> I think we can agree UBI is not possible in low income countries

No, we won't agree. Any country can tax its industry (GDP) by certain percentage and redistribute this among its population as an UBI. It might not sustain you, but it is a form of universal dividend.

The actual percentage is only a matter of political choice. I don't think any country (unless there is like a disastrous famine, and even most famines today are actually redistribution problems in disguise) can really say that redistributing 100% of its GDP would not be able to sustain its population. So there must exist a lower percentage from which this is possible.

I wish modern Western economies would have the guts to do this with about 20% of their GDP. Economic history shows that (especially progressive) taxation actually matters very little when it comes to economic growth.

> I wish modern Western economies would have the guts to do this with about 20% of their GDP. Economic history shows that (especially progressive) taxation actually matters very little when it comes to economic growth.

UBI is much more than just taxation - a UBI at 20% of GDP would almost certainly cause massive inflation. That's ~$10000 per person per year in the US.

And that's not to mention that a 20% UBI would have to be on top of already existing government spending to maintain infrastructure and services. If it replaced social benefits in the US, it'd add an extra trillion or two to the federal budget (already 25% of GDP!) depending on which services you allowed it to replace.

The simple answer to all these questions of "what will happen to people currently working in industry X or job Y" is – they will retire, and won't be replaced. Those studying or entering the workforce will see the reduced opportunities and pursue other career paths.

Automation isn't going to happen overnight. It is a generational change.

> I think we can agree UBI is not possible in low income countries.

This got me wondering, what is the best analysis of whether UBI is feasible economically for a given country? How low is too low? Does it boil down to something like the difference between average per capita income and average per capita GDP? Or something else; is it possible to afford UBI even if GDP is lower than personal income?

If the country is past the middle income trap? . Or if there’s already a universal something (eg. Universal Healthcare)?

I didn’t know what the middle income trap was. I just looked it up and Brazil is one of the 2 examples used on Wikipedia. It appears from a little bit more Googling that Brazil’s GDP is much higher than it’s average income, suggesting that it could afford a UBI, no? (Edit: South Africa is the other one, and it too appears to have higher GDP than income in comparable adjusted PPP dollars.)

I might contend that all countries might be able to afford universal healthcare, that universal healthcare is actually less expensive than private for-profit medicine regardless of the size of the economy. While people do contend that publicly funded healthcare might be more expensive, it seems like the main argument these days is that the quality of public healthcare is lower than free-market healthcare. Unfortunately, the US is one of the biggest and best examples of being both more expensive and worse quality than a decent sized list of countries with public healthcare.

Yea I would like to learn more about a 2nd or 3rd world take on UBI because it doesn’t even seem in reach in first world countries. Same goes for the 4 day workweek!

There’s a lot of countries that provide free healthcare, like Cuba. So UBI should be possible in places like Cuba?

At the same time, the robots haven’t taken people’s jobs in Cuba yet.

Another question. Shouldn’t some sort of Universal Healthcare come before UBI?

> Shouldn’t some sort of Universal Healthcare come before UBI?

Good question, I don’t know, but maybe yes, especially if it takes longer to implement UBI than healthcare. OTOH, if a UBI was enough money to cover both healthcare and living expenses, and if it was achievable and could be implemented just as quickly, then there’s nothing wrong with that. Realistically UBI is probably much more difficult politically, and more expensive, so you’re probably right.

Basic income works from parents to children, for example trust funds. Sometimes it’s expanded to families, for example emirates in UAE. The next level is small countries with large sovereign wealth funds. Of course family seems to lose its meaning once you have 7 billion family members.

re: dobot, that's an impressive robot arm, and it's even cheaper than what you cited! ($2700 on the product page)

My first thought is why don't we see more food automation? ex. retrofitting these in a mcdonalds kitchen should be in the realm of possibility. Food is my largest expense behind rent and taxes, I imagine the same is true for most.

The fidelity and affordability of these machines has definitely taken a huge leap forward in the past few years. Many will echo "the technology isn't there yet", but it certainly feels like we're on the cusp of full robo revolution. Excited to see how far this will go by 2030.

I thought this was an interesting insight into what a fully-automated grocery store looks like. And also wild to think about how different things are when you design them for automation from the ground up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE

I wonder how much of a McDonald’s costs are staff. If most of the cost of a cheeseburger is food costs plus stuff like real estate then it might not make sense to replace the people with robots, especially once you account for needing a few humans to manage the place and maintenance (plus accounting for downtime when stuff breaks).

Yea lots of desktop class industrial arms available in next few years! The mg400 seems like the best value with industrial (rather than educational) in mind.

I’ve been looking at the Epson Scara arms but those go for like 10k I can’t afford it lol.

Yea I see a lot of small startup types but no big chains like macdonalds, even with a POC to fully automate! Surprised Uber Eats isn’t in on it with their ghost kitchens and autonomous car endeavours.

The main ones that seem to be lowest hanging fruit are coffee, pizza, and stir fry.

Also, sushi/maki machines have been widely used for a long time!

I think its 5-10 years before complete automation. We are seeing more partial automation, such as a deep fryer that will automatically lower/raise the fryer basket, and being able to order without needing waitstaff to take the order.

The main part holding it back now is not the capital cost of the equipment, its the NRE (non-recurring engineering) costs in making all of the equipment operate together as there is not a standard platform to make various pieces of equipment easy to plug together.

That sounds to me like an Elon timeline.