
Elon Musk Thinks Automation Will Lead to a Universal Basic Income - FuNe
http://fortune.com/2016/11/06/elon-musk-universal-basic-income/
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bbctol
If he's "not sure what else one would do," he needs to think bigger. I'm
amazed that America seems so locked in to maximum laissez-faire that the idea
that UBI is the actual solution has become remotely popular.

When truck drivers are replaced by self-driving cars, they won't see their
monthly allowance as a benefit. People want to have control over their lives
far more than they just want to survive. Sure, you have income. You can spend
it on more plastic goods sold by the company that took your job, more consumer
electronics sold by the company that took your job, more fast food from the
company that took your job, all delivered on a fleet of drones from the
company that took your job, while trying not to piss off the government
infested with lobbyists from the company that took your job, lest they cut off
your allowance and leave you for dead. Cycle that money right back to the same
rich guys who claim to function on meritocracy and judge every applicant into
their world by their ability to speak the arbitrary jargon, bolstered by a
nice degree, the right level of expensive casual dress, and your race and
gender. Or you could buy a gun.

Giving people comfort without giving them power is a recipe for revolution,
and Silicon Valley doesn't get that they'll be the first against the wall;
they'll still be wringing their hands and wondering why people voted for Trump
when neoliberalism could give them so many cool new phones. Very few people in
America are actually starving or on the streets; far more are committing
suicide, either directly or through slow drug addiction, not because they
don't have the means to survive but because they don't have the means to
control their own lives, create their own future for themselves and their
families, have the level of basic dignity that a solution like "here's your
allowance, now go back to school and study hard" will never provide.
Collective ownership, working democracy, a real attempt at a post-scarcity
society is "what else one would do."

Welfare is important. UBI could be a fine way of making sure people don't
starve to death. That hasn't been the major issue in the developed world for a
long time now.

~~~
saurik
Just because people are not actively starving to death does not mean they are
not going hungry, skipping or skimping on meals due to a lack of cash flow; I
encourage you to look more deeply into food security (for lack of a better
entrypoint, the University of California recently did a study as part of the
"Global Food Initiative" and concluded 42% of its students are food insecure).
Maybe food isn't an issue in your world, or in my life, but remember: we are
the kind of people who sit around and read Hacker News and are the kinds of
people whose professions and in some cases _hobbies_ either directly or
indirectly have massive effects on other people's lives by undermining the
need for not just their job, but all jobs similar in nature to their job; we
will have "the last jobs" :/.

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mikestew
"I don't know what else you could do."

This article regurgitates the same crap I've heard for 45 years, and people
have been saying it for longer than that. What else can you do? Same thing
that's always been done: automate, take the extra profits for yourself, and
the line workers can piss off. I have zero reason to believe it will ever be
otherwise.

~~~
norea-armozel
Or we can take the means of production and hold them in common for the
workers? Automation would be the added benefit of not having to slog through
50+ hour work weeks.

~~~
mikestew
Too bad the U. S. has had almost a hundred years to drill into us that
anything even slightly along what you mention is to be met with an immediate
reaction: "that sounds a lot like COMMUNISM!". At which point common protocol
dictates that the discussion is now over.

~~~
norea-armozel
Absolutely true, but it's weird that socialism had it's chance in states like
Minnesota and Kansas. It's sad to see it never went anywhere.

~~~
castratikron
Minnesota has a significant Scandinavian heritage, that's where the socialism
mindset comes from. And I think it works pretty well.

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harpocrates
While I think UBI would perhaps be a good solution to unemployment that
increased automation is going to cause, I fear we will end up with a situation
like in Kurt Vonnegut's Piano Player[0]: those who aren't working will have
much lower status and living quality than those working, even if they do have
some UBI.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_\(novel\))

