You have a decent set of arguments related to UBI as it may be conceived today, but I think it doesn’t accommodate the future or where we are right now in terms of worker productivity as a ratio to capital profitability.
There’s a longer term x-risk for non-major (US/CN/IN/etc) countries—especially in my mind AU since I live here—that isn’t being discussed as much as it should, since it’s already been happening for decades and will only accelerate with tech/AI-centric developments: where is the tax/revenue base going?
This dream of technology unlocking UBI and/or Utopia for all people seems DOA if we live in a world where corporations don’t actually pay meaningful taxes in the non-majors (situation we have today and only getting worse—look at Apple/Ebay/Google/Facebook tax payments in Australia) and those corporations have an ever-consolidating level of market power. We’ve been living in the world of ever-consolidating market power since around 1980 (slightly earlier in US, slightly later in AU). During that period, corporate profits have exploded while worker incomes have stagnated, even while worker productivity has grown strongly. This contrasts harshly with the 1945-1975 era where growth in worker productivity correlated closely with growth in worker real wages and overall well-being. The dismantling of antitrust and related regulations are coming home to roost.
There is at least a dual factor here: both reduced regulation & state capture combined with massive financial globalization where capital can be moved to the most favorable places in the world.
If even the most Trekkie AI optimists see a future where 99% of humanity could live in recreational luxury, served by technology and 1% of the human operators—and full disclosure, I believe this future is technically possible and maybe here already—under our current world system, there’s just no way that will happen. The top 1% have a ridiculous amount of gravity and will always veto that, when it could be the common goal that all humans work towards.
“Let’s refashion this planet in a way where every human is happy, and we can sustain this for a million years”—to me, this would be a great goal, and probably achievable given today’s knowledge, but we as a species/society are maybe just not set up to make that happen. Even if we were, we are currently living under a system of global capitalism that has transcended human ability to overturn that system. Like even if 60? 70? 80%? of humans wanted to do some form of major revolution in the major economies, it couldn’t happen.
So therefore IMO the UBI debate is not that relevant. If UBI happens in the major economies (I think it will), it will be the baseline to prevent the future mass-unemployed from mass revolting. It will be to allow anyone in that economy to live just above the “acceptable poverty line”. It will be the equivalent of the old school dole and pension in Australia, but worse, because increasing happiness is bad for GDP.
100% agree. Worse, I think you can’t really get to the Star Trek like future and stay there unless you give the people a way to lock it in place and not have their rights taken away. Sam Altman speaks explicitly about “capturing all the value in the world” and redistributing it in the form of UBI but that’s… like… a Saturday morning cartoon supervillain’s plan. “Get all the money and then give it to everyone else, trust me”. Even assuming he is being 100% sincere, you can’t expect things to go that smoothly, or that system to fix the problems of the entire world rather than the US alone, or that he’ll be allowed to do it by those around him, or that he’ll be the one to win the AI race.
This is like a modern version of “just have an absolute monarch and trust that he’ll be an enlightened, wise dude with everyone’s best interests at heart”. There’s a reason why that never worked.
You have a decent set of arguments related to UBI as it may be conceived today, but I think it doesn’t accommodate the future or where we are right now in terms of worker productivity as a ratio to capital profitability.
There’s a longer term x-risk for non-major (US/CN/IN/etc) countries—especially in my mind AU since I live here—that isn’t being discussed as much as it should, since it’s already been happening for decades and will only accelerate with tech/AI-centric developments: where is the tax/revenue base going?
This dream of technology unlocking UBI and/or Utopia for all people seems DOA if we live in a world where corporations don’t actually pay meaningful taxes in the non-majors (situation we have today and only getting worse—look at Apple/Ebay/Google/Facebook tax payments in Australia) and those corporations have an ever-consolidating level of market power. We’ve been living in the world of ever-consolidating market power since around 1980 (slightly earlier in US, slightly later in AU). During that period, corporate profits have exploded while worker incomes have stagnated, even while worker productivity has grown strongly. This contrasts harshly with the 1945-1975 era where growth in worker productivity correlated closely with growth in worker real wages and overall well-being. The dismantling of antitrust and related regulations are coming home to roost.
There is at least a dual factor here: both reduced regulation & state capture combined with massive financial globalization where capital can be moved to the most favorable places in the world.
If even the most Trekkie AI optimists see a future where 99% of humanity could live in recreational luxury, served by technology and 1% of the human operators—and full disclosure, I believe this future is technically possible and maybe here already—under our current world system, there’s just no way that will happen. The top 1% have a ridiculous amount of gravity and will always veto that, when it could be the common goal that all humans work towards.
“Let’s refashion this planet in a way where every human is happy, and we can sustain this for a million years”—to me, this would be a great goal, and probably achievable given today’s knowledge, but we as a species/society are maybe just not set up to make that happen. Even if we were, we are currently living under a system of global capitalism that has transcended human ability to overturn that system. Like even if 60? 70? 80%? of humans wanted to do some form of major revolution in the major economies, it couldn’t happen.
So therefore IMO the UBI debate is not that relevant. If UBI happens in the major economies (I think it will), it will be the baseline to prevent the future mass-unemployed from mass revolting. It will be to allow anyone in that economy to live just above the “acceptable poverty line”. It will be the equivalent of the old school dole and pension in Australia, but worse, because increasing happiness is bad for GDP.
100% agree. Worse, I think you can’t really get to the Star Trek like future and stay there unless you give the people a way to lock it in place and not have their rights taken away. Sam Altman speaks explicitly about “capturing all the value in the world” and redistributing it in the form of UBI but that’s… like… a Saturday morning cartoon supervillain’s plan. “Get all the money and then give it to everyone else, trust me”. Even assuming he is being 100% sincere, you can’t expect things to go that smoothly, or that system to fix the problems of the entire world rather than the US alone, or that he’ll be allowed to do it by those around him, or that he’ll be the one to win the AI race.
This is like a modern version of “just have an absolute monarch and trust that he’ll be an enlightened, wise dude with everyone’s best interests at heart”. There’s a reason why that never worked.