Kiran K Karthikeyan wrote:
Posting this [1] on the only place I know where there are better minds than
mine who can tell me not to worry so I can sleep better at night.
https://medium.com/basic-income/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines-7c6442e37a49#.4mn452rn9
It's easy to disregard such fearmongering, which has been going on since
the horse was replaced by steam power, and which received a boost when
computers proved practical. But such fundamental changes do have a
remarkable impact on the nature of work, and we do need to work hard to
guide those changes into the most desirable option possible.
We just have to decide which that is.
The author's call for Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a wise one, and
that would be my judgment even if we had no fear of encroaching
automation. Separating work from subsistence would permit a new
perspective to develop in society, and one I think would ultimately be
of great benefit (after the pain of transition wore off).
But this would require we develop some means of taxing the use of such
automation so that governments have the wherewithal to pay for UBI. If
it instead is made to ride on the shoulders of those few with
high-paying jobs, the structure becomes unsound rather quickly.
This suggests that UBI will fare far better in countries like Finland
where Big Industry and Big Government aren't sleeping with one another.
In the US, which is sliding rapidly into an oligarchy, it's quite
possible that the self-serving elite will exempt themselves from
taxation, eviscerate the movement toward UBI, and utterly impoverish the
bulk of society.
So, we have several options here:
1. Make UBI work. The burden of ensuring that corporations pay
sufficient tax to keep their nations populace alive will be great, but
it's preferable to option 2. If done carefully, this will cushion the
blow by increasing the cost of automation while lowering the salary
demands of workers. It may well be that automation (and its associated
taxation) will prove to have a higher cost than simply hiring humans.
This is also important because even a fully automated business needs
customers, especially in a consumer-driven economy like most of us
occupy. Henry Ford was cited for paying his workers more than the
prevailing wage so that they could afford to buy his products. Had he
not lead the way to higher industrial wages, his enterprise would have
foundered for lack of sales. Automated industry must similarly be
concerned that even with their economies they do not price themselves
above a falling market.
2. Don't make UBI work. The result will be vast discrepancies of wealth,
with the same social upheaval that's followed every prior instance of
such an arrangement. Yes, you could automate a police force and just
keep shooting, but would the surviving elite be able to keep the
automated systems working with such a small base?
This structure could also fail of the elite don't build those
"robo-cops". In this scenario, the mobs with pitchforks and torches
breach the Bastille, destroy the automation (and those who could fix
it), and throw society as a whole into another dark age. Widespread
death and a greatly reduced population would result.
3. Don't make UBI work, but make it not work slowly, and effect a
significant reduction in population. China was on the smart road here
for some time, but cultural backlash and the growth of their middle
class have obliged them to surrender this battle. It is one worth
resuming on all fronts, as nearly every woe this world is prey to can be
pinned, at some level, on overpopulation. (See Stanley Schmidt on this
topic.)
So either we engineer a new social balance that maintains most of our
population, or we suffer from either a deliberate or consequent
decimation ... perhaps to a level that cannot sustain what we now
consider civilization.
Like any other tool, automation of jobs can be used for good or bad
purposes. Because it is so far-reaching, the care with which it needs to
be implemented, and the complexity of the compensating factors is so
great, that many will despair of this civilization working through to
the end of it all.
Me, I'm thinking it's time to start stockpiling pitchforks and torches;
you never know when they're going to come in handy!
Cheers,
Bruce
