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I think I'm at the point where I'm so worried about this I'm going to figure out how I can send my hard earned dollars to mincome lobbying groups.

Here's the informative video that caused my crisis.

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I'm not convinced it's going to happen quite so soon as to be stressing out about it in the immediate future, but it's definitely going to 'cause some shit to go down in the next couple decades.

 

Never heard the word "mincome" before, but I always appreciate a nice portmanteau!

 

EDIT:

 

... "It" being millions of people losing jobs in rapid succession as automation takes over more and more jobs.

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As a programmer I'm slightly less worried for myself, but yeah I think we need some kind of basic income for everyone.

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I remember whiching this futurologist talk on a breakfast television show, and he said in the future, what with automation and growing populations there is just not going to be enough jobs for people. Half the population of developed countries are just not going to be able to work and us as a society need to figure out how we're going to support that.

I think a good start would be less hours per working week. Say 4 people doing the hours that 3 people are currently doing. Make it a 25-30 hour working week.

Studies show (obviously depending on what work you do) people are more productive when working fewer hours. Aren't people in Norway doing this shit. I've seen a few companies in the UK are trailing it.

I'm lucky that the past 5 years I've only had to work a 35 hour week, I seriously couldn't hack any more than that now, I do overtime and put extra hours in on my terms. I'm not working some forced fucking 40 hour week where you're also expected to stay late FUCK THAT SHIT (I was actually at a company about 6 months ago where the culture was like that.... I didn't last long :)) now I work entirely form home :tup: future

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Yeah, it’s a depressing business. Certainly if I worked in a call centre, or as a driver of taxis, trains, or trucks, I’d be worried. Self-driving vehicles will probably be here sooner than we think. The recent protests from cab drivers in Europe against the spread of Uber seem like an echo of a future where automated taxis get trashed in the street by neo-luddites.

 

I’d love to believe that this would result in fewer people having to work fewer hours while everybody maintains the same (or better) standard of living, but I dunno. There doesn’t seem to be the political will to make this happen at the moment. Whereas I can easily imagine Prominent Business Leaders arguing that in order to grow, they need to minimise their overheads by employing as few people as possible while squeezing as many hours out of them as they can.

 

Given the de-fanged state of our unions, and the general reluctance of government to get involved in these markets, I guess it’s the cost of labour that will be the driver of change here. At the moment, it’s still just about cheaper to hire masses of human beings to do things that you could conceivably mechanise and automate – like packing and delivering my Amazon orders, for example. But that could all change very quickly. 

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I live in a rural area and I just got back from a rare trip to New York City. I thought a lot about related subjects. I thought the public-transit system from New Jersey to Manhattan was impressively efficient and the number of people that seemed to be maintaining it compared to the number of people using it seemed to be ridiculously low; this is more like some sort of economy-of-scale in regulated infrastructure of the commons than automation, but they seem like pretty much different versions of the same thing.

Once in Manhattan, I got a strong sense that labor-demand what absurdly low due to the amount of people who were willing to commute in to work. So think about this combo: centralization-of-the-means-of-production due to economy-of-scale AND fast and reliable transportation. The results seem like there is a lot of competition for any jobs. I'm sure I'm missing some aspects of this, economics always overwhelms me.

Another thing I've been think about is how automation makes things less expensive for the consumer. The internet, laundry-machine, gas-motor, and refrigeration are great examples of this. I wouldn't be able to comfortably live on so little income if sending super-specific requests to a global network and retrieving answers, doing my laundry, hauling groceries, and keeping them cool were all things I had to do manually. That's a side of the coin to consider.

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Is this spurred by the latest Boston Dynamics video? Because that shit is frightening.

 

Hah, no. That's nothing, that's just a joke. This is about the rise of automation that will remove millions and millions of jobs over the next few decades. See, for example, self-driving cars. What's going to happen when truck drivers, taxi drivers, lyft, uber drivers are all replaced by self-driving cars? Those people with those specific skills will not be needed anymore. They'll need to develop new skills. But which skills? They have to be careful not to devote time to learning a new job that will be replaced. Even the food service industry isn't safe. Especially fast food restaurants, where quality isn't really a big deal.

