I keep saying what I said to my dad 10 years+ back - once we automate ALL jobs out of existence be that 10 years or 100 years from now, how does society / monetary systems change? What comes next? UBI at best is a stopgap.
> how does society / monetary systems change? What comes next? UBI at best is a stopgap.
Money is an abstraction used to manage scarce resources. The fact that resources are scarce is never going to change, because we live in a world with finite space, mass and usable energy.
UBI does not seem incompatible with that. It's just a system (on top of the abstraction of money) to allocate scarce resources. Why do you think it is "at best a stopgap"?
I disagree on your point that resources will remain scarce. That's true of earth, but long-term, which is really what I'm getting at, that's not the case. We aren't even that far off from mining nearby asteroids; give humanity 100 years, and who knows what we'll be up to.
UBI is a stopgap in that it just extends the current system by giving away money; eventually we'll need to move past 'money' somehow.
Yes, it's time to really start thinking about that. I'm excited for the future, afraid for us , without a plan. Also I think most people will hand wave this away "It'll never happen to me".
Very fun question to think about, if there are no more "jobs", what does society look like.
I'm just saying that it seems as though (especially given the messaging that Wall Street has given to the public as it pertains to their position on the debt ceiling crisis) that Wall Street is probably happy to say "let them eat cake" for those who can't participate in the new economy.
It’s much easier to stomacj than communism. I believe that UBI will be part of the forthcoming neofeudal system.
Rich people will operate private welfare systems that distribute money and housing to poor people. This will be a philanthropically funded version of the current welfare system, but with different tradeoffs made than public welfare systems.
Parents pay their children an allowance. The child must obey the orders of the parents or the allowance can be taken away. Most children exist in a such relationship with their parents and everyone involved is satisfied.
Under neofeudalism, the poor will be as children to the rich. The rich will operate intentional communities populated by their poor people. From the perspective of a rich person it’s like playing The Sims but with real people.
Here is how life under this system will be. You live according to the rules set by the overlord. The rules will be downstream from the personal values of their overlords. Most housing in these communities will be like current housing provided to welfare recipients. It will probably be a spectrum of Tent to Homeless Shelter to Studio Apartment to Small Multi Room Apartment to Small House.
Here’s a question to ponder. How much of a welfare state can the average oligarch provide to how many people under the economic conditions of the post-AGI era?
That's not actually true - if you look around, you'll find a surprising number of people who are right-wing economically overall, but specifically support UBI; and this is especially popular in tech circles, which, if it really goes as OP described, would be the ones amassing power. Two simple reasons: first, when suffering is too obvious and blatant, it's harder to not notice it; and second, you can only push people too far before they riot, and it's cheaper to pay them just enough to avoid that.
The question, rather, will be: what kind of UBI - "just enough to prevent large-scale unrest", or "as much as we as a society can afford"? The former is not necessarily an utopia or even close to it; think The Diamond Age and The Expanse.
