161–170 of 213 posts
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This is a bit of a Luddite viewpoint. There will be some ups and downs as people adjust to the need for different skill sets however, automation won't simply wipe out any need for human labor. There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate.
The opposite of Luddite is believe that it will all get sorted out in the end inevitable. As the fall of Rome, the middle ages, and several other dark periods in human history show, this is now always the case. > There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate. Several things, yes. A lot, no. And even if those types of jobs were many, what matters is the num…
As far as the creative part is concerned, the offer is already huge and probably exceeds the demand depending how you consider it. So there is not much to expect in that domain either, as far as jobs (or even activities) are concerned.
It is a bit the same for painting. There are people who are willing to buy and can afford to do so, but their problem is then "where am I going to put this?. I already have many that I cannot display...". That's one of the limits the few painters I know hit. Then do have fans, known buyers but if one of these guys buy another painting, it is more to sponsor the painter than because they have a 'use' for the painting.
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Not true. When you put it in a bank, the bank loans it out (usually at a multiple). Even if you put stacks of bills under your mattress, you're effectively making a loan to the mint to fund government operations. Some invested money is bad, though. Investment in many businesses is bad for the world: cigarette companies, casinos, monopolistic roll-up companies.
Banks don't loan out savings. That's a myth. The money for the loan is created by the act of creating the loan. Loans are effectively banks 'licence to print money'.
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There is no such thing as free money. If you're not creating more work (or more productive work) then it is simply taking from someone and giving to someone else. However, the point is that through automation we're creating more work and from who we're taking is the robots. If there are no new automation or robots to take from, then it is most likely that we're going to take from middle class, either directly or indi…
I get the premise behind your answer I believe. What I am asking is, what's to stop the markets (especially in the US where greed reigns) from increasing the cost of things such as food and shelter artificially b/c of this free money, making this "basic income" all but useless? Meaning at some point it wont even cover the most basic and modest of necessities.
If you wanted a more reliable way to ensure UBI would remain effective, one way would be to treat it as a separate currency that could only be used for the necessities of life. Moves could then be taken to limit profits made on these goods without distorting prices in the rest of the economy. Could also couple this with government support to encourage automation and other savings in these industries. I'd argue both of these changes in combination can result in a UBI system that is protected against price hikes.
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Banks don't loan out savings. That's a myth. The money for the loan is created by the act of creating the loan. Loans are effectively banks 'licence to print money'.
I don't think that's accurate. In our fractional reserve banking system, banks loan out 90% of their reserves. The net effect of that repeating itself is that you end up with 10 times the amount of money in the system, which is maybe what you're referring to? That's just a side effect of our banking system though. Kind of wonder if there's a stat on how much banking has expanded the money supply at any given moment o…
I realise this is fairly uncommon knowledge, and doesn't seem to make sense. I'd recommend watching this video for a brief synopsis of how it works.
I'm curious, and this may have been discussed elsewhere, but how would that work in a country like the US (both in terms of size of population and capitalistic greed)? For instance, when student loans became ubiquitous, universities raised their rates. Now there are many theories as to why that was but I feel the simplest explanation is that a) it created greater demand, and b) easy/cheap money (look at ITT). What's…
This is why we need land value tax.
"Take an IPhone - you find a variety of technologies - each one was created by some government grant... The collective production of wealth, which is then privately appropriated.. it's very easy to start thinking of basic income as a dividend that goes to the collective that was responsible for collectively producting the wealth." "We need to create a system whereby society stakes a claim to the returns to aggregate…
Having nothing to do day-in-day-out, really messes with you. Not everyone, but on average. It's an open question if society can handle it. In the short-term it will evoke bitterness in those that work against the able-bodied that choose not to (remember the 'food-stamp surfer'?)
Basic income probably isn't the answer, but instead basic needs being met through education and proper allocation of resources is a very viable answer. FDR had a vision during his time in office which was for every person to own land. Theoretically, if everyone had access to use some amount of land through entitlement - they would be able to use natural means to provide themselves and their family with certain basic…
I'm not sure how that can work though on a global scale of 7 billion people while also allowing for the aggregation of people into cities that is so necessary for everything our modern civilization builds.
On top of this naturally you now have unfairness in the system as some peoples land will be better than others, and by virtue they will be richer than others through greater productivity.
In the end UBI works around all this and simply says - let the market sort it out, so that the best uses of capital, land, people's time can be found, but we're going give people enough to live so that if the most efficient result is that half the population sits on their hands and the other half work programming robots, then from a systems perspective we are adequately compensating those half that sit on their hands for their misfortune not to be a robot programmer.
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> There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate. Could you give examples that are capable of providing living wages to 160-250 million people, in the US alone? Technology has completely destroyed the value in human labor for most industries, in much the way we no longer use horses for farming, and is rapidly doing the same to "white collar" jobs. I'm hones…
Domestic labor for highly productive individuals. If you are a high productivity software engineer, trader or doctor, there is no reason any of your time should be devoted to driving, doing laundry or cleaning your bathroom. Also, I'm not sure where your "160-250 million people" comes from. That's exactly how many workers there are today, many of whom are in no danger of having their jobs automated.