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See, before precious governments got set up in the first place, people could live as long as they were able to aquire food. There were no "property rights" and other nonsense. But now, people aren't allowed to gather their own food or shelter because of governments and laws and property rights. So we have an unfair disadvantage that was of our own making. Gorillas and lions and etc don't have vagrancy laws or property rights....
The concept of self and self-ownership is pretty much human specific, but we are bound by human nature. Progress is a fundamental drive in the human DNA. It cannot be stopped or wished away.
But like human nature, the laws of economics cannot be stopped, altered or wished away. UBI will create an economic death spiral, and it will be very quick. You cannot go against nature that hard and expect it to go well.
My problem with universal basic income is that it encourages people not to work, the government takes my money for charitable purposes when I can give charity myself, and I can give it to people I want to give it to - instead of government picking who gets the money.
For better or worse, Coronavirus has altered the American political and fiscal landscape for the foreseeable future. Republicans, if they want to survive, will have no choice but to raise taxes on the wealthy. The alternative is bankruptcy for the Federal and local governments. They have no tax base anymore. Latest estimates are that nearly 50% of lost jobs are never coming back. Unemployment is likely to stay above 10-15% for the next decade. Where will governments get their money to run the country? The Federal bill alone is 3.5 TRILLION dollars. With half the nation on unemployment where will the Fed get their money?????
Location: Live:Downtown Phoenix, AZ/Work:Greater Los Angeles, CA
27,606 posts, read 14,610,214 times
Reputation: 9169
Quote:
Originally Posted by Volobjectitarian
The concept of self and self-ownership is pretty much human specific, but we are bound by human nature. Progress is a fundamental drive in the human DNA. It cannot be stopped or wished away.
But like human nature, the laws of economics cannot be stopped, altered or wished away. UBI will create an economic death spiral, and it will be very quick. You cannot go against nature that hard and expect it to go well.
So once again, you're saying we're going to be the cause of our own extinction because of "economics"
Summed up since TL;DR= once automation renders people unemployable, human population will contract by 90 to 95%. How, don't ask.....
Quote:
Originally Posted by Freak80
Yes, that’s still true with today’s technology.
But what happens when AI and robotics advances to the point where 99% of humans become economically obsolete?
Thank you both for proving beyond any reasonable doubt you have never worked with AI or automation and don't understand it.
AI and automation create jobs, not kill them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BoBromhal
where does $4T/year come from for 330MM people?
Neither he nor any other UBI supporter has the moral courage, honesty or integrity to demonstrate that.
I would suggest to MODs that any UBI thread that doesn't show how it will be funded should be immediately deleted/locked.
And, "show" means show, not tell. Actual dollar figures and the sources from which they are derived, not fluffy meaningless talk.
The operand in Universal Basic Income is "Universal" meaning everyone gets it, even the stinky filthy rich.
If you eliminate those earning $1 Million or more, it's no longer "UBI" it's just a welfare giveaway.
Even so, that just means you spend $3.12 TRILLION instead of $3.22 TRILLION annually which the US cannot do under any circumstances without suffering severe negative repercussions that would destroy the economy and society worse than COVID-19 is doing.
And from the other side, I've had the "pleasure" of working with these catered-to children, now 22 years old. The arrogance and "lip" that comes from these young adults, toward their bosses (old enough to be their grandparents), would make your head spin. I actually had one of them come up to me, hand me an assignment, and when I said that was something that ______ could do, the kid actually snarled at me and said, "what do you think we PAY you for?!" (Never mind that I was a senior manager at the time and he was six months out of college.)
Bingo. I've had that "pleasure" as well. A 30-year-old woman was hired about 6 months ago. She had never had a job, had a useless degree, lived in an apartment paid for by her parents, but was convinced she was a genius. She couldn't grasp the simplest concepts, and she would NOT follow rules, particularly the dress code. She was talked to about it on numerous occasions, and when reprimanded for wearing tennis shoes (in a professional office) she replied that she had paid $700 for them, so she WAS going to wear them. We take yearly certifications, and when someone else said they were finished, and she was not (she was new, so no surprise) she screamed "it's not a competition" and promptly left to call her mother. She regularly had to leave to call her, usually crying and yelling on the call.
