On humanity scale, it looks differently: we don't need the amount of labor we have now to maintain the current level of consumption. We can produce the same amount of goods and services without 100% of people contributing.
May be we'll finally become OK with some of the people to live on welfare checks? It's not "slacking" when the humanity just doesn't really need your input.
Be interesting to see how fast we realise this and if that will vary by region.
Parts of Europe strike me as the ones most likely to lead the charge (the Swiss had an actual vote on Basic Income just recently) and many existing benefit systems (welfare systems) come fairly close to a ad-hoc de-facto basic income.
Assuming the basic income is sufficient to cover basic needs, I'd be quite happy (as long as I could afford a reasonable computer and internet) to just write open source software for the rest of my life.
The only reason I write any proprietary software is to pay the bills with that incentive removed I'd program just as much.
First, the world needs to become truly globalised in terms of cost of labor. It's pragmatic from capitalist standpoint, and it also serves the interests of humanity (I find that these two are almost entirely oriented together, if we're talking about a swarm of competing capitalists and not one behemoth monopoly). But after the whole world comes to more or less the same cost of labor, this will begin to rapidly appear across the whole globe.
Many proposals for Basic Income set the rate too high. A reasonable amount would not overly disincentivize people from working. So in your case, yes, you could spend much more of your time doing open source development, but it is likely you will still want to some commercial work so you can have bit more than just the bare necessities.
Programming isn't "writing software". It's "understanding humans and translating what they want into algorithms". I don't think it's possible to automate that without general AI (at which point, writing software is just telling the robot what you want).
Creating the Culture is some feature. Heck even if it was the result of a bug it would be the best bug ever.
For those of you who haven't read Ian M. Banks "The Culture" series, The Culture is a space-habitating multi-species confederation that has long ago made true general AI, concurred all ageing and illness and now mostly spend their time exploring the universe and trying to improve other civilisations, without too much meddling. Anything at all we can do to become them is a Good Thing.
Whoa there. I think there are a certain, countable number of fundamental questions to answer about the universe. And you can count them with your fingers and toes. They are the fundamental constants, and they're already known to 3 or 4 decimal places.
Imo the flaw in this reasoning is, altough we may know an aweful lot about chemistry and the physics of atomic and molecular interactions, the problem of predicting the folding of proteins from the sequence of amino acids is exceedingly difficult. This is why we still dont have custom engineered protiens.
This is an example of a highly important and interesting problem that is limited by computational ability, among other things. Knowing some physical constants is important but the macro problem is still hard.
"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote."
After that, he lived just enough to see the physics giving birth to modern chemistry and electronics.
The bottleneck in basic research is not employees - we already have too many of them - and we're already starting to automate lots of the research work,both the manual one(robotics in biology), and the mental one(lots of the data analysis in many scientific disciplines could-be/is automated).
Welfare is not the answer. It just isn't satisfying being handed a check for doing nothing. Jiro Ono (the sushi craftsman) is an inspiration on how hard work can really provide satisfaction in ones life.
What I would hope is that with machines covering the necessities we see a huge surge in the arts, education, and craft.
A perfect example is the craft beer movement (tap rooms are popping up everywhere by people who enjoy their craft - and it is glorious!). It's generating quite a bit of money too.
This is illogical. Some people will just enjoy "doing nothing", like watching TV or meditating. Does drinking booze and shooting yourself in the process count as "doing whatever you want"?
Either you pay unconditionally, or you hire and pay for specific work.
I am having a hard time thinking of work where you get paid yet you provide no benefit to the payee? Maybe some further insight is in order (since I am living in another world apparently).
I was not speaking in absolutes. Of course there are exceptions. All I was saying is that it provides some incentive...
Not only that, but you are applying today's economics to a dramatically different situation in which basic needs are met by machines. I don't think that works.
If you can ... train people to live without appeals to status, then perhaps. This is only true is we don't continue to descend into deflation.
A paycheck is more than just a paycheck; it's also an estimate of the value of service to others. I feel it's reasonably important to have some mechanism to steer activities by. This is difficult; it's easy to get trapped in careerism.
What I am seeing more and more is that the technology can get in the way. Corporate IT just seems to get worse year by year.
The point is, the value of your activities to others is approaching zero for a good portion of the population. Automation etc are producing goods without the need for people. The majority of people no longer need to be 'steered' to do anything.
In old stories it used to be called Utopia when people didn't work and robots did everything. Now we call it Unemployment and make it a bad thing. This will have to change.
Then there's the possibility we just haven't happened on the right reciepe to keep people working. It's a huge shift in the basic assumptions of economics, one of which is "not every thing can get done."
The question is the increasingly outdated notion of "needing to work", searching for ways to keep people working is rather missing the point being raised. People don't need work, they need a sense of accomplishment and meaning; work isn't the only method of obtaining that.
I would love to have more time to take care of my kids or aging parents. There is no money in that, unless those people have money...
The one thing machines will have a hard time getting good at is curing loneliness.
Now there in lies some real irony! Instead of staying home to spend more time with your kids and parents, you are going to have to work harder so you can buy a robot to stay home with your kids and parents. That's the future we are currently building. Ain't it brilliant!?
No, because of fairness. Some people will have to keep working while others can have holidays? Those who work will forever be paid more than non-working ones.
I don't see how your comment is a counter-argument. Those who will work will indeed be paid more than a welfare check is worth. But you should still be able to live decently on a welfare check.
May be we'll finally become OK with some of the people to live on welfare checks? It's not "slacking" when the humanity just doesn't really need your input.