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The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

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Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#91

Post by nightski »

ThomPete wrote: post #41
notahacker wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a lot of evidence that this was how things were moving a century ago, but the predictions made at the time look more than a little bit wrong. Not only have the sons of the increasingly obsolete production line employees mostly found jobs, but so have their daughters! Trouble with breaking down jobs into smaller subsets is that you need an awful lot of robots, and suddenly the rental on those doesn't look an…

No there wasn't a lot of evidence because back then the human intellect wasn't being outcompeted by the machines. This is what is happening now. Machines are gradually moving further and further up the abstraction ladder. So unless you are aware of another human ability used to do a job it kind of stops there.

As someone who is trying very hard to keep up with the latest improvements in machine learning and artificial intelligence, I see very little evidence to say we have made strides in reasoning on the level of a human intellect.

Machine learning is still unfortunately limited to very specific tasks. Even though the means through which those tasks are accomplished may be very general (neural networks, Bayesian statistics, etc...) the end result is still very limited.

Let's not fool ourselves with how far along the technology is and instead embrace it for what it is.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#92

Post by ThomPete »

nightski wrote: post #90
dragonwriter wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was a lot of evidence that this was how things were moving a century ago, but the predictions made at the time look more than a little bit wrong. Not only have the sons of the increasingly obsolete production line employees mostly found jobs, but so have their daughters! No, actually, a century ago there was reason to think things would head that way at some time in the future ; now, there is evidence that it…

I'd reckon it probably did not peak globally. You can't ignore the effects of globalization when making such an argument.

Outsourcing is just the last step before automation.

In the same period the US lost 4mio jobs to China, the Chinese lost 15mio jobs to the robots.

Globalization is only easing the overarching trend ever so slightly until it's cheaper to do it automated.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#93

Post by ThomPete »

notahacker wrote: post #86
ThomPete wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No because tech havent been cheap enough now it is while wages are potentially going up. You are basically arguing against the numbers here.

The numbers show that McDonalds beat earnings forecasts three quarters in a row after putting wages up. Fast food is not a struggling industry. Vending machines have always been cheap, but they've never been popular . Which is why the fast food giants, each with large teams of analysts armed with all the relevant numbers, have experimented very little with them, and generally cancelled the experiments after very shor…

Fastfood is a competitive industry. I never said it was struggling.

You are trying to establish strawmen no one is talking about. That's my signal to get out of a conversation.

Believe what you want, reality speaks for itself.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#94

Post by c22 »

golemotron wrote: post #70
c22 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think throwaway2048 meant something more along the lines of "worthy to participate in our society" and, unfortunately, whether you deem them worthy or not they are participants of society so reducing the friction of their interaction with society benefits all. (Friction rubs both ways.) The argument is that dropping this "distinction" could help lead to more pragmatically sound policies.

How do you think this can be done when it is not controlled by policy as much as outrage culture in media and social media?

I'm not sure I understand your question. Are you saying policy is controlled by the media?

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#95

Post by dragonwriter »

nightski wrote: post #90
dragonwriter wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was a lot of evidence that this was how things were moving a century ago, but the predictions made at the time look more than a little bit wrong. Not only have the sons of the increasingly obsolete production line employees mostly found jobs, but so have their daughters! No, actually, a century ago there was reason to think things would head that way at some time in the future ; now, there is evidence that it…

I'd reckon it probably did not peak globally. You can't ignore the effects of globalization when making such an argument.

Which would be relevant, if the level at which UBI was being proposed as a policy was the world government, rather than that of the US.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#96

Post by beat »

dragonwriter wrote: post #89
beat wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one of the very first things fast food did. It got rid of waiters and other floor staff, and the complex series of customer interactions. Automating away the human in the order process removes a way to speed up the process. Modern registers are complex enough to require training. Untrained, possibly illiterate customers using them while decision-making? That's bad news.

> Automating away the human in the order process removes a way to speed up the process. Modern registers are complex enough to require training. Untrained, possibly illiterate customers using them while decision-making? That's bad news. A number of fast-food and similar outlets have order-ahead mobile apps, which include payment through the app. These take humans out of the order process, but do not require customers…

I use them sometimes. They're a pain in the ass, way more work for me than simply ordering at a counter while a human types my order in. The only advantage is not having to wait for my food when I get there.

The real win on that front isn't fast food, it's the ability to order from local restaurants for pickup. We do that a lot.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#97

Post by golemotron »

c22 wrote: post #94
golemotron wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think this can be done when it is not controlled by policy as much as outrage culture in media and social media?

I'm not sure I understand your question. Are you saying policy is controlled by the media?

Whether a distinction exists in the minds of the public or not is not something that can be controlled by policy. Especially in a world where people can communicate freely on social media, and where mainstream media has a financial incentive to to amplify outrage.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#98

Post by chrisco255 »

JDiculous wrote: post #55
chrisco255 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea of a "dead-end job" is foreign to me. Only privileged, spoiled people talk like this. All job experience is valuable and will teach you lessons if you let it. If you can't look at even an entry-level job as a chance to gather experience and use it as a stepping stone to something better, and you'd rather sit back and be idle and privileged with some welfare check over working then you're the problem, not th…

No, dead-end jobs are very much a real phenomenon. Working as a janitor is not a stepping stone to anything except more minimum wage janitorial work. Meanwhile as a software engineer, the work you do can be put on your resume and used as leverage for better opportunities.

Not unless you make it so. No one who's ever determined to educate themselves or earn their way to a better position has ever been stuck as a janitor their whole lives.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#99

Post by chrisco255 »

Introvertuous wrote: post #50
chrisco255 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea of a "dead-end job" is foreign to me. Only privileged, spoiled people talk like this. All job experience is valuable and will teach you lessons if you let it. If you can't look at even an entry-level job as a chance to gather experience and use it as a stepping stone to something better, and you'd rather sit back and be idle and privileged with some welfare check over working then you're the problem, not th…

Clearly you have never worked at mc.donalds.

No but I have been a busboy. And I did work my way through college while working a lot of other so-called "dead-end jobs".

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#100

Post by chrisco255 »

ThomPete wrote: post #35
chrisco255 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had 25%+ unemployment during the Great Depression, at a time when hardly any women were in the workforce. I would say that was a much more difficult time than this great stagnation we find ourselves in currently. Our economy is now largely service-based, but we are still quite a ways off from automating most services. There's a lot of speculation that the economy will imminently suffer rapid upheaval with few jobs…

What you and others get wrong in that analysis is that you don't take into account that just one algorithm have to learn something then all the others can do the same. Point machine learning towards a problem and things that normally was cumbersome and took several people to do is suddenly done in the fraction of a second. It's like claiming that if an alien race landed on planet earth with superior skills and superi…

Machine learning is still far from automating most services. If anything, machine learning will create as many jobs as it will destroy.
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