
Guaranteed Minimum What? - danans
https://granolashotgun.com/2017/05/05/guaranteed-minimum-what/
======
cbanek
> Humans are agressively being eliminated from as many business models as
> possible.

Well that's true, where they don't add value. What's the difference between
the case of getting movie tickets and your waiter at a fancy restaurant? One
of them is practically a useless annoyance, and the other one is part of the
experience.

Someone in a movie box isn't going to tell you about the movie, or have a
conversation about it with you. They are there to take the most basic info
(movie, time) and money, and give you a ticket. It's also always done thru a
thick bit of glass that makes communication sometimes difficult if not
painful.

On the other hand, the fancy waiter will make recommendations. Will tell you
about other things, and is generally part of the ambiance and experience of
eating out.

Honestly, do we really like interacting with the people with minimum wage
jobs? Not really. Most people seem to prefer the automated checkout, ordering
on their phone, etc. While sometimes the person doing the job can be
interesting, or friendly, even if the person is amazing, generally these jobs
are pretty repetitive, and could be done easier, faster, and cheaper with
automation. Not only for the employer, but the customer. Most of these people
also are not thrilled about their jobs and be lazy, or do a bad job (I can't
blame them really, you get what you pay for). The only thing keeping employees
around was that automation was more expensive (and more unreliable). Now it's
the flip - labor is much more expensive and unreliable than automation. Now
people in those jobs have to prove where they add value, if it's only to watch
over the machines.

~~~
e_d_e_v
When I worked in the movie box, that was not at all true. People would come in
and ask about the movie. How long was it, whether it was any good, should they
see another one instead? We gave them real answers. Just because you have a
minimum wage job doesn't mean you're a bump on a log. If you've lost sight of
the value of basic human interaction with anyone not baked into your caste, I
pity you, even if you are in the majority. Also, 99% of movies today are crap,
so there's not much to talk about.

~~~
paulddraper
> 99% of movies today are crap

Survivorship bias. They always have been.

~~~
coldtea
"Things are always the same" fallacy.

No, there are periods that are artistically more fruitful and interesting that
others, and the history of art knows and documents several of them.

~~~
brownbat
> there are periods that are artistically more fruitful and interesting that
> others,

Sure, but the claim was just that there have always been bad movies.

Here's a test: If there's some year you know of where bad movies were
exceptionally rare, let us know. Then we'll see if we can provide
counterexamples.

~~~
jfoutz
My pick for year is 1878. I'd love to see your examples.

But really, how do you quantify good? Taste is subjective. The original
Transformers move is a great example. I didn't like it. but i believe 14 year
old me would have absolutely loved it.

It's similar to the statistics about Word users only use 5% of the
functionality of Word. But everybody uses a different 5%.

I guess if you want to go by money, i'm going to pick 1939. I'd guess about
$18,000,000 in production expenses, and about $240,000,000 in box. [1]
(arbitrarily assigning 1,000,000 to the unlisted numbers, but keeping the box
at $0 for unlisted numbers) Seems like a pretty good ROI. (although i think
of, Gone with the wind, Mr Smith goes to washington, and the Wizard of Oz as
subjectively good. 25% is a pretty good percentage)

Kind of a fun exercise poking through the years. 1997 was a standout, but
everything i looked at had memorable and fun movies. I don't think any year
would hit that 25% mark though.

[1] [http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/year/1939](http://www.the-
numbers.com/movies/year/1939)

~~~
brownbat
> My pick for year is 1878.

Very funny.

> I guess if you want to go by money, i'm going to pick 1939.

You listed several great films, but I'm not disputing there were years with
several great films, that's a completely separate point.

> But really, how do you quantify good? Taste is subjective.

I will concede that if we adopt a radical skepticism towards all aesthetic
values then the claim "every year has bad films" collapses.

However, if we agree to make that move... the original claim that "everything
in the theater now is terrible" is also false. Or "there's something special
(and bad) about the quality of film at this very moment" also collapses.

