May be we'll finally become OK with some of the people to live on welfare checks? It's not "slacking" when the humanity just doesn't really need your input.
Parts of Europe strike me as the ones most likely to lead the charge (the Swiss had an actual vote on Basic Income just recently) and many existing benefit systems (welfare systems) come fairly close to a ad-hoc de-facto basic income.
Assuming the basic income is sufficient to cover basic needs, I'd be quite happy (as long as I could afford a reasonable computer and internet) to just write open source software for the rest of my life.
The only reason I write any proprietary software is to pay the bills with that incentive removed I'd program just as much.
If machines become better at basic research than humans, then we have achieved one of the key features of Banks' Culture. That's a feature, not a bug.
"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote."
After that, he lived just enough to see the physics giving birth to modern chemistry and electronics.
This is an example of a highly important and interesting problem that is limited by computational ability, among other things. Knowing some physical constants is important but the macro problem is still hard.
For those of you who haven't read Ian M. Banks "The Culture" series, The Culture is a space-habitating multi-species confederation that has long ago made true general AI, concurred all ageing and illness and now mostly spend their time exploring the universe and trying to improve other civilisations, without too much meddling. Anything at all we can do to become them is a Good Thing.
At that point we just found The Culture and start to build space-ships.
Here's another great piece on that problem: https://medium.com/@RickWebb/the-economics-of-star-trek-29ba...
What I would hope is that with machines covering the necessities we see a huge surge in the arts, education, and craft.
A perfect example is the craft beer movement (tap rooms are popping up everywhere by people who enjoy their craft - and it is glorious!). It's generating quite a bit of money too.
You don't get the check for doing nothing. You get the check for doing whatever you want. Most people would find that very satisfying.
Either you pay unconditionally, or you hire and pay for specific work.
I was not speaking in absolutes. Of course there are exceptions. All I was saying is that it provides some incentive...
Not only that, but you are applying today's economics to a dramatically different situation in which basic needs are met by machines. I don't think that works.
I'm sure there are plenty of people with an interest in helping people out in similar ways that aren't willing to put up with the low pay.
A paycheck is more than just a paycheck; it's also an estimate of the value of service to others. I feel it's reasonably important to have some mechanism to steer activities by. This is difficult; it's easy to get trapped in careerism.
What I am seeing more and more is that the technology can get in the way. Corporate IT just seems to get worse year by year.
In old stories it used to be called Utopia when people didn't work and robots did everything. Now we call it Unemployment and make it a bad thing. This will have to change.
It will have to change.
Then there's the possibility we just haven't happened on the right reciepe to keep people working. It's a huge shift in the basic assumptions of economics, one of which is "not every thing can get done."
No, because of fairness. Some people will have to keep working while others can have holidays? Those who work will forever be paid more than non-working ones.