Basic income

Automation "nightmare?" Why do you like working so much?

for 5 years i have edited a weekly video series where entrepeneurs and CEOs give speeches to business students and im convinced upper management spends most of their time justifying their salaries. i'm sure they are "producing value" in the abstract or fiscal sense but yeah they mostly produce entertainment for their financial peers.

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, March 17, 2016 12:30 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

upper management def exists in some altered reality demonstration of dominance but they represent such a small slice of the workforce and arent really representative

xxp depends on how you define cheap and which labor, but basically, yes. that's part of what's driving weirdness in the current election cycle, with trade and ppl demanding great american factory jobs

Yeah it's almost blatantly obvious that Uber's strategy is to bide its time fighting off employment regulation until it can fire all its drivers and have robots pick people up.

― petulant dick master (silby), Thursday, March 17, 2016 12:46 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

one good thing abt driverless happening way slower than the industry wld like is hopefully uber will go out of business first

I want driverless cars now. Commuting sucks.

yeah that will be a truly beneficial technology, not any time soon tho

taking an app car will be so cheap too ~75% of yr current uber/lyft/et al fare goes to the driver (big chunk of that obvs vehicle maintenance/gas/etc tho)

i think the big hurdle with driverless cars is getting the car to recognize things that have changed in the environment, like a jaywalking pedestrian or a closed lane or a tree that fell. they seem to have got it p down in extremely controlled environments

They are driving all over the place here in the valley, with only one driverless car-caused accident so far.

they are driving with people who can take over if anything weird happens

the technology is pretty useless until it can reliably drive someone who cant drive

Well, even the limited stuff like what Tesla has already (drives itself on the freeway) is pretty sweet. I just don't want to spend two hours every day with my foot hovering over the pedals in stop-and-go traffic.

yeah thats good for sure but the holy grail is automated taxi service

and all the lil problems like heavy rain or figuring out where to park to let someone out or dealing with a temporary stop light are very difficult to solve, i suspect that the current map based approach just will never work

clothes folding now takes robots only 5-10 minutes!
http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/laundry-folding-robot-folds-laundry-thank-you-japan-1.3263516

xp yup

i want the laundry bot

the technology is pretty useless until it can reliably drive someone who cant drive

By the time it's perfected we'll all be heads in jars, Futurama style.

we will be uploaded to facebook

I just don't want to spend two hours every day with my foot hovering over the pedals in stop-and-go traffic.

Move closer to work.

Google just put BD up for sale fwiw

walk up a flight of stairs

― flopson, Thursday, 17 March 2016 16:03 (20 minutes ago) Permalink

i was under the impression that asimo was able to ascend and descend a full flight of stairs

I like this piece at LGM that just went up

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/03/capital-mobility-and-trumpism

And while people may support dreamy ideas like Universal Basic Income or more politically possible ideas that would help around the margins like an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit, none of these things are happening now while all the manufacturing jobs are in fact disappearing. And whether that is because of capital mobility or it is because automation, we have zero concrete plans on what to do with millions of working class people. At best, we might give slight subsidies to retraining programs for careers that pay less and may not have a future anyway. At worst, we start drug testing for people who get on public assistance or slash those programs to nothing anyway.

...When you give working Americans no good options, we might think they would turn to socialism. And a few have, as the Sanders campaigns demonstrates. But without widespread leftist organizing in working-class communities, which in working-class white communities largely does not exist, the appeal of racial and class prejudice added to the appeal of seeing someone tell off the forces that have doomed them to stagnation and poverty, that’s very powerful. That’s the Trump voter.

UBI isn't going to work if there are no dignified jobs for people to do even if they don't "need" to do them. And we're never going to get anything close to a basic income if we just destroy the middle class and let the resentment fester.

i don't understand how restricted capital mobility is going to bring good middle class jobs back to the white working class

also it's important to remember that Trump will lose

the point I took from it is that even if we had any options to legislate UBI into existence it doesn't solve for having literally nothing to do all day

im hella in favor of guaranteed public jobs programs

ppl can still have jobs if they want with basic income, or just live in a yurt <<< smart ppl

but what abt when ppl want a sick job, having copious yurt experience is not going to look good meanwhile "i buried and dug up gold for the us govt" is gonna be like wow u have some great experience with the shiny metal gold u r hired

the yurt economy is gonna be huge

more like the hurt economy is gonna be yuge because ppl wont have meaningful work opportunities