So I'm good with this move. I accept the gambit.

~~~
jfoutz
Oh, for sure. We agree "Everything I the theater is terrible" is false.

------
chris_va
I realize that UBI is a very popular position on HN, so I am hoping someone
here has given this more thought and can comment.

My problem with UBI is that all tests to date look great, but have only been
done on a micro level. The fundamental issue I would like addressed is the
macro scale inflation you would expect when redistributing trillions of
dollars without commensurate economic value being created directly.

Money is a complicated subject, but essentially it represents a transfer of a
future scarce resource. For commodities, the cost is essentially the sum of
labor to generate it (either to mine the raw resources, build the factory,
etc).

If no economic resource is being added to the economy, then you are just
devaluing money. That is usually very regressive, and in this case could be
made worse by people slightly reducing their economic labor because of the
extra income stream. I could see this leading to a bad cycle, where any
economic gains due to increasing UBI are later undermined.

Anyway, it would be nice if it worked, but I've seen no evidence that it will
in a large system. Comments appreciated.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Why would you expect inflation? All sane UBI proposals don't create money,
they just move money from rich people to poor people. If you're a Friedman
disciple, then "inflation is a monetary phenomenon" and we can stop there.

If we're moving money from rich people to poor people, perhaps we'll see the
prices of stuff rich people buy go down and the prices of stuff poor people
buy go up.

The vast majority of stuff poor people buy is demand limited, not supply
limited, so if poor people start buying more PS4's, Sony will just make more.

I'll also assert that food is demand limited, we have lots more capacity to
increase production than people think. It doesn't matter though; the problem
with poor people in the United States is that they eat too much, not that they
eat too little.

The only thing that might see price movement is housing. That's definitely
supply limited in many places. But maybe UBI will encourage people to move
from high cost areas where UBI isn't sufficient to live on to low cost areas
where it is. And movement will only happen in the margins -- most of the poor
in the States already have a place to live, so demand shouldn't increase that
much.

~~~
mamon
The problem with taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor is that
you undermine riches' motivation. If you limit the prize, then you also limit
amount of effort that one is willing to make to get it.

Therefore, after UBI is introduced on mass scale we might see a slow but
steady decline in economic activity: fewer new companies started, fewer
investments made, riches focusing on tax evasion and moving their business
abroad instead of just running and developing it, resulting in recession.

Of course you can go with nuclear option and forfeit all their properties at
once, in the name of social justice (does that ring a bell?) but you can only
do it once, and eventually will run out of the money seized this way.

~~~
zimzam
This assumes that the primary reason to start a company is to become
fantastically wealthy, which I would contest.

Sure, most founders want to get rich, but I'd assert most would be just as
happy to end up in the 8 figure range ($10's of millions) as they would in the
9-10 figure range. (And such a reduction would require taxes on a scale far
beyond what UBI would require)

Few people are going to consider starting a company and then sit down,
calculate their tax burden as a billionaire and decide that it isn't worth
starting Apple, Facebook or Google.

~~~
rhino369
Founders might looking for a good living and glory, but VC's for example are
looking to really capitalize on 100X growth.

~~~
ThatGeoGuy
To play devil's advocate: you may not need VC's as much in a UBI world. You
don't have to worry about income if your startup fails, so you're less likely
to play the VC lottery in hopes that you can ride the funding into a
successful exit.

~~~
orthecreedence
Exactly. In a UBI world, the government becomes the investor for innovation.
If an idea you tried doesn't work out, you try something else. It becomes much
easier to start a business, and you no longer get kicked out on the street for
failing.

------
jimmywinestock
We can draw an interesting historical parallel from the Roman Empire in the
2nd and 1st centuries BCE. Expansion had greatly enriched the Senatorial class
(and the Equites). Meanwhile, middle class Romans (I use the term technically
to refer those in the middle property classes able to serve in the military)
had been the soldiers who fought in the campaigns the senators had used to get
rich.

The soldiers' farms fell into disrepair while they were away campaigning and
were bought by the wealthy senators when the soldiers realised they could not
work them anymore. The Senators then used the slaves they had brought back
from overseas to work those farms thereby eliminating the need for hired
labour from the dispossessed. The now landless soldiers lived off the grain
dole until popularist leaders came along and offered to pay them directly to
fight for them. This was a key factor in the breakdown of Roman democracy and
the rise of the emperors (princeps).

------
AndrewKemendo
_The early adopters will be the largest companies with the most to gain from
improvements in efficiency._

This pattern is actually the one I'm worried about the most. New tech is
giving outsize advantage to the major players across almost every industry,
who can afford to invest in creating internal teams for these big new
technologies.

