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Comment by mannewalis | Hacker News Reader

Plenty of people will be working, just not everyone will make the jump to a post-AI society, especially older folks I imagine.

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I seem to remember a Star Trek episode (not sure which series) where a character is talking about how they’ve evolved past the need for money. Badly paraphrased, and maybe just as badly remembered, but my thought at the time was that if no one is getting paid, how do get low level crew members to sign on? I’d much rather be an officer than scrubbing torpedo tubes.

Isn't it that you sign up for Star Fleet, go through school, take tests, and then get assigned to a position?

Not everybody is in Star Fleet, so I assume people want the ability to travel the stars and they'd be happy enough scrubbing torpedo tubes.

@unnamed76ri Haha, I love the Star Trek nod! Their post-money world sounds great, but where I'm from, hustle economy/treet vendors, okada riders, shows how hard it is to imagine no one needing cash.

Even if AI automates a ton, people will still want incentives for less glamorous jobs. Maybe UBI isn’t about scrapping money but ensuring a baseline so folks aren’t stuck scrubbing metaphorical torpedo tubes.

What’s your take—could a partial UBI make “low-level” work more voluntary?

└── Yarn me

When generations of people are on UBI,and this is all they know, the system starts to require more capital and tax revenue, until it collapses.

I think one other aspect of this system is that if you are getting UBI, you give up your voting rights.

I don’t know, I won’t claim expertise on this subject. But it feels like any kind of UBI risks creating a permanent underclass of people much like current welfare programs that carry no incentive to get off said programs do.

Every economic system has its flaws and can be exploited. Capitalism has been responsible for lifting billions of people out of poverty. But it’s also been corrupted by cronyism.

The coming AI revolution will likely cause capitalism’s issues to be more pronounced.

"AI will take all of the jobs!"

"People will still have to scrub the torpedo tubes!"

How are these not mutually exclusive?

Well the first quote is something you made up. And the second is a paraphrase of something I wrote. So yes, mutually exclusive.

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