Comment by suncemoje
3 days ago
Universal Basic Income, ah no sorry, Universal High Income...
I would like to say "let's see how that goes". But I'm afraid I don't quite trust that "things will just go well". At least not nearly as fast as A(G)I development is happening. I feel fortunate that I don't worry about this too much personally, but I fear for our economy, laid off (office) workers, their families, in a few months and years. What am I to do? How can we fix this? Am I exaggerating?
UBI is a distraction.
The public needs to own AGI, not be given a small allowance from it.
UBI would make us dependent on the grace and generosity of those who have proven themselves to have neither.
I'm not sure I agree. You make it sound like you think the idea of UBI is for the rich to pay it out to us, the plebs. That's us-vs-them thinking. The idea is for the society as a whole, democratically controlled by everyone, to pay it out to everyone equally.
Obviously that can only work in a real democracy that is really controlled by everybody, not a fake one where you technically vote but it's really controlled by rich people. That's oligarchy.
I think the distinction you make is a fig leaf in a world where the rich control AGI.
If they are in control of superhuman abundance machines, where does the money paid out come from if not them?
What would it do to a democratic society if a few people have control over this machine god? How would that society be able to do anything (including raise taxes to pay for UBI) that the owners of productive force disagree with? What leverage does it have?
Once control over AGI is centralized, whoever controls it can just tell a democratic state to kick rocks and because of the dependence they've built, there's nothing the state could do about it.
In other words, once you have this sort of power centralized in a few people, democratic rule over them becomes a polite fiction they go along with as long as it's not too inconvenient at best.
I don't think you can have a real democracy unless society owns AGI. If rich people control AGI, they control society.
2 replies →
The guy who has hoarded the most wealth on the planet says "trust me I'll share later". Would you trust him? <no> REALLY?
Or try another way. When everyone loses their jobs to AI and can't pay taxes will the billion and trillilnares who are still rich volunteer to fund UHI? (How did the California billionaire tax to fund healthcare go?)