I see this in every industry I encounter. The middle class worker lost out
over the last few decades. Now the middle tier company is going to get killed
cause they can't change fast enough.

~~~
mabbo
> New tech is giving outsize advantage to the major players across almost
> every industry, who can afford to invest in creating internal teams for
> these big new technologies.

Oohh, this very much.

Inside Amazon warehouses, there are tens of thousands of employees called
'Pickers'. They walk around with these handscanners with 300x300 pixel screens
that tell them where to go and what item to get next.

For two years, my job was to make the UX of that application a little bit
faster. Not the order to pick the items (another team) not the decision of
which shipments should be processed next (also different team) or which items
should be picked by which picker (you guessed it- a different team). Just the
UX for the 0.9MP of screen space in front of the user.

Labour costs for that job are in the hundreds of millions per year, so any
team that made a 1% improvement to overall efficiency would be covering its
own costs a many times over. And we did.

Amazon can afford to get those small 1% gains multiple times per year, but for
smaller companies the gains wouldn't pay for the costs. If they want to beat
Amazon, they'll need to find a very big win that Amazon didn't see first. The
only company I can think of that did that was Kiva Robotics- wait, it's called
Amazon Robotics now.

~~~
nfriedly
I think the only realistic way for a small player to beat Amazon at selling
physical goods is to charge more and convince customers that it's worth it.

~~~
stevenwoo
At this point, if one could guarantee that what one is selling is not a
counterfeit, one has a leg up on Amazon.

~~~
adrianN
Yeah no, if you go into a normal brick and mortar store you can be pretty sure
that what you're getting is not counterfeit. Stores are still not competitive
with Amazon.

~~~
stevenwoo
Anecdotally, it's enough to nudge me into alternatives. Other people are
saying they know people who decline Walmart shopping for similar reasons but
on the other hand with about half of US households using Amazon Prime it's a
drop in the bucket.

------
redleggedfrog
I hate to say this, and this is in _no way_ a troll, but I believe the
solution for this will eventually be to kill the poor.

Not directly, at least I don't think, but through lack of health care, lack of
shelter, lack of education, poor diet, use in waging war, incarceration, and
probably once they get desperate and try and get theirs, being labelled
terrorists.

People who have money, and therefore power, in the United States are not going
to give it up so someone down the economic scale can have a modicum of comfort
and dignity and purpose. They will, carefully and covertly, and maybe even
inadvertently, remove them.

~~~
fasquoika
> this is in no way a troll

Really? Because this is this the basic premise behind one of the greatest
examples of satire in history...

~~~
kristianp
> Really? Because this is this the basic premise behind one of the greatest
> examples of satire in history...

This one?

A Modest Proposal

For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being A Burden to
Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public

By Jonathan Swift (1729)

[http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html](http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html)

~~~
andai
This is pretty fucked up.

------
bluedino
>> I noticed iPads on the tables

They're tablets, from Ziosk. iPad is the Kleenex of this generation.

I rather like those, nothing like paying (and leaving) when I want instead of
trying to track down the waiter for 20 minutes

~~~
dsacco
Yeah, those are the best of both worlds when you're not dining at an upscale
place. Don't have to use cash, don't have to wait for them to complete two
round trips just to leave.

I never understand why waiters don't give me a chance to hand them the card
immediately when they drop the check. I don't need to sit with it for 10
minutes, especially after it took 10 minutes to flag you down for it. Years
ago I was a waiter, so I don't really sympathize with an argument that they're
too busy. The whole system could be revised.

~~~
dexterdog
If you want to review the check you're going to have to wait for a round trip.
If not, just hand the card when the check comes or better yet, give them the
card when you ask for the check.

~~~
dsacco
In general I don't review the check until it's time to sign it. I've been told
that's a bad habit but...well, if anything jumps out at me when I'm signing, I
mention it then. And I think you might be surprised how many waiters seem to
drop the check and simply leave.

I'm not talking about restaurants where you expect excellent service. I'm
talking about restaurants where you can't take it as a given that they're
going to be attentive to something you say when they put the check down.

------
sparkling
From Henry Hazlitts 1946 classic "Economics in One Lesson":

You cannot make a man worth a given amount by making it illegal for anyone to
offer him anything less. You merely deprive him of the right to earn the
amount that his abilities and situation would permit him to earn, while you
deprive the community even of the moderate services that he is capable of
rendering. In brief, for a low wage you substitute unemployment. You do harm
all around, with no comparable compensation.

~~~
marcosdumay
Competitive forces are a thing.

If your competitors can hire cheap people for working there, you will never be
able to justify hiring more expensively. But if they can not hire that
cheaply, you will be able to spend more too.

~~~
fsaneq2
You will also never be able to justify hiring more expensively if you can
instead use a cheap/free machine, which is of course where we're heading,
since people refuse to acknowledge the truth in OP's quote.

------
jawns
One thing that might cushion the displacement of workers by automation is if
the workers themselves had an ownership interest in the automation technology.
Yes, they would lose their jobs, but having an ownership interest would allow
them to generate income.

Maybe instead of UBI, we should consider a scheme where we grant an ownership
interest in productive property.

One naive way to implement that is to just grant shares in an index fund that
tracks the robotics/automation sector, such as the ROBO Global Index
([http://www.roboglobal.com](http://www.roboglobal.com)).

Obviously, that's not the best way to do it, because if I've just been laid
off and have to pay my mortgage, I'm going to turn all my shares into cash.

But there might be some more sophisticated way to grant ownership of
productive property that would both generate income and also give influence to
the very workers who are most affected by the technology's success.

