IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

Firstly you're responding as though, at some mysterious date in the future, all people are getting fired and replaced with a robot. It's not going to happen that way, it's going to be a gradual process but I think not as gradual as a lot of people want to think, and I think once it begins it will accelerate exponentially as the technology matures.

Not to mention:

> So you think things like artistic creativity, service work, craftsmanship, etc. are going to be automated soon? That there will literally be no productive things that humans can do, sometime in the not too distant future?

You're still hung up on this idea that productive things are all people can do. The whole point as pointed out by another poster is that people were supposed to not work anymore, at least in the traditional sense: that humans would give the work to the robots, and then go find other, more enriching things to do, maybe something with art or just really learning a shitload about medieval poetry. The fact that someone chooses something that isn't necessarily productive doesn't matter in the world I'm envisioning, where scarcity is no longer a thing.

> But that's not what you're talking about. You're not just talking about homeless people. You're talking about, eventually, all people. You're saying that there will come a time in the not too distant future where every single human on the planet has effectively zero productivity. And your way of preparing for this is to put a rule in place that says that humans don't have to produce anything in order to get a basic living.

I wouldn't say it's going to hit zero. There will always be something for us to do, even if it's just to hit the stars and go find new things (ala Star Trek's utopian future).

What I am saying is: We already are seeing the beginnings of a population that can't really produce anything, and we're seeing a new phenomenon; we don't really need them to. How much of the population will end up like that isn't the point; the point is that some of them are, and some are already, and we have no mechanisms to deal with that other than starving people to death which I think is not a long term solution.

> But if you have automated dealing with change, then you're up against a bigger problem: you have basically invented AI, and there is no guarantee that the AI will care about humans. We will be at the mercy of the AI, just as other life forms on Earth today are at the mercy of humans. We will basically be zoo animals, preserved only at the sufferance of the AI. And in that situation, humanity is doomed.

This is a whole different discussion but this doomsday view also relies on the AI being entirely unaware of empathy, which as a core component of humanity, would likely make its way into the artificial minds humanity creates. It's a base function of animal and human brains, it's what stops us from killing each other over basic impulses.

I have said no such thing. I am responding directly to your own statements. You said, in effect, that nobody's job is safe from automation. I just assumed you meant what you said.

> You're still hung up on this idea that productive things are all people can do.

All of the things in question are productive things, by the definition I thought we were using. A "productive" thing is a thing that improves people's lives. Are you saying that artistic creativity, service work, craftsmanship, etc. don't improve people's lives?

> There will always be something for us to do

That contradicts "no one's job is safe from automation", doesn't it?

> We already are seeing the beginnings of a population that can't really produce anything

Again, you're using a much too restrictive definition of "produce". But there's another point here as well.

The basic vision I see you describing is, nobody has to produce anything because all of the necessary production will be done by machines. But who owns the machines?

If the machines are owned by a few centralized entities, then we have the same problem of distribution that we had before--who gets the stuff the machines make? If you think there is any way of setting up a society that will guarantee that such a distribution is going to be fair to the people who don't own the machines, I have some beachfront property in Nebraska I'd like to sell you.

The obvious alternative is to make those machines cheap and small and plentiful enough that we can all have one. In other words, instead of universal basic income, we all are able to buy, at some reasonable price, machines that meet all of our basic needs. Then it will indeed be up to each individual person to decide what, if anything, they want to produce, because they will own all the resources necessary to meet their basic needs.

The difference between these two scenarios is that the first (yours) requires a fundamental change to human nature. I don't think that's going to happen. The second (mine) only requires a change in the kinds of technologies we try to build. That seems like a much better bet.

> this doomsday view also relies on the AI being entirely unaware of empathy, which as a core component of humanity, would likely make its way into the artificial minds humanity creates

This strikes me as overly optimistic handwaving. We have no idea how human brains implement empathy, and none of the artificial devices we have built so far have it. Yet somehow we're going to magically be able to build it into an AI?

> It's a base function of animal and human brains

Which evolved over hundreds of millions of years. I think you're vastly underestimating the amount of complexity that process created.

"Collective ownership" doesn't solve this problem; it makes it worse.

The only way to solve it is for everybody to own the wealth they create, and then trade. In other words, free markets. "Capitalism" might not be the right name for such a system, but that's because that word has come to mean centralized control of capital, rather than free markets.