

Forget a million jobs - read

It just occurred to me the government&#x27;s desire for startups to generate one million jobs hasn&#x27;t been stated very well. It&#x27;s a little limiting.<p>It&#x27;s not one million jobs the government wants. It&#x27;s to have one million people have the income they would have had if there were one million jobs for them.<p>The difference is you can find a way to give the people that income without generating the jobs. A small semantic detail, but with huge consequences to the degree of freedom you have tackling the problem.<p>The way out isn&#x27;t only to try generating one million jobs [1]. You could generate a fewer number of the type of jobs that have the potential of generating basic income for one million people.<p>Like many government plans, there are good intentions behind this one that miss the forest from the trees. The bigger idea challenged is whether people should even have jobs. Should you be working your entire life? That&#x27;s complex enough of a question I doubt the government would be the one to fix it. It&#x27;s largely a question of imagination. The best solutions are likely to be so different from what we are expecting we&#x27;ll look back in embarrassment at our current Stone Age of jobs.<p>What could generate basic income for a million people?<p>[1] - http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.ycombinator.com&#x2F;new-rfs-one-million-jobs
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LeoSolaris
Hmmm... hybrid communism. Instead of making everyone work, we make a few
people work while the unmotivated, disaffected, or medically incapable
majority sponges off their efforts directly. Sure, it may not start that
way... hell basic income might not even be that bad of an idea since it would
eliminate/merge welfare and social security. However, a cross the board basic
income that people don't have to apply for would be disastrous at our current
level of technology.

The downside of basic income is that it would be directly given to everyone,
which would simply raise prices to match or exceed the income raise. Basic
economics makes the idea nothing more than a feel good folly. More demand due
to a large consumer base + finite supply of goods = raise in prices to the
limit the demand will sustain.

However, having engineers, inventors, and business people directly support a
group of individuals that are not contributing would be even less
unsustainable. Since a business is generally smaller and maintains a lower
cash reserve, the business will fold faster if anything disrupts its cash
flow.

At least communism mandated working for those who are able. It was an
implementation of the "many hands make light work" theory of economics. It is
unfortunate that it will only work in a worker economy rather than a creative
or service economy. Automation pretty much ended the communist ideal.

On the other hand, not working... it is an attractive idea. Live the life of a
gentile, pursuing one's own interests and hobbies, and having the freedom to
seek pleasure as the desire strikes is an intoxicating concept. Automation
seems to put that within reach. Having a small personal factory in a box that
takes care of ones material needs for the cost of raw materials would
drastically cut ones expenses drastically.

Until a large scale, automatic, multi-material 3D printer/manufacturing unit
becomes a reality, that will remain a pipe dream. Even then, it would drive
the price of raw materials up, unless there is a price fix in place to stop
the rise. That price fix in turn would adversely affect the raw material
producers and packagers. Even if they were heavily automated, they still have
costs that have to be met.

More supply would also be a method of correcting the price rise from higher
demand. Mining asteroids would be a major boon to the total amount of
available raw materials.

We are still 2-3 generations away from widespread, purely autonomous labour
that would allow everyone to live like aristocrats. Plus, someone will still
have to do the maintenance work!

Even if robots fix robots, some intelligent corrections will be needed
eventually. Limited, task focused AI can only go so far. General AI that think
at near our level would not solve anything either... that just gives us a new
slave race.

In the end, people will still have to work. Maybe not as hard or as often, but
human effort will always be required to sustain ourselves in our current
biological state.

Now if we could alter our biology to accept direct electric energy in stead of
food the way some single cell organisms live... that would solve most of our
real issues. It would sharply reduce demand our most resource intensive
enterprise... agriculture.

I know that my current writing is a little jumpy, but hey I only have so much
time... Time to get back to work!