~~~
antisthenes
Yes, communism would cushion the displacement of workers.

But that's not viable politically in many western countries.

~~~
jawns
What I'm proposing is not communism, where ownership is held by the state. In
fact, what I'm proposing is starkly different.

I'm proposing the direct ownership of automation technology/companies by the
workers themselves, not by their government.

This is in keeping with a political philosophy called distributism, which
advocates for the widest possible (private) ownership of productive property.
Proponents of distributism typically view both capitalism and socialism as
systems that tend toward a small number of people holding power over a large
amount of capital. (In the case of capitalism, super wealthy investors, and in
the case of socialism, government officials.) They see widespread private
ownership of productive property as a way of neutralizing the dangers of both
Big Business and Big Government.

~~~
spiralx
Socialism is literally where workers control the means of production
themselves, and communism was the end-point where the state disappeared.

------
RangerScience
This feels topical:
[http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

~~~
nemo1618
I've read this twice. The writing isn't spectacular, but it's fun to see a
future like this fleshed out.

------
massysett
I have no idea why this is getting upvoted. A blog post that simply observes a
bunch of self-serve kiosk machines, has a bait title, and is used on HN for an
uninformative rehash of a UBI discussion that has taken place here over and
over. I was hoping at least for a piece that made an argument or said
something informative, not for some photos of a movie theater lobby and a
restaurant.

~~~
aeorgnoieang
The 'argument', and the admittedly more informative content, is distributed
over many posts on that blog (which I like and follow).

This was a relatively sparse post compared to others from the same blog and
is, in my opinion, mostly a 'look, more examples' kind of thing for the blog's
regular audience. In this case, literally 'look, more examples of low-status
work being squeezed out of the world'.

------
SirensOfTitan
I really don't understand why ideas like the Negative Income Tax aren't being
considered before Universal Basic Income. In that scenario, the government
just sets an income floor and pays the difference
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax)).

UBI makes little sense whenever someone making 500K a year still gets it
unconditionally. The marginal utility of that is nil, but its tax implications
are massive (how do you even fund something like that in today's economy).

~~~
scarmig
The issue with negative income taxes is that they create steep effective
marginal tax rates. Suppose you set the floor at 12k, and suppose someone has
an existing job at 12k. They immediately lose all incentive to work, because
they could make the same amount by not working at all. Your effective marginal
tax rate is 100%. There are ways to make this effect less pronounced, but
those ways end up morphing a negative income tax to be closer to a basic
income. If you get rid of the effect altogether, you get... A basic income.

Even if you make twice as much as the negative income tax floor, you're still
facing really high marginal rates. Enough people would drop out of the market
economy to make the negative income equivalent to a basic income in financial
cost, but more inefficient both because low income jobs would be obliterated
and because it'd be (a bit) more complicated to administer and more prone to
fraud.

Compare that to a basic income. There, as a first order effect there's no
reason for the person to quit the 12k job, because they're now making 24k.

It might seem silly to give someone making 500k 12k a year, but economically
and fiscally it doesn't matter: they're taxed at a rate that covers their own
basic income and plenty more.

