I thought your response was good enough to deserve a new thread, so I posted my response here: https://steemit.com/ubi/@randr10/response-to-automation-universal-basic-income-part-2

Hi @randr10 :)
I agree that the UBI is a terrible idea - it's socialism/communism, and crushes souls and productivity accordingly.

I disagree that the world is better today for most people than it was in the past. I classify that as an 'official myth'. I.e. it's taught by schools. Real history books, and the evidence of our eyes, paint a different picture - of a past high technology, culture, science which has been slowly lost...

I suspect that the world has actually got a whole lot worse for most people over the last millennia. America used to be filled with abundant wildlife, and free people who had no taxes to pay, for example... Australia too.

The coming 'robot revolution', where all people who drive for a living (for a start) are going to lose their jobs, is exactly the sort of thing governments should be preventing. If governments were legitimate they would. It'd be easy. They could ban (or tax) them solely for commercial vehicles - which would work for everyone, except big business profits...

Hi @veritopian :) Do you care to point us in the direction of "real history books?" I was specifically mentioning the history of the last few hundred years. It's pretty well documented by scholars of that time, so I have no reason to believe other than that things generally sucked for humanity during the period immediately preceding the industrial revolution. Things have generally gotten objectively better since then.
I also believe the concept of a noble savage to be a myth as well. Also from early American and European scholars of the settlement era, it's evident that the Native Americans were constantly at war with each other when Europeans settled, and that while they may have been more at equilibrium with nature, that's not necessarily good for the people living in it. Nature, and the other life that has evolved around us, is constantly trying to cut our lives short, and overcoming it is of the utmost importance. They had short life expectancy, no modern amenities, and they were generally very ignorant of the world around them. Some even thought that the Europeans were gods because they wore armor and rode horses.
Being of libertarian/anarchist persuasion, I don't believe that government meddling in markets is a good thing at all. The way I see it, if we have robots to drive us around, we don't need to waste our time doing the miserable task of driving, especially in traffic. I'm actually an automotive enthusiast. I like to drive, but commuting back and forth to work in heavy traffic is one of my top 5 worst experiences in daily life today. The same goes for commercial drivers, a task which I did for a brief period as well. I can't imagine that many of them find sitting in one place for more than half the waking day while their circulatory and musculoskeletal systems atrophy, shortening their lives considerably, an enjoyable experience. If we get robot cars, we'll have fewer deaths for one, less stress in daily human life, and drivers, both personal and commercial, will be freed up to do more important and valuable tasks. I don't see a downside there.

Sure. Lots of info about the Taino, for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ta%C3%ADno#Culture
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/taino/taino-conquest.htm
"Although a peaceful people, the Taino did not simply sit around waiting for the Spaniards to bring about their destruction."...

If you don't believe in the 'noble savage', please read about Tecumseh. He was a great man.

As an Englishman, I know for certain that life on these isles has degraded in every important way for many hundreds of years. Where I live was where the last free hunter-gatherers lived in Britain until the 17thC when they too were genocided.

They had short life expectancy, no modern amenities, and they were generally very ignorant of the world around them.

That's not correct. In many ways they were far superior to us. They lived longer, healthier lives, and understood reality far better than most westerners did, or do today.
Look at vids of modern-day hunter gatherers - e.g. in the Amazon, and see how at 60+years old they look about 40, and are still climbing trees for hours hunting monkeys.
I saw one vid, with an 80 year old, and he looked about 50.

We're taught at school, and by the media, that this is the best culture that's ever existed. Right? Do you think they may be hiding something?

This year, in England, we can expect perhaps 20,000-40,000 people to die of cold in the winter. These people don't have 'modern amenities'! Native people would never let their old folks die of cold!
(Last years 2015:)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/weather/11382808/Winter-death-toll-to-exceed-40000.html

See the link below. Life expectancy of 43 years. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/707491

I don't have a login for that. Funnily enough...

The move to agriculture from hunter-gatherer did cause a (big) drop in life expectancy, and they use those numbers:
http://www.rewild.com/in-depth/longevity.html

Also the stats are done "from birth", including child-mortality, which can skew results.
http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins/life-expectancy-myth-and-why-many-ancient-humans-lived-long-077889

Plenty more out there on this - I just did a quick search.

I take it you believe the cult-propaganda you were programmed with relentlessly at school and in front of the TV: "That this is the best society that's ever existed"?

Sorry to pop the old bubble mate, but it's all lies. This western 'culture' is more 'cult' than the Moonies...

Actually, reminds me, I just watched this on cult-behaviour. Listen, and see if you think government fits the bill of 'cult' according to the official definitions... ;)

Hmm, interesting. That site didn't require a login for me to read the article. Did you try x-ing out the prompt?

I haven't had time until now, but I also wanted to reply to your comment about lies and history. The lies I've seen about the Native Americans are just the same one's you're espousing here. You see, here in the states, they teach that the Indians were only victims, that they never attacked whites unprovoked, and that everything was stolen from them. They were noble and communal people who were in balance with nature according to my public education, and the whites came and killed them in an effort to steal everything they had. Do a little digging, and you'll find plenty of first-hand accounts of the treachery of Native Americans, in which some were conniving, evil, murderous and even cannibals. The only reason they had such harmony with nature is because it killed most of them at a young age and they were never able to conquer it.
That's not to say that white Europeans weren't without fault in all of this, or that as a culture it's perfect, but it certainly wasn't anything close to the genocidal mania it was characterized as by my school teachers and the Hollywood elite. Sorry to burst your bubble buddy, but what you're saying is the lie. The white people made numerous efforts to coexist with the natives, and they often were the first to draw blood.
Those 40,000 dead you talk about in England from winter weather are pensioners. What that means is that they are supposedly taken care of by the state, pointing to the fact that the reasons for their deaths isn't the lack of compassion and empathy in European culture for the elderly and infirmed. Quite the opposite. Most of these people wouldn't even be alive at this age in a hunter-gatherer scenario. They simply are more susceptible to cold than the young, and that's why we see more of them dying during winter. And yes, infant mortality definitely should count towards life expectancy numbers. They don't skew anything, they're important data in determining the health of everyone, not just the strong who are lucky enough to survive birth as in hunter-gatherer societies.