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With condition of being suppled by resources for living I think it's a good idea to go into research. It's a bit unrelated, but I think that maybe instead of j
by inlineint 10y ago
With condition of being suppled by resources for living I think it's a good idea to go into research.
It's a bit unrelated, but I think that maybe instead of just introducing basic income to suppress social tensions caused by bots taking jobs it would be better to spend the money to create new research jobs at large scale. There are plenty underexplored directions in science and research in lots of them can't be automated anytime soon.
If there were much more PhD positions that paid solid stipend (and colleges were accessible to everyone and paid solid stipends too) and there were a lot of open research positions, people losing their jobs because of automation would go to these programs and then do research which eventually might make the world a better place to live.
Just replying to someone who is going to say that not everyone is able to meaningfully participate in research, I think it is not true. Yes, different people might have different productivity and abilities, but science needs not only researchers generating new ideas, but also laboratory assistants and experimental scientists mostly just doing meticulous measurements.
However it's simpler to just throw money at people and tell them that they don't need to work rather than scale the educational and research systems to the extent that would allow them to engage a large part of the population into them.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- stanfordkid 10y agoTHIS. I think basic income makes everyone becomes the same ... but people inherently need structures to climb up -- "power processes". Ted Kaczynski describes this very well in his essay "Industrial Society and it's Future" (crazy guy but actually saw the problem clearly) http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf I still think there are infinitely many amazing things to unlock and discover and everyone can be involved at various levels (whether it be experimenting and trying new things or being "subjects" in experiments) or coming up with experiments or areas of study. The people at the top of the hierarchy would figure out the experiments with different levels / skill sets people could do. In this sense we would transition to an economy where we try to build the "System" to fit the "needs" in terms of power processes of humanity -- not just sustenance. In other words the economy becomes one where the people who are rewarded and get to the top are those that are able to create structures that enable people fulfill higher elements of maslows hierarchy than pure food and entertainment. I don't think infinite resources equals the death of capitalism -- but rather, in a world where the bottom rungs of Maslows pyramid are fulfilled the only things of value become "systems" that enable people to exert power processes.
- abathur 10y agoAFAIK most UBI advocates aren't looking to just throw money at people and tell them they don't need to work. It's not called a Universal Comfortable Income, or a Universal Middle Class Income. Unless you're a devout ascetic or minimalist, you'll probably still want other sources of income. The UBI provides you a baseline that can make it easier for people to spend a while retraining, or resist being underpaid for miserable/dangerous work. One of the big potential boons of a UBI is that it could be paired with a rollback of minimum wage/benefit requirements, shifting the point at which automation is strongly incentivized. In such an environment, meaningful research projects with significant low-skill components should have an easy time (at least relative to today) staffing up.
- galvin 10y agoTo add to this, UBI would also allow people to provide value in areas other than research. A few examples would be arts, sports, charity and community work.