~~~
bryanlarsen
If you set the floor at 12K, that means that people with no income get a
refund of r*12K where r is the tax rate, not that they get a refund of 12K.

~~~
scarmig
That's something fundamentally different from using a negative income tax to
implement a guaranteed minimum income.

------
lux
> My best guess is that we’re not going to resolve these challenges in any
> intentional comprehensive logical manner. At least not at first. Instead
> circumstances are going to overwhelm us until enough of the population is
> miserable enough to demand real change. That’s been the historical model and
> it tends to be messy.

This is why I think we need to accelerate the pace of automation as much as
possible. That's the only way of creating enough governmental pressure fast
enough to reduce the suffering time of the first waves hit by automation.
Counter-intuitive, but the faster we get there the less suffering in the
transition and the faster society wakes up to the fact that we have to take
care of our own.

The right to subsistence has been conveniently tied to the ability to work
because that's easy to understand, but it's always been an artificial link.

------
pasbesoin
Right now, in the U.S., I'd settle for guaranteed basic/effective health care.

If you aren't going to outright kill people, and if you expect them to
"bootstrap" and move on to the next job, you should put some effort into
making sure they are healthy enough to do so.

Not to mention basic morality.

Nor that problems treated early are smaller and cost less. And that society
pays that cost, whether through cost spreading by private healthcare (hospital
critical care -- the last line of defense); Medicaid and government programs;
or prison.

Unless you really are going to just bury them, and spring for a pauper's
grave.

Sounds rhetorical? Look at Jeff Sessions' latest mandate to prosecutors: 'Lock
them up! For as long as possible!'

Look at the widening gaps in longevity.

Follow the money (to the top).

------
TACIXAT
I always feel we will just scale larger and larger. We automate farming and
move onto industry. We automate industry and move onto service. Now we are
automating service and we will move onto something else, perhaps tech.

We are a long ways off from programs programming themselves. NLP and machine
learning are still in their infancy. Program analysis and automated bug
patching is still young tech. There is still a lot of work to be done and I am
confident we will find ways to provide value to each other.

------
etskinner
"There will always be a need for someone to wipe down the tables, mop the
floors, and take out the trash so a few minimum wage level positions will
linger on."

Hah, yeah right. Boy is the author gonna be surprised when those jobs get
automated too.

~~~
zanny
Seriously, we already have robots that mop and vacuum. Scrubbing tables and
taking out trash are just more expensive - it isn't a technically infeasible
thing to do right now, especially if you sacrifice some of the magic by just
putting UV strips on the tables to indicate where the robot should scrub, or
some such.

That eliminates the day labor, you would probably still want a weekly cleaning
crew to come around and get in all the nooks and crannies, but it is also
reasonable to design buildings around being robot-maintenance friendly, and
the more and better of a job the robots can do the less often you need the
cleaning crews coming through until you never need them anymore.

The problem right now is that buying a robot that can wipe tables is a large
upfront expense few places want to eat up. Prices will come down, though, as
they always do. The cost to manufacture machinery is fairly fixed by volume in
the endgame anyway, you just have to overcome the R&D costs.

~~~
cr0sh
> The problem right now is that buying a robot that can wipe tables

I'm not sure how it would help with the "cleaning" part of things, but what if
the tables were robots themselves? Could that help with cleaning?

It could help with a lot of things - for instance, imagine a conference center
that could re-arrange itself between groups or conferences, then put itself
"away" as needed.

Or imagine a garbage can at some venue that loiters around people with
disposable items (and perhaps reminds them about its presence when it senses
they need to throw something away - I experience this once at a "human level"
at a 5-star hotel, where instead of visible garbage cans, there were people
who stood around to take your "garbage").

One could potentially think up many such instances - where everyday items
become robots for tasks (which might also help to keep such things clean, as
well).

------
ChuckMcM
That is a pretty well presented argument for mass unemployment. But it suffers
from all such arguments in that is extrapolates "today" into "tomorrow"
without acknowledging that there are literally billions of variables at work.

A simple example of the challenges this sort of reasoning present; assume
you're a being that perceives time very slowly, perhaps your lifetime is a
mere 100 milliseconds rather than 100 years. But your perception is fairly
good and you can observe and measure things several yards away in all
direction. And you're living in seawater near the beach. Through out your
entire life, and for several generations, the amount of seawater above your
head has been growing and growing. You believe that eventually there will be
sea water "as far as you can observe" above your head.

As an outside observer with a different time scale and perception, we "see"
that this being is part of an ocean wave that once the mass of water above the
center of gravity moves ahead of it because of water below being slowed by the
the beach, the wave will 'crash' and fall into foam.

Now if we could explain this to the creature in the wave, or if the creatures
there had some sort of stored history, they might know that in the past there
have been waves and the waves have crashed and that the seawater never
extended so far into the sky. And there might be debates because _some_ waves
reached a height that was higher than any other wave in recorded history and
so maybe this time, this time the wave would grow forever.

Except from our time spanning view we realize that all of those fears and
understandings arise from the the short lifetimes of the creatures versus the
longer time of a wave cycle, and so few creatures will ever encounter another
who has experienced "the crash".

These unemployment doomsday articles suffer from a similar myopia. Yes,
technology does advance, and yes, it changes how people are employed and what
it takes to be employed. _Technology_ shifts however have not resulted in a
'net loss' of employment opportunities when looked at in the full view, ever.

So rather than focus on the 'loss of jobs' let us focus on "transition"
support. I point out to people all of the time that we have tremendous gaps
between supply and demand in what have historically been called "the trades."

The reality of that was brought home to me when I started a bathroom
remodeling project in Las Vegas. For that project I need a plumber, an
electrician, and a mason. Three classic 'trades'. I _cannot_ find three people
that I can schedule who are licensed contractors, any sooner than 6 months
from now. They are all booked up, and as a result leaving money on the table
from unfilled demand.

What is more, Las Vegas has very affordable housing. It was hit hard by the
mortgage crisis and house prices have still not recovered in large parts of
the city. So it isn't like a plumber can't afford to live in the city.

I really think we need to stop stressing out that the number of retail cashier
jobs are going away and start figuring out why people aren't able to train for
the jobs that are available and going unfilled.

