Eternity RPC Board
05-13-2017, 10:58 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-13-2017, 11:00 PM by Seperallis.)
Yeah, but where's the basic income going to come from? The main problem in the US, as I said, is that a large chunk of government revenue comes from payroll taxes, which don't get paid from robotic labor. One idea that was floated about but obviously crushed by the powers of lobbying was to tax the use of robotic labor in some capacity, either in a per-robot or production-per-robot basis. That has its own problem, mostly competitiveness abroad in markets that don't do that, etc...
But a different idea, and one that is probably more viable in the future (but might be harder to get started the more we wait) is the idea of people owning the robots. As we know, the biggest attraction to the use of robots despite their high initial cost is their low cost over time. They're a capital asset, used to generate wealth and income.
Currently, all the capital is raised and owned by the company itself, making the company the sole beneficiary of the robots'...uh, "labors," and leaving out all the former workers and other people. However, if people owned the capital, owned the robots and more or less "rented" their capital to a company, or otherwise investing in that capital some other way, it could effectively do the same thing as a basic income.
Robot take your job? Own the robots that took your job.
On a slightly related note, why is it that the people championing both the use of robots and the idea of a basic income both assume the erroneous lie of the poor, oppressed, slavish laborer who goes to work at his soul-crushing job that he'd give anything to leave if he could, but simply can't. This falsehood keeps getting perpetrated by white-collar corporate interests that seek to gain from their use of robots, and readily believed by "better educated" people that can't possibly see how anyone could want to do back-breaking labor.
I'm looking at you, Bill Gates.
Maybe this was the case of the teamster or assembly-line worker in the 60's, but it's not the case today; the sorts of jobs being lost now, and the ones to be lost in the future, are highly skilled jobs, jobs people trained to do and quite often like doing. They're told robots or basic income will "free" them to do things they actually like doing...yet they're already performing rewarding and fulfilling work. It's highly presumptive and pretentious to assume that someone doing sweaty manual labor isn't doing what he loves, or takes pride/passion in his craft.
I never know where I'm going with these thoughts. I also never know how to end them, so this'll do.
But a different idea, and one that is probably more viable in the future (but might be harder to get started the more we wait) is the idea of people owning the robots. As we know, the biggest attraction to the use of robots despite their high initial cost is their low cost over time. They're a capital asset, used to generate wealth and income.
Currently, all the capital is raised and owned by the company itself, making the company the sole beneficiary of the robots'...uh, "labors," and leaving out all the former workers and other people. However, if people owned the capital, owned the robots and more or less "rented" their capital to a company, or otherwise investing in that capital some other way, it could effectively do the same thing as a basic income.
Robot take your job? Own the robots that took your job.
On a slightly related note, why is it that the people championing both the use of robots and the idea of a basic income both assume the erroneous lie of the poor, oppressed, slavish laborer who goes to work at his soul-crushing job that he'd give anything to leave if he could, but simply can't. This falsehood keeps getting perpetrated by white-collar corporate interests that seek to gain from their use of robots, and readily believed by "better educated" people that can't possibly see how anyone could want to do back-breaking labor.
I'm looking at you, Bill Gates.
Maybe this was the case of the teamster or assembly-line worker in the 60's, but it's not the case today; the sorts of jobs being lost now, and the ones to be lost in the future, are highly skilled jobs, jobs people trained to do and quite often like doing. They're told robots or basic income will "free" them to do things they actually like doing...yet they're already performing rewarding and fulfilling work. It's highly presumptive and pretentious to assume that someone doing sweaty manual labor isn't doing what he loves, or takes pride/passion in his craft.
I never know where I'm going with these thoughts. I also never know how to end them, so this'll do.