She was fired during her probationary period. And was shocked when she was.
Her parents created that monster, and it would NOT be the taxpayer's responsibility to support her with UBI.
Then they need a real dose of REALITY, fast. School doesn't give you real world, on the job experience, which is often more important.
Which has gotten worse since it's become the norm to not work in high school. Kids are told that school is their job, when in reality it is just an insulated bubble that teaches them nothing of the real world.
For better or worse, Coronavirus has altered the American political and fiscal landscape for the foreseeable future. Republicans, if they want to survive, will have no choice but to raise taxes on the wealthy. The alternative is bankruptcy for the Federal and local governments. They have no tax base anymore. Latest estimates are that nearly 50% of lost jobs are never coming back. Unemployment is likely to stay above 10-15% for the next decade. Where will governments get their money to run the country? The Federal bill alone is 3.5 TRILLION dollars. With half the nation on unemployment where will the Fed get their money?????
I've read through your rant three times, and still can't find where part of the solution is to STOP SPENDING UNNECESSARY MONEY AT THE FEDERAL AND LOCAL LEVEL, and to cut out waste, fraud and abuse.
So once again, you're saying we're going to be the cause of our own extinction because of "economics"
Give me a break; animals don't have economics
Animals don't have the combo of abstract reasoning, written language and recorded history either. In Maslow's hierarchy, even the most intelligent non-human animals don't go past stage 2 of 5, and even if you consider animal species that mate for life with a single mate, that isn't a stage 3 relationship for the purpose of love or friendship, but an extension of the survival/safety needs.
The psychological and self-fulfillment needs are human specific...but they are universal to the human condition. And that's where progress, the profit motive and all that stuff that is unique to humans comes in...and it is baked into the human genome. You cannot stop it, revoke it, circumvent it or avoid it. It's why progress happens. Humans can't help making progress any more than spiders can help making webs. It's one of our basic instincts. On net and the macro scale, it is always positive...but on the individual micro scale, it affects some negatively even if a larger number is affected positively. But it cannot be stopped any more than gravity or thermodynamics can. The human need to progress, to create, to self-actualize...that's immutable natural force at work.
You labor under the standard false dilemma of all those who are opposed to progress. You posit that if there is an economic activity A that is disrupted and even destroyed by progress, then all humans who currently perform economic activity A for a wage will DIE! Did all of the telephone switchboard operators who were made obsolete by the computer switching network just die, or did they repurpose? Did all of the assembly line workers replaced by robotics just die, or did they repurpose? Since the dawn of human civilization, there has been some number of people opposed to progress under the exact same false dilemma that you labor under - take away X activity and anyone doing that activity will DIE. Hell, in the legend of John Henry, the worker actually dies by trying to compete with the evil steam engine that was built to replace human labor. It's a pretty old paranoia, and the rhetoric of it hasn't changed in centuries.
Thing is, humans adapt. That too is part of our genome. I know, I know...this is different...BECAUSE AI AND STUFF!! But as Mircea points out, anyone who bleats that nonsense clearly knows not a thing about AI, even pamphlet level knowledge.
And even if your fever dreams of dystopian hellscapes were a tangible possibility, UBI does nothing except speed us on our way to the hellish landscape you envision.
Location: Live:Downtown Phoenix, AZ/Work:Greater Los Angeles, CA
27,606 posts, read 14,610,214 times
Reputation: 9169
Quote:
Originally Posted by Volobjectitarian
Animals don't have the combo of abstract reasoning, written language and recorded history either. In Maslow's hierarchy, even the most intelligent non-human animals don't go past stage 2 of 5, and even if you consider animal species that mate for life with a single mate, that isn't a stage 3 relationship for the purpose of love or friendship, but an extension of the survival/safety needs.