~~~
wvenable
> Technology shifts however have not resulted in a 'net loss' of employment
> opportunities when looked at in the full view, ever.

This rebuttal suffers from the same problem, it extrapolates "yesterday" into
"tomorrow". A computer isn't the same sort of thing as a steam-powered mill or
a printing press. A robot isn't a tractor. When we create machines that are
simply better at work than humans both physically and mentally -- there isn't
anywhere to go from there.

There will always be jobs for people but we're eliminating jobs at a fast pace
and there isn't anything replacing it. We aren't doing new things that require
new jobs; we're doing the same things more efficiently with less people. This
should lead to the future utopia of old science fiction but we will need to
re-define what it means to be a functioning member of society.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I accept your point if you show me the evidence that supports your claim that
we are eliminating jobs at a rate faster than before.

To give an example for you to think about, the machine gun eliminated more
jobs for infantry than we have for cashiers. As veterans came home from WW II
and 'mustered out' we provided the GI bill to train them in skills other than
soldering. This provided an economy that transitioned a standard army to one
tenth its previous size.

On the social justice side I am totally in favor of, and have advocated for,
using tax payer money to provide the education and training to anyone who
needs it to take a job that could use them. An example of how that has fallen
down and needs our help was that the VA will not pay for veterans to learn to
code[1]. _That_ is a problem we can do something about.

What I categorically reject is the notion that there is any solid reasoning
for trying to artificially create jobs that happen to meet existing skill
sets. My favorite example of that failing spectacularly was the railroad union
concession of having people work on trains in jobs that were no longer
necessary[2].

[1] [https://backchannel.com/thousands-of-veterans-want-to-
learn-...](https://backchannel.com/thousands-of-veterans-want-to-learn-to-
code-but-cant-7ed60c167a61)

[2]
[http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2005/08/great_moments_...](http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2005/08/great_moments_i-4.html)

~~~
wvenable
The share of U.S. economic output that's paid out in wages in at the lowest
point since the government started keeping track of it. In 1964 AT&T was worth
$267 billion in today's dollars and employed 758,611 people. Google is worth
$370 billion but has only about 55,000 employees -- less than a tenth the size
of AT&T's workforce in its heyday.

We're going to get self-driving cars in our lifetimes and the number one job
in most states is "truck driver". My job as a software developer is to
eliminate jobs (or simply prevent new ones from being required). I'm
personally responsible for the loss of more jobs that I have.

> As veterans came home from WW II and 'mustered out' we provided the GI bill
> to train them in skills other than soldering. This provided an economy that
> transitioned a standard army to one tenth its previous size.

Of course, they transitioned into a world where all the other major countries
had their manufacturing industries destroyed by war. Again, extrapolating from
the past has it's issues; you cannot simply say "training" was the only, or
even the most significant, factor. If you had a functional body, you could get
a good job.

> using tax payer money to provide the education and training to anyone who
> needs it to take a job that could use them.

I think right now we have an absolute glut of educated people; no time in
history have you needed to be as educated as you are right now to get an entry
level position. People are literally taking jobs that don't pay anything. The
number of recent collage grads that are underemployed (employed in jobs that
don't require their degree) is at the highest level in 20 years.

> What I categorically reject is the notion that there is any solid reasoning
> for trying to artificially create jobs that happen to meet existing skill
> sets.

Absolutely; it's a terrible practice. And the thing is, you don't even have to
artificially create it. We already have "bullshit jobs"[1] that fill this
vacuum already.

[1] [http://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-creates-pointless-
jobs-d...](http://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-creates-pointless-jobs-david-
graeber/)

~~~
ChuckMcM

       > The share of U.S. economic output that's paid out in wages in at the lowest 
       > point since the government started keeping track of it. In 1964 AT&T was worth 
       > $267 billion in today's dollars and employed 758,611 people. Google is worth 
       > $370 billion but has only about 55,000 employees -- less than a tenth the size 
       > of AT&T's workforce in its heyday.
    

