Whether we should do otherwise-obviously-suboptimal things solely because it’d result in more jobs is a question that long predates self-driving cars...
Well, I want to end up in the future where humans don’t have to labor to survive, so I’m all for automating more and more jobs away. But in order to end up in that future, the benefits of automation have to also accrue to the displaced workers. Otherwise you end up with a shrinking productive class, a teeny-tiny owner class, and a rapidly growing unemployable class — who literally can’t learn a new trade fast enough to work at it before it is automated away by accelerating AI deployment.
As far as I can tell, the only serious proposal that might make the transition from the “most adult humans work at jobs to make a living” present to the “robots do most of the work and humans do what they like” future — without the sort of mass die-off of the lower class that someone out there probably fantasizes about — is something like Friedman’s basic income / negative income tax proposal. If you want to end up in a future where humans can screw off all day because the robots have the work covered, you have to let some humans screw off all day. May as well be the displaced workers.
Whether we should do otherwise-obviously-suboptimal things solely because it’d result in more jobs is a question that long predates self-driving cars...
Whether we should do otherwise-obviously-suboptimal things solely because it’d result in more jobs is a question that long predates self-driving cars...
Well, I want to end up in the future where humans don’t have to labor to survive, so I’m all for automating more and more jobs away. But in order to end up in that future, the benefits of automation have to also accrue to the displaced workers. Otherwise you end up with a shrinking productive class, a teeny-tiny owner class, and a rapidly growing unemployable class — who literally can’t learn a new trade fast enough to work at it before it is automated away by accelerating AI deployment.
As far as I can tell, the only serious proposal that might make the transition from the “most adult humans work at jobs to make a living” present to the “robots do most of the work and humans do what they like” future — without the sort of mass die-off of the lower class that someone out there probably fantasizes about — is something like Friedman’s basic income / negative income tax proposal. If you want to end up in a future where humans can screw off all day because the robots have the work covered, you have to let some humans screw off all day. May as well be the displaced workers.
I agree. (Yvain wrote about that in more detail here, and a followup here.)
I’d prefer something like Georgism to negative income tax, but the former has fewer chances of actually being implemented any time soon.
It long predates Milton Friedman, too