prof wrote: ↑Fri Dec 08, 2017 12:50 am
The problem (that motivates a proposal such as the UBI) is lack of quality jobs, that is, jobs paying a decent living wage. There are some jobs available, but they are either in service industries that pay a wage inadequate to support a middle-class lifestyle; or they are highly-technical and require advanced training - which takes some time to learn, but which will not pay much of anything during the training period.
Many of the workers displaced today used to make $20 an hour; so they feel deeply the loss.
In Germany, during The Great Recession, when business was slow, employers gave their entire staff a reduction in hours they could work; yet they kept workers on - because
they cared about people. Here in the USA those good workers would have been laid-off (or dismissed) "to cut costs." When times got better, the German businesses, for several reasons, were glad they had carried these fine employees along.
The managers did not have to seek out and hire workers qualified to fit into their company workforce, since they already had them there.
Oh, I understand you point perfectly as to why it is coming. I agree with you a hundred percent, and probably could expand a few points.
Do you have a better solution to offer than the UBI for the problem of worker displacement by Artificial Intelligence, robotics, or automation?
Yes, perpetual never ending war. Institutionalized ritual sacrifice. Starvation.
The truth is we create AI/Tech/Industry/etc because not only it provides an efficient means to provide what we want, but it we do it because people do not like people....we find eachother boring because everything is relative to the "I"....and to question the "I" is to blaspheme.
AI/Tech/Industry/etc. is about getting rid of the human condition and replacing it with...."whatever". And "whatever" is the "word" to use because that is exactly what it is, a culture base around distraction unto death. Progress is about moving towards point zero.
Nothing more, transcendance and falling in a bottomless abyss both feel as if one is flying. The only difference is whether one closes their eyes....and that is what the modern world is about...closing your eyes.
People eat people, it is what this civilization is about. People are not honest with themselves about it, because they are hypocrites. Turn on the television or any social media device you will see three fluids everyone is transferring: Blood, sweat and semen. People hunger...and then they eat eachother in various grades.
The only thing industrial civilization did was give full vent to man's animal impulses. Discipline, virtue, community.... these are morals for old dead men noone remembers. What people want to do is eat and have fun and play.
So give them what they want in full measure. Furthermore, we need to advance feminism further in order to do this. Women are nurturers by nature, and this civilization does not need the hard word of men any more. Put women in charge, it will be like putting them back in the kitchen again. They won't be needed except to run things....like clerk work...plus their inherent morally relativistic nature will allow us to justify all our actions without consequence.
Men can do what they want, and the women can brag about being empowered...or whatever we tell them that they believe they feel.
Then when people feel they get bored, get together and pick a victim and sacrifice him or her. We will get a cartharsis out of it...and it will be another story to tell and convince ourself how great we are.