the butthurt belt

i mean in all seriousness basic income "solves for having something to do all day" much better than out current system or a guaranteed work scenario cause it allows greater flexibility, u cn do things that dont pay or things that dont pay that much or work on things that will give u the experience for yr career or just play video games in a yurt, rather than working in an amazon warehouse or doing deadend government ditch digging

i think we shd have both honestly

yeah not everyone is cut out for twitch streaming from inside the hurt yurt. some people want to sign up for that government jobs program, so they can look down on those other people, living off the government

guaranteed work just seems like the bad socialism to me

hmm *tents fingers*

it seems like one of those things that could demonstrate the value of the "laboratories of democracy" bullshit about state sovereignty, like, new hampshire could do guaranteed work and vermont could do straight UBI, and see how people feel after a few years

actually probably need it a lot more in Louisiana and Mississippi but you know

One of the intended outcomes of a UBI would be to encourage people to exit the labor force. People who don't feel good when they aren't working will likely be able to take some jobs vacated by people who adopt the yurt lifestyle. But like one of the talking points in Inventing the Future is that diminishment of the (Protestant) work ethic is important to the goal of emancipating people from toil.

In previous basic income experiments, some people did quit working, and that's a desirable outcome imo. "Dignified jobs" is a policy goal that presupposes working is necessary for a dignified life, and I really don't think it is.

we could always socialize the commons -- oil, etc. -- like they do in northern europe to provide the basic income thomas paine advocated centuries back but you know freedom and jesus and all that. we also wouldn't want to trouble the comfortable positions of the winners

yes duh I mean my MAIN argument for UBI has always been that there are a lot of people working who would be better off not - for the rest of us who have to try and work with (around) them

politically and realistically though the so-called protestant work ethic (because you know those jews and catholics are just lazy) has been part of the bedrock national identity even back to colonial times so yes, GLWT, that's why any approach to achieving something like a UBI needs to be tempered with jobs programs and EITC expansion

political feasibility is so far from necessary to speculate about

on reflection it is kind of funny how I go on the AI threads to just shit all over "if it has a nonzero chance of happening then we have to consider seriously worrying about it" and come on this thread to be like "guys UBI how do we get there it could happen"

imo ubi has a much grater chance of happening than sentient computing but nether of them r prob happening anytime soon, from a practical perspective how u lay the groundwork for it to be a reality in 20 or 50 years is start to build the institutions of activism academia and so forth and i think at that stage preemptively negotiating with the system youre trying to change is counter productive and prob fatal

the point I took from it is that even if we had any options to legislate UBI into existence it doesn't solve for having literally nothing to do all day

― El Tomboto, Saturday, March 19, 2016 3:18 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what you do on a daily basis should be your call. it is up to each person to find meaning in their lives. purpose should not be reliant on having a job or not.

people would still create, they would still consume, they would fall in love, they would play, etc. "having literally nothing to do all day" is an capitalist-apocalyptic strawman.

also kinda interesting how ppl looove complexity

imo ubi has a much grater chance of happening than sentient computing but nether of them r prob happening anytime soon, from a practical perspective how u lay the groundwork for it to be a reality in 20 or 50 years is start to build the institutions of activism academia and so forth and i think at that stage preemptively negotiating with the system youre trying to change is counter productive and prob fatal

― lag∞n, Saturday, March 19, 2016 4:46 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's actually a bright side to it prob not happening for a long time which is the longer you wait the richer we get and if you hold the poverty line fixed that means it gets cheaper and cheaper to provide a UBI. even though you can make a case for UBI now, it gets easier and easier to do so as time and economic growth progresses

Don't see anyone currently considering it but i would like to see a country go full Left-Libertarian, just have the state provide public goods and a UBI, that's it. cause knkow that we can afford a generous UBI at current rates of taxation and income per capita if you swap out all cash and in-kind transfers. like in Canada for example the total value of transfers is about 15-20k per capita. but that includes everything: health care, education, pension, disability, EI. not saying i would vote for it but i'd like one country to do it just to see what happens

cause *we* know that we can afford a generous UBI

also kinda interesting how ppl looove complexity

― lag∞n, Saturday, March 19, 2016 4:48 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk if people like complexity and intentionally design complex transfer systems or if those insanely complex welfare systems you read about just kind of slowly grew over time because it's hard to remove them once they're in or something like that? it would be interesting to read about their history. but like, i don't think that LBJ or someone was like, ok so we're gonna have 126 different programs