Comment by Slartie
3 days ago
Yep, most wealth is ultimately dependent on some kind of ability to scrape off tiny bits of practical accomplishments of value achieved by large numbers of people. In some cases, such as your housing example, this is a very direct dependency. In other cases the dependency is indirect and less visible.
The smarter ones among the rich have realized this and are open for something like a universal basic income precisely for that reason: to protect their wealth and the position in the food chain this wealth affords them.
UBI will never happen. I don’t understand why it’s even brought up anymore. Social security isn’t even solvent, health care is a disaster, and people still trumpet UBI like all of the enormous glaring funding holes don’t exist.
It’s embarrassing at this point. Give it up.
And what's your solution to mass unemployment due to AI?
If you play this out, UBI or some near variant is inevitable.
The US currently has over 100 million people over the age of 16 who are unemployed.
What point do you think you’re making about mass unemployment, exactly? It’s been here for half a decade already.
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Why are you correct even though the early Marxists (who posited that capitalism would inevitably lead to socialism) were wrong? We have had mass production for a hundred years without any hint of socialism.
And I would like you to be right, by the way. But why should I believe you?
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If AI really generates so much wealth UBI becomes much easier to justify and downright irrational to not implement.
Anyone who thinks wealthy people willing part with any amount of wealth en masse hasn't studied history.
One of the reason democracy has tended to be a stable form of government is that it naturally finds a balance between the haves and the have nots -- the boundary where the haves are comfortable parting with that much to live in a stable society where they keep the remainder, and the have nots are afforded some amount of social services for their most accute needs.
That's all predicated on a "or riots / internal military action" alternative though.
We've lived through a pretty stable post-WWII economic bargain period, and historically there's not a ton of certainty that continues through distributive renegotiations, which tend to be bloody.
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UBI money needs to come from somewhere. Hence it will and can never happen. Fake money helps nobody. There is no difference between getting 0, 1000 or 10000 fake dollars a month if they value of the dollar will go to zero
It isn't fake it is the wealth created by AI. Think of it like a national dividend.
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we just need to break the second law of thermodynamics, no big deal