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Comment by enaaem | Hacker News Reader

You still need a fish catching machine. In the literal sense. Despite all the innovations, we still need fisherman and sailors. Even if we have a fish catching machine who/what will make the fish catching machine? And there are still tons of other automation problems and a fish catching machines isn't even the hardest one.

The automation challenge is often conveniently underplayed, while it's an insanely hard problem. You might as wel say a wizard will do it.

Will it be possible some day in the future? Probably? In a relevant time frame? Probably not.

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It's fascinating how some people view on manufacturing is oversimplified. Fish catching machine needs maintenance, it uses consumable items to work properly. To produce all of that there should be tools, transportation, mining, engineering and so on. There will be no state in any near term future when it would be possible to have work optional for any meaningful group of people. All the welfare we have right now is basically a subsidy (mandatory charity) of working people to not working people.

I believed more in "corporate welfare" when a corporation finds a way to create a free product for large group of people while selling something else. But closer and closer connections between the government and corporations made this possibility less likely from my opinion.

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

Now I certainly agree that there is no realistic scenario where any significant portion of people can just choose free fish in 5 or even 10 years[1]. But the automation of work tasks is like Mike's bankruptcy: it builds slowly until we have the sudden realization that we're over the cliff. Robots making and repairing robots, people watched over by machines of loving grace, the whole 9 yards.

Personally, I would like to have the UBI parachute strapped on before we find ourselves floating Wile E. Coyote style over an economic collapse. Given the rate at which new legislation passes in today's society, the time to start the fight is at least 20 years before you really need it.

[1] Unless those singulatarian types are right, and human-level machine intelligence is 7 years out: https://longbets.org/1/

Check the percent of the population involved in agriculture over time, or involved in fishing. From a quick Google search something like 90% in 1800 vs 2% now.

We definitely have machines, not saying there’s no labor involved but it’s certainly less than it has been historically. It really is similar to the village where one person operates a fish catching machine.

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