 

Basically, watch that video Spenny posted.

 

As a programmer I'm slightly less worried for myself, but yeah I think we need some kind of basic income for everyone.

 

Yeah, I'm fortunately not in any danger. Not only am I a programmer, but I also work in game dev. Creative industries are (right now??) not in any great danger. But I worry for everyone else. ):

 

I remember whiching this futurologist talk on a breakfast television show, and he said in the future, what with automation and growing populations there is just not going to be enough jobs for people. Half the population of developed countries are just not going to be able to work and us as a society need to figure out how we're going to support that.

I think a good start would be less hours per working week. Say 4 people doing the hours that 3 people are currently doing. Make it a 25-30 hour working week.

Studies show (obviously depending on what work you do) people are more productive when working fewer hours. Aren't people in Norway doing this shit. I've seen a few companies in the UK are trailing it.

I'm lucky that the past 5 years I've only had to work a 35 hour week, I seriously couldn't hack any more than that now, I do overtime and put extra hours in on my terms. I'm not working some forced fucking 40 hour week where you're also expected to stay late FUCK THAT SHIT (I was actually at a company about 6 months ago where the culture was like that.... I didn't last long :)) now I work entirely form home :tup: future

 

Working less hours is a goal we should be striving for, but it's not really a solution to the problem of automation, you know? Unless you're proposing the hours you lose are given to someone else. But then they have to be trained for this new job they'll be doing. Which, in a lot of cases, will mean going to school, which costs money, which you need a job to pay for...

 

It ain't lookin' good.

 

Yeah, it’s a depressing business. Certainly if I worked in a call centre, or as a driver of taxis, trains, or trucks, I’d be worried. Self-driving vehicles will probably be here sooner than we think. The recent protests from cab drivers in Europe against the spread of Uber seem like an echo of a future where automated taxis get trashed in the street by neo-luddites.

 

I’d love to believe that this would result in fewer people having to work fewer hours while everybody maintains the same (or better) standard of living, but I dunno. There doesn’t seem to be the political will to make this happen at the moment. Whereas I can easily imagine Prominent Business Leaders arguing that in order to grow, they need to minimise their overheads by employing as few people as possible while squeezing as many hours out of them as they can.

 

Given the de-fanged state of our unions, and the general reluctance of government to get involved in these markets, I guess it’s the cost of labour that will be the driver of change here. At the moment, it’s still just about cheaper to hire masses of human beings to do things that you could conceivably mechanise and automate – like packing and delivering my Amazon orders, for example. But that could all change very quickly. 

 

Yeah, what worries me most is that nobody is talking about it. It's going to be a problem, and we need to be talking about it now, but most politicians only seem to give it the time of one vague "yeah it will be a problem" response. It's the second biggest problem we're facing, after climate change. I suppose, at least, climate change is getting more attention.

 

I hope it's not too late for either issue.

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I'm not convinced it's going to happen quite so soon as to be stressing out about it in the immediate future, but it's definitely going to 'cause some shit to go down in the next couple decades.

 

Never heard the word "mincome" before, but I always appreciate a nice portmanteau!

 

EDIT:

 

... "It" being millions of people losing jobs in rapid succession as automation takes over more and more jobs.

 

I think this is fair, it's just been on my mind, and something that kind of indirectly keeps creeping up on me. On a positive note, we have a few players in Canadian politics presently making the argument for mandatory minimum income, and they are pitching it from the perspective of being a replacement for present social programs, which is a great way to pitch it. Anytime I hear about it though, I think it's the kind of program we could institute now that future proofs society down the road. On a negative note, a few week ago I got in a bit of an argument with my coworkers, because they were making the point that to exist in society you have to be an economic contributor. That argument to me just reads as a symptom of the inherent conservatism people hold that is going to end up hurting society down the road. Kind of the same nobody is talking about it problem you described above.

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There's a very hardcore libertarian at my office and I've been thinking about bringing up this topic because I'm curious how he'd suggest we solve it.

