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Comment by rusted_planet | Hacker News Reader

With automated warehouses and autonomous cars and automated fast food and everything else just think of all the jobs lost. I read articles saying the jobs will be offset with new jobs, but no one bothers to explain what. Also when everyone is unemployed how are they going to pay for these automated goods.

When I was in highschool a job was to build character and get you ready to survive in the world. Maybe this is why more kids are living with their parents longer. I don't agree with basic income, because I believe like welfare people will find ways to exploit it. The people who have a drive to work will seem like they are getting less.

I am not opposed to this type of automation. It is just worrisome what impacts it will have that us little guys cannot control..

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I don't agree with basic income, because I believe like welfare people will find ways to exploit it.

The whole point of UBI is to avoid means testing, so there's no reason to game it. Of course, if anything, we won't have actual UBI because it's most likely politically untenable because of the exact perspective you have, but some form of extended welfare, which requires some kind of means testing, which is then gameable.

The people who have a drive to work will seem like they are getting less.

If it's truly UBI, then these people can avoid the feeling like they are getting less by not working, or taking a job closer, or starting their own company, that doesn't require driving to work. "I don't want to drive to your office" becomes an acceptable and usable reason to quit your job because you don't actually need a job under UBI.

Erg... English is most annoy. I'm pretty sure OP meant "drive" as in motivation, not the car type :)

But yeah, your point it still kind of valid.

Point being, if you are motivated to work then you inevitably get more. If you simply rely on UBI then you get enough for cheap rent and cheap food.

Pretty sure a UBI doesn't allow for a new xbox games and a carton of cigarettes every week.

Plenty of homeless people will waste it on cigarettes. I'm actually for it. These are precisely those people for which the currently rampant paternalism is NOT helping. It just further communicates that they are no longer worthy of bettering themselves. This attitude is pervasive and exists as a direct reflection of our neo-liberal capitalistic state. It floats around like pollution in the aether between egos and stifles anyone sensitive to it. Once that's happened the means-testing merely communicates that they are being measured and slotted. That anything known of their condition will only be used to humiliate them further; There is no help. I don't have statistics at hand but these people (hobos) largely aren't reproducing. Can they not just smoke and be comfortable? Why are we so desperate to police the abuses of these systems? Making proper use of them is already it's own reward. Let's just allow people to punish themselves for as long as they feel they need to. Without giving them any more evidence that they ought to...

I read articles saying the jobs will be offset with new jobs, but no one bothers to explain what.

That's because it's impossible to know what new jobs will exist in the future. Consider the invention of the digital computer. It would have been impossible to know in the 50s that the thousands of typist jobs would be replaced by web designers, programmers, systems administrators, etc.

I remember watching an American civil war documentary that linked the dire state of the southern economy to slavery.

Whilst it is true that robots != slaves, at least from an ethical standpoint, the fact that an increasing portion of our economic production is done by unpaid (nonhuman) labour might land us in similarly dismal economic straits.

For the record, I don't think the answer is to pay the robots a salary! :-)

More seriously, I'm also equivocal about the benefits of universal income. A job is about more than money, it's also about identity and self-actualisation. Perhaps a mixture of universal income and indirect public subsidies for academic, heritage-craft, public service and other charitable / vocational work might be the answer?

Actually, paying robots a salary sounds like an equitable way to fund a basic income.

>I read articles saying the jobs will be offset with new jobs, but no one bothers to explain what. Also when everyone is unemployed how are they going to pay for these automated goods.

There's no "also" if job losses are offset by new jobs.

I feel the same way.

I dont feel good about the future. I see that divide between the "haves", and the "have nots" just widening.

I personally think we are living in a bleak time right now.

I felt it was bad in the ninties, but we didn't have a voice.

Sorry--I just see companies exploiting people because they can. I see fees, and fines becoming more than excessive. I see more homeless. I see more escapism through drugs. People don't appear to be experimenting/expanding their minds; they appear to be numbing. It's not just partying like in the 80's. It's complete escapeism?

Plus, I see a complete lack of ethics. I really don't like that whole, "Hay it's legal?". I won't even comment on morality. I have a fake profile of FB, and in all these years I joined one group. I joined an Amish group years ago. I joined because I was genuinely interested in their culture, and found their lack of greed/materialist ambition comforting. And I have a greedy sister who literally stole all her mother's money in a estate matter. She had a multimillion dollar shoe company in Los Angeles, but still needed more money. I guess I am trying to convince myself their are still good people left in this world?

I see too many people pushing my age, and kinda giving up. We work, but we are getting less, and less. Those years between jobs are lengthening. We are being financially squeezed--by anyone who can get away with it.

They say go back to school, and retrain for exactly what?

My hope is Millenials are better people, and do the right thing, but I feel like they won't have much power either.

> I see more escapism through drugs.

Escapism is a great way to expand your mind. If you didn't believe you could escape this why would you conceive of anything else?

Millenials may be the most pathological generation in history; That's only because they were raised by the second most. They know it. They can see the history of the populist political failure; The phony institutionalization of freedom. The centralist optimization of economies as a domain of warfare. They're ants and they know it. They don't know how to proceed. They've met so many wonderful grasshoppers. Yet they feel the grasshoppers in total are evil. There is more dissonance in reality than ever before. Even if that's only because we're so aware as a society now. It has consequences on the developmental outcomes of human's that may not show up until decades after they've taken effect.

You've misunderstood my comment. The point is if the people who say there will be other jobs are correct, there's no reason to worry about who will have money to buy things.

> I read articles saying the jobs will be offset with new jobs, but no one bothers to explain what.

Robots in warehouses (AGV's) need to be sold, designed, welded, eclectically wired, programmed, transported, installed, integrated into an existing system, maintained. All of those are done manually, by sales people, welders, electricians, CAD designers, electronica engineers, software engineers, site engineers, ... . I worked in the Automated Guided Vehicle industry, and custom projects are all made by men, not automated yet (because projects are custom).

Once upon a time the majority of people were farmers or herders. 150 years ago the majority of non-farm workers in the advanced economies were doing menial manufacturing work. Machinery that automates work allows individuals to produce more with a given amount of effort. This allow people to produce/afford more goods/services, and leads to the human role in the production process being more managerial.

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