I think this might be an interesting statistic to look at but I can't find it.
I can find Gross Domestic Income (GDI) and the GDP which the Bureau of
Economic Analysis ([http://www.bea.gov](http://www.bea.gov)) seems to think
GDI has been about ~50% of GDP for a long time. I'm also having a bit of a
challenge evaluating your numbers, yes Google has a high market cap relative
to its workforce, but its contribution to GDP is only about $90B/year (not the
Market Cap, but the revenue) and its 55,000 employees accounted for about a
third of that. So its pumping into the economy. AT&T had revenue of $164B, not
quite double that, and higher employment costs as well. It certainly _has_
been remarkable how much money Google, Apple, and a small number of companies
have pulled out of the economy and into cash. Depending on how you measure it
you can make an argument that is the entire source of unemployment in the
current US economy. I expect at some point various governments will note this
impact and construct the Tech equivalent of 'windfall profits tax' (maybe
'unproductive capital tax' or something) in order to liberate it into the
economy.

    
    
       > If you had a functional body, you could get a good job.
    

If you are saying that you _only_ needed a functional body to get a good job,
that has not been true for at least 50 years. The amount of education and
training needed to be employable has gone up steadily as new job creation
happened in industries that were growing.

> I think right now we have an absolute glut of educated people;

We need to be careful about terms, there are many people who have college
degrees for which there is no career path other than perhaps teaching people
who would like to get that same degree. They are 'educated' and essentially
unemployable because the number of teaching positions is small relative to the
available candidates. But working it backwards from the job to the employee
does work, there are unfilled jobs available for people where there is also
training available to teach people to do those jobs. Some are 'college' jobs
and require STEM training, some are trades jobs and require skills training.

------
grblovrflowerrr
In the barista example, the robot clearly will be able to make a more
consistent cup. Maybe the solution then is to make the barista experience more
elaborate and enjoyable, sort of like performance art? Flair bartending is a
good example of that, aesthetic differences aside. Humans, when properly
trained in the creative arts, are still the best entertainers of other humans.

I wonder how this will impact the world of fine dining and establishments that
have a great reputation with their community. Just yesterday I was watching a
Japanese show about a restaurant owner in Louisiana who would spend all night
in his store going between the customers and the kitchen, coming up with new
menu items on the fly with his friends(customers), introducing people to each
other, going to the neighboring bars to visit and try out their new
drinks/food, and just really combining the best aspects of a chef, host, and
wait staff. I doubt his store will be severely impacted by automation since
you're not just buying food or a drink, you're there to be a part of something
you really love and supporting a man and his business in keeping something
beautiful alive.

Maybe this whole automation issue will give the big box retailers and chain
restaurants a kick in the butt to up add a deeper human element to their
experiences? Or maybe the space will be filled in by people who can make
spaces for people to just have a good time and connect with their community,
instead of being walked along like dogs through a programmed conveyor belt
experience.

------
erikb
Actually I would argue to social systems and people arguing like this blog
post we already have some slowing that process and its effect. We are actually
already doing "better" than nature in this regard, because of culture (if you
consider sacrificing survivability in exchange for social benefits better).

In general this is just normal evolution, something more efficient replaces
something less effecient. And it's not completely stopabble. Let's say you can
create laws that force McDonalds to keep staff and not use robots. Then at
some point McDonalds will get bankrupt and another company will take its
place. Maybe you can make the laws that forces all companies in your country
to employ people despite not needing them any more. Then at some point your
country will be too poor and gets replaced by another country, either through
invasion, or revolution, or both.

------
PeterStuer
There isn't enough 'high value' work to be done. We don't 'need' so many
people to feed or house or even entertain the planet. We have a distribution
problem of affluence, not a production problem. Even much of our current value
'work' only exist because we are externalizing the disastrous impact it has on
the planet and its inhabitants. Maybe VR will offer a way out. Keeping the
masses 'occupied' with virtual labor that has less of an ecological impact.
Grinding lvl 863 mining in an MMO, not for fun, but for life.

------
vivekd
People have it tough. To compound to this the cost of things like food,
housing and energy are sky rocketing, at least the have been in Toronto where
I live.

I don't know if UBI is the answer, or even if the problems are tied to
mechanization. But certainly I think we hit the nail on the head when we
realize that things are glib and something needs to be done. If not UBI, than
something big to ensure that everyone can share in the wealth our society
produces and that people are not scrounging, fighting and drowning in debt
just to barely get by.

------
objectivistbrit
The following table (Employment by major industry sector) should be more
widely known in this debate.

The most relevant column is the second one (Thousands of Jobs, 2014). Just
seeing this table makes clear how broad the modern economy is.