The psychological and self-fulfillment needs are human specific...but they are universal to the human condition. And that's where progress, the profit motive and all that stuff that is unique to humans comes in...and it is baked into the human genome. You cannot stop it, revoke it, circumvent it or avoid it. It's why progress happens. Humans can't help making progress any more than spiders can help making webs. It's one of our basic instincts. On net and the macro scale, it is always positive...but on the individual micro scale, it affects some negatively even if a larger number is affected positively. But it cannot be stopped any more than gravity or thermodynamics can. The human need to progress, to create, to self-actualize...that's immutable natural force at work.
You labor under the standard false dilemma of all those who are opposed to progress. You posit that if there is an economic activity A that is disrupted and even destroyed by progress, then all humans who currently perform economic activity A for a wage will DIE! Did all of the telephone switchboard operators who were made obsolete by the computer switching network just die, or did they repurpose? Did all of the assembly line workers replaced by robotics just die, or did they repurpose? Since the dawn of human civilization, there has been some number of people opposed to progress under the exact same false dilemma that you labor under - take away X activity and anyone doing that activity will DIE. Hell, in the legend of John Henry, the worker actually dies by trying to compete with the evil steam engine that was built to replace human labor. It's a pretty old paranoia, and the rhetoric of it hasn't changed in centuries.
Thing is, humans adapt. That too is part of our genome. I know, I know...this is different...BECAUSE AI AND STUFF!! But as Mircea points out, anyone who bleats that nonsense clearly knows not a thing about AI, even pamphlet level knowledge.
And even if your fever dreams of dystopian hellscapes were a tangible possibility, UBI does nothing except speed us on our way to the hellish landscape you envision.
You seem to think that we'll keep coming up with new tasks for humans to do. That's not going to be the case. Robots and machines will be able to do everything, including build and repair themselves. There will be nothing left for labor
Animals don't have the combo of abstract reasoning, written language and recorded history either. In Maslow's hierarchy, even the most intelligent non-human animals don't go past stage 2 of 5, and even if you consider animal species that mate for life with a single mate, that isn't a stage 3 relationship for the purpose of love or friendship, but an extension of the survival/safety needs.
The psychological and self-fulfillment needs are human specific...but they are universal to the human condition. And that's where progress, the profit motive and all that stuff that is unique to humans comes in...and it is baked into the human genome. You cannot stop it, revoke it, circumvent it or avoid it. It's why progress happens. Humans can't help making progress any more than spiders can help making webs. It's one of our basic instincts. On net and the macro scale, it is always positive...but on the individual micro scale, it affects some negatively even if a larger number is affected positively. But it cannot be stopped any more than gravity or thermodynamics can. The human need to progress, to create, to self-actualize...that's immutable natural force at work.
You labor under the standard false dilemma of all those who are opposed to progress. You posit that if there is an economic activity A that is disrupted and even destroyed by progress, then all humans who currently perform economic activity A for a wage will DIE! Did all of the telephone switchboard operators who were made obsolete by the computer switching network just die, or did they repurpose? Did all of the assembly line workers replaced by robotics just die, or did they repurpose? Since the dawn of human civilization, there has been some number of people opposed to progress under the exact same false dilemma that you labor under - take away X activity and anyone doing that activity will DIE. Hell, in the legend of John Henry, the worker actually dies by trying to compete with the evil steam engine that was built to replace human labor. It's a pretty old paranoia, and the rhetoric of it hasn't changed in centuries.
Thing is, humans adapt. That too is part of our genome. I know, I know...this is different...BECAUSE AI AND STUFF!! But as Mircea points out, anyone who bleats that nonsense clearly knows not a thing about AI, even pamphlet level knowledge.
And even if your fever dreams of dystopian hellscapes were a tangible possibility, UBI does nothing except speed us on our way to the hellish landscape you envision.
This is simply brilliant! Amazing how such common sense is lost on so many, but not really surprising...
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