alt Hacker NewsSome of us have a perfectly good game plan for that. It's called Universal Basic Income.
It's just that many powerful people have a vested interest in keeping the rest of us poor, miserable, and desperate, and so do everything they can to fight the idea that anything can ever be done to improve the lot of the poor without destroying the economy. Despite ample empirical evidence to the contrary.
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> It's called Universal Basic Income.
I'd rather we democratize ownership [1]. Instead of taxing the owning class and being paid UBI peanuts, how about becoming the owning class and reaping the rewards directly?
Well that sounds less like a plan and more like a pipe dream.
We can (and should) provide for those among us who aren't able to provide for themselves, without also firing everyone in the welfare department. UBI is shit. People need to do something in order to recieve money, even if the something is begging on the side of the freeway or going into the welfare office to claim benefits. Magic money from the sky is not the answer.
I wouldn't call UBI a "game plan" so much as a thing people can point to so justify their actions to themselves. It helps you pretend you're not ruining people's lives, because you can point to UBI as the escape hatch that will let them continue to have an existence. It's not surprising that so many in the tech industry are proponents of UBI. Because it helps them sleep at night.
Never mind that UBI has never actually existed, it probably never will exist, and it's very, very likely that it won't even work.
People need to face the possibility that we will destroy people's way of life the way we're headed, and to not just wave their hands and pretend that UBI will solve everything.
(Edited to tone back the certainty in the language: I'm not actually sure whether AI will be a net positive or negative on most people's lives, but I just think it's dishonest to say "it's ok, UBI will save them.")