oliveira12345

This.

Basic income would pay for basic needs, and let people devote "free time" to more personally-satisfacting-activities: open-source programming, studiyng new interesting fields, etc...

The mere fact that in today's professional career there is little oportunity for a 40-50years to work on a completely-new-unexperienced-field is an clear example. There is a point in time after which a job converts from ilusion-and-motivation into delusion-and-economic-compromise. And that's blocking people from growing and fully apply their capabilities to reach higher achivements

People work because they need to pay rent.

With mincome, if the basic needs are paid, then people could do other non-economic activities, such as more dedication to arts and culture, develop studies, etc...

For example, I believe a lot of people would increase participation on open-source projects in internet

Thanks for your explanation - there is a brighter future through your ideas.

What measures could/should be taken to minimize the social impact of this?

Would something along the lines of making special regulation so that the factory, in the verge of firing the workers, should pay a special compensation to contribute to the formation of those workers? A special tax on mecha-factory-robots ?

Explained in comment above: the prediction contains contradictions.

It may not be an option for everyone to make a "more creative skilled task" as it usually implies an extensive education including university and nowadays even a master (or more)... So even when people are willing to take another higher-skilled-career, that may not be an option for example for 40+ with kids... (no time to do it)

> Which option do you think is more likely?

We can look at poorer countries and see that necessity forces people to survive by whatever means exist. When they can they work. When there is no work, people have to resort to illegal means of survival, leading to eventual political instability and well, sometimes war... nothing good.

I did not intended to address the people with opposing views - I meant to addressed the arguments and tried to do so. I believe in respecting all opinions, the article is very interesting and the discussion spinning around it is a sign of its relevance.

There are contradictions in the prediction (even if it becomes true or not in the future)

* Why would a factory, built upon a big number of low-skilled workers, would need a big number of creative-skilled workers ?? Why would the factory pay the extensive formation necessary to transform "low-skilled" into "high-skilled" workers ?? Would they all become proeficient new professionals, or possess the necessary educative background and personal vocation to become skilled workers in a different career path ?? What would they do in their new role ??

It seems a contradiction, and contains the illusion that there will be better jobs for all the workers, when there is a serious and (most) probable risk of ending up with the opposite effect: a new wave of unemployment.

With that clear, I do hope your prediction becomes true and all jobs do become better. I just have a have a hard time imagining the world going down that path.

    > There have been plenty of examples of such innovations over the past century

Could you share some info about them? Would help understand your point of view

UPDATE: Let me clarify that with "socially-owned factories to solve nation-wide necessities" I meant to say "some way to use this technology towards the common good" - I tried to express this idea with a contrived example "socially-owned factories". Sorry for the misunderstanding

Can't give you a complete answer on this, although I believe the correct way to evolve on this list (and other questions of importance to society) could be something like (for example):

* a) open period of public discussion (media info and debates), and invite proposals to be sent and received before a fixed deadline-A. This expects the contribution from anyone, both {government, social, private} entities which work around the context but also from anyone else who has a valid opinion or contribution to make (journalists, individuals, teachers, etc).

* b) let the discussion of arguments and solutions breed during the period of public discussion, and when deadline-A is reached identify key-arguments-and-participants who surfaced as dominant contributions and with them constitute a "task-team". (make available to them some gov-special-temp-permission to work on this)

* c) Ask the "task-team" to try to elaborate a joint proposal, with their different contributions taken into account, and explaining the pros/cons of the decisions proposed (this could serve also as an historical-explanation-of-why-those-decisions-were-proposed-at-that-time). If it is not possible to make a joint proposal (arguments too different) then the task-team would elaborate multiple proposals and take them to an online voting to let the public decide which proposals should be discarded at this point.

* d) At this point, there should already be public conscience of the problem and the different tradeoffs around proposed solutions (from a)). Also there should be a proposal elaborated by the "task-force" (from c)), so in this phase the proposal should be gradually implemented, with much communication and transparency of the whys-and-hows.

These are just some sparse ideas... I believe that society could be led to participate much further and generate greater/better contributions towards the well-being of the nation...

> they are not likely to deliberately shoot themselves in the foot

Like polluting the planet beyond unsustainable levels?

"Yet rather than putting people out of work, this will supposedly free them up for more creative, skilled tasks, rather than subjecting them to menial, low-skilled work"

This is a lie.

It pretends that the factory owner will continue to pay the wages of existing employees and also the acquisition-and-maintenance of new CPS machines. Simply a lie.

It pretends that the employees will be free "for more creative skilled tasks"... this is almost insulting... Previous employees will be fired and in their place will be a small team of highly specialized technicians to control the machines. There is no hope for previous-employees to be kept, they will basically be replaced by machines - please don't create illusions.

The truth is that this means layoffs and a new wave of unemployment, for the benefit of the corporate efficiency though machines highly intelligent.

The blame should not fall on the technology itself, but instead on the politics which allow the technology to be used to boost financial results without taking into account the social-costs of it.

I believe this should be regulated to create socially-owned factories to solve nation-wide necessities.

At present time: job = need money to survive in our current society

In an ideal future (not here, not now): job = personal development in some desired activity

So in the current reality we live in now, not having a job is (still) not freeing humans, its almost the reverse - its casting humans out of economic power, which in turn is reducing the humans ability to have a normal life

The country is no longer of its citizens, but is owned by an elite

The government works for the country's elite, against its citizens

Democracy is just all fucked-up... I thinks this is another sign showing that in the near future we will have to confront and evolve our society: our grandparents had 2 world-wars, we will have now our share of social change which I believe will be a "political-war"

Hope not, but all signs point into that same direction, all around the ocidental civilization

I also started with computers and programming at very young age (10yrs), and with a lot of ilusion.

3 years ago when I was 29, my daily routine was going home after job and be with computer untill going to sleep. I had periods of gaming, of programming of discovering-linux, install-and-review the latest open-source inovations, reading books, etc...

I always had a big passion for computers, BUT 3 years ago I suddenly got to a point when I realized that computer-time was not satisfying me as much as before... and although my habbits continued to take me home and be with the computer, I started noticing more and more that I was missing other things, like socializing and relating with people in other contexts...

Some months later, I had not really made any real change to my lifestyle, and was becoming more and more apathic and frustrated with everything (including my passion with computers)

Then, one day, I took the resolution of stop thinking and inscribe myself in the first group-activity that I saw... and that is how I got into a class of martial-arts... It was not easy for me the martial-art, and people where not very warm at first sight, but everytime I was there, sweating and feeling like "maybe-I-should-go-home" I remenbered myself the void sensation of being home alone tired of the computer... and I kept going to classes... some 6 months later, I started to know better my colleagues of the class, and my skills improved naturally, and I started to enjoy the classes by themselves and not as a refuge :)

Even still, somedays I got out of job late, or it was very cold and I skipped classes but then it I was at home and feeling frustrated by being there alone with computer, again with that feeling... and that reminded me that I knew I could change it, with my decisions... And that were important frustrated-moments, because helped me see that I could make things to feel better, or I could just not do anything but I would finally feel bad about it...

The martial-art classes have been to me the first intent to change my lifestyle, but since those early days, it has given me much much more than I could expect... I made friends, discovered much more interesting persons than I thought there were, and had great time... some special ocasions just happened after a class which I almost missed because of staying-at-the-warmy-home, and I try to not forget those special days because they would not have happened if I had not forced myself to go to class... that for me meant a huge personal lesson

I also recommend one of my best-books: "The Magic of Thinking Big" from David Schwarz... while reading that book I rethinked a lot of my own actitudes and it helped me be aware of some personal blocks

Hope sharing my experience helps someone :)