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Comment by brokenmasonjars | Hacker News Reader

I often feel what will replace jobs is people just going to school and earning a PhD or two or three. It'll certainly destroy their idle time of unemployment and make them and everyone else - the collective a whole lot smarter. Perhaps subspecialties emerge with dual-PhDs.

I often hear that not everyone is capable of getting a PhD, but then again if we take the same energy and dedication of a career and push it over into education I think plenty have the capability. I often consider myself exhibit A so to speak since I got my GED and was working three low end jobs (line cook, gas station attendant and construction worker) until I bounced out of the workforce and pursued my PhD in Public Policy. I'm sort of playing around with undergrad level math now as I prepare for a second PhD. Seriously think if I could manage at least one PhD anyone else could easily manage 2 or 3.

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OK, but is there a demand for so many PhDs? Having a PhD doesn't really guarantee a good income now. It will be worse once everyone has one.

This makes sense, if there is some sort of government sponsorship or grants, but providing these to all people would mean drastically higher taxes, and companies are opposed to those.

It's not about the demand so much in my view. Post graduation, people move onto research. The site Innocentive comes to mind sort of in regards to developing a form of compensation. Rewards for discovery. Nature had a partnership with that company for a bit but I believe they went separate ways.

I think the funding issue can be figured out without higher taxes or at the very least without absurdly higher taxes. Perhaps one idea would be to train people to invest through grades 9-12, have some sort of basic minimum income which isn't rich but isn't below poverty either; encourage people to invest with those funds and use profits to pay for college etc. I also sort of align with Jaron Lanier's concept of paying people for their data usage; but built onto that maybe so that it includes both government and private companies usage of that data; individuals don't see those funds until 18, from which they are encourage to go to school. As those funds are held they are invested like social security maybe? None of these ideas are really all that worked out just yet, just responding to you is all.

Not every job needs a PhD and the purpose of university isn't to prepare you to get a high paying job.

It's not about high paying jobs. It's about just occupying people's time, giving them something to do. Perhaps high pay; or at least a pay of some form can come from patents/copyrights developed with such knowledge however.

Until basic needs are handled, you can't just say "it's about occupying people's time". People need to eat, clothe themselves, and shelter themselves, and all three require a steady source of income.

If you want to push widespread welfare or UBI for those in academia, that's an entirely different option. But that'd require a serious revision in the current tax codes or some very wealthy benefactors to bootstrap.

So, basically bmi/ubi is what I'm assuming when I talk about this. Just it's post that, what I'm trying to answer is "what will people do" essentially when there is no jobs and we have bmi/ubi. I sort of just assumed readers figured such a system would need to be in place already as jobs are automated. Probably should not have assumed that, my bad.

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