[https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm](https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm)

Here's a more detailed version:

[https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_207.htm](https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_207.htm)

------
atemerev
Guaranteed minimum income is: sustainable, sufficient for basic life
necessities, can be implemented for the current population levels. Choose two.

It is as inevitable as CAP theorem.

~~~
fahadkhan
The current population is growing. Evidently there is enough resources to
population at this level (food, water, space, air, energy, etc). If production
of resources is automated why can't resources distributed to sustain current
population?

~~~
atemerev
The bulk of costs of living in modern societies: rent/mortgage, healthcare and
education. Can't be really automated in the near future, expected to cost even
more as everything else becomes more automated.

~~~
fahadkhan
I believe education is currently undergoing a similar transition that music
and film and been through. At the end of Education will be cheaper. It already
is a lot cheaper in some cases.

Health care is tougher, due to stricter regulations (rightly so) and
reluctance from doctors but I think the transformation there is about to
begin. Look at what is happening with (open source) prosthetics.

Prime reason for rent and mortgage that I can see is wealth generation and in
a society where wealth is less important perhaps these will also decrease. You
can see more and more interest in open source, not just in software but also
other fields, is this a shift away from wealth accumulation?

From another angle, people are beginning build homes with recycled plastic and
by 3D printing this hopefully will reduce build cost. And hopefully that will
filter down to the end consumer.

------
oftenwrong
This is one of my favourite blogs. The author is able to extract thought-
provoking stories and insights from very unlikely places. The heavy use of
photos is no doubt an important part of the formula. Most of the photo essays
fall outside of HN's typical interests, though.

I linked to some of my favourite entries here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13825177](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13825177)

------
xg15
> _My best guess is that we’re not going to resolve these challenges in any
> intentional comprehensive logical manner. At least not at first. Instead
> circumstances are going to overwhelm us until enough of the population is
> miserable enough to demand real change. That’s been the historical model and
> it tends to be messy. Big fun._

The historical precidents he, I believe, refers to were less _messy_ and more
_bloody_.

------
coldtea
> _Humans are agressively being eliminated from as many business models as
> possible._

Well, that only works as long as many businesses don't do it.

See, business models tend to require people with jobs and money to spend. You
can rip profits by catering to those still working if you automate your
restaurant or supermarket first.

But it gets increasingly harder to make money for any businesses when those
whose jobs got automated away get increasingly many.

------
triangleman
I found this debate to be helpful in my understanding of the UBI:

[http://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/universal-
basic...](http://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/universal-basic-income-
safety-net-future)

~~~
dexterdog
I listened to this debate on my podcast subscription. The TL;DR is the
audience poll shifted massively toward UBI being a bad idea by the end of the
debate.

------
grondilu
> Instead circumstances are going to overwhelm us until enough of the
> population is miserable enough to demand real change.

I'm not sure. During the great depression the USA did not embrace communism.
Why should it be different with automation?

------
known
1\. Unlike Capitalism, Globalization is Zero-sum

2\. Basic income gives impetus to Social mobility

------
brndnmtthws
Freakonomics had an interesting 2 part podcast series about this very topic.
If you haven't heard of it, and these things interest you, I suggest you check
it out:

Part 1: [http://freakonomics.com/podcast/earth-2-0-economics-
edition-...](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/earth-2-0-economics-edition-
part-1/)

Part 2: [http://freakonomics.com/podcast/earth-2-0-income-
inequality/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/earth-2-0-income-inequality/)

------
micahbright
> We tend to think of that as social engineering and Godless communism.

Come on, you're making an argument for universal basic income, but you
obviously aren't educated enough to make an argument for or against it if you
think only religious bigots and those lacking your level of sophistication are
the majority of the opposition. Learn some opposing views, Buddy

------
yeslibertarian
yeah of course, I'm all for a guaranteed minimum income. I guess you are going
to do a kickstarter right? I hope you are not proposing to forcefully steal my
money through taxes.

~~~
Eerie
I'd like to see you being forced not to use anything that was payed for by
taxes, since you hate them so much. Like water, electricity and roads.

------
Kenji
We already have guaranteed minimum income. Look at the people employed by the
state. Doing mundane tasks, day by day, that could be automated cheaply and
effortlessly. Literally sorting and storing documents, something the computer
is proficient at. It is invented and completely senseless and stupid work.
Depending on the country, we are talking about 20-50% of the population being
state employees right now, in the first world. And the trend is that it's
increasing, fast. There's your UBI, and as a bonus point, it keeps people off
the streets and they think they are doing something.