 

(I already know he won't have a solution; he'll just suggest that if people lose their jobs and can't find another, it's their fault. It's scary how many people think like this, even if they aren't as passionate about it as he is.)

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One of the reasons I am trying to switch teams at work is that it would be fairly trivial to automate 90% of my current job. The team could be reduced from 4 to 1 with a little effort.

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Let me start by saying I'm not against the concept of a mandatory minimum income, but it's not quite as simple as it sounds. Social Security in America is heading towards a car wreck as there are more elderly people needing money (both because of longer life expectancy and the sizes of successive generations) than young people paying in money. Especially if automation takes hold the way people in this thread are fearing, we could very easily end up with a minimum income strategy that works now, but collapses in 10 years as less people are working.

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Mandatory income is currently in effect in a few Swiss Cantons, and I think Finland and/or Norway as well in some regions. 

The problem with looking at a minimum income in the US is because its so big, and economies and cost of living vary from place to place. 

But it really isnt just about pure capital. There is enough food grown to feed the world, no problem really (as long as we don't burn it or do cash crops)

In the first world, we can basically shift priorities and everyone could live at a basic level without worry. There will be some kinks etc. to work out in such a system. However, that would also mean that the wealthy and the families thereof would no longer be allowed to be (as) wealthy. 

 

Stop doing the war thing would be a huge help as well. 

 

Yea, its idealistic and requires a grand paradigm shift, but it's not entirely impossible. 

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Let me start by saying I'm not against the concept of a mandatory minimum income, but it's not quite as simple as it sounds. Social Security in America is heading towards a car wreck as there are more elderly people needing money (both because of longer life expectancy and the sizes of successive generations) than young people paying in money. Especially if automation takes hold the way people in this thread are fearing, we could very easily end up with a minimum income strategy that works now, but collapses in 10 years as less people are working.

Some of that is related to the US having a screwy tax structure and the attacks that have weakened social program funding. 

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Some of that is related to the US having a screwy tax structure and the attacks that have weakened social program funding. 

 

No disagreement there. I don't have the faintest idea how to unscramble that.

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Let me start by saying I'm not against the concept of a mandatory minimum income, but it's not quite as simple as it sounds. Social Security in America is heading towards a car wreck as there are more elderly people needing money (both because of longer life expectancy and the sizes of successive generations) than young people paying in money. Especially if automation takes hold the way people in this thread are fearing, we could very easily end up with a minimum income strategy that works now, but collapses in 10 years as less people are working.

 

I don't think anyone here said it was simple.

 

But it will be a necessity eventually. So we need to start talking about it, especially because it's not going to be simple!

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Unless i'm misunderstanding what's being said, I must agree that "it's complicated" and "current social security is broken" are real bad reasons to not examine a problem.

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Sorry, I didn't mean for the tone in my post to be accusatory, if it came off that way. I don't think Spenny did, either!

 

Phew. Glad we got that sorted! :D

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Yes, I have misrepresented your point. I think your argument was specifically that mincome isn't automatically a simple solution, but is it fair to posit that you think it is as inherently flawed as current social security?

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I would say that we need a solution, but it has been fairly typical of governments to implement a quick solution that has major problems over time, so I want to get it right this time.

 

Edit: And, for this particular thread, I'd like to chat a little about how we could implement it, because I honestly don't know where we'd get the money, unless we magically got the government to cut back on military spending for once.

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Increase the tax rate on long term capital gains made by those making more than $90,000k a year to be on parity with the income tax rate associated with their tax bracket; encourage corporate spending by incentivizing raising wages, hiring new workers, and bolstering capital/R&D investment via a tax on stagnant corporate holdings (maybe as determined by a ratio of their declared net annual profit to their total liquid holdings, or maybe by some other method, i don't know, i'm not an economist); eliminate the more short-sighted of trade agreements like NAFTA; cease the failed policy of quantitative easing...

 

There are a lot of options beyond getting the government to decrease military spending, some more feasible than others.

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As a programmer I'm slightly less worried for myself, but yeah I think we need some kind of basic income for everyone.

 

Being a programmer is weird though because of the push towards open source. It's the most economically polarized creative industry I'